The Bluejacket’s Manual

Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:

Hot, humid, thunderstorm.

Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.

Great blue heron barks  at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.

Hot, humid, storm.

Jellyfish.

A Chesapeake Summer

Summer on the Chesapeake Bay, in five lines:

Hot, humid, thunderstorm.

Bald eagle tries to steal fish from osprey. Osprey crying out indignantly, loses fish.

Great blue heron barks  at both of them, at no-one, at everyone and the general effrontery of the world.

Hot, humid, storm.

Jellyfish.

Confronting the Inner Squirrel with Farm Girl Grit

One of our first big weather events is behind us. Maggie May made it through Tropical Storm Isaias virtually unscathed. We spent the day of the storm on high alert, as the wind forecasts were constantly changing. This uncertainty was the greater part of why we decided to go to a marina rather than ride the storm out in a hurricane hole in the…

Fate Turns on a Squirrel’s Teeth

On the morning of July 9 my journal entry began, Setting off again this morning at high tide. We’ll see what transgresses. Headed to Maine. It was to be our second attempt at a launch, but it followed the fifth or sixth major named storm in the life of our circumnavigation dreams. Still, we were both hopeful. We had no beautiful friends to wave…

Gratitude, Maryland

Where to start? Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland…all places I wasn’t expecting or hoping to to blog about at the end of June 2020, but that is the way of adventures. I’m writing from the dining room table of my good friends, the Goods, who have kindly and warmly welcomed Bill and I to stay with them while the Maggie May is, again, being…

The Voyage Has Begun

Chesapeake Bay: Rockhold Creek to Chester River 6-14-2020 Last Tuesday, June 8, 2020 we cast off lines at Town Point Marina in Deale, Maryland, and headed out into the Chesapeake Bay for what we hope is a 3-year voyage around the world. Dear friends began arriving around 8 am and we said a few words, read a poem of blessing, and sprinkled some champaign…

Setting Sail

Launch is imminent. Destination flexible. So much has changed from when we first started planning this voyage 15 years ago,  even in the past few months, right down to the direction we will be going. Our hope had been to travel southward along the Intercoastal Waterway to South Carolina, then head out into the Atlantic to the Bahamas, then following a westerly route through…

At Home With the Gods of the Chesapeake

We made it. After 15 years of planning, 7 years of working on the boat, 2 months of pandemic lockdown, we are finally moving aboard Maggie May. Bill and I have spent the past few days carting carloads of stuff from our home basement and our friend Dave’s home, (where we were staying for the past few months), to the boat in Deale, Maryland. …

SV MMMotivations

The virus has offered lots of unbidden time for reflection. Time is a coin I was yearning for, if not in this manner and upon dry land. But it is valuable and I spend a lot of it thinking about what has moved me toward SV Maggie May over a 15-year period. Bill and I hatched the circumnavigation idea after our last big journey,…

COVID Dreams

  In some universe, the Sailing Vessel Maggie May was launched by now. Not here. On February 8, our friends and neighbors gathered  at Red Dirt Studios in Mount Rainier, Maryland, to bid us farewell. I’ve never been married, but I imagine this is what one’s wedding would feel like, an overwhelming feeling of love at a moment of great transition. Friends from our…