Bird Onboard

by Ellis W. Merschoff

Sea Gypsy was pulling nicely in a stiff southerly breeze, making close to her hull speed at 6 knots. The early autumn light seemed to carry the shoreline colors out onto the Bay, emphasizing that summer was indeed over.

"What is that squeaking?" asked Sherry, as she settled in on an easterly course toward the Craighill Channel front light.

"Just the wheel," I replied. "It has been making some noise off and on for a while now." I replied.

"No, it sounds like a . . . eeeech!" screamed Sherry at sudden appearance of a bird. A female goldfinch. (We looked it up later.)

Sherry squirmed away from the wheel, trying to keep her distance from the chirping hitchhiker perched on the taffrail. Unhelpfully, the bird hopped to her shoulder, eliciting another outburst. Fortunately, the goldfinch quickly made a second short hop to the binnacle mounted on the wheel pedestal. Now that we could keep an eye on her, our guest was less frightening. Soon, my wife Sherry, our guest Diane, and I started to become more comfortable with our unlikely visitor. Now, this is different, we all agreed. Even the bird seemed to be surprised by the turn of events.

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Three Hulls on the Potomac

by John Robinson

We're beating into the steep chop of the Bay off of Smith Point. Adam is at the tiller. The breeze is stiff out of the northeast and Go-Go Girl's sleek hulls are majestically parting the waves. With our three sons along for the adventure—Adam, 15; Ian, 14; and Taylor, 11—my wife Marybeth and I are exploring the 100 miles or so of navigable Potomac from the Bay to Washington D.C. Eyeballing an imaginary line between Maryland's Point Lookout and Virginia's Smith Point, my Adam yells, "Well, I guess we are officially in the Potomac now!"

At dawn this morning we left our home port on the Rappahannock aboard our Corsair F28 trimaran. I've been looking forward to this trip for months. The boys are recently out of school for the summer and the weather forecast looks fine. Life is good. As we round a bend in the St. Mary's River--which is especially calm and inviting after the crossing of the boisterous mouth of the Potomac--the sailing ship Dove comes into view. This stout vessel is a reproduction of the ship in which Leonard Calvert and his crew arrived in the new world in 1634 to establish first significant English settlement in what is now Maryland.

Prior to anchoring for the evening off of Church Point in the shadow of the Dove, we tie up at the St. Mary's College pier, with the dockmaster's gracious permission, and explore on foot. We wander the grounds of the college and the living history museum of St. Mary's City. It's a beautiful place, and I can't help but imagine how grateful those colonists must have been to be settling in such a place.

Later, after cleaning up another of our one-pot dinner stews, I sit in the netting between the hulls of Go-Go Girl writing in my journal as the sky blazes orange to the west. Ian entertains us with his guitar, and Marybeth studies the cruising guides. Taylor and Adam are finally coming back aboard from swimming and paddling our resident surfboard over to the Dove.

We delight in the immersion of ourselves into the life and history of the Potomac. Our days are full with all the activity that cruising entails: navigating, sailing, motoring, reading, playing, learning. We visit memorable creeks and points of interest. One of those is St. Clements Island, about 15 miles upstream from the mouth of the St. Marys River, also on the Maryland side of the Potomac. This is the site of the first landing by the St. Mary's settlers, and we are intrigued to visit it as well. A long, dilapidated pier makes access to the island easy, and we enjoy walking the sandy paths which crisscross the quiet island. The only structure standing there is a large stone cross erected in 1934 to commemorate the first landing. It's an evocative place, and on the day of our visit we have the island to ourselves.

On our Potomac cruise we sail when we can, which turns out to be more than we had expected. Otherwise we motor along with our trusty Honda outboard. When we sail under the Rt. 301 bridge, and see the cars and trucks speeding overhead, we feel like we're worlds away in time and space. Here we are on river time without a schedule, our trip unfolding before us at its own rate. We have definitely been looking forward to this: the sunken ghost fleet of Mallow Bay. The remains of over 100 wood- and steel-hull ships built for service in World War I, but too late and never commissioned, lie in the shallow water of this cove off the Potomac. We anchor among them for the night and listen to the frogs inland and gaze at the stars overhead, the water gently lapping at the boat's hulls.

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