Views from the Crew...SIGMACHI...Summary of SIGMACHI'S first southern cruise...Summary...at our new Chesapeake Bay marina for the winter.


SIGMACHI is home in her new slip near Baltimore after 8 months of our cruise to Florida and back to Chesapeake Bay Country.

Three of us (including Molly,our cat) left the most wonderful Olverson's Lodge Creek Marina of of the lower Potomac River on Dec. 15, 2019 and headed South to Florida!...

 A one month delightful stay a Palm Coast Marina was elicited by its most delightful dockmaster "Ro!" The we headed south through SIGMACHI's home port of Hobe Sound headed for Marathon...

Then the specter of the "Chi-Com Flu" closed the Florida Keys and most marinas to "transient" boats we were fortitutiously "marooned at the lovely Soverl Harbor Marina.  After a two and 1/2  month lockdown in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla... and a delightful stay with our friend Betty Legare in Jupiter,  SIGMACHI retraced our track northward on the AICW.  We stopped a a few favored marinas and enjoyed the use of our new Maxwell winch and new 55# Mantus anchoring often.

A planned stop at our friends' dock on Campbell Creek, NC warmed our hearts (social distancing observed ) for a few days.

Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, VA and Yard Manager James Taylor hosted us for over a week [interrupted by a hurricane threat] as necessary repairs necessitated by a grounding incident near Stuart, FL were professionally completed. While there, AYB crew also changed engine oil.

From AYB we made the secure anchorage near Ft. Monroe in Hampton, VA. The next day was an easy cruise  to a well known anchorage of Little Bay near White Stone. Next, northward on the Chesapeake Bay, at last, the good distance was covered to the scenic creeks of Solomons, Maryland. 

After after refueling early the next in Solomons, and a short east bound trip to the mouth of the Patuxent River  we rounded Drum Point to the Chesapeake Bay and  despite a brisk  northerly wind and some rain [73 miles!] on Aug. 14, 2020 around 6 pm entered Bodkin Creek (between Annapolis & Baltimore) to the Pleasure Cove Marina...our new marina on the Chesapeake.  Rick, the facility manager, had a crew of "red shirted PCM staff at dockside to help tie up.  First class, thank you sir!

Nothing could ever replace the friendliness of Olverson's...but the 3.5 hr each way car trek from our home in Randallstown,  MD to Callao, on  the Northern Neck of Virginia was ...well ...both Jeanne and I wanted something closer to home so we could enjoy SIGMACHI more often!

Since coming to Pleasure Cove we have not left the boat slip.  We have come to just " be limin'" (as the say in the USVI). The crew" plans a Fall Cruise early in November and then SIGMACHI will be hauled and stored inside of one of the 3 GIANT temperature controlled "boat barns" at Pleasure Cove.

While SIGMACHI is in " hibernation" the staffof Pleasure Cove will perform some maintenance  including bottom painting and Karen and her crew of RED SKY Detailing will throughly clean, wash, compound, polish, and "ceramic coat" SIGMACHI for her anticipated "expediton" in 2021 northward to the Erie Canal and the Thousand Islands....

Tight Lines!

Alan & Jeanne Cecil 
Aboard SIGMACHI 

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BTW, neither of us piloted from the flying bridge during our 8 month Florida voyage.  

The photo is of Co-Captains Alan & Jeanne Cecil on the occasion of our 3rd. wedding anniversary 9.29.2020.

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