First mini-cruise
Tom Vandenberg and Spiced Rhumb - a 2003 Bavaria 36 Cruiser

Here is my trip report for our cruise in SPICED RHUMB. We learned a lot about mini cruising -- our first real trip in the Bavaria 36. Bottom line, we were comfortable the whole trip and the boat worked great. Vital stats: engine run time 29.4 hours (12-14 hours charging at anchor/mooring), 16 gals of diesel (burn rate 0.54 gals per hour), water consumed approx 55-60 gals - we both took showers all but one day and did dishes once a day (first forty gallons lasted from Sat morning to Thursday morning), 157.4 miles total -- probably sailed 40% of that.

Saturday & Sunday
We left on Saturday morning (29 May) with a group from SMSA (So Maryland Sailing Assoc) for Oxford, MD. Great north wind, first reef in the main and genny reefed to about 100% -- we were smoking, tacking up the Bay. Ended up motor sailing last half of the 40 mile trek -- needed to make happy hour at the rendezvous. We anchored with the group off of 'the Strand' at Oxford on the Tred Avon River...I do not recommend that as an anchorage. Very hard bottom and took us 5 tries to get the anchor to set! We've never had that problem anchoring and to my relief, I watched several other boats come in that evening and have the same problem. Recommend anchoring on Pandealing Creek across the river from Oxford. Had another first, after returning from cocktail hour, I noticed our boat was facing differently then everyone else. During the slack breeze, the flow of the river managed to wrap our anchor rode around the keel. Solution was to use the dink as a tugboat and push the stern around against the current and wind to unwrap the rode. We spent two days at Oxford -- neat little town, some great boat yards and marine stores. Nice people.

Monday
We woke up Monday morning to rain and fog. Our SMSA group got underway around 0800, but we remained at anchor. After a great breakfast, we dinked back into Oxford for one more 'been there' T-shirt my wife wanted. We got underway about 1100 for a motor through 'the back door' to St. Michael's. We motored up Broad Creek, and then onto San Domingo Creek. Interesting approach; attention to detail on the charts, and day markers are required. We also tried an experiment with towing the dinghy with the engine on it at a little over four knots -- not a good idea in my opinion, but we thought we would try since we see so many people towing their dinks with engines on them -- bad idea will be reinforced on Tuesday. Great anchorage and an even more fun town to visit - weather cleared for our walk through town.

Tuesday & Wednesday
Tuesday morning was an early underway. We were headed for the Magothy River (north of Annapolis) and knew it would be a good 40 miles having to come back down to the Choptank River and then out to the Bay. Weather forecast -- partly cloudy, winds out of the NW and 20% chance of thunderstorms. As soon as we got back onto Broad Creek, we hoisted sails and managed to sail just past Bloody Point Lighthouse when the winds basically died. On came the motor so we could make the anchorage by dinner time. We were towing the dink with the towing bridle and with the gas can in it and our normal dock lines still attached -- fortunately I had put all the sail ties back on when we doused the main. We had just cleared the RT 301/50 bridge and were by Sandy Point Lighthouse, watching a t-storm brew west of Annapolis -- it appeared that it was heading straight north. We got nailed with a 40.7 knot micro burst. The dink flipped over at about 25 knots -- I was maneuvering the boat to get out of the channel and get the nose pointed into the wind. By the time I had the bow around it was up to 40 knots, and about 6 foot seas. It lasted may be 5 minutes and by the time we made the mouth of the Magothy the sun was out the winds were down to about 7-10 knots. To get the dink turned back over, I used some old Navy training about being pulled through water in a parachute face down to get the dink back on it’s right side. We spent two days anchored off of Dobin’s Island. Great place, Theresa did needle point and I waxed the hull and shined all the stainless along with other maintenance projects.

Thursday - Saturday
On Thursday, we sailed down to Annapolis -- had the boat up over 8 knots under sail coming down the Bay. Our 10.5 mile run took us about 2 hours from pulling anchor to catching a city mooring in Annapolis! Annapolis is definitely set up for visiting sailors. For $5.00 the harbormaster will come out to the mooring to pump out the holding tank. And the water taxi service is great. I won't tell you how much we spent in Fawcett's, but we did help the local economy out. Ordered the whisker pole and a Link 10 Battery monitoring system for the boat while we were there. Our plan was to head back to the Patuxent River on Sat morning -- woke to 24 knots sustained and gust to 28. Told Theresa that I had made that trip twice now in those conditions on the race boat -- not a fun 6 hours down the Bay. So we called the harbormaster and spent an additional night in Annapolis. Annapolis received somewhere between 2-3 inches of rain on Sat! I perfected the method of sitting on the hand bilge pump discharge hose, pinning the pump against the dink transom, pumping with one hand and driving the dink with the other! Sunday we motored home -- attempted to motor sail, but no wind.

Follow-up
Our only real concern was electricity management. Our Raymarine multi display shows voltage, but not amperage. So I ended running the diesel for 1/2 hour at about 1500 RPM in the morning, late afternoon and just prior to going to bed. Usually voltage would be cycling between 11.8 and 12.1 about that time. The only thing left on was the refrig -- at night we burned either the oil lantern and one/two overhead lights to read with. So, I ordered a Link 10 to install so we can really see what we have in 'the bank.' We have two 140 AmpH household batteries.
All in all, great trip. Really love the boat -- Theresa is already looking forward to a couple day trek back down to St. Mary's City.

PS: Installed the Link 10. Well worth the money, easy to install except the hole you have to drill in the beautiful Mahogany! I realized I was charging too much on a subsequent 7 day cruise in Sept 04 … great instrument to have onboard.