Started: Mill Creek. 37°47.58′N 076°19.19′W

Anchored: Mill Creek. 38°19.79′N 076°27.06′W

Distance: 45.1 nm; Time 6.5 hrs

Yes. They have the same name. They're in different states, however.

Things are still working! We have a new fruit-fly trap, too.

We chugged up past the NAS PAX target range, where Target Range boat 9301 advised us to stay at least 1 mile west of the direct line from Point No Point lighthouse and the Alien Artifact.

It was hazy today, so the picture of the naval target range boat gives the thing a peculiar disembodied look.

Yes, the Naval Air Station on the Pawtuxent River is sometimes called PAX.

There's a point in Chesapeake Bay called No Point, and it has the No Point Lighthouse.

And the Alien Artifact is used as a target of some kind. We didn't see practice bombs raining down out of the sky. So it must be used as another kind of target.

Mr. Benmar steered much of the morning. I think I've got him properly calibrated to hold a course that matches the GPS reasonably well.

It's not so easy getting him set up properly. The wheel must be approximately centered, and the course dialed in must be really close to the desired course. If the deviations are too big or the wheel isn't centered, bad things happen. Bad things, in this case, means steering more-or-less at a random direction.

No wind today.

Amazing boat speed (still) from the new paint and clean propellor. About 7 knots for the whole 45.1 nm run.

Fruit Fly Traps

We've perfected the fruit fly trap.

Perfected.

The essential recipe is vinegar with a drop of dish soap. That creates an attractive nuisance for the flies. Trying to get some luscious vinegar, they are ensnared by the soap in the water and drown.

The container is an old Gatorade bottle with holes punched around the top.

It works like a crab trap. Flies go in, but have a hard time getting back out.

The presence of the fatal vinegar-soap combination seals their fate.

The previous trap was a piece of cling-wrap stretched over a bowl and punctuated with a fork. How primitive. This is woman's ingenuity at its most lofty.

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