Diamonds in the Rough Ep. 22

Last Friday, we left Georgetown on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake with a simple objective in mind — find a harbor with some excitement. The cruising guide had promised great things about Georgetown and had even forewarned us that we might encounter a “wall of boats” heading over from the more populated Baltimore and Annapolis regions. We quickly learned that you need to put on your ‘seasonality adjustment’ lens when reading the guide. What might be a wild and crazy location in July is as tame as a kitten in October. Sometimes too tame! And after spending the whole day holed up down below in the cabin in anticipation of gale force winds which never came, we were anxious to get out and see and do. So, we set sail for the western shore with Baltimore in mind, a 35 mile journey. We were finally able to show my Dad some real sailing with a beautiful 15-20 breeze out of the north that allowed us to sail on a broad reach or wing-and-wing downwind the entire day. Like the Delaware Bay, this part of the northern Chesapeake is shallow in many spots and they have designated a narrow shipping channel for freighters, tugs and the like to use. We had to keep very alert as our downwind destination forced us to criss cross the channel repeatedly. Zack stepped in and helped us out for part of the sailing, under the watchful eye of Grampa!

The entrance to Baltimore was by no means planned by the office of tourism. The shores are lined with heavy industrial activities with odd looking plumes of smoke exciting the factories and many freight terminals and container cranes. History is never far away though. After passing under the Francis Scott Key bridge, we saw in the distance a red and white stripped buoy with white stars on a blue background at the bottom. I thought it was something left over from a July 4th celebration this summer, but days later I read that this was dubbed the “star spangled buoy” and was the approximate site where Francis Scott Key got the inspiration for our national anthem while he stood imprisoned on a barge and looked across the bay to Fort McHenry to see our flag flagging. It is a little hard to see in this photo.

Beyond all of the shipping terminals and industrial landscape, the real destination in Baltimore is what is called the Inner Harbor. It is a windy course that soon narrows to a point that tall downtown buildings and tightly packed marinas become the shoreside scenery. The guide told us about the reasonable dockage offered by the City of Baltimore that was right on the waterfront, and that was indeed what we got! We tied up to a brick seawall and after a few nervous moments trying to keep the brick from getting too friendly with the fiberglass, we took stock of our surroundings. We were in the thick of the city!! It was very apparent that we had city-prone kids as they were jumping up and down with excitement and wanted to explore ashore immediately. It was Saturday night and there was activity all around us. The Inner Harbor has a beautiful wide boardwalk that meanders around the waterfront. Where we tied up at was in front of two large gallerias and a food court. Instantly, we were surrounded by people asking us questions — “What kind of boat is she?” “How long?” “Where are you from?” “Are you sailing around the world?” We felt as close to being celebrities as ever! We closed up the boat quick and took a relaxing stroll down the boardwalk and stopped for ice cream. The contrast with Georgetown was nothing but shocking!

When we returned to the boat, it got to the point where none of us wanted to be up on deck. As soon as someone on shore saw you, they’d come over with a ton of questions which wasn’t all that bad by itself but all too frequently you encountered a bum that was really more interested in a donation from your liquor locker. We eventually settled in down below and I even turned on the heating system for the first time to take the chill off — what a treat!

Just like our experience in New York, city life in Baltimore was something we really embraced and enjoyed. Ofcourse, you take the good with the bad in any major city. The water in the Inner Harbor was unbelievably dirty. Those pesky plastic grocery bags were everywhere and I was sure we were once again, like in Halifax, nearby to a sewer drain. If only these cities would put money into cleaning up their harbors. It is ironic that boaters are required to be beyond the 3 mile limit to pumpout their holding tanks, but cities like these appear to pump it right in the harbor. The City of Baltimore had a set of docks further down the waterfront and when a spot opened up there on Sunday, we seized the opportunity and the chance to get to a little quieter and cleaner smelling spot. We quickly met a number of other sailors at the docks, several with kids making the journey south like us. Here’s a picture of the spot where we docked.

It was now time to get out and see Baltimore. I have to say that the city, apart from the water quality issue, has done a fabulous job at reviving the waterfront. It is not hard to imagine this area in it’s industrial heyday where factories and warehouses dominated the waterfront. But now, they have architected an attractive and entertaining spot for both locals and tourists. We stopped in at the most impressive visitor’s center I had ever seen. As a traveler, these places are a godsend.

We were quickly overwhelmed with the possibilities to occupy what surely was going to be a long weekend stay. There’s an impressive list of museums, including a renowned aquarium, a science center, the proverbial maritime museum (man, have we seen plenty of these…), a civil war museum, and even a whimsical public works museum. There’s loads of shopping and restaurants, a Whole Foods store nearby, and even an ESPN zone — a spot with so many TV’s, multiple floors of video games and overall hub-bub that we could only stand it for a few minutes! We chose instead a more basic form of entertainment, the local farmer’s market, stocking up on fruits and vegetables and hopefully some e-coli free salad ingredients.

To our surprise, we had arrived on Columbus Day weekend, which gave us a chance to enjoy the local Columbus Day parade.

The city was also hosting the Fells Point Festival, a street scene attended to by about 300,000 people. When you’ve been on a four person boat on the open water most of the summer, that’s a shocking amount of people in one place! By the way, if you have ever seen bump stickers saying Eat Bertha’s Mussels, it is in Fells Point!

On Sunday, we divided up, with Karen and Zack going to the aquarium and our youngest, Grampa and I going to the science center. It was not quite like the Boston Museum of Science, a spot we frequented back home, but they did a great job nonetheless. It was a real treat to see our youngest starting to come out of their shell and volunteer twice to go up on stage during the demonstrations. Here’s a video of them at the show on static electricity. The instructor was the splitting image of one of my quirky high school science teachers…

Unfortunately on Monday, we had to bid adieu to my Dad, who had a return flight in Philadelphia to catch. The designer of Baltimore’s inner harbor should be hired for their light rail system as we had to wade our way through broken

down ticket machines, confused signage and multiple train rides to get to the Amtrak station. I was feeling bad having to put my Dad on a train in such a frazzled state, but he hung in there fine, making the transfer in Philadelphia to the airport subway line and got back home without incident.

On Monday evening, we gathered together on the dock with a couple of other sailboat crews. With our box wine in tow, this was nothing like our parties back home in Bedford, but it was the simple life we were living now. We met a wonderful couple from Norway on board Mi Casa, Ragnhild and Tryge who were traveling with their young daughter Una and 9 month old son Trym. They must have some sky high taxes in Norway because Ragnhild was on the standard one year fully paid maternity leave courtesy of the government. As a family, you can get up to three of these! Tryge was on leave from his job also. When I asked what kind of reaction they got from their employers, they said they were completely supportive and arranged to have someone take over their jobs temporarily until they returned. It sounded like a year break from work was no big deal over there!

When you are cruising these days, a lot of boaters have websites like ours that they fill with news of their travels. Ragnhild had told us they had read with laughter the incorrect details another boater had written about them. So, I’m going to be very careful about what I say, just in case! For our Norwegian friends, they are immune, since their website is all in Norwegian. If anyone can read their site, can you please let us know if they said anything wildly disparaging or inaccurate about us??!

After four nights in Baltimore, we felt we had stayed long enough and should really be moving on. Under light winds, we motored out of the long harbor channel and started south past Annapolis with the intended goal of seeing St. Michaels on the eastern shore. St. Michaels was about 40 miles away from Baltimore. Earlier, we had planned to shoot directly across the bay a shorter distance to Rock Hall, where we had read good things in a recent Soundings article. But, after talking to our Norwegian friends and hearing about their disappointments getting into Rock Hall and then exploring ashore, we promptly changed plans to head to St. Michaels. Besides, several other boats at the Baltimore docks were headed there too.We had a few brief hours of gentle sailing downwind, but as we approached the Miles River where upstream resided St. Michaels the sky was getting dark and we turned on the engine to avoid entering yet another harbor at night. These waters are pretty well charted and if you do run aground it is nearly always soft mud not the rocky granite ledges of Maine. However, they do have some areas where the crab pot buoys can be as think as Maine, so it is more desirable to navigate during daylight hours. Upon arriving in St. Michaels, we found the small harbor full of boats at anchor; instead, we joined a couple boats anchored outside the harbor entrance. Normally, in Maine, if you left the confines of a harbor, it would entail letting out an inconvenient amount of anchor line to get the right scope, but not here in the Chesapeake. We anchored in 14 ft of water and could get by with dropping about 90 ft of anchor chain. We settled in with a quick dinner and an early night with hopes of exploring ashore the next day. As typically happens these weekdays, our morning and sometimes an hour or two after lunch is consumed with school work. After these obligations were done, we dinghied ashore to what we were told was a pretty swank town. I could picture the rich and famous strolling the sidewalks in July and August, but once again we had to seasonally adjust our expectations. I left Karen to do the shopping while the boys and I searched for the parks. In October, when the church bell tolls five times, this town shuts down. There would be no late night pub crawl for us! At least it had more life then Georgetown. Here’s a shot of the harbor. As you can see, there’s plenty of slip space this time of the year!

Needless to say, after an afternoon, we had enjoyed St. Michaels enough and were ready to move on. Besides, we had made arrangements to stay ashore over the weekend with a family friend of Karen’s that live in Columbia, MD — Phil and Pat English. We left early this morning, after enduring the overnight arrival of an especially strong cold front with temperatures in the low 50’s. Now, I know I’ll get some grief from our New Hampshire friends about how they are already experienced temperatures below freezing. But, you have to get on the water, in a cabin or up on a breezy cockpit when it is 50 degrees and you’ll appreciate how cold this can be! We motored for four hours back across the bay to the Rhode River, just south of Annapolis to leave the boat at Holiday Hill Marina. It has been quite a few years since I’ve danced for four hours straight but that was what was required to stay warm at the helm! Here’s Karen and I this morning. I truly hope this is the coldest we have to tolerate this winter; I’m really looking forward to the blue water and white sand beaches of the Caribbean!Phil met us at the marina and we were whisked off at 70 mph to Columbia, MD for a break from the boating life and a tour of Washington, D.C. We are looking forward to it immensely!

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