Havre de Grace, MD

We decided to leave Baltimore on Saturday, not having much more there that we wanted to do. Baltimore, like many major eastern US cities has a little Italy. Carol selected an Italian restaurant for Friday evening at which she wanted to eat and that completed her agenda. Mercifully for the crab population in the bay, the Italians don't seem to have any red sauce covered culinary analogues to crab cakes. The marina started filling up on Friday, going from 1/4 full to, maybe 1/2 full. The Preakness was being run on Saturday and that was a big draw; Univ. of Maryland was having a graduation and that was also getting lots of people into town. Plus, the rates went up on the weekend so we left town.

We had thought to go to St, Michaels, a place we had skipped in order to organize the trip to Washington. But, that's south of Annapolis and I didn't want to retrace that much water. Jay had suggested Harve de Grace, as a candidate, allowing that he had not visited the town in 25 years. There are marinas there, they're pretty cheap, so with no better plan in mind we took off for that town since it is north and in the general direction of our travel.

The trip sort of typified a frustration about cruising in the Chesapeake. We were 7-1/2 hours on the water; two were to get from Baltimore to the Bay; 1-1/2 were to get from the Bay to Havre de Grace. We only spent 4 actual hours of covering miles that were new or we would not have to travel again. Almost every place off the Bay requires a hour to reach, most require more. I guess that the silver lining is that the days a getting quite long so this lateral motion doesn't completely kill progress.

The trip was perfectly boring and uneventful and that was fine with us having had a full measure of eventful in the prior five years. As we left the inner harbor we saw two shells, one a crew of one, the other of four. I figured that at 5.5 knots we would overtake both in short order. Not so! Both pulled away from us with the single oarsman leaving the crew of four far behind .... us too.

We decided to take a shortcut, exiting the main shipping channel in favor of going "off road." When we had made the course change there was an information buoy that labeled the area, "crab lane." I expected the worst but there weren't so many crab traps. Along the way we saw these two lighthouses that aren't lighthouses. The taller, black and white structure is a range light, which, when aligned with another light tells ships if they are in the center of a channel. The other is obviously an old lighthouse but I could not find a lighthouse on the chart. Turns out that it was converted to the range light that complements the black and white structure to create the Craighill Range, the taller light being the upper range and the lighthouse the lower range. This is a range that we had used on the trip to Baltimore from Annapolis. The time in the Chesapeake Bay has been interesting in this sense: we have never been in a place that has such a large population of navigational aids and markers. Regardless of where a boat is on the water there always seems to be some aid visible to the naked eye. The issue becomes not finding a reference point but figuring out what reference point you're seeing because there are so many.

Baltimore seems to me to be the end of the Bay. Above the city the Bay is more of a river and not a very big one for all that, much less than one mile from bank to bank with the whole area getting progressively shallower. Saturday afternoon the wind picked up a little and there were lots of boats out sailing, nowhere to go, just enjoying the wind. This was one of the boats that we saw, an older boat, probably a yawl. It seemed unusual that a boat like that would have kevlar sails, very pricy, and a spinnaker, but there it was. For all of the money invested in sails, a lot of money, the boat was not going very fast but looked very good regardless.

We arrived at Havre de Grace in the early afternoon, motoring all the way, the last 8 miles or so with a tide pushing us along toward the town up a narrow and tortuous channel. When we were settled I just had to look up the name to see what it means: Haven of Grace. The area is fairly sheltered so I got the haven part; I was not so sure about the grace unless it was discovered in dire circumstances or under divine providence. Turns out that it was named after Le Havre, France an interesting choice since the French were mainly much farther north and this area was assiduously British. After the war General Lafayette visited the place several times and commented that it reminded him of Le Havre in France which was originally named Le Havre de Grace. Improbably, from 200 years on, in 1789 the town was a contender for the site of the nation's permanent capital.

Plan! What plan??? We originally intended to stay the weekend and leave Monday but decided to attack a small boat problem: the strataglass in the center panel of the canvas surround, the most critical view, had become badly mottled making it almost opaque. The trip started with that issue as annoying and it recently became a problem. In bad weather the panel stays down but the boat pilot becomes partially blinded, not a good thing since the obstructed view is where we look for crab pots. So, we found a canvas guy here in town who was willing to replace the "glass" on short notice, a sufficient reason to stay another day.

On Tuesday, we're off for Delaware City. There will be some very windy weather on Wednesday and Thursday and the cruising guide says that the Delaware Bay can be difficult in those circumstances. So, we'll ride it out in shelter.