A shout heard, “FIRE IN THE HOLE”. We are startled by cannon fire and over the bow we see a parade of schooners headed our way. Dragonfly had recently dropped the hook in the inner harbor of Baltimore, both Rick and I were in the cockpit reading our books,, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, relishing the light breeze, listening to the cacophony of city sounds. One by one more than 40 beautiful boats enter the inner harbor’s turning basin, pirouette around our stern, and deftly maneuver around the neighboring boats before departing the scene. Speaking of sounds, we found ourselves enduring shouts of “Clear the bridge, dive, dive, dive” from a neighboring submarine; Baltimore’s anchorage is bounded on one side by a WWII submarine at the maritime museum’s pier and it seemed that someone shut the door and left the audio on when they closed up on Saturday!
Lots to enjoy in Baltimore, plenty of museums, a great aquarium, lots of colorful neighborhoods, good food, a clean and busy downtown, live music, regional theater and more. If you didn’t know it, Baltimore was home to Edgar Allen Poe, Babe Ruth, Frederick Douglass along with many other noted writers, musicians and historical figures (I learned this from listening to the live broadcast of Prairie Home Companion from Baltimore while sitting in the cockpit in the harbor, wish I could have gotten a ticket).
From the marine perspective it was an easy approach to the city but there was absolutely no information on anchorages. So as we always do, we anchored where we saw other boats anchored right in the thick of things. Unfortunately the harbormaster/marine police where unhappy with our spot (too far into the channel they said) but our real frustration was that they decided to come by at night & direct us to move. We were not very pleased at having to re-anchor in the dark, but I am glad that it all worked out fine.
After Baltimore we made like a power boat and motored over to Oxford on the Eastern shore of Maryland. The sun emerged and the wind disappeared, we were out of our fleeces but swatting at flies. Twenty four hours later we are anchored in Solomons, MD on the W. Shore. We have been traveling about 30 miles, 6 hours/day. It’s been a typical few days of cruising; we spent a great night with friends in Oxford and then as we were motoring down the river toward the bay we received a phone call from another acquaintance we last saw in The Grenadines – he was at his house overlooking the river watching us motor away. Then on the way into Solomons we looked behind and noticed a familiar looking power cat and were pleased to find it was a couple that we met at the boatyard last week. Also typical Rick spent much of yesterday and today at work on various boat improvements including plenty of time diagnosing a water flow problem in the starboard engine. I spent much of the days looking for crab pots while navigating back and forth across the bay. I think I had it a bit easier than he did -- now it’s time to meet up with our power cat neighbors for a glass of wine so I’ll say adieu!
