June 23, 2000 -- A beautiful day and 30 minutes of hell

We left out of Fishing Bay at 1009 GMT. It was beautiful. The winds were in our sail area enough for us to use our sails, though we had to motor sail. Hey, at least we used them! On the way out, we saw a tall ship anchored by Gwynn Island. As we approached Smith Point we saw Arcturus. We originally met them in West Palm Beach and have been pacing them (sort of) up the coast from there. As we headed north today, we took some photos of their boat under sail. We caught up with them on what's been going on with them and then pulled ahead and left them behind. It was a comfortable trip, though the wind kept bouncing in and out of our sail area. Finally, we put the sails away for the day. We arrived at 2300 GMT in the mouth of the Severn River. We were greeted with a frightening sight. There were 50 + sailboats, all under sail, most of which were participating in a race. Our boat lumbers at no wake speed. Almost the entire channel coming up the Severn is no wake. We successfully negotiated the channel, but became progressively annoyed at the other sail boats. The most annoying moment came, though, when we were anchoring. We had put the anchor down and were waiting for a boat to clear our stern before setting. A boat at our bow had the audacity to ask us to move our boat out of their way. As far as I am aware, boats at anchor have right of way, unless they are anchored in the channel. We weren't in the channel. We were anchored in a designated anchorage. This is one our pet peeves. There seems to be a mentality among "day" sail boaters (and a couple of others as well) that just because they are under sail, everyone must give way to them. This is true, to a point. However, vessels of limited maneuverability, constrained by draft or a few other conditions supersede boats under sail. The worst is a sailboat motor sailing! They are under POWER and therefor are supposed to follow the rules of a boat under power, but don't. Finally, there are a lot of day and weekend boaters that don't know the rules of the road or don't want to. It is certainly poor seamanship, as well as pure idiocy not to consider things such as gross tonnage and other such things when underway. We try to follow the rules of the road and it is irritating when we come across the arrogance and stupidity (a very bad combination) that seems to be so pervasive on the weekends and exhibited by Sport Fishers in general