The “Bums Rush” Out Of The Marina
Friday, August 19
We got up and took our time with breakfast and leaving the marina. We weren’t sure what time checkout was and all of a sudden we were listening to the VHF radio and they were assigning another boat to the slip that we were currently in. We called the marina on the radio and told them that we were still in the slip and would be moving in a few minutes. I call it the “Bums Rush”. Since we were in a hurry we did our normal start up procedures a little differently. We started the engines from the upper helm for starters, pulled our power cord quickly and Tom and Colletta help pull our dock lines.
The Narrows has a stiff current and you have to wait for a bridge to open so John had his hands full dealing with driving the boat and maneuvering the boat. After the bridge opened, we and a bunch of other boats passed under the bridge and left the Narrows. About a mile out from the bridge, a large boat passed us. John remembered that with all of the activity around the current, other boats and the bridge that he forgot to turn on the stabilizers. When he remembered he just switched them on as the boat was passing and went on as normal. WRONG, we rocked like crazy for the first time every…
So, we had a problem with the stabilizers. John did a bunch of trouble shooting for the next hour or so. After a call to Stabilized Marine and describing what had happened with the “Bums Rush” we were advised that the typical installation of the stabilizers calls for them to be started from the lower helm station only; by actuating the ON Button (kind of like turning a key). I have been running this boat for 9 months and thousands of miles and just learned about this!!!
Ultimately, we had a nice cruise up to the Wye River about 10 miles south. We anchored right inside the Wye river in Shaw Bay. There is a beautiful anchorage.
We watched a small boat with a family setting out crab traps and continuously checking them for about two hours. This is an interesting practice that we have seen a lot of in Maryland. These people were taking them home and having them for their personal use as opposed to professional crabbers that we see in the Bay. I’m not really sure what the big deal is with the crabs. We have tried them many ways while we were on the Chesapeake and they’re really not something we get excited about. They are little and an awful lot of work to get any amount of meat out of them. We have tasted some good crab cakes, but they are expensive and not worth the money. That evening Tom and Colletta came over for docktails. We can’t get in the water because sadly enough there are still a lot of jelly fish in this river.