Bay Tripper

Stories of Boat Related Mishaps and Experiences | Soundings Online Column

Time for a tune-up before cruising season

When I began sailing in the mid-1960s, my watery world was limited to the Severn River, which opened to the great unknown (to me) Chesapeake Bay some three miles distant.

My first sailboat, a National One-Design, was moored in a cove near my home in Severna Park, Md.

Ed Cutts: designer, builder, Bay icon

I regularly cruise to Oxford, Md., on the middle Eastern Shore

— not primarily to eat, drink and make merry, but to poke around a remarkable time capsule of an old, traditional boatyard.

Pitching shoes with a new friend

Some friendly boater decided somewhere at some time to hail a stranger on the water.

When that stranger returned the wave, a nautical tradition began that is now considered de rigueur.

The annual rite of autumn at City Dock

As a sailboat-weary veteran of all 40 October sail shows at the City Dock in Annapolis, I have never been discouraged by snow squalls, gale-force winds, torrential rain, 100 degree temperatures, super-high tides with workers rowing about in dinghies, super-low tides with risky boarding on boats hard aground, and invasions of stinging honeybees.

Even after boat show owners suspended the good old freebie press luncheons of beef and booze at the Fleet Reserve Club on Ego Alley, I persevered and continued my habitual attendance.

Lump crab on the hook and helping hands

My frequent sailing activities on Chesapeake Bay sometimes fit into a category of bits and pieces of this and that taking place here and there, now and then.

Here are a few vignettes:

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Jack Sherwood, Writer-at-Large

Jack has been cruising Chesapeake Bay and writing about the region for more than 25 years. His critically acclaimed book, "Maryland's Vanishing Lines," was published by Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University Press and is now in its second printing. Before joining Soundings, Jack was a feature writer at the Washington (D.C.) Star for nearly 20 years and a senior editor at Chesapeake Bay magazine from 1995 to 1998.His monthly Bay Tripper column focuses on the Chesapeake.