Day 117 - Biking the Island

We were up early, expecting a serviceman from the marina to come and change the impellers on the generator and on both engines (as long as he was down there).  He arrived on time at 8:00 am  and worked until after 11:00 am.  Captain Randy made delicious omelets for breakfast.  I went up to the boater’s lounge and was able to post a blog entry – hooray!  We had not had good internet yet, and although we could connect on the dock, it was very spotty.

In the afternoon we borrowed bikes from the marina and rode into “town”, which lies between the Back Bay and the Patuxent River.  We browsed the few shops and soon were at the end of their commercial district.  The Solomons Island Yacht Club is in the middle of town, but there were no cars and it looked closed.  We would return later with a burgee.  We discovered a very cute Tiki Bar, complete with sand, colorful chairs and thatched roofs.  It lined both sides of a center courtyard, with what looked to be motel rooms behind the tables.  Sure enough, we found out that it used to be a motel but was closed down due to a proliferation of rentals “by the hour”.  There were 2 stores in a couple of the old rooms and the owners plan on adding more.  As of now, the other rooms are utilized for storage.

We rode back to Zahniser’s and spent the rest of the afternoon in their pool, which was well attended, as it was another beautiful day.  Then back to the boat to clean up for dinner.  We took the bikes to town again and our first stop was the yacht club.  A few people were having drinks at the bar and they welcomed us in.  Our impression of Solomons Island was that it is mostly sail boaters and we assumed the yacht club was too.  To our surprise, the club is mostly power boaters.  During the week they have members tending bar, with paid help on the weekends.  Food service is only a few days a week.  We traded boating stories for a while, then traded burgees.

Dinner was at the Solomons Pier Restaurant, right across the street from the yacht club.  We sat outside and watched the sunset over the causeway to the mainland.