Sometimes, when the weather is particularly unpleasant, or I’m sitting in the office wishing I were sailing, I reach into my pocket and pull out my Patuxent River. Look, here it is, let me show you. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Yes, yes, I know, you can’t actually see it. It’s my metaphorical Patuxent River, assembled one experience and one memory at a time this May during a cruise down the Bay from Annapolis. It took me nearly a week to put together all the pieces, but now I can pull it out anytime I want to and admire its lush green shoreline and revisit its amiable creeks and anchorages and just remember . . . See, there’s dirt on that part. (C’mon, just play along; pretend you see it too.) That’s where I joined a group of enthusiasts at Jefferson Patterson State Park for a public dig at the site of an old plantation. And see, over here, a few crumbs left over from a jumbo Stoney’s crabcake sandwich on Broomes Island. Oops, there’s an empty Sam Adams bottle tucked in behind Vera’s that somebody missed. Oh well, it’s a fine looking river anyway, though I can’t seem to get that coffee stain out of St. Leonard Creek, no matter how hard I try. Wait, I’ll tell you about that in a minute. First, I want to show you my favorite place on the river. Let me hold it up so you can see where it is. Okay, now we’re looking at the mouth of the river, as if we were out in the Bay looking in. Straight ahead there is Solomons Island. See it? Now forget Solomons, because we’re not going there. I’ve been there; you’ve been there. So, no, we’re not going there. Instead, look across the river to the left, just where the Route 4 (Governor Thomas Johnson) bridge comes back down to earth in St. Mary’s County. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘boating’
A Pocketful of Miracles
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009Beating The Inner Bimbo
Saturday, August 29th, 2009By Jane Meneely
When Clint brought Escort, a 42-foot Kadey-Krogen trawler, home one day, I knew it was way too big a boat for me to handle. Ever. I couldn’t even imagine being a capable first mate. There was just no way I could decipher a boat like that. “Clint, my love,” I said. “You’re going to have to take that boat back to the store and get your money back.” “Fat chance,” said Clint. And the boat stayed. So we made a deal, Clint and I. He could keep the boat if I could be the boat princess. He would do all the work and I would do my nails and eat bonbons. And that worked out just fine. For about three days. Then I started to get antsy. I was antsy because deep down inside, I really didn’t like being so completely dependent on someone who isn’t me. And that’s when I began to look long and hard at the idea of running that trawler. Why in the world couldn’t I?
Because I was a powerboat bimbo.
There’s simply no other way to say it. I could have taken our 38-foot sailboat to the moon and back, but put me on a powerboat and I’d turn into a complete moron. Sure I could drive it from point A to point B, but never through a bridge or, heaven forbid, into a slip. I was a real wuss about it, but I wasn’t alone. In spite of the fact that more women than ever are buying their own boats, taking the helm and applying for their captain’s license, I know plenty of seasoned seagoing ladies who still feel completely upwinded by a powerboat. It’s as if we smack our heads on a glass hatch at the very thought of running an engine. We’re perfectly capable of handling a powerboat. And most of us agree that we should learn how to operate at least our own boat. We just don’t want to. We suffer the agonies of Reluctant Captain Syndrome. Something holds us back from actually taking control and being captain of our ship. It could be a girl thing. It could be a cultural thing. It could be a fear thing. . . .
Jamestown’s Big Bang
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009[05.07 issue]
by Jody Argo Schroath
By the time 2007 takes its own place in the past, there will be perhaps two or three people in the Chesapeake area who have not been touched by a Jamestown 400th-anniversary event—they’ll be the ones wearing Pampers. And even then. . . .
There are so many special events marking the quadricentennial of the landing at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, that they spilled over backward into last year. The replica ship Godspeed, for example, made a tour of the East Coast before returning to Virginia to prepare for this year’s first landing re-enactment on April 26. Jamestown Live! allowed a million students across the country to watch an hour-long webcast on Jamestown’s legacy that featured questions from students to a panel that included Chickahominy Chief Stephen Adkins, Jamestown’s chief archaeologist William Kelso and former astronaut Dr. Kathryn Thornton. The Virginia tribes held a conference last October on 400 Years of Survival. And last month, radio host Tavis Smiley hosted a 2007 State of the Black Union event on the Black Imprint on America. Smiley asked a panel of 36 notable African-Americans to discuss the role that Blacks have played in the development of America, from the arrival of the first slaves at Jamestown in 1619 to the present.
But don’t worry, there are plenty of special activities still on the 2007 event horizon, including the biggest and brashest one of them all. That would be America’s Anniversary Weekend, May 11 to 13, at Jamestown, a mega-celebration that will feature three days of special events and all manner of famous folks—James Earl Jones, Ricky Skaggs, Chaka Khan, Sandra Day O’Connor and, of course, the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra (they grow their own instruments). To help you make sense of all the Jamestown 400 hoopla—which will include a visit May 3 and 4 by Queen Elizabeth II—we’ve ruthlessly marshaled these activities into several neat groups— Jamestown events, all-around-the-Bay-events and (our readers’ favorite) events with boats. Finally, you’ll find two related stories—the first, how our understanding of what happened at Jamestown has changed over the years as we have changed; the second, information on cruising the Jamestown area.
Jamestown Events
When we talk about Jamestown, of course, we are talking about not one Jamestown, but two. For Jamestown newbies, here’s how we went from zero to two: Since Jamestown had all but disappeared as a town by the middle of the 18th century, 1907’s 300th-birthday celebration was held in Norfolk instead. But organizers of the 1957 event moved the 350th birthday party back to Jamestown—to a facility constructed for the purpose, called Jamestown Festival Park and located adjacent to the original site. Jamestown Festival Park is now named Jamestown Settlement, while the site of the 1607 landing, early forts and town is called Historic Jamestowne. Hence two Jamestowns and three sites for the 400th Anniversary Weekend (the third is Anniversary Park, across Route 31 from the settlement, and where many of the weekend’s concerts will be held).
Aye Aye Skipper
Sunday, August 16th, 2009It was six o’clock on a steamroller-hot Saturday evening at the tail end of August, and Skipper the ship’s dog was eating bait hotdog pieces as fast as the seven-year-old fisherman-trainee on the dock could pull them out of his ziplock bag. Clutching his fishing rod in his left hand, the young angler, clearly enjoying the interaction, would reach into the baggie with his right and bring out a new piece of bait, ready for the hook. Skipper would wait until it was halfway to the hook, then snatch the hunk of wiener out of the boy’s fingers and gulp it down faster than you could say Oscar Mayer. Not that I approved of this, but while Skipper was concentrating his every fiber on putting a dent in the catch of the day, I was still aboard Snipp finishing up the dock lines.
The ship’s dog and I had just returned from a sail on the Potomac that had become a motor back from the Potomac after the wind began its late-summer offshore-to-onshore do-si-do and the long, windless intermission had settled over us like a heating pad. Skipper had sought permission to debark as soon as we caromed gently off the finger pier. I didn’t really mind. He had been aboard all the long lazy day, dozing on the relative cool of the cabin sole or trying to stay within the dodger’s shifting Band-Aid of shade. Besides, he wasn’t much good yet at stowing things away and he was completely hopeless at tying a half hitch. Then too I thought he might have, you know, “business†ashore. Instead he simply returned to his everyday job as dockmeister/doofus, consulting briefly with Molly and Blacky the boatyard dogs—who were themselves busy supervising a do-it-yourselfer’s rudder repair—then running off to escort a mildly apprehensive visitor down A dock. He paused on the way back to clean up after a powerboat Westie, who had unwisely chosen to save a little bit of his dinner for later, before streaking back out B dock, and finally braking hard at the sight of young Izaak Walton and his bait baggie. I smiled indulgently from the foredeck and called him back onto the boat. Hey, I’m no Captain Bligh.
Six months earlier I would have reveled in such a happy outcome—grand theft hotdog not included, of course. From a winter of repairs on the hard through an early spring splash and recommissioning, I had watched enviously as other boat pups came and went, mingling amiably or passing each other in quiet disdain. Not so Skipper. While he was content to wait meekly in the open rear end of the station wagon while I worked for hours aboard, up the inaccessible ladder, he transmogrified into a snapping, snarling Baskerville hound at the first sight of another dog. Whoa, I thought as I struggled to bring him under control, this is going to make cruising—not to mention life in general—pretty tough!
Oldies but Woodies
Saturday, August 15th, 2009by Jody Argo Schroath
I walked past the covered slips of a certain marina on the Northern Neck of Virginia, and this is what I saw, not skipping anything. Minnow, a lapstrake Chris-Craft cruiser; an old wood Citation;Ole Chris, an old Chris of about 30 feet; Therapy IV, an old Chris cruiser; a wooden Carver; a Chris-Craft Cavalier; a big wood something; an old Egg Harbor; and a 1965 57-foot Chris Constellation named Good Spirits. This latter is the marina’s unofficial clubhouse, and, with its awning, soft chairs and wicker settees, its flybridge deck feels like the veranda of an old pillared plantation. Moving on, there was Encore, a 58-foot Elco that once was named Do-Ho and belonged to Howard Johnson; an empty space usually filled by a 55-foot Chris Constellation that is currently out for repairs (always a word with dangerous overtones when used in reference to an old wood boat); and a 1949 46-foot Chris-Craft Double Cabin Flying Bridge listing slightly to port. This one’s mine. With some work she could be a real beauty, I said to myself yet again. This has been my mantra for the past five years. And indeed the long soaring curve of her cabin is pure Art Deco, by way of the Jetsons. Inside she has a large mahogany saloon and aft cabin, a full kitchen and a nifty turquoise linoleum bathroom—not that it actually works, of course. The bilge pump clicked on and water began to gush out the starboard through-hull. I smiled ruefully, remembering that my husband Rick calls her our $2,000-a-year decorative fountain.
I looked back up the dock. Nobody. All these lovely old boats and nobody to talk to. I turned back to my own boat, leaning quietly and gathering dust, and I was overtaken by a wave of helplessness. Frustration. Loneliness. I needed to talk. I needed to talk Chris-Craft. What I needed was to find owners who actually come down to their old Chris cruisers, who take them out of the slip and out onto the Bay. I needed to sit in their saloons and feel like a glamorous Chris-Craft owner of the past—Katherine Hepburn or Eleanor Roosevelt, for example. I needed to see the brightwork at the end of the tunnel.
Over the spring and summer that followed I pursued my resolve. I attended every antique and classic boat show and rendezvous I could find on the Bay. I chatted up the owners. I oohed and aahed over restorations that left me avocado with envy and fairly popping my rivets with resolution. And I insinuated myself into boatyards where old cruisers were likely to be under the saw and fine china brush. Finally, I contacted the Mecca for old-Chris owners, the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Va., which houses the 200,000-piece Chris-Craft collection, and I talked with Jerry Conrad, who curates the collection and is himself the author of Chris-Craft, The Essential Guide.
Sailing with Pride
Friday, August 14th, 2009by Jane Meneely
It occurred to me that I might faint. Watching my only son climb the rigging onboard the Pride of Baltimore II as we sailed for Norfolk was so overwhelming I was afraid I’d swoon like a B movie diva and hit the deck hard. And if that happened, my son would be mortified, undoubtedly scarred for life. But this was a test for both of us. I looked away as Stewart scampered up the rigging after the crew to furl the main course. And I didn’t faint.
We were headed south full tilt, hoping to whip every other boat in the schooner fleet during the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race last October. Sixteen-year-old Stewart had grudgingly agreed to participate in what I at his age could only have dreamed about—there was no Pride of Baltimore then. But he’d gotten over the grumps and bent to with a will that was a joy to behold—well, except when he scurried up the mast. You see, I’m deathly afraid of heights. Deathly, knee-knockingly afraid of heights. Just looking at the masthead of a ship like the Pride gives me the willies. God forbid I should look up and see my baby perched there like he’s leaning against a corner lamppost. No matter, I told myself, studiously peering at the compass in front of me and keeping my hands hard on the helm. This was why I’d wanted him to come.
When Stewart was born, his father and I had promised him to Jan Miles, one of the Pride’s co-captains and a friend of mine from high school days. Jan could have him for a year, we’d said, before he goes off to college. Naturally, Stewart grew up detesting everything about traditional tall ships. He liked the mechanical advantage of winches, for starters, and he thrived on the fumes and roar of internal combustion. Sailing on the Pride of Baltimore, he announced as high school graduation approached, was for the birds. I tried to convince him that our signing aboard the Pride for the Great Schooner Race was the chance of a lifetime, but he didn’t believe me. He said he’d rather go to school; that missing his calculus test would be an unspeakable hardship; that considering what his father and I pay for tuition it was criminal to even suggest that he miss a few days (I’ll admit, this last argument was pretty convincing). But I played the Mom card and signed him up anyway. It was only four days, not a whole year, I said, and if he really didn’t like it, that would be the end of it. He could join the rat race like everyone else.