Occasionally, in this cruising life, everything comes together in a period of such beauty and intensity that mere superlatives are inadequate. You know that there have been such times before and that they will come again but, in the moment, it seems completely improbable.
I motored back across a glassy bay after the party and up San Domingo creek. This secret back door to Saint Michaels winds its way past houses of unusually good taste for this part of the world and ends at a waterman’s wharf and dinghy dock in a town park. I didn’t go all the way up because someone was burning leaves (they do that here, a smell that brings back childhood memories and which I haven’t smelled in decades) and I would have been directly in the path of the smoke.
My anchorage put me right at the junction of a little side creek which turned out to be directly in line with the setting sun on a warm, calm, and clear evening with deer browsing in the yards of the houses on shore.
The next morning, I worked my way carefully up the creek to comfortable rowing distance from the park. The walk up to town goes through a neighborhood of modest but perfectly restored period houses. It was as perfect as fall days get, calm and warm with a hint of crispness, utterly clear sky, and colors at their peak.
I explored the town, refreshed a few stores and rowed them back to the boat. I then returned to the museum to sit on a bench in the sun and await the arrival of my friend from Oxford. After a lunch of crab and oysters at the famous Crab Claw restaurant, we toured the museum. We leaned on a log canoe in the sunshine while she told me of her many years sailing that very boat as jib trimmer, as much responsible for the steering on these craft as the helmsman. She reminisced about capsizes and races showing me exactly where she sat and braced herself as well stories about other log canoes she sailed. We looked at a beautiful Bugeye built by the man she lived with for many years and she told me more of growing up in living in this place.
We then took ice out to Strider and sat in the cockpit and talked more about the times we spent together, decades ago in Woods Hole, and the people we knew and remembered. After crabs and oysters again for dinner, I rowed back up the dark creek to Strider.
I woke up this morning to mist and the depth sounder showing only 3 inches of water under the keel at dead low tide. There was a big swirl of mud in the water after I pulled in the anchor chain and turned around but, from the feel of the boat, I think I can still say that the keel, since this spring’s launch, has yet to touch Maine, Canada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland.
The sun was just coming up as I went down the creek. I watched deer wading and swimming and dipping their heads underwater to eat bottom plants like hairy ducks. Fog was still flowing down all of the side creeks and inlets lit up golden by the rising sun.
I came out into the mouth of the creek to find a fleet of oyster tongers and dredgers at work. It is the first that I have actually seen such fishing and to see it in that light on such a perfect day…
It was a long motor in dead calm down to Solomons. The wind came up about three quarters of the way down so I set the sails and began tacking easily to windward. Just as the sails filled and the boat settled down to her work, I looked up to see a bird I didn’t recognize. It flew closer, almost directly over the boat, and I realized that it was my first Pelican. It was like the south welcoming me.
I sailed against the tide until it got close enough to my ETA that it was time to start the engine and get there. I arrived and tied up at the Research Fleet Operations Center (I’ve got connections) where the view out my companionway is the last research vessel I designed.
I don’t know how it gets much better than this but I’m sure it will.
I motored back across a glassy bay after the party and up San Domingo creek. This secret back door to Saint Michaels winds its way past houses of unusually good taste for this part of the world and ends at a waterman’s wharf and dinghy dock in a town park. I didn’t go all the way up because someone was burning leaves (they do that here, a smell that brings back childhood memories and which I haven’t smelled in decades) and I would have been directly in the path of the smoke.
My anchorage put me right at the junction of a little side creek which turned out to be directly in line with the setting sun on a warm, calm, and clear evening with deer browsing in the yards of the houses on shore.
The next morning, I worked my way carefully up the creek to comfortable rowing distance from the park. The walk up to town goes through a neighborhood of modest but perfectly restored period houses. It was as perfect as fall days get, calm and warm with a hint of crispness, utterly clear sky, and colors at their peak.
I explored the town, refreshed a few stores and rowed them back to the boat. I then returned to the museum to sit on a bench in the sun and await the arrival of my friend from Oxford. After a lunch of crab and oysters at the famous Crab Claw restaurant, we toured the museum. We leaned on a log canoe in the sunshine while she told me of her many years sailing that very boat as jib trimmer, as much responsible for the steering on these craft as the helmsman. She reminisced about capsizes and races showing me exactly where she sat and braced herself as well stories about other log canoes she sailed. We looked at a beautiful Bugeye built by the man she lived with for many years and she told me more of growing up in living in this place.
We then took ice out to Strider and sat in the cockpit and talked more about the times we spent together, decades ago in Woods Hole, and the people we knew and remembered. After crabs and oysters again for dinner, I rowed back up the dark creek to Strider.
I woke up this morning to mist and the depth sounder showing only 3 inches of water under the keel at dead low tide. There was a big swirl of mud in the water after I pulled in the anchor chain and turned around but, from the feel of the boat, I think I can still say that the keel, since this spring’s launch, has yet to touch Maine, Canada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland.
The sun was just coming up as I went down the creek. I watched deer wading and swimming and dipping their heads underwater to eat bottom plants like hairy ducks. Fog was still flowing down all of the side creeks and inlets lit up golden by the rising sun.
I came out into the mouth of the creek to find a fleet of oyster tongers and dredgers at work. It is the first that I have actually seen such fishing and to see it in that light on such a perfect day…
It was a long motor in dead calm down to Solomons. The wind came up about three quarters of the way down so I set the sails and began tacking easily to windward. Just as the sails filled and the boat settled down to her work, I looked up to see a bird I didn’t recognize. It flew closer, almost directly over the boat, and I realized that it was my first Pelican. It was like the south welcoming me.
I sailed against the tide until it got close enough to my ETA that it was time to start the engine and get there. I arrived and tied up at the Research Fleet Operations Center (I’ve got connections) where the view out my companionway is the last research vessel I designed.
I don’t know how it gets much better than this but I’m sure it will.
