Lewes Canal & Rehobeth Bay with River Dancer

We are getting a little better at putting River Dance in and out of the water.  We watch others detaching and attaching their boats, small and larger, one person jobs and two or more.  We fumble a bit but so far no major glitches.  

We ordered charts of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bay and tributaries.  Until it arrives we are relying carefully on our Garmin, depth finder and Google info.  And watching what other boaters are doing.  Rehobeth Bay is less than 2 feet in much of it and from a distance we watched people out of their boats apparently walking on water.  Dogs too.  Pretty cool.  

Initially we were going to run the Broadkill River from Lewes to Milton and back.  But since it was a quiet Monday we figured it might be a good time to run the Lewes Canal south to Rehobeth Bay to see what's what.  We were surprised at how few places there actually were to dock to eat from the canal.  That's probably a good thing for the environment.  The business part of Lewes along the canal was just not as large as I'd thought, somehow.  I don't know what made me imagine one thing or another.  We actually floated through stretches of the canal with no apparent development.  Other than the canal.  

Just heading out, south, from the boat dock.

Going under the bridge in Lewes. 

Then it got quiet and we started to see more wildlife. We saw blue herons and a green heron and lots of other shore birds I don't know yet. Lots of tiny crabs running for shelter as we passed along the mud banks.

We went south in Rehobeth Bay/Indian River to where we could see the Indian River Inlet bridge near the Delaware Seashore State Park & Indian River Marina.

We weren't sure whether we could slip through the canal into Assawoman Bay to Ocean City bayside.  Apparently it was last dredged in 2006, I think, and at one time was considered part of the intercostal, but not anymore.  Even with our shallow draft we weren't sure we should try it.  We are new to the area, new to our boat, and are just being careful.  

On our way back out of Rehobeth Bay we passed back through the relatively narrow jetties into the Lewes Canal again.  

A lone kayaker was in the canal.

It was a successful boat trip and we learned a lot.  We began to examine River Dancer's options for us and I began studying how to make screens for the back door and front hatch.  I tried laying in the forward berth for a while.  I haven't yet used the porta-potti that we had ready in the forward berth under the cushions.  I want to look forward to using the boat a lot and don't want to get dehydrated so I must explore this option at some point as well.  

Our next boat adventure will probably be back to Lewes to put in at their public boat dock and go north and west into the Broadkill River to Milton and back.