Baltimore, MD

It was cold, this morning, down in the 40's again. Every nice day has been followed by several extremely cool days and nights, struggling to break 50^o at night and 60^o during the day. The struggle has rarely been successful.

It was Monday, and we had to get underway, having been banished from Annapolis. Carol had taken a liking to crabcakes at a particular restaurant. She would say, "I'll fix you breakfast and then I'll take a walk," the walk being to get and eat a crabcake. Or, "I'll fix you lunch and then I'll take a walk," the walk ending at the same place for the same reason; ditto for dinner. She ate so many crabcakes that the town was running out of inventory, sending tourist spending down 11.3% for the week we were there. The city council passed an emergency measure exiling us from the town, so we left.

We saw a couple of neat boats along the way. The first is at least a "go fast" boat, maybe a racing boat. It had kevlar sails, a squared off main, and a small bow sprit to handle spinnakers. There were several people in the cockpit so my guess is that it's a USNA boat that went out very early to return in time for a regular day. The second boat is a schooner that we saw in the Patapsco River, close to the Baltimore inner harbor. In a two masted schooner the rear mast is at least as tall, but usually taller, that the foremast. I imagine that at some earlier time we would have seen these in the dozens between Annapolis and Baltimore.

The trip was pretty simple: go down the Severn River, turn left for an hour or two; then turn left again at the Patapsco River and go until you cannot go any farther. We passed these two lighthouses just north of the Bay Bridge. It seemed that the upper portion of both structures were brickwork. The white topped one, Baltimore Lighthouse, was, at one point, powered by a small nuclear generator, the first ever to be so powered. There were many more lighthouse, the traditional tower on land, as we neared Baltimore's inner harbor; there are so many that it almost seems like a connect the dots/lighthouses passage.

Of course, we saw Ft. McHenry, of "O, say can you see..." fame. Without even having a clue, it seems that we are, in part, going over the very same waterways that the British traveled in the Chesapeake Bay campaign during the War of 1812. We first read about that in Solomons, MD. Up the Potomac, up the Patuxent, up the Patapsco went the British and so went we two. The War of 1812 is one about which I have scant knowledge. After the trip I will have to remedy that.

We passed an industrial site on the lower reach of the river, Sparrows Point. It is/was a part of Bethlehem Steel. Not a thing appeared to be happening ... shut down and shuttered. I researched that there is talk of putting an LNG terminal there. There was also a container port above the Ft. McHenry Memorial Bridge. All the boats were brightly painted and only one was recognizable: the green hulled boat is a car carrier with a ramp on the starboard side of the stern that goes down to load and unload cars. The two to the right are container vessels, but of a type I have never seen, maybe half for containers and half for who knows? The red hulled boat to the left: clueless.

The marina was at the end of the harbor; had we gone another 50 yards we would have hit a sea wall. When we were researching the choices we selected this marina for its proximity to downtown, and downtown is about 200 yards away. What we didn't realize is that walking around the harbor to get to the downtown area is about a mile or so. Taking the dinghy across would be quicker and save a ton of steps.

We were greeted at the dock by someone from the marina to handle the lines and by a smaller visitor, truly the size of a bathtub rubber duck, no feathers yet. It was either lost, or so small that it could not make headway into a fairly stiff wind, or, more probably, both. I have no clue whether it's a sea bird or some type of duck. Regardless, it was paddling courageously and energetically to no place in particular, generally managing a circle.

This is, more or less, what Carol and I see from the back of our boat. A pretty nice view in the waning light of the evening. The wave looking thing on the right is the Aquarium.

Our son, Sean, arrived in Washington, DC on Tuesday for a vacation. Mamas love their babies even when their babies are older than 40 and weigh more than 200-lb. Sunday having been Mothers' Day, Carol's "suggestion" for her gift was a visit to WDC to see Sean. Neither he nor I chose to step in front of that truck. The trip was short, not much more than 50 miles. There was an interesting symmetry: having twice passed under the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, we twice got to drive over it, Sean's hotel being in Alexandria, VA. We were back on the boat Wednesday in time for lunch. Mama was happy.

On Wednesday we were able to get together with my cousin Sue and Jay, who took us to Ft. McHenry to see the place from land. It was pretty interesting and closed a loop: in WDC we had visited the Museum of American History and saw the actual flag on display that flew that day and night in 1814. We went to dinner at a place that they said has the best crabcakes in MD, which suited Carol. Sue's brother, my cousin Bill, was also able to join us with his wife, Linda. It was a good time it having been a while since we had visited Sue and a longer while for Bill.

Sue and Jay took us on Wednesday through a very old section of Baltimore called Fells Point. So, on Thursday we decided to revisit the area. We hopped aboard buses, at no charge, that got us there quickly and in air conditioning. The area is mostly gentrified but not quite all the way. Most of the houses were in exceptionally good shape, i.e. very well maintained, at least on the street side. My guesstimate is that most houses date from 18-something, maybe a few from 17-something. It was a great place to walk and rubberneck. There were whole streets where every house had a plaque denoting that it was registered as a historic location. The clapboard houses stood out in a sea of brickwork, notwithstanding the bright colors. There was a third one, but that picture didn't turn out. We passed by a real estate office and looked at the offerings in the window. The old houses, like in the pictures, didn't seem all that expensive; the newly built condos, on the other hand, were very dear. There were lots of places selling beer, almost as many selling food, most doing both. A good place to be hungry and thirsty. Better yet to be thirsty and Irish, about 1/2 the bars seeming to claim genetic descendancy from that emerald isle. I don't know why the Irish are so closely associated with alcohol, but they are.

We also visited the USS Constellation, a restored vessel from 1854. It seemed unusual in that there was no structure on or above the deck, just the several masts rose higher that the gunwales with a clear view from stem to stern. The openness on the deck made it seem that the Constellation larger that the USS Alacrity on which I served, but in fact the Constellation is about 15-ft. shorter. They both were, however, wooden ships. History has judged which was the more compelling of the two. There are several other ships on display and open for visits in the harbor and we saw them all, a busman's holiday of boats.

Link to USS Constellation

The boat has received small amounts of attention in the morning as we've performed modest maintenance, none of which has required much time or much energy. Mostly we've been enjoying the visit to the place and with family and the .... somewhat ..... warmer weather, a welcome change and, hopefully, a permanent one.

We're leaving tomorrow, Saturday, but I haven't yet decided where. We had thought to go straight on to Cape May, the jumping off place to Long Island. I am reluctant to arrive that far north too early due to temperatures. Marinas are out of the question, costing $5.00 ~ $6.00 per foot, per night, about the expense of a luxury hotel without the room service or the Godiva chocolates on the pillow.