When we were about fifty feet off the bow of the nearest boat, the captain, a guy about my age, scrambled into the cockpit and emerged with a long bait net, his face contorted in anger. I chose a course through the widest gap between boats and then slowed down so as not to create a wake. We set a course for Delaware City at the eastern terminus of the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal.Īs we approached the towering Chesapeake Bay Bridge we were faced with the prospect of winding our way through a fleet of small fishing boats anchored beneath it.
We didn’t feel like getting stuck in a big city over a long and hot holiday weekend. Our initial plan was to head to Baltimore but with a forecast calling for temps in the low nineties we changed our mind. Once we got going there was very little wind and even in those early-morning hours you could tell it was going to be a hot day. We were trapped above the Spa Creek Bridge in our morning departure of Annapolis, the rush-hour traffic into town dictating a no-open policy until 9am. Crab sandwich – everything but the eyeballs.Īctual uniform, table, tablecloth and documents of Admiral Nimitz aboard the Missouri for the Japanese surrender at end of WWII. Crunchy but delicious, and the next day I felt like a seagull during my morning ablution. I ordered my first ever soft-shell crab sandwich, a regional favorite in which a whole crab – claws and all – is stuffed between two pieces of toast. Wednesday night we joined our friends Jim and Syl of “4th Quarter” for dinner at Davis’s Pub, a small joint in an obscure part of town but known up and down the east coast for its good food and nautical ambiance. The parade of boats after the show was nearly as interesting as the show itself there’s some big money floating around on Chesapeake Bay. I joined Jan on the deck of Chimera II with our friends Jim and Gwen to watch the show, the entire Annapolis Harbor jammed with boats. Departing the campus, I passed through lines of spectators arriving for the big Blue Angels show scheduled to start later in the day. I found a photo of a ship my father once served on – the Langley – and also a detailed description of the Invasion of North Africa in which his ship was torpedoed and sunk. An amazing collection, with some of the artifacts dating back to the Revolutionary War. I spent nearly four hours alone Wednesday morning on the campus of the Academy touring the Naval Museum. We liked Annapolis so much we wound up staying there for three days.