The crew of First Light dropped the Dink in the water first thing in the morning and headed in to check out the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in town. There was a nice free Dink Dock for those passing through to come visit the town. Not sure why every town along a waterway hasn't figured out that people passing through with boats will gladly stop and visit, spend a little money, and move on without making much of a demand on the town's resources if they could just have good access to shore. Win win as the bean counters would say. Anyway, the Museum was well worth the $30 or so we dropped to get little stickers to paste to our shirts, giving us free rein of the place.
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| Wikipedia image of the Hooper Srait Lighthouse at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum |
Back at the boat, I was sitting in the aft cockpit attempting to coax something like music out of my low “G” tenor UKE. (one of six currently on board) when the sound of an approaching outboard caught my attention. In it were four folks who had left the very nice looking American Tug 49 that had anchored not far away and were clearly headed for First Light. I had to wonder if it was someone we knew from before, though expensive trawler owners had not really been that common in our circle of cruisers. It turned out that they didn't know us, but they did know our boat. They had done part of the loop with the owner before the owner we had bought the boat from. They had called the owner that they knew upon seeing the boat, had been told by him that he had talked with us several times and they should drop by and say “Hi”. So they did.
It was a short visit as they were on their way into town to spend some money as well. But it was interesting that we had crossed paths. My guess is when they got back to their boat they were a bit surprised to find that First Light had pulled anchor and skedaddled. That had not been mentioned when we chatted because, at that moment, we had no thought of skedaddling. But we had done everything we had intended to do at St. Michaels. The weather was a lot better than the forecast had suggested it would be. We have family we haven't seen in several years waiting at Kent Island. And Kent Island was only a two hour motor away. So after a bit of discussion up came the anchor and off we went.
The winds were actually a bit more than we expected, but they were at our stern. The waves they stirred up were moving in the same direction as we were, making for an OK ride, though they did push us around enough to confuse the autopilot. They also made it look like we were going far slower than the 6 knots we were coaxing out of our bent prop in order to make the bridge opening on time. After a bit we gave the autopilot a break as it was working pretty hard and still not managing to hold a heading very well. Grandson Eldest, who had driven us off of the anchor, worked the wheel for the first half of the trip. I took over for the second half. My half included a rather narrow and twisty route out of Prospect Bay and through the Route 50-301 opening bridge, which we reached exactly on time. On the last part of the route I actually had to pass on the wrong side of Green Markers 3 and 5 to stay out of the shallows. On the chart both are depicted as sitting in the shallows. Not sure what the chart makers were thinking. And passing between Green 3 and Red 4 would put the boat in a shallowest part of the channel. Really not sure what the chart makers were thinking. Deciding to follow the depth gauge rather than the charted markers was weird and a bit taxing. But it all worked out and we made the dock in the Piney Narrows Yacht Haven. Though we try to avoid taking a dock as much as possible, this is a family visit. Hauling non-boating types back and forth to the boat in a Dink isn't my favorite thing. Hell, riding in the Dink myself isn't my favorite thing. So we have showers and shore power for a couple of days. And a busy bridge. (Why is it that marinas and noisy bridges are so often located right next to each other?) Anyway, it should be a really good couple of days, even with a noisy bridge nearby.
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| The boat building facility where they are building a replica Buy Boat from scratch |
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| The lighthouse keeper's residence was not nearly as posh as the one at the Calvert Museum in Solomons |
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| This is the bell ringing apparatus |
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| The boat building yard |
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| A steam engine. It was two stories high |
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| The model building workshop |
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