A light breeze pushed us along at a modest 3-4 knots of speed, a perfect pace to examine the outline of Cape Clear island as it disappeared to our stern. A bright blue day was the canvas upon which we traced our wanderings, a trail of bubbly water. The weather gods were making gestures of peace as the wind built enough for a gracious downwind sail, depositing us at the entrance to Baltimore harbor. Locals here like to remind us transatlantic kin that this was the first, the real Baltimore. Like everything, Americans had super-sized it, but here, an infant coastal town had just enough of the basics to put it on the map. A handful of cafes, pubs, and boutiques occupied the waterfront street while a sailing school with a bee-hive of young teenagers took over a corner of the harbor. I was thrilled to see a bunch of young girls, paired up with their moms, being given a shoreside walkthrough of their trailerable sailboats before they set out into the harbor. It was mother-daughter day on the water! Breezing past us in the direction of the cafe-scene were clutches of slightly older young adults dressed like it was a high-school prom, except this was August.
