THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 27, 1994 TAG: 9407270352
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: AROUND THE BAY IN 50 DAYS
Earl Swift is exploring the geography, history and people of the
Chesapeake Bay on a 50-day kayak trip that began July 1.
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Monday morning, after paddling for three weeks among the marshy necks and lonely, low-lying islands of the Chesapeake Bay's eastern shoreline, I rounded Love Point at the northern tip of Kent Island and turned southwest.
Miles to my left, rendered ghostly gray by haze, the Bay Bridge arched from Kent Island to the mainland.
I had reached the northernmost point in my voyage by kayak around the Chesapeake.
Beyond the bridge, nestled in the western shore, lay Annapolis, and beyond that the long paddle southward toward home.
A whisper of a breeze barely rippled the water. The big ships I had expected to see plying the deep channel from Baltimore were absent. So at 8:30 a.m., I set a course for the Sandy Point light, a Victorian red brick landmark on the far shore, and began the 2 1/2-hour paddle west.
That I had encountered fine weather for the crossing was fortunate because the previous three days had been tough ones.
After leaving Oxford bound for Knapp's Narrows at Tilghman Island, I'd been hammered by a gale. As it often does on the Chesapeake on late summer afternoons, the southwest wind rose from undetectable to a squall in minutes.
By the time I was halfway across Harris Creek, within sight of the narrows but a mile from land, huge waves - 4 feet, sometimes 5 feet high - were crashing into the kayak's port side.
After a couple broke over the deck so forcefully that the boat nearly flipped, I surrendered to the storm and let it blow me into Dun Cove, two miles north of my destination. I set up camp as lightning began to flash.
I reached the narrows the next morning after 90 minutes' paddling into a still-fierce headwind. Knapp's is one of several havens on the Bay well known to mariners, a skinny avenue between island and mainland lined with marinas and wharves.
It was crowded Saturday morning with boaters staying put until the weather improved. I paddled by idle sailboats and opulent motor yachts, their owners relaxing under canvas sunshades with cups of coffee, then passed a couple of big sailboats that had run onto sandbars and were awaiting help. I couldn't do much for them under paddle power, so I headed into the Bay and turned north.
At the village of Claiborne, I pulled into lunch at a dock that, until the Bay Bridge was built in the 1950s, served steamships crossing the Chesapeake from Baltimore. These old docks dot the Eastern Shore in towns that were once the Delmarva Peninsula's ports of entry but have now faded into historical footnotes.
In the old days, vacationers could travel by ship from Baltimore to Claiborne, then board trains for Rehobeth Beach on Delaware's Atlantic coast. A railroad bed and ruins of a train pier remain in Claiborne, just a few yards from the steamship dock.
At St. Michaels, on the Miles River, I camped on the grounds of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, which sprawls along the waterfront of a town that has become a favorite weekend retreat for Baltimore's harried. Again, storms rolled in from the southwest. So on Sunday, as I paddled north in rain and gusty winds, my mind was already on the Bay crossing that lay ahead.
The sky cleared, however. When I reached the Kent Island Narrows, just east of the Bay Bridge, the sun shone brightly, and dockside restaurants were busy catering to overpowered cigarette boats, most of which had squads of bikini-clad young women lounging on their bows. The limitations of my kayak's narrow foredeck were never so apparent.
By Monday the wind had all but disappeared. An hour after leaving Love Point, I could see the Baltimore light to the north, and the Bay Bridge loomed larger to my left. I raced across the 700-foot-wide shipping channel, turned south under the bridge and glided into the town dock at Annapolis.
Later, I paddled past the Naval Academy and through a flotilla of plebes struggling with sailboats in the Severn River. I stored my kayak at the St. John's College boathouse.
Almost as soon as I'd unloaded the boat, another lightning storm swept over the city. MEMO: Swift's next report will appear Sunday. His 50-day journey around the
Chesapeake Bay began July 1. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
IAN MARTIN/Staff
Earl Swift paddles under the Bay Bridge near Annapolis as he begins
the southward leg of his journey around the Chesapeake Bay.
IAN MARTIN/Staff photos
Reporter Earl Swift gulps down a container of water. He drinks
plenty of fluids during his voyage around the Bay since the summer
weather is exceptionally hot.
The kayak departs Castle Harbour Marina on Kent Island, Maryland.
Afterward, during a lull in a storm, Swift crossed the Chesapeake
Bay to the western shore near Annapolis. His trip around the Bay
reached its halfway point.
by CNB