And afetr that, we picked up our good friend and very able cruiser, Peg Guilfoile. Here's her spin on what happened next! I carefull edited this by adding a couple carriage returns. I have lots of photos of these places, but for some reason this blog ill not accept them any more....
"Adirondack
2013...Baltimore to Hampton Virginia
Rain in
Baltimore. A stubborn insistence on
public transportation means a grand total of $1.60 in train fare into town from
the airport, and connecting with something mysteriously called the Charm City
Circulator, and that is free. Sally
finds me under an awning on AliceAnne Street and it turns out that Fells Point
is just my favorite kind of urban neighborhood.
A leftover from an earlier century, brick streets, winding and
responsive to the flow and necessities of the harbor. Narrow.
Row houses with flat fronts, larger structures that once were warehouses
servicing the old pier, with a building that must have been enormous in its
day, that had a ballroom on its top floor.
Tremendous warehouse space in the middle, tattered enclosure to its
lasting large bones, flanked by the remains of what must have been merchant
offices or city customs, with tremendous iron columns flanking the doors.
battered oversized lamps on top. Ethnic
community traces everywhere, fish market
with round-eyed fish peering up from their ice beds, and, tucked away on
Shakespeare Street, a tiny enclosure
remnant of a graveyard that apparently still holds a few Fells of Fells Point.
Drizzling
turns to spitting turns to steady rain.
A good town for umbrellas, many bright and patterned. We are docked on
the free dock, on the old waterfront, right in the middle of the
neighborhood, across the
harbor from a huge tanker called The Last Tycoon. It must be a good
town, too, for naming boats. The water taxi fleet, ordinary, open to
the rain, seats all
wet, are called Insatiable, Indomitable, Indefatigable,
Endeavour, Alacrity, and Celerity. I love this.
Tucked up
in my berth after a long talky dinner, rain on the hatches. I don't need to be out in the streets of
Fells Point to know that they are wet and dark,
gritty, haunted by a few hundred
years of former occupants, bustling, crowding, hustling, building a city and a
country along the way. This neighborhood
was annexed by Baltimore in 1775. Its
blocks of buildings, which, southern-style, enclose interior courtyards that
can be glimpsed down narrow alleys behind iron grilles. Present-day doors are set into openings that
once admitted horses and wagons laden with goods. The sidewalks are made even more narrow by
cellar doors that extend toward the street, where goods entered the
warehouses. 'Twas a metropolis in its
day and an attentive ear could still hear drays and wagons clopping around on
business business business, the American elbow-to-elbow business of building a
city and a life. And it still is framed
by the mighty harbor, indomitable,
indefatigable, and a mighty city, insatiable, and full of alacrity.
Day
2..
Pouring
rain on Friday morning, making an excellent time for lingering in berth. In the morning, we walked over to the Inner
Harbor, built up and shiny and huge, with public institutions of various sorts
and also a very cool-looking set of dragonboats for rent. But it was wet wet wet, so eventually we made
our way to Whole Foods, indulging in a crab cake sandwich to share, and back to
Adirondack to drop off provisions. I
found a walking tour online... the Food Tour at Fells Point... which
rendezvoused at the North Market, the 'oldest continuously operating public
market in the US', there since the 1700s.
Things I learned... these brick streets are not brick, but Belgian
block, which came over as ballast in shipholds over the centuries; when the ships arrived and filled up with
cargo for European ports, they no longer needed the ballast, which the
enterprising colonists used to pave their streets. Our food guide James,
authentically charming, ushered us
through five stops of eating while expounding on the pleasures and interests of
Fells Point. A Polish cafe
called Ze Mean Bean, entirely empty, which offers a pierogi happy hour with
unlimited pierogi for 25 cents.
Sauerkraut was best. Sally and I
split a krupnik... which was vodka spiced with cinnamon and honey, poured into
a glass of Polish lemonade. Fantastic.
Next stop
was Hungry Andy's, a dive-y spot where we sampled pit beef sandwiches, with red
onion and horseradish. Then Tapas Aleda,
where James once worked as a server, with excellent red sangria, special
meatballs and spicy potatoes with cheese.
We loved One-Eyed Mike's, a pub-ish grand spot with
walls and walls of glass cases of individual members' bottles of Grand Marnier,
glowing warmly in the light. We slipped
through the bar to the back room. Every
stool was occupied with early Friday drinkers.
It was Maryland crab soup and chicken cakes, a version of crab cakes,
and Sally and I shared a Perfect Storm... ginger beer and Grand Marnier and
bitters and a little bit of lime.
Delicious.
Here we settled
for a good talk with pleasant James, a world traveler, a student, who
would run
a half-marathon as part of the Baltimore Marathon the next day. And we
were off to Todd Connor's, an Irish bar named after the owners' two
children (it was reported that she was pregnant and they might need to
re-name
the bar), where we had the foodie equivalent of PBandJ sandwiches and
milk. A sauteed peanut butter sandwich
with jam spread, and a White Russian.
And here we lingered with James, discussing health care and politics
and, eventually, going off to sit on the edge of our seats watching Tom
Hanks
and some Somali actors from Minneapolis in
Captain Phillips. James has told us to watch for his friend
Ginny the bartender at the Landmark movie theater and, sure enough, there's a
classy bar in the corner of the lobby, and she has, as advertised, created a
craft drink menu related to the movies then playing. For
Captain Phillips, a "Troubled Waters".
Again,
it's
pouring outside and now we're getting really wet. My MOMA umbrella is
getting a workout. But the streets outside classy Landmark, are
full of the young beautiful and prosperous and it's a lovely scene to
observe,
laughing people, well-dressed and shiny, clustering under umbrellas and
headed
into bars with doormen, visible through wide windows dusted with rain,
leaning
in toward each other and laughing. Back
in Fells Point, Sally and I stay out walking for a while, and each bar
here has
a... what?...bouncer sitting on a stool outside checking IDs and calling
out to
passersby to come in for $1 beers or touting the pleasures of their
establishment. Passing one, we three wet
ones are invited to come in. We, smiling, decline and move on.
It seems like a beautiful night, however wet, especially when we find
the back door of Bonaparte's Bakery, where good James has told us we can
come
in the middle of the night to buy chocolate almond croissants right out
of the
oven, as overnight bakers prepare for weekend custom and deliveries to
half the
good restaurants in Baltimore. And
indeed there is a baker behind the window, cutting pastries on a floury
table,
and it smells wonderful even in the rain.
Sunday
We ran
across the Chesapeake yesterday under a gray sky, with brisk winds, bundled up
on the flybridge, with me re acquainting myself with boat systems and
navigation and content to dabble with the several versions of complex charts,
the depth finders, the bearing readings, the weather predictions, the tides and
currents, and all. And also content to
sit up top, hood up, back turned to the wind and look out over the expanse of
water and to sit on the stern step, starboard quarter, out of the wind, feet
braced against the gunwale, mind wandering.
We were headed for Rock Hall, a little hamlet where Jeff and Sally have
friends and, to my astonishment, two of
those friends are neighbors from Woodland Acres, who have moved out east and
keep a sailboat on the bay, and the third a sailor gent whom they met
in the Exumas and keep track of in their various travels. We went to a town festival, where the fire
department was selling fried oyster baskets, craft booths lined Main Street,
with live music at both ends of the three-block expanse. In the children's area, you could ride a
pony, jump in a bouncy house, or milk a patient long-suffering goat. Just off the street was a tiny gathering of
moved-in formed one-room tourist cottages, painted in bright colors, and
occupied by artists and sellers. At the
back of this Oyster Court, down a winding gravel path, the most permanent of
these is a little personal museum for a long-gone amusement park, Tolchester
Park, which apparently once was a feature of the Eastern Shore until its demise
around 1962. The gentleman greeter turns
out to be the collector, too, and the proprietor, who points out both a
newspaper article about the charms of the tiny spot, and a photo of himself and
brother, ages 5 and 6, perched on a studio pony of long ago for a softly
blurred photograph. Many photos on the
wall, including some charmers of the bingo tent in that long ago spot, with a
woman caller whom this gentlemen knew.
Also many revelers in swimming outfits, large hats and parasols and,
later, staid dresses of the fifties.
They picnic, sun, pose, smile from old battered black frames. We talk about carousels -- there are three
separate ones pictured on the wall, glimpses of a grand PTC, a very early
Armitage Herschell, and a smaller and uglier one -- and while we stand a
look, Mr. Proprietor says, quietly, 'well, it was a nicer time'.
Later,
dining at the Harbor Shack and a cozy night docked up on the free wall. And this morning, crossing again, this time
through a narrow and fast-moving channel toward St. Michael. We'll be anchoring out there within the
hour.... no public dock... and headed to a Maritime Museum through a new-to-me
charming historic village, riding wet in the dinghy from Adirondack to the
dinghy dock onto the streets of St. Michael.
Tuesday...or
maybe
Monday
where I
am charmed by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, a really good one with a fine
lighthouse exhibit where the id placques are embedded in the artifacts and you
are encouraged to open and look inside and behind and below. I'm used to the lighthouse shapes of the
Great Lakes and these Chesapeake versions are broader and less tall... I
suppose the lower topography here of islands and trees doesn't require the
height that dunes and rock cliffs would.
They are perched on enormous iron legs which, I learn, are screwed into
the sand and mud of the bottom. Charmed
here, too, by a tremendous exhibit on Playing on the Chesapeake with wonderful
photos and artifacts of people boating, swimming, skiing, oystering, beach
picnicking, and all the things people love to do in sun, sand and water. There a wonderful 1946-vintage cruiser called
Isabel, which the same family ran for fifty years around the Bay and finally
donated it to the Museum, where it rocks against the pilings; they use it to take people for rides on days
more clement than this one.
There's an
exhibit of oystering on the Bay, with video and sound track while you clamber
over a skipjack. And a statue of a
Chesapeake Bay retriever, apparently all descended from a couple of shipwrecked
Newfoundland puppies long ago. Oh, I
love these local museums.
On
Monday, at least I think it's
Monday, we motor a few hours in welcome sunshine
to Cambridge. It's a beautiful
ride on the Bay; we cut through Knapp's
Narrows to save time, at nearly slack tide, and are still pushed out like a
cork from a bottle beyond the bridge, where the reds/greens reverse again and
I'm thrown back on the chart to figure out, as best as I can, where we are
red-right-returning to, and from. Emerging
from the channel, we pass the Rebecca
Ruark, the oldest operating skipjack on the Bay, built in 1866 for heaven's
sake, carrying a load of middle-schoolers who labor, in teams of three, to
raise her sails when she is ready go to sail from the pushboat, also called a
yawl.
We tie up
on the free wall here, and break out the foldable bikes so Sally and I can
ride: to the visitor's center of course
for maps and a little artifact-looking, then to some heritage gardens going
fall-like and small, and out some commercial streets toward a Harriet Tubman
Memorial Gardens, which we find, neglected and a little sad, pressed in a little triangle between busy
streets near the big box stores.
And we were biking down a
rather narrow sidewalk, passing an open door and heard a loud cry of pain and
anguish, and when I looked back, it was the open door of a tattoo shop called
Lethal Injection and some poor man must have been being pierced at that exact
moment. What part of the body would hurt
that much?! I don't want to know.
A good
day, and sun! We have no particular plan
for tomorrow, and that is part of the fun.
Tuesday
It took
until today for me to fall for Cambridge, which yesterday seemed somewhat
nondescript. Jeff and I took a long bike
ride out through town and outside to a palatial Hyatt Regency where we boldly
rode the golf cart paths on the River Marsh course, breaching the no bicycling
signs and nodding pleasantly at the golfers.
A beautiful course. And on the
way back we stopped at Central Market and spoke to a nattily dressed elderly
gentleman with pomade and a curl in his hair, whose family had been running the
store since 1937. Wooden floor, pork necks and they cut your steaks to
order, a bag of Maryland beaten biscuits
made for the store by the Camper Sisters.
Judge Travis stands upright and welcoming and tells us the story of why
the upper reaches of the shelves are full of old things... his predecessors, whenever something went out
of style or reach and was no longer carried,
would save one example and put it up on those high shelves, now a dusty jumble of boxes and cans and
bottles, with an occasional crab trap thrown in. We're here for chicken necks, so we can do a
crabbing experiment; hang 'em,
ripe, from a string which you draw up
from the water and net them before they realize they can't breathe air. We get the last package.
Bright
yellow crocuses are in bloom here in Cambridge on October 16, and the air is
soft and sunny. I am magnetically drawn
to a shabby storefront with a few bright old quilts draped outside and a sign
that says Visionary Art. Inside a man
named Danny Doughty is starting on a large canvas near the open door, standing
on a floor with a painted slogan about Peace and God's Love for everyone. The walls are covered with canvases and, to
my surprise, there are several that I like. Large bright shapes and female African
American figures, faceless, with
billowing skirts and, in my favorite in front of a wide arc of bright cottages
that remind me of a place I saw last year on Martha's Vineyard. I like Danny Doughty, who
lives in the back, and has been painting here for decades, honoring he
says, the African American women who
saved his life.
A new
sailboat has pulled up to the free wall,
Sea Something out of Minneapolis, and as we pedal by, they leap out and
call Jeff! He doesn't remember them,
but they remember meeting him on Stockton Island a couple of years ago. They have sold everything and bought a boat
and are headed south for the winter.
And now
we're motoring out of the Choptank River toward an anchorage down around Hooper
Island where we'll sit and read and sleep.
And tomorrow, on.
Wednesday
I napped heavily today, snug in the berth on a gray morning, while Adirondack
motored south toward Smith and Tangier Island.
Waking groggy after a few hours and showing underway as we approached
Smith Island, where the channel in is tight and turning and the chart shows
shoals on either side close. The
watermen crowd through at full speed while we employ all the info we have, chart
and ipad chart and eyes and buoys and all, and into a narrow channel running
through a tiny tiny town. Adirondack
seems much much bigger here, and higher, as we nod to people on the docks and
are largely ignored by the working boatmen bringing their end-of-day catch in
for dinner or for business. On the far
side, as red/greens reverse again, a crab boat, loaded with eight or ten men,
low in the stern, some distance ahead of us, backs and turns and pauses. Through the binocs they appear to be having a
meeting of some kind in the long working cockpit, all standing, all with backs
to us and consequently facing toward a low island.
Through
the channels to Tylerton, watching carefully, ebb tide and mid-tide.
We find the town dock, or what we think is
the town dock, amid a set of rusted and battered docks and pilings and
water
structures. A giant man from the
Captain Jason II watches us come in... 'is this the town dock' we ask
but there
is no answer. We do a snappy job of
turning and catching, under his indifferent eye, but after we're tied
up,
fenders on the horizontal, a fellow appears and tells us to move down
halfway... the school boat will soon be arriving, and indeed, just after
we walk the now giant-appearing Adirondack down 70 feet or so, a
catamaran appears and two home-from-school
teenagers step off and into golf carts, and away.
The
moment when that cat pulls out, growling, and heads to the next island
is remarkable. Now there are no people here at all and only
the birds calling and a palpable silence falls over the battered little
waterfront. There is a flagpole, but the
Stars and Stripes have been so eaten by the sea wind that it resembles a
battle
flag and makes me think of the War of 1812, which was hotly contested in
these
very waters. There are no roads here,
just lanes between houses with picket fences, and many of them garlanded
with
autumn decorations. Others appear
utterly empty. The combo general
store/post office/ cafe ("crab cakes") is closed and quiet. A few
artificial pumpkins are on the side
porch with a hand-printed sign that says Halloweeen decor, buy one get
one
free'. We walk to the Methodist
church, a beautiful facade and walk through
the cemetery, between the church and the waterfront, and as I step
around the
corner of the building between the covered graves, crows break from
trees off to the left and from
among the graves ahead, and swarm, cawing, into the sky.
There are
Tylers here, and Marshalls, and Maggies, and children. Heads and feet
are both marked, the land is
low and wet and headstones go back several hundred years. All of it,
the monuments, must have come by
boat from the mainland at some time.
The stained glass windows, the pews.
There is a church hall below with a large flatscreen, where I imagine
movies are sometimes shown and the village business is conducted. And
there is not a soul around. No people, no voices, one call of a child
a lane or two away, unanswered. We are
drawn to even walk quietly and, since the lane is dirt and damp, there
is no
sound. We walk to the seafood coop. No one.
I cannot imagine the ringing of a telephone. At one point, from inside
a house, there is a small murmur which might be a
television. Is it dinnertime? prayer time?
Nap time? It is
4 pm on a
Wednesday
and there seems to be quite literally no one on the island. We see a
battered pickup. And a fire and rescue vehicle parked askew
near the seafood co op. The two teens,
who took the silent golf carts from the school boat. are gone. No one
walks or talks.The gulls are calling, but quietly. At 6, the sun goes
behind a cloud bank and
the day grays out. It feels like we are
the only people on the earth.
We try a
little crabbing off the dock, which is laughable. Something might be
down there tugging on that
ugly chicken neck, but whatever it is is smart enough to let go when it
is raised towards its effective sky.
We laugh, though, gazing fixedly toward the water, poised with rod in
hand, hoping an 8 oz crustacean may be wandering by at exactly the right
spot
in this vast watery world. WHat are the
odds, which I prefer to think, rather than imagining that the floor of
the Bay
is literally crawling with crabs everywhere.
While we're sitting there, the Captain Jason II returns and offloads a
group of island women returning from a shopping expedition in Crisfield,
and
thirty or forty shopping bags from the grocery store, from clothing
stores, and
from Macy's. Jeff helps them uinload
their cargo onto the dock, and helps the larger ladies ashore, where
they
promptly load everything onto golf carts and zip away with their
booty. Presently, the island seems to stir and we see a few people
walking along, and a dog.
The boat we saw yesterday turns out to be from the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation and they settle a couple of docks away and Jeff and I go down to
investigate and we are invited to join
them for steamed crab. It's a group of
young environmental professionals on the Bay for a couple of days; yesterday they set out crab pots, today they
harvested a bushel, and we are all three happy to stand with them on the
darkened dock breaking the crabs apart and digging the meat out with our
hands, tossing the shells into the water.
One of
the ladies who is stationed here tells us that the crab picking co-op
women will be working tonight but, during an evening walk, the building
is quiet and
dark. Walking back, we swing by the
church and lights are blazing from the basement windows. A murmur of
voices can be heard, and the golf
buggies are parked outside. Prayer
meeting. We wait an hour and walk back
out to the co-op, now lit up and occupied.
The ladies are startled by our knock, but welcoming, sitting at a huge
stainless steel table with a tipped-over bushel basket of crabs within
reach under
bright light, with a small tv tuned to Survivor. They use a small
knife as their only tool as
they work through the mass of crabs, stripping away the externals,
knocking the
shells apart, picking apart the meat and piling it into little one-pound
tubs
'packed with pride by the women of Smith Island'.
They are
friendly and willing to sell. They
wonder how we found them from Minnesota.
The harvest is down... why?
'Well, you'd have to ask God that'.
These women are the mothers of the two teen girls we saw getting off the
school boat earlier. Will their
daughters stay on the island? No. One, a basketball player, stays with her grandmother
from October to March. 'It's a hard
living on the island. They all go live
on the mainland,' they say.
And
afterwards, we walk through the dark along the deteriorated wharf and shabby
boats, and that is the circumference of Tylerton and the island, and back aboard Adirondack with one pound of
the freshest crabmeat imaginable, and a recipe for crabcake. It has clouded over and the nearly-full moon
is not visible above. A woman is casting
for rockfish off the dock nearby and shows us a beauty, then tosses it back. 'Not legal until they're eighteen inches',
she says, smiling, and casts again.
Night time on the island and the school boat leaves at 6:20 tomorrow
morning, with the island daughters aboard.
Thursday
And it
did leave at
6:20 in the morning, rumbling by Adirondack and rousing me from my
berth to stand, sleepy, watching it pull away.
Shortly after, the friendly hefty captain of Captain Jason II arrived in
his rattly pickup with Romney bumper stickers instead of license plates, and
boarded to prepare. I stood in our cabin
in my pjs watching golf buggies arrive with islanders and bags and parcels,
including one the crab-picking ladies from last night, with two kids in tow,
who heft their backpacks and settle into the cabin for the ride. A few more people arrive and board until
there are eight or so; Jeff goes out to
chat, and they are off.
After
breakfast, Jeff and I get in the dinghy and zoom over to Ewell, a couple of
miles in open water on plane and explore for a bit. The visitor's center is closed, the store is
closed. Walking a back lane, returning
from a visit to another dock, we run
across a building that smells good even from outside. It's the Smith Island Bakery, a small
commercial outfit that produces the local delicacy of a ten-layer cake, for
restaurants and special occasions. Like
the crab co-op in Tylerton, women are working here, with babies and playpens in
the corners, a hundred cake pans,
buckets of chocolate frosting and baking baking baking. Wonderful smell, and friendly smile and I come
away with a 6" version to carry, carefully, back in the dinghy through the
grass flats and around the green buoys. Back
in Tylerton, at the general store, we
smile and chat with watermen having lunch and order crab cake sandwiches to be
eaten on oilcloth on a sagging front porch.
Delicious. An old beagle is tied
to a golf buggy in front, and he
retreats as far as he can when two peacocks strut up, the male casting a
baleful eye on the little dog. The
rockfish fishing lady from last night roars through in her golf buggy calling
"look out, peacock!", and laughing as the snowy one clears out. The girls from the Foundation drive by with
the leftovers from their last night's feast and go to every house distributing
the extra pulled pork and macaroni and cheese and salad, and we get some, too. The sun is shining, roses are blooming in
the sideyards, and women are out trimming their bushes and trees in preparation
for the winter.
In the
afternoon, we have a long rough haul across the Bay to the western shore, and
the ones and two foot waves turn into threes with an occasional four. When it starts to rain, we retreat below and
Jeff drives from the cabin, while Sally and I watch for other boats. We pass close to two enormous container ships
and a barge with tow, and hear traffic from Navy ships in the area, but for
most of the 5 hours, we have the Bay to ourselves. We glide eventually, and a little gratefully,
to a quiet anchorage in Jackson Creek. I
sit up top and read. We eat the pulled
pork from the Foundation girls, and watch a nearly-full moon dash in and out of
the clouds. Now, they are reading in their cabin, and I am
typing in the salon. Tomorrow, an early
departure to try to use part of the ebb tide going down-bay toward Hampton. It's forty nautical miles, so another five
hours or so, and we hope for good weather.
They need to be there tomorrow to attend a Snowbird rendezvous."
Well, that's enough content for at least ten of my blogs, so I'm just going to start another.
Capt. Jeff
