Day 42 – N 38° 19.840’ W 76° 27.578’ Solomons, MD

After a calm night at anchor, we awoke refreshed and ready for some fun ashore.  After breakfast, it was time to inflate the dinghy – a chore we perform on the foredeck so that we can use our spare halyard to lift the inflated dinghy off the deck and then lower it into the water in a controlled way.  It was nice to be doing this in calm winds.  After the outboard motor was hoisted from its rack on the stern rail of Kite and lowered onto the now-inflated dinghy, we were ready to go ashore.  As a precaution, Lyn checked the weather just before we intended to leave, and wouldn’t you know it – the new forecast called for increasing winds in the afternoon.  Knowing that the bottom was clay, we didn’t want to risk being away from Kite when the winds would increase.  So we decided that we would take a mooring today instead of waiting for tomorrow, and we motored the half-mile to the marina that had moorings available.  As it happens, this location is just near the Calvert Maritime Museum that we intended to visit today, so it turned out to be a better location for many reasons.

Lyn about to be devoured by megalodon

The Calvert Maritime Museum is very interesting!  In it they have fossils from most of the history of life on earth.  These fossils were taken from nearby cliffs that are constantly eroding and unearthing new fossils.  The cliffs are so tall that most of the history of earth from the time there was only one super-continent until the present is visible in the layers there.  Beyond the paleontology, the museum also has aquariums with many local aquatic species on display, an extensive display of wooden boat types that have been specifically designed for the Chesapeake Bay, from dugout canoes to Bugeye sailing draggers, to Skipjacks, to modern powered fishing boats.  It wasn’t open today, but we noted that they also have a boatbuilding shop in which they restore old boats as well as build replicas from new wood. 

Elsewhere on the grounds, they have restored the old Drum Point (located 2 miles downriver) lighthouse and set it up right at the waters edge.  This is a screw-pile type of lighthouse, which is common in the Bay because the bottom is unstable.  So they have to screw the 6 special pilings that support the lighthouse structure down into the bedrock, and then build a superstructure that contains the living quarters of the lighthouse keeper and his family, plus the light and associated fuel and supplies to maintain it all.  I’d heard the term screw-pile lighthouse before, but never knew anything about why they were called by that name.

After a delicious lunch of crabcakes at a nearby restaurant, we returned to the museum to witness the special event of the day – R/C model Skipjack races.  The museum has a full-sized skipjack boat at their docks, and all the skippers of the R/C models got aboard this boat, and raced their models on a course set out in the adjacent harbor area.  There were 9 competitors, and Lyn filmed some of it for your enjoyment.  The excitement of this race was too much, and we decided to return to Kite after it was over.  By the time we got back the wind had picked up and we were happy that we had decided to take the mooring.  By suppertime, not only had the wind increased, but it had started raining, too.  The rain is forecasted to continue through the night and into tomorrow, so we’re planning to stay another day here before continuing northward. 

Our friends Gordon and Linda Reynolds, whom we consulted when planning this journey to the Chesapeake Bay, highly recommended a visit to St. Michaels.  We’ve decided that our destination for Tuesday will be back to the eastern shore and into the Choptank River, and a tributary of that called San Domingo Creek.  It has been described as a quiet anchorage with “super” holding, and it has the added advantage of being a half-mile from the town center of St. Michaels, an easy walk.