A summertime kiss

We were the only boat on a mooring at Zahniser's Monday evening, Aug. 12, so we took the opportunity for me to get some practice bringing the boat to a stop at just the right place so Robert could pick up the mooring pendant, the heavy line that attaches the mooring ball to the boat.

The first few passes went very badly. First I came up too slowly and stopped with the ball still out of reach. Then I came right up to the ball, put the boat in reverse to stop and Robert picked up the mooring pendant. I was so busy enjoying my triumph that I forgot to take the boat out of reverse and looked up to see Robert looking at me with exasperation just before he let go of the mooring pendant which was about to drag him overboard.

The next time I lost sight of the mooring ball and ran over it - VERY not good!!! Fortunately I had the presence to take Arwen out of gear so the mooring pendant didn't get wrapped around the propeller. Throughout all this, Robert gave great instruction. The only time he got a little excited was when I ran over the mooring ball. After maybe 10 passes, I could just about kiss the ball with Arwen's bow. Great progress and domestic harmony prevailed.

An anchorage full of adolescent osprey

When we left Solomon's Island Tuesday, Aug. 13, we thought we might get rain on the way to St. Michaels, but it was a beautiful day on the water with good wind from the west northwest giving us a beam reach during the morning, but dropping off so that we turned on the motor in the afternoon.

We motored into San Domingo Creek about 4:30 p.m. and found it peaceful and beautiful with young osprey all about yammering for food and learning to fly. We passed two Island Packets and a large motor yacht on the way to our favorite spot in the anchorage.

After a walk downtown to the Acme Grocery, we had dinner in the cockpit and took the dingy back in after dark to give Madison her walk. Using a weather app on Robert's iPad, we'd seen a storm sweeping across the Western Shore headed straight for us. As we came back to the boat we watched quite a light show in the western sky. We made it back aboard before the deluge came with a vengeance. The storm winds swung the boat about, but our anchor was well set and we weren't worried about it dragging, so the rain on the deck and rocking motion from the wind made for great sleeping.

Lucky stowaways

On Wednesday morning as we were getting ready to bring Madison in to the park for her morning walk, we discovered that we had a couple of stowaways, a thumb-sized frog on Arwen's deck and a palm-sized one in the dingy. We later found another thumb-sized interloper. Did they hop aboard to ride out the storm? Turns out they were grey tree frogs. They sat very still and let us take all the pictures we wanted. We took them to the park and released them, then we spotted an interpretive sign about local amphibians.

The best bit of trivia we learned from the sign is that in Japan frogs are considered good luck. Maybe three aboard Arwen means three times charmed.The sign says one myth has it that bullfrogs descended from a great ancestor who could suck all the mosquitos out of a room with one breath. Another bit of trivia: Rumor has it that in the 18th century when Paris was surrounded by many swamps (a favorite home for frogs), visiting French nobility would refer to Parisians as frogs. Only later did the name get generalized to all French. Lucky French.

The sign also explained that amphibians breathe and drink through their skin. Chemicals in the air or water or even on your skin if you pick them up easily enter their bodies through contact. They are so sensitive to environmental changes that when they begin disappearing from an area it's a sign of an environmental problem, therefore they are called an indicator species. One hundred and twenty-two species of amphibians have disappeared since 1980 and 1,900 species or 32 percent of all species are in danger of becoming extinct globally, thanks to habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and disease, according to the sign. Not so lucky for them - or other living things.

Meeting up with "Holdfast"

After breakfast we made our way to the library where I had planned to spend part of the day working on a project I am long overdue to finish, only to discover that the library Web site hasn't been updated and the summer hours on Wednesdays are 2 p.m. - 6 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

We strolled through the library's lovely reading garden, wandered over to the Blue Crab Coffee Shop for coffee and chai and made our way back to the boat for lunch. As we were finishing up, we had a visit from our friends Dena and Myron from Holdfast who were also anchored in San Domingo Creek around a point of land so that we couldn't see their boat. Bob had run into them in the park earlier in the day. Among other things, we spent hours talking about boats and their travels since we met in 2011. It was getting dark when they left to turn on their anchor light. They're headed for Harness Creek where we may see them again in a few days. We've been following their blog and living on the water vicariously through their adventures for months, so it was wonderful getting to catch up with them.

Today, Thursday, is another cool, gorgeous day. After taking showers at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, a favorite haunt from two years ago, we headed back to the library where I spent most of the day with a break for lunch at the Blue Crab Coffee Shop. Robert and Madison sat outside the library for part of the day, then came back to the boat, where evidence left in the cabin (Robert's pillow) leads me to suspect they both took naps before coming back to get ice and pick me up.