Sailors Ahoy

There may not be anything better from our point of view that hearing from fellow sailors (boaters) as they travel along.

Imagine our delight this weekend, to hear from old Bradenton, Florida, boaters Jerry and Marsha who had brought their boat up the Chester River on the Chesapeake to the lovely town of Chestertown. We had visited this great place sometime ago as we were meandering through the Chesapeake.

We drove two hours up to meet with them to hear of their adventures aboard their boat. I might have written about Jerry a couple of years back when he ran his Hatteras powerboat onto a rock in the Okeechobee Waterway across Florida. The rock ripped the stabilizer fine off the boat and then push it into the hull, creating a Titanic-like slash on the back of the hull. The boat sank in the waterway, with its bow up on the bank. Jerry and Marsha escaped and their boat was a complete write off because the water got into their engines and ruined them.

Now, I thought that would be the end of their adventures in the water world. But Jerry and Marsha are tough stock. After licking their wounds, they found another Hatteras powerboat and began the adventure all over again.

And here they were, making their way to Long Island Sound for the summer.
We drove through the lush Delaware and Maryland countryside, with the hundreds of chicken houses that house millions of cluckers then eventually end up in American ovens or frying pans. The houses these guys are penned in are long and low. They generally have two huge (4-6 foot diameter) fans that suck in fresh air. Delaware is the home of Perdue Chicken, as well as a host of other markets. There are many processing plants scattered around the state. Quite surprisingly, you rarely smell the chickens as you drive by.

We sat on the banks of the Chester River with Jerry and Marsha and had a delightful lunch. A waterman came in with his crab boat and we watched as he untied Jerry's dinghy so he could tie up.
Jerry sent Marsha out to the dinghy (he has a weak leg and has some difficulty walking). When Marsha and Jo got there, a marine cop pulled in behind the waterman and cited him for something. He wrote out a ticket then turned his attention to the dinghy. He asked Marsha if she was the owner because the dinghy had an out-of-date registration sticker. Marsha said her husband was in the restaurant and the cop waited for us to come out.

He radioed in the registration information and the radio squawked after a few minutes that the registration had lapsed in 1901. I laughed when I heard that. But the cop didn't seem that amused.

He checked to see that Jerry had four life jackets aboard (he did) and then followed us out into the river and to the boat to check the registration. It was, in fact, expired and he wrote a ticket for $65 for the incident.

Then he stood on the back deck and chatted in a friendly kind of way about how he had arrested the waterman who had moved the dinghy last year for placing several illegal nets in the river. He had caught 25,000 lbs of some kind of fish. He said his fine amounted to $130,000 because the nets were a $30,000 fine and the fish were assessed at $4 a pound.

We waved goodbye to this fellow and then sat aboard as the wind blew at 20 knots, creating a bit of tempest in the river.

Marsha and Jerry returned us to shore when the breeze quietened down and we drove back to the campground, meeting thousands of cars heading the other way on their way home from the weekend on the shore.

Tuesday morning, we received a phone call from old friends and sailing buddies Corky and Sue. They had just sailed into Ocean City, Maryland, aboard their 47-foot catamaran. This is 32 miles south of us. Now we head down to have dinner with them on Wednesday before we head out of Leisure Point Resort on Thursday morning.

We found them lugging laundry back to their dinghy and we settled into a waterside restaurant for a four-hour dinner to hear their tales of cruising Bahamian crystaline waters... as well as stories of life aboard, weather horrors and future plans for their 47-foot carbon-fiber catamaran named Surprise. We'll meet up with them once we get to Connecticut since they still own a spectacular home that's been on the market far too long.

We had toyed with the idea of immediately heading for Alaska this year but have abandoned the idea because we really need to be on the west coast of the U.S. right now to make it possible to spend enough time in the remote northwest of Yukon Territory and Alaska in June, July and August. So we are now planning to head out from Delaware on today (May 29) and drive north to Connecticut to visit with our daughter and family. We'll spend a few weeks there and attend the graduation of our oldest granddaughter who moves up to high school in the fall. Then we'll move north to visit our younger daughter and family in Vermont for a month before setting out across the Maine woods and down to the shore during August.