Piankatank River
postcards from the road
Remembering Ocracoke
Ocracoke Lighthouse
From a trip to Ocracoke Island back in 2007.
Might be time to go back, but with a pair of little sailboats. Sailing around the harbor, Silver Lake, and in the lee of the island along the sound, would be nice indeed.
Schooner Gallery
Schooner Liberte at Thomas Point Lighthouse
Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race
Got the whole gallery of images from the Schooner Race uploaded – all 394 of them. You can find it here:
Rowing by Moonlight
Moonrise on Totier Creek Reservoir
Every autumn, for the last few years, I’ve posted photos of the fall foliage here for friends and family who don’t get any. Did something a little different this time.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a row in the small local reservoir in the late afternoon, going from the dam all the way back up the creek that feeds it. The low sun set the trees on fire. These boats draw less than three inches, and it was a wonder to glide over water so shallow, well back into areas I had never been before.
Cape May Morning ~ Video Postcard
Nice morning after the tow into Cape May Harbor the night before. Nice antidote to all that excitement.
Coffee in a paper cup. Time to kill.
For some reason, cameras make everyone at Utsch’s very nervous. Three times different people stood in front of my lens and demanded to know what I was doing. The last time it was the owner. When I explained, he laughed and gave me a hug.
Never got far from the marina. All this is from there.
Returning ~ Danger on the Delaware
Towed through Cape May Canal
The Chesapeake is known the world over as a popular sailing ground. The Naval Academy is in Annapolis with it’s top notch sailing program, and there are scores of sailing schools scattered all up and down the Bay. Marinas in every cove and creek are full of pleasure boats. As time approached for this trip, I began to wonder why I had heard so little of the great sailing to be had on Delaware Bay. It’s right next door, only 14 miles away – the same 14 miles the C&D Canal spans to connect them. They’re like sisters holding hands.
Returning ~ The C&D Canal
Motoring into the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal
One of the easiest ways to spot the handiwork of man, especially engineers, is to to look for straight lines. Humans love straight lines. Nature, not so much. We think in a linear fashion, prefer to travel that way, even measure time along a single line either forward or back. Simple geometry imparts order and efficiency to our world in a manner we admire with almost spiritual piety: the shortest distance between two points, walk the straight and narrow path, etc.. To the ancient greeks, geometry was indeed an expression of the divine. We don’t even build things out of trees until we’ve sawed them into straight boards. Continue reading “Returning ~ The C&D Canal”