Day 118 - Another Great Maritime Museum

The weather had changed overnight.  It was very warm, humid and muggy with no breeze.  We left for our next port, St. Michaels, at 9:03 am.  The Bay was calm and we whizzed past the homes and bluffs on shore.  Near the western shore is a large structure on the water, a LNG Terminal, a liquefied natural gas terminal.  To our starboard we saw an orange flag marking fishing nets.  We have been lucky so far in avoiding crab pots and fish traps on the Chesapeake.  They seem to be pretty close to shore in the shallow water.

As we entered the Eastern Bay that leads to the Miles River, there was a group of fishing boats, apparently in the “hot spot”.  We arrived at St. Michael’s Marina at 11:50 am.  They were able to fuel us at the slip although it took forever to get to the 350 gallons of diesel we needed.



We set out to explore the town, another very charming port town catering to boaters and tourists staying in small B&Bs.  After visiting St. Mary’s Square, a school from the late 1800’s and several shops, we went to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  The museum is housed in about 15 buildings over 18 acres.  That meant a lot of walking in the heat, but it was worth it.

The museum has another screw-pile, cottage style lighthouse, the 1879 Hooper Straight Lighthouse, like the one we saw in Solomons Island.  This one had more original artifacts inside.  There are several buildings that house boats, from the old small commercial crab and oyster fishing boats to the first recreational power boats or “cruisers”.  Boating or Yacht clubs became popular after the Civil War and there is an exhibit of club burgees, pictures, programs and even a bar set-up.  The bar even includes Myers Rum – the Captain’s drink of choice!

Another highlight at the museum is the oystering exhibit.  You can climb aboard a real “skipjack” (oyster boat) and learn about the harvesting, shucking and packaging of oysters.  One of the buildings (thankfully air-conditioned) has rotating exhibits and the ones we saw were the Chesapeake Tugboat and War of 1812 on the Chesapeake.

After all this walking we needed some refreshment and luckily there is a restaurant, Crab Claw, right next to the museum.  We ordered a half dozen hard-shell crabs and spent the next half an hour with mallets and knives, opening the shells to get to the sweet crabmeat.  We were a sticky mess after this, but happy.

We visited a church cemetery and a few more shops on the way back to the boat.  A huge 80-100 foot boat had docked opposite our slip while we were gone.  Captain Randy had to take a conference call, so I worked on the blog until he was finished.  We walked up to the Town Dock Restaurant, right on the water, and had oysters, shrimp and mussels.  We can’t get enough seafood! 

Rain was predicted for that night and we saw lightning all around us.  Sure enough, soon after we settled in for the night it poured.  I was glad it had waited until night to rain and hoped it would be over by morning.