Lovely St. Michaels, MD

We have had this spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum from our boat for the past week. The museum, which features a variety of Chesapeake marine heritage exhibits including boatbuilding, lighthouse tending, fishing, crabbing and oystering, is located in lovely St. Michaels Maryland on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. St. Michaels, a beautiful little town with many cute shops and restaurants, is also known as “the town that fooled the British.” During the revolutionary war, town residents hung lanterns from the treetops and tops of masts and then blacked out town lights, tricking the British into overshooting the town during a nighttime bombardment. Aiming at the treetops, the British missed the town completely, except for one wayward cannonball which is still lodged in a historic building here.

When we arrived mid week, the harbor and town were almost empty and we were able to anchor with only a few other boats in a well-protected inner harbor close to the museum. Then the Memorial Day weekend arrived and the harbor overflowed with arriving boats and people. As the anchorage filled with boats quickly and overflowed into several less-protected anchorages nearby on the Miles River, we became more acquainted with the politics of anchoring.

Since anchoring is free and dock space in the St. Michaels marinas is about $130/night for a boat our size (more for larger boats), many boaters prefer to anchor in the harbor and go ashore via dingy. Accordingly, space in our well-protected anchorage was highly desirable and attracted a seemingly endless stream boats looking for room to anchor. Some with anchoring experience realized there was no more room to anchor safely but others were anxious to get to town and didn’t consider the consequences. From a the friendly people on a nearby sailboat, we learned about doing the “Chicken Dance” on the bow of our boat (standing up with a stern expression and hands on hips with elbows out and waving) to ward off boats that try to anchor too close. When the Chicken Dance failed to work, the next step was to loudly say things like “You’re NOT thinking of anchoring there are you?” and then to getting the bumpers out to ward off the inevitable collisions with other boats swinging at anchor.

We only experienced one collision, which was more comical than damaging. The boat in question had an odd anchoring technique (careening around the anchorage rapidly in reverse), bypassed us, and then immediately ran hard aground, reversed again and hit another boat and then ours. Observing their lack of experience, we had dangled large bumpers and managed to avert serious damage when they hit us. They, in the meantime, had hung out a teabag-sized bumper which was useless. Red faced, they moved on to a marina where the dockhands were able to help them properly secure their boat.

Sailing in the Chesapeake Bay has been truly wonderful, with great winds, scenic shores and wonderful places to visit. It is also incredibly popular, and it is fun to watch the wide array of boats and ships that ply the waters here. We look forward to more sailing and exploring in the Chesapeake over the next few weeks before continuing our adventure north toward New England.

Hanging out in the Chesapeake

One of the last things to do before leaving “the Ditch” near Portsmouth Virginia is pass through some locks which connect the higher-level Chesapeake Bay waters with the lower-level ICW. While holding our boat’s dock lines in the lock and waiting for the water to rise, I noticed a sign with mileages to various destinations including “Jacksonville Florida, 750 miles” and “Boston, Massachusetts - 720 miles”. This drove home the fact that we are, in fact, well over halfway home.

We’ve spent the past two weeks hanging out in the lower Chesapeake Bay, visiting Norfolk Virginia for a few days (a nice surprise, I expected a town which was primarily industrial but it turned out to have a lot of interesting neighborhoods and history). We rented a car and visited Colonial Williamsburg, which is a town-sized living history museum, did some sailing on the Chesapeake and anchored for three days in lovely, quiet, Mobjack Bay. With nowhere to land our dingy nearby (all of the shorefront is privately owned), a local homeowner took pity on me and invited me to use his dock so that I could come ashore for a run. He then suggested a running loop which was nearly three times as long as the “about three miles” he said it was, but I guess he felt guilty for his misdirection because he circled twice in his pickup truck to make sure I was ok. The countryside in this part of Virginia – which I now know rather intimately – is lovely, comprised of historic plantations, pastoral horse farms and quiet roads.

We are now in the delightful town of Urbanna, Virginia, population 600, which pretty much shuts down except on weekends, so things have been very quiet. This has not been a problem, since driving rain and high winds have kept us boat bound for two days. Yesterday we braved the elements at Amelia’s insistence to go out for pizza and celebrate Mother’s Day. This turned out to be an enormous mistake because, as we ate our pizza, we watched through the window to see a hurricane level storm develop. The proprietor was kind enough to drive us back to our marina but we still got thoroughly soaked. We all have a little cabin fever and are looking forward to the storm moving on tomorrow so that we can spend time outside our boat and even go somewhere.

We plan to continue exploring the Chesapeake over the next few weeks including visits to Oxford, Cambridge and St. Michaels on the eastern shore before visiting Annapolis at the end of the month. Along the way, we hope to rendezvous with our boating friends from Wyoming, who plan to explore some of the same waters for the month of May.