All Aboard

Come on Nancy put your best dress on
Come on Nancy ’fore the steamer’s gone
Everybody’s headed for the Chesapeake Bay
All aboard for Baltimore! If you’re late we’ll all be sore!
Come on Captain let us catch that boat
’Cause we can’t swim, no mister, we can’t float
Banjo ringin’ a good old tune, Up on deck there’s a place to spoon
Settle down folks ’neath the silvery moon
Sailing-down-the-Ches-a-peake,
All aboard for Chesapeake,
Sailing down the Chesapeake Bay!
- Red Clay Ramblers



That pretty little thing there's the Shorn Lamb, my uncle's fine, 42-foot Island Packet schooner, in her berth at the North Point Marina in Rock Hall, Maryland. Last weekend, Uncle Andrew, took his girlfriend Diane, me, my cousin Leo Fitzwilliam McPherson Whelan, the Shorn Lamb's Chief Mate, a jolly stock trader from Wilmington called Rob Sidell, for a four-and-a-half day cruise on the Chesapeake. We started from the Eastern Shore, and headed directly South on a Thursday, below the Bay Bridge and up into the Magothy River (one of 48 that drain into the Chesapeake). We didn't sail a bit our first day, because the winds were no good, but it was still a pretty sunset...



That there's the Baltimore Light, at the mouth of the Magothy, and this here's me and Will:



She's a pretty little beacon...



However, the fact that we were underway with the motor the entire first day, may have in fact been the fault of the Chief Mate, pictured below...


Because if I remember correctly, when he was asked in the morning about the state of the winds for the day, he pretended to check the forecast in the Mariner, a free magazine that touts itself as "the beacon of the Bay," but he was, in actuality, looking at this.

I arrived with unsuitable footwear for the voyage. All I brought were my new, and totally ill, lime-green Starburys, but I was told that the soles would scuff up the poop deck, so I had to buy these, admittedly also pretty ill, West Marine top-siders:



We laid chain in a faire gunkhole somewheres round Swan Cove our first night, in view of a few good-lookin' waterfront mansions. The cocktail hour was observed, with some aged Dalmore and a fairly decent pate. After rations, which I assure ye weren't no hard-tack-n-grog, we smoked cheroots with the Chief Mate on the deck. Quite pleasant.



Our harbor, a mansion...



Day two took us back across to the Eastern Shore and under the bridge at Knapp's Narrows, a route that allows a sailor to navigate southeast towards the Choptank River without having to sail all the way around Tilghman Island. The Chief Mate remarked that the Tilghman Island boys are notoriously rough on landlubbers, and that we made quite an admirable decision in limiting our congress with them. We passed through them straits in just a few minutes. Even saw a few half-naked ladies sunbathing aforedecks.



Knapps Narrows is a-brimmin' with dilapidated trawlers...



And the Bay's finest skipjacks, what whose days of dredgin' the clay for world-class arsters have passed 'em by, god bless 'em...



The red markers, where ospreys make their homes...



And one of many JFK shots of me with Diane. And yes, that's seersucker.



Here's the Captain puttering about up near the mainsail. He was preparing to hoist the foresail in this shot, if my memory serves me. The second day was when the wind picked up and we finally did some knots.



El Capitan...



The mighty mast:



But things didn't get really awesome until we unleased the Jenniker, a sail that can only be used in leisurely waters, but with a good headwind. In races, mavericks often blow these things out, which is easy to do because they're not affixed to the mast or the boom the same way the more traditional sheets are. The design on this particular sail was chosen by Uncle Andrew's kids, Clare and Christian. The jenniker:



And as evening descending, Will on the bow:



Next port of call: Oxford, MD, home of the nation's oldest continuously operating ferry!