Annapolis AND Baltimore

We woke up in the Annapolis Mooring Field to another cloudy day. While we like the relief from the sun, I much prefer the sun for taking pictures. Annapolis is one of our favorite cities so far and there's lots to see. We took the dinghy up Spa Creek, and saw many fine, but not too ostentatious homes. The homes in this corner of the creek were older and well maintained.
Annapolis loves boating and the city makes it nice for the boaters on mooring balls and anchors by making every dead end street that ends at the water a dinghy landing.

The streets downtown are narrow, lined with historic buildings and lead up hill from the harbor.

At the top of the hill are two circles, one with a church, and the other with the Maryland State Capitol Building at the top of the hill. It's a beautiful city.

Annapolis is the home of the US Naval Academy and this week is graduation week for the cadets. The famed Navy Blue Angels perform a show as part of the graduation festivities. Practice was scheduled for 1400 that day, so we made sure to get back to the boat in time .. and the sun came out in time too. We've seen lots of military planes on the Loop and I've been trying without much success to photograph them each time, so once again I made an effort, this time tried video too ... there's three very short videos at the end of this blog. We had never seen a Blue Angels show before, everyone said the practice is just as good as the show, and it was indeed spectacular. There were a total of 6 Blue Angel FA-18's performing. They were close to the ground and fast, fast, fast as they barrel rolled, flew upside down, corkscrewed, flew straight up then dropped straight down, individually and in formation. Everyone in the mooring field and on the shore was being amazed at these skilled pilots. The practice lasted for over an hour, finally I just threw down my camera and watched in awe.

Both afternoons about 6 of these Navy vessels came out and drove around the perimeter of the harbor. We felt very safe in Annapolis.

The City Docks and Mooring Field are very well run and boater friendly. Here's the marina with the State Capital dome in the distance.

The Naval Academy building are very impressive as well. All these buildings on the shore are part of their large campus.

As we departed Annapolis, there was one Navy War Ship (that is what they call themselves on the VHF radio) and several freighters waiting to enter the river. The War Ship is the one in the center of the picture.

Back in the Bay, we passed under the double span Chesapeake Bay Bridge ...

... and cruised north into the wide and industrial Patapsco River. We saw more impressive gun metal gray military vessels and plenty of container ships, but here's something different ... the US Navy Hospital Ship "Comfort".

We passed by Fort McHenry. Francis Scott Key penned the words to our national anthem as he looked for the flag to continue to fly above this fort while he was held prisoner by the British in the War of 1812.

Baltimore's Inner Harbor is 15 miles up the Patapsco River. The City has revitalized the harbor into a shopping, eating, and museum center. There are marinas, tourboats, water taxis and crazy little electric boats and dragon boats that are filled with families tooling around the harbor.

But there are no mooring balls. We'd read that anchoring was okay and that there was a dinghy dock, so we lowered the hook and the dinghy and off we went. Here's the humble Shingebiss at anchor in downtown Baltimore. If you want to see more of our view from the boat, the last video below was taken from the boat.

So we putted around the entire harbor and could not find any place to land the dinghy. We asked a guy in a boat who appeared to be overseeing the dragon boat activity and he said we could tie up on the city wall for $25 ... so we returned to the Shingebiss and watched the action from the fly bridge. No problem, we get to see the city lights tonight and tomorrow will reach another mile zero as we depart the 200 mile long Chesapeake Bay.

First three videos are Blue Angels and the last one is Baltimore Harbor.