Crab buyer on the docks, Oxford, MD, with blue crabs
Crab lunch in Oxford, MD with all the fixins'
Kids getting briefed before their trip on a "pirate boat" in Annapolis
AWARDS
Most Memorable: sailing in light air across the clearest water ever, the Bahama Bank east of Bimini, for a day and a half in crystal clear water, seeing only a few boats in the distance and sand, starfish, and small silver fish below us
Best Harbor or Anchorage: Faber Cove near Ft. Pierce Inlet, FL
Best Food: tie for conch salad in George Town, Exumas (all freshly made while you watch) and fish fry in Green Turtle Cay, Abacos, put on by the church youth group
Best Marina: Bohicket Creek Marina, South Carolina
Best Laundromat: free one, for boaters, at Charleston Maritime Center, SC, where we watched preparations for an outdoor wedding while we did the wash
Best Live Music: Bahamian Junkanoo bands, they perform at Christmas and New Years in Nassau, as a parade, and various other times of the year as individual bands (we watched one in George Town, Exumas)
Most Feared Waters: Alligator River entrance at south end of Albermarle Sound, NC
Worst Guidebook: Pavlidis’ “The Exuma Guide”, 2007 edition with numerous references to “this may change after 1999.…”
Best Guide: Explorer Charts (with annotations for groceries, laudromats, fuel, etc.) for the three different areas of the Bahamas
Most Likely to Go Back To: Eastern Shore Maryland to explore some more; but if we “win the lottery” we’d fly to the Exumas to see the annual April “Family Regatta“, the locals’ sailing festival and races that we missed this year
Good Samaritan Award: Brian on GOTTA LIFE who saw us aground, anchored his sailboat and came over with his daughter sounding the surrounding water, in his dinghy, to pull us off in the Matanzas River, near St. Augustine
All-Star Support Team: Mike Powers for keeping Belva and Ken Sr. up to date with our blog, Captain John Campbell for sending engine parts, etc., Steve Ward for phone advice and providing parts, our son Pete for forwarding mail and taking care of our house
On-The-Spot-Help When You Need It Award: Barry and Susan Perkins on SWAN who returned again (and again) to Key Biscayne while our engine was disabled and helped us to move RISING TIDE between anchorage and sea wall as needed
Best Local Business: Sun Electronics (solar panels and related products), Miami
Worst Local Business: West Marine, various locations
Encouragement Award: Frank and Linda Cassidy, veterans of this route (and much further travels) who got us interested in the Bahamas in the first place
May 28 We have just a few places left to visit that are new to us before we retrace our steps through Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. We crossed the Chesapeake to Oxford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, in the Choptank River. We also visited St. Michaels, Maryland, which was not far if we stayed in the Choptank, slipped into Broad Creek and then anchored in San Domingo Creek. Both towns are full of older 1700s and 1800s buildings, restaurants, boat yards, and crab fishermen. Oxford is a little smaller, and St. Michaels has a museum on the waterfront with several buildings and quite a few boats in the water and on land that they are exhibiting.
One of the boat yards, in Oxford, has an interesting method of building and repairing wooden boats. They use Kevlar rope instead of frames and it is set in a perpendicular routed groove in the wood planking and fiberglassed over. This yard, Cutts and Case, also has a lot of wooden boats in their yard, and they even have the power boat FOTO on display. It’s the boat the famous photographer Morris Rosenfield used (around the mid 1900s?).
We thoroughly enjoyed the area, and were treated to a lot of bird activity (one swan flew by at the same time each morning just before sunrise -- they make an unusual sound as they fly) and we learned a lot about the oystering and crabbing in the area.
June 2 (Tuesday) Our friend Ann Dacey is coming from West Virginia to join us for our last week of sailing. We positioned ourselves in Annapolis today and plan on completing a few projects while we are here, before she arrives on Saturday. The weather is very warm today, and the wind is light. The forecast is for thunderstorms each afternoon this week and by Thursday it should get cooler.
We are anchored in Back Creek which runs alongside Eastport, which is to Annapolis as Cambridge is to Boston. We can walk across Eastport in about 15 minutes and cross a bridge into Annapolis. Both places are interesting, and Eastport has a good share of funky houses and local restaurants/bars. When we bought RISING TIDE in 2003 it was at a marina in Back Creek.
June 5 Lots of rain today. Nonetheless it is laundry day and we loaded up our dinghy with laundry bags and headed to the main harbor in Annapolis. We’ll bring the clean, dry clothes back in plastic trash bags to keep it dry. The nice thing about doing laundry while cruising is you often get in a good place where you can go have a drink at a pub while the laundry washes, check out some of the shops while it dries, and then since you’re already “in town” you can stay and have dinner out. If there are at least 2 washers and 2 dryers this can be done with a minimum of time actually spent in the laundromat. Since we have still been wearing mostly shorts, tank tops and no shoes, two loads every two weeks just about does it!
We walked quite a bit today, probably 3-4 miles. We used the bus system in Annapolis for part of our traveling, but the traffic was backed up so we found walking was actually faster as the Friday afternoon influx was jamming the roads. A single-hander on a wooden sailboat (PAVITI TERN) from Westport, Mass. joined us in our travels today after we met him in the laundromat.
June 6 We’re getting ready to leave tomorrow for Chesapeake City near the Delaware/Maryland border.
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