We headed out from the Sassafras River back out into the Chesapeake and into Worton Creek. It about a 22 mile journey however 10 of those 22 miles is just getting out of the Sassafras River. We are tucked all the way back in at the end of the river. There was some early morning fog that we waited to burn off in the morning sun, so we headed out. We have some happy crew this morning!

We were able to throw the jib out on the way down the Sassafras and have that help us along the way with the motor. As we got out into the more open water of the Chesapeake, there was still some lingering fog hanging around.

As soon as we entered the mouth of Worton Creek we hit crab pot-aggedon. They were literally every where! If you aren’t familiar with crab pots they are a wire framed structure that sits on the bottom of the creek bed and has bait in it to attract the crabs to enter the pot. They look like this under the water.

What we see on the top of the water is just a small floating bouy of various colors. Generally crab pots are dropped in a line with several crab pots dropped in the water that follow that line. It looks something like this.

Each crab fisherman has a different color bouy that they use to identify their crab pots. As I said, they are supposed to be in some representation of a line. To be honest, there were so many covering the entrance to the creek it looked like thousands of skittles on the water. Now generally as a boat, you want to avoid running over a crab pot because the line that runs from the bouy to the pot can get tangled in the propeller of your boat which is not good. We were on full crab pot alert! It took all three of us, Mark, Tim and myself to identify crab pots and which way to steer to avoid hitting them. After our discussions at the restaurant in the Sassafras river about a shortage of crab fisherman, we contemplated whether we should just pull up a few and have some lunch.

We were finally able to dodge all the crab pots and head a ways up Worton Creek. We found a quiet little spot to drop our anchor just off the only marina back in Worton’s Creek. We were the only boat anchored there and there wasn’t really room for any more. The depth was a limiting factor and our depth sounder read zero. Here are some photos of the beautiful anchorage.

We just hung out and enjoyed the quiet of the evening, had some dinner and played some mexican train. Tomorrow we will be off to Rock Hall.