Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

For four days, me and four friends sailed around the Chesapeake Bay without using GPS --- only steered by compass, chart, parallel ruler, grease pencil, and binoculars. Remember those things? The implements sailors used in the days before navigating a sailboat was more like playing Atari than having to actually look at one's surroundings? We did it. And I think that's worth bragging about. Here's the Flickr photo set of us sailing from near Annapolis down to Smith Island, Maryland in the daytime.

It took a damn long time to get to Smith Island so we had to sail nearly all night. We had to use red-tinted headlamps to not screw up our night vision on the way down. If you sail and have not sailed at night, I'd highly recommend it --- especially without GPS. It hones your sailing skills like hell. But I'm not a total Luddite; we did use the 3-million-candle-power spotlight near shore. Now I understand why large ships ran aground all the time at night in the olden days. Here's the Flickr photo set of us sailing all night.

Once we got to Smith Island and I'd run the boat aground for an hour motoring in, we rented a house from this artist woman who lived on the island. Smith Island is like a foreign country. I always say the true mark of a 3rd World country is one where the citizens burn their trash on the side of the road; that was the case with Smith as you'll see in the pictures. Smith's only industry is crabbing and that's declining. Only 200 people live on Smith Island year 'round. These same families have lived there for hundreds of years and linguists claim you can detect a bit of Elizabethan in their accents left over from the original settlers. Here's the Flickr photo set of us spending 24 hours on Smith Island, Maryland (if you click the "i", you can get info about each picture).