On Monday, we went to Point Lookout, MD which is the very tip of the mouth of the Potomac River on the Chesapeake Bay.
We passed this really cute little island as we left Belmont Harbor. At least it is an island using the St. Lawrence Seaway description, which is: if it has a tree, it's officially an island (if it doesn't, it's just called a rock, regardless of size. It would be fun to go there, but when you look at it on the charts, it's all 1 ft. and 2 ft. deep out hundreds of feet from the island. We'd have to get out and walk to it if we wanted to go ashore.

Yesterday, we went up the Potomac to Solomons Island, MD, about halfway to Annapolis. We're in a very nice harbor within walking distance to the teeny "town".
But we don't have to walk because the marina has free bicycles to ride to town. That's John and Kathy on their bikes. Neither had ridden for a long time, but "Hey.. you never forget... it's just like riding a bike".


We visited the Univ. of Maryland Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and we found that over harvesting and habitat destruction has totally ruined the once large Chesapeake oyster harvest. The last year shown on the chart is 2003 and the harvest was obviously very small. After a paltry 750,000 bushels in the year 2000 (compared to 14 million bushels in 1900) it dropped to an even more paltry 100,000 bushels in 2003. Then today, we went to eat some fried local oysters. Oops... sorry... but they were delicious.

We were going to go across the Chesapeake today to Cambridge, MD but the NOAA forecast for the Chesapeake was for 4 ft. waves so we decided to stay here another day and then go up to Annapolis tomorrow when it's supposed to be nice again.

Instead, we went to visit the Calvert Maritime Museum here, on bikes again. It includes a lot of interesting old style wooden boats, maritime history, an aquarium with lots of local fish and an excellent river otter display with two really cool, playful river otters, and this completely restored Chesapeake Bay lighthouse. This is the Drum Point Lighthouse and when it was decommissioned it was disassembled and brought here to be restored as a display at the museum. It was very interesting.

Then, this afternoon, John and I installed a voltage meter in the dashboard of my dinghy. I always want to know the charge condition of the batteryt and if the new voltage regulator is working correctly, and this will let me see that quickly every time I run it. It's the gauge in the upper right corner, which balanced out the dash since that was empty before.

Tomorrow, we'll cruise up to Annapolis, MD where John will depart and Geoff & Deb Peters will meet us on Friday for a 2 day cruise to St. Michaels and then Baltimore.