East Shore of the Chesapeake

If you have read Michener's "Chesapeake", it is centered around the Choptank River on the East Shore of the Bay. That is where we have spent the last four days. Cambridge, La Trappe Creek, and now Oxford are all part of the history of this area. We spent a night in Cambridge, which is a nice town based on the crab fishing industry. Today it struggles, but there are still many fishermen that work the waters. They set crab pots, or they use these long lines with crab bait. The above waterman is using the latter, where he is setting the line.

We anchored in a nice cove in La Trappe Creek for two nights. The water is still not clear like the Bahamas, but it is so much nicer than the sounds inside Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. We swam to a small beach several times, and Shelley found some more shells for Leo's colletion. As this was the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, the small cove began to fill up with locals coming in from various marinas to spend the weekend rafted up next to each other. We we left, there were just six. But after talking to these folks, they were expecting over 20 boats to show up in this same cove. Glad we were moving on.

Not sure how we survived two days at anchor. Not much to do but read, swim, take the dinghy out for rides, read, swim, .... you get the picture. We have really slowed down from the mad rush north from Florida and the goal of getting to Norfolk for the Looper rendezvous. Now we have all this time to bump around the Bay, and it is a challenge for Shelley and I. We like to be moving.

I really like Oxford. We have been to many towns on the water, but I really like Oxford. It is a small town on the Tred Avon River off the Choptank. There are probably 8 marinas in this small area, so you can imagine how important boating is to this community. There is a small car ferry that connects the far peninsula to the west to Oxford. In fact, Shelley and I realized that we have been here before by car. After the Annapolis Boat Show 8 years ago, we had rented a car to drive over to the East Shore of Maryland. We had lunch in St. Michaels and then took the ferry to Oxford. It looks different when you approach it from the river.

This is an affluent community with many huge homes built along the rivers and creeks. Most of these homes run in the $3 to $6 million dollar range are beautiful. One of them is attached. Many of these homes have million dollar yachts sitting at their private dock in their back yard. Serious money.

We will leave Rock Chalk next Tuesday at such a home. One of my good friends, John Duni, from Richmond Virginia, has a good friend who lives in the St. Michaels area. He has a large dock with no boat on it, so this guy agreed to allow us to tie Rock Chalk to his dock while we come back to Austin, and LA for Charlie's wedding. So we will soon take a break from the boat to head home to catch up with our friends and family. Then in late June we will be back to start the Loop again. Can't wait to see you all. Marc