At the top of the Chesapeake Bay is Havre de Grace. It is a little town at the mouth of the Susquehanna River. We honestly would have never known about it, but we met some cruisers in Coinjock, NC that were on the way to their home port of Havre de Grace. After listening about the town and realizing that it would offer another meet-up location with the grand-kids, we added it to our list.

We continue to learn about cruising on the East Coast, and our lesson this weekend was to avoid traveling on Holiday weekends! We got our first lesson when the Marina in Baltimore presented us with their “special” Holiday daily rate. No problem, we will leave before said “special rate” kicks in. It’s not just the additional boat traffic, it’s the fact that the crazies come out. They only travel at one speed - as fast as they can go (so much for the no wake - 6kt buoys) - and they want to come as close as possible to you - I guess to say hi? Or maybe they thought Cindy wanted to say hi, since she was waving and screaming at them to slow down and control their wake. Once in the marina we were told that one of the other marinas was having a Poker Run, which was the source of the crazies (or at least a lot of them).

Coming into a new marina is always a bit of a wait and see game. The engineer-in-me wants to know and be prepared ahead of time. So, when the marina doesn’t respond to your radio calls and you have no idea which dock you will be on, let alone whether to put out fenders and dock lines on the port or starboard side, and Cindy is asking what she should do, it reminds you to stay calm and be adaptable. Then when you realize that they have assigned our 60ft boat to a 50 ft space and there is no space to turn around at the face dock - you must back in through the breakwater with a tidal current running - and oh yeah, all those crazies zipping by creating wakes. And then Cindy points out all of the rocks just breaking the surface and a sign that says DANGER. Stay calm and be adaptable. You know what they say about airplane landings - well boat docking is somewhat the same. Let's just say we walked away from this one, but we left the folks on the dock with something to talk about - and it wasn’t style points. Neither the Dockmaster, nor any dockhands ever showed their face the entire time we were there.

That said, we enjoyed our stay in Havre de Grace. We had a great walk to the park that had both a fabulous playground for the kids and a really great restaurant, where we paid homage to Jimmy Buffett and enjoyed our cheeseburgers. Coming back to the boat we followed the shoreline trail and were treated to lots of birds as well as bird carvings atop pilings that were stupendous. Since everyone had been on the boat before, they were all old-hands and made themselves at home. The next morning, we took off in search for all of the murals about town - and some breakfast goodies. We found a wonderful coffee/bake shop where the husband and wife did their best to spoil the kids - and us. Searching for all of the murals gave us a chance to see much of the town and take some great pictures.

The Grandchildren left on Labor Day, and we departed the dock on Wednesday. The good news about having to back into a spot at the dock is that leaving is a lot easier! And the cherry-on-top was that the crazies were all back at work and we had the water to ourselves for the most part.