Back Creek

Our time in Annapolis was spent stocking up, doing laundry and taking showers - nice long showers with lots of water pressure. We stayed on a mooring in Back Creek for three days. We went down town once, but mostly we just enjoyed the interesting boats that came and went in Back Creek and did our chores.

An "official" mooring

On Saturday we motored over to Weems Creek, a new anchorage for us, We have talked to boaters who use it as their primary place to stay when they're in Annapolis and we wanted to check it out. There are moorings scattered throughout the creek that belong to the U.S. Naval Academy and we've heard that's where they put the academy's boats when there's a threat of a hurricane because it's well protected.

When there's no hurricane threat and the Academy isn't using them, they're apparently up for grabs on a first-come, first-served basis. There was only one open when we made our way down the creek and we claimed it for the night. These moorings don't have a pendant, but we have one for such situations. Unfortunately, we didn't have a shackle big enough to attach it to the mooring chain, so we used a line instead of a pendant. Robert worried about the line chaffing, so he attached a backup line to the chain with a shackle to keep Arwen from floating free if the line wore through.

A line by any other name is a rope

I still have trouble remembering to call lines "lines" instead of "ropes." During the years when we rock climbed and caved, I carefully avoided stepping on climbing or caving ropes to avoid grinding grit into their fibers and compromising their strength. If you're going to be dangling from a rope 100 feet off the ground, you don't want it to be compromised. When we started sailing, I learned that boats have lines, not ropes, and that no one will yell at you if you step on them. I still feel bad when I do.

Crossing under the bay bridge

On Sunday, we crossed under the Bay Bridge motoring into the wind and and headed into the upper bay for the first time.

We made our way to a lovely anchorage behind Dobbins Island in the Magothy River. When we arrived there were a couple of other sailboats anchored nearby and a couple of small motor boats near Dobbins Island. By 3 p.m., there were at least 30 or 40 motor boats anchored near or pulled up on the small sandy beach of Dobbins Island. It was definitely party central for the afternoon. Lots of families with kids and teenagers splashing and sunning and playing on floats of every imaginable color and shape. We enjoyed watching but Robert had seen jellyfish in the water and wimp that I am, I was not inclined to swim. We thought it was a bad idea to take Madison ashore with all the people and it was too hot to sit in the cockpit unless you'd been swimming, so we spent the afternoon in the cabin, where the breeze kept us cool, planning a trip to the top of the bay in September.

About 4 p.m., we took the dingy and explored until we found another small sandy beach where we could take Madison ashore. By 8 p.m., all but a couple of the motor boats had gone and we were able to take her in for an after-dinner walk on the beach as the sun was setting and the sky faded to several spectacular shades of crimson and blue.

Dobbins Island - like it on Facebook

On Monday morning we motored over to the island thinking we would walk up the hill for a view in both directions as we'd seen people do on Sunday, but discovered that it was posted above the high water line where a row of pilings had been erected. Disappointed, we walked along the beach, avoiding the goose droppings from a flock that we'd watched come in for a noisy landing on the river Sunday night.

In North Carolina the beach below the high water line belongs to the public. Beach-front owners can't build fences or otherwise exclude the public from walking, sunning, fishing or otherwise using the beach below that point.

I did some research to find out what the law is in Maryland, which has 31 miles of Atlantic shoreline compared to North Carolina's 301 miles, but has 3,190 miles of tidal shoreline, almost as much as North Carolina's 3,375 miles. (Tides at Dobbins Island are about one and a quarter feet.)

It turns out, the same is true in Maryland and in most states - property below the high water line belongs to the state.

But things got really interesting after that. To our surprise, we were anchored behind a little seven-acre island at the center of a state-sized controversy.

In 2003, David L. Clickner and his wife bought Dobbins Island for $825,000 intending to build a house on it. They were less than enthralled to discover that swarms of boaters descend on the island during the summer, especially for a celebration called the Bumper Bash. Apparently in 2006, concerned about liability among other things, the Clickners put up the fence to stop the partiers from going beyond the high water line.

A group calling itself the Magothy River Association reacted by suing to keep the remainder of the sandy beach open. They argued that the beach had been used by the public for more than 20 years - a fact easily established by testimony and old photographs - without objection by the owners and therefore a right of use had been established. The judge at trial agreed.

The Clickners appealed and in January 2012, the Maryland Supreme Court reversed the lower court, ruling in favor of the Clickners' right to exclude the public based on the "woodlands exception." The "woodlands exception" applies to unimproved property and says, in essence, that public use of private property in its natural state, without a house or other improvements, is presumed to be with the owner's implicit permission and therefore that permission is subject to being revoked.

So all those partiers who crossed beyond the pilings were trespassing. Some news stories about the ruling speculated about how other owners of shorefront property would react, but it may still be too early to tell the long-term implications, which could affect transient boaters with pets as well. Dobbins Island has an interesting history and is a really fascinating case where environmental, private property and traditional use issues are colliding. We've seen lots of that in the mountains of Western North Carolina, but there are different twists here where those issues are being played out in coastal setting. I've pasted some links about Dobbins Island below. The Dobbins Island Facebook page gives a good sense of the atmosphere on Sunday afternoon.

Nostalgia in Centreville

On Monday, we crossed the bay to the Eastern Shore and went into the mouth of the Chester River and then up the Corsica River, which empties into the Chester. We found a pleasant anchorage about half way up the river with a small sandy beach where, according to Active Captain, no one had yet objected to boaters taking pets. In late afternoon, we took the dingy about two miles up the river to Centreville, the county seat of Queen Anne County. We made it to the town wharf, took Madison for a short walk and, conscientious boaters that we are, we headed back because we thought we'd forgotten to turn on the anchor light. I really wanted to walk downtown, but was glad we didn't. As we made our way back to Arwen, we watched a lovely sunset from a really peaceful, beautiful river. On Tuesday morning we got up early and went back to Centreville to have a walk downtown.

As we walked into town we passed the newspaper office, right across the street beside the courthouse and around the corner from what appeared to be the coffee shop where folks gathered in the morning - a perfect location for a newspaper office. Robert and I had breakfast at the coffee shop sitting at tables on the street across from the courthouse, the oldest one still in use in Maryland, according to a sign we saw, and I felt a pleasant nostalgia for my days as a reporter covering courts in Hendersonville.

After breakfast we walked across and examined the statue of Queen Anne on the courthouse lawn. Queen Anne ruled Great Britain when the county was established in 1706. Then we walked back to the wharf, untied the dingy and made our way back to Arwen where we pulled up our anchor and headed back to Annapolis about 11 a.m.

Back in Back Creek

We returned to our mooring in Back Creek. I took a bike from Port Annapolis Marina to the grocery store after we picked up the mooring. We had showers and did laundry. We'd only planned to stay one night before heading around to anchor in Harness Creek, but it rained this morning and on and off during the day and we like it here so much, we just stayed put.

Tomorrow we head across to St. Michaels where we should have mail and a package with stanchions for a gate on Arwen's port side waiting for us.

Dobbins Island Facebook page

A history of Dobbins Island published in Maryland Life

A Baltimore Sun story about the Maryland Supreme Court ruling regarding Dobbins Island

A Washington Post story about Little Island, whose history is entwined with Dobbins Island