St. Mary's City

Thursday July 19, 2012
38 11.519 N
76 26.041 W

St Mary's City was the site of the forth European settlement in North America, circa 1620. Thursday morning we made our way out of the XX River, across the Potomac and about 10 miles up the St. Mary's River to Horseshoe Bay. What a prefect anchorage, protected all around, about 15' - 20' deep and big enough for 100 boats. Only negative was poor phone, TV and internet access - no clue why.

Deidre can spot an Aussie flag at 100 miles in a storm!

Within 10 minutes we watched a 50 Hunter cruise in and drop anchor, displaying an Aussie maritime flag just like ours. We dropped our dinghy and made our way across and met up with Kieth and Jennifer from Sydney. What fun. A few minutes later a 48 Katey Krogan arrived, and since  we were still in the dinghy we popped over there too, and met Brian and Jackie. Later on that afternoon, Brian called and asked us over for drinks. I decided I liked this place.

Friday July 20, 2012

Quaint

The original St. Mary's settlement faded away a long time ago. The site is now occupied by the St Mary's College, established about 1846. Friday morning we took the dinghy and tide up at the St Mary's sailing club and had a wander around. Several of the "original" buildings have been recreated, and there is a "pioneer village" that operates for the tourists in the summer. We found a coffee shop so we bought a newspaper and had a couple of lattes.  Our primary objective was to spec out the "free concert" that happened for 9 Fridays in the summer. Good fun, back to the boat for a quiet afternoon.

We loaded the dinghy with 4 chairs and picked up Kieth and Jennifer. It was a short walk to the "amphitheater" - a bit like a temporary "Myer Music Bowl" (Australian reference) or "Blossom" (Cleveland reference) or Wolf Trap (East coast reference). We had heard the orchestra rehearsing all afternoon, music drifting in the wind over the water. The weather was a bit threatening, but there was maybe 500 people on deck chairs and rugs. It was a full orchestra (the "Chesapeake Orchestra") plus a guest pianist. I am certainly not an orchestral music aficionado, but the concert was magnificent. It was amazing, one of the best experiences of my life. Certainly not some hokey concert in the country.

It may have helped that Kieth had brought a lovely bottle of Australian port.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Saturday dawned overcast and wet. (That is what it was like at about 9AM, honestly not sure what it was like at dawn.). The forecast for Chesapeake was more of the same plus a bit of wind. This was the first cool weather we had seen for weeks. I needed socks and shoes. We felt like curling up in front of the fire with a good book, so that was what we did, sans the fire.