Oxford, Maryland to Solomons and the Trip From Hell

svliahona0
Sep 19
2 min read

We left St. Michaels for Oxford the next day, as Norman recommended. We tried to go all the way into the harbor, but we had to turn around - it was too shallow for Liahona. The Strand, as they call the area outside of the harbor, was the only place deep enough for us. We anchored and the next day we went into this beautiful, picturesque town. I took lots of photos. We walked, went to the library, a local artists' gallery/store and went out to lunch at Doc's Sunset Grill. We would have stayed longer, especially to eat at Doc's again, but we ready to get back to Solomons.

We left the next morning in beautiful, breezy weather. We made good time getting all the way back to the Chesapeake. Although the winds were coming from the south, we were able to motor/sail toward our destination. Then, the furling motor on the main sail would not work. Tim had to go on deck to manually furl in the sail. After some time the winds started getting stronger, so we decided to tack back and forth to utilize the wind that was now coming on our nose. There was no place to stop along the way. The winds kept getting stronger and stronger, they eventually built to 28 knots and we had steep 2 - 4 foot seas. Under power from our engine we could not move much faster than 1 knot. Tim tried another tack. The sail got hung up. He went out on deck, donning a life vest, and tried to loosen it, but it tore. Now we couldn't use that sail either. Also, I was getting increasingly more seasick as time went on. Five more hours to go. This trip was supposed to take 5 hours total. It took over 12 hours by the end. We motored into Solomons in the dark. Luckily, we had been there before and knew just where to go. We anchored and went to sleep. Worst sail ever!