#downrigging weekend

  Assateague Island

Assateague

whelk shell on Assateague

skate egg case

Sassafras River lotus

Assateague

Sae Hrafn, Oakley MD

Sae Hrafn under sail

selfie

on the Lynx (is that Moana?)

did I just sail with Maui?

furling sail

Schooner Sultana

Kalmar Nyckel

wild ponies on Assateague

egret, Assateague

We beep our cars and stuff turns on, we drive off, following our GPS, listening to the radio, not thinking much about how we get there. There was a time when we flew on the wind. Lynx: fore and topsail An 1812 era privateer like Lynx or Pride of Baltimore II can be a hundred feet long, and tower a hundred feet into the air. It’s like a house… one that flies. And not like a 747. That’s a big…

downrigging weekend: you’re welcome…

Each year on Halloween Weekend, Chestertown Maryland hosts a floating timeline (also music, art, food, more food and cool stuff crafted by locals). The waterfront becomes a forest of masts as tall ships from around the bays and east coast flock to this colonial seaport for One Last Big Party before the end of sailing season. Pride and Lynx at night This year we had not one, but TWO War of 1812…

get your pirate on!

Downrigging Weekend has food, art, music, crafty things to buy, Chestertown’s historic colonial architecture, classic cars and wooden boats ashore and afloat, and real fish and chips on a riverboat… on a river…where you can have the slightly disconcerting sense of “why does the floor move” while enjoying an awesome view of a gorgeous river and a floating timeline. It also has that floating…

get your pirate on!

Downrigging Weekend has food, art, music, crafty things to buy, Chestertown’s historic colonial architecture, classic cars and wooden boats ashore and afloat, and real fish and chips on a riverboat… on a river…where you can have the slightly disconcerting sense of “why does the floor move” while enjoying an awesome view of a gorgeous river and a floating timeline. It also has that floating…

get your pirate on (or just enjoy some good food, music, art and history)

Every Halloween weekend, Chestertown Maryland becomes a tardis, timetravelling to when it was a colonial seaport on the Chester River, which opens into the Chesapeake Bay, and then the wide world sea. There is food (let me tell you about fish and chips on a riverboat), music, classic cars and wooden boats,   Sultana’s educational center with Chesapeake Bay goodies and owls and terrapins and…

Chestertown, Maryland’s 2016 Downrigging Festival was a beautiful fall weekend for celebrating the most beautiful wooden boats on the Chesapeake Bay. Whether local ladies like the Sultana or the Elsworth, city girls like the Pride of Baltimore or the Sigsbee, or vessels from further afield like the Kalmar Nyckel, the ships are stacked up on the dock sometimes two-deep to allow visitors from around the country the chance to see and sail on these magnificent craft. 

It’s an event that marks the end of the tall ship season on the Chesapeake- and afterwards, many of the buyboats, bugeyes, schooners and clippers return to their home port to be unrigged, hauled and worked on over the winter. With fireworks, bluegrass, and some stately trips down the Chester River, thousands of people celebrate the year’s last hurrah for these charming watercraft. Hulls gleaming and flags standing proud in a warm fall breeze, they are reminders of a time not so distant when these ships were the Bay’s most essential connection between small Chesapeake towns and a vast maritime world. 

It’s a past worth celebrating- and a beautiful one, at that.

…today parking was a little harder to find, though that lets you walk a few blocks through Chestertown’s historical district with its fabulous architecture. One of my Longship Company friends, Fred, educated us on the variations in colonial brickwork. I tripped everyone up every few strides as I stopped to take pictures. I have a digital camera (the good thing is you can take lots of pictures… the bad thing is… you can take lots of pictures), and a good old Canon with a mighty lens of epic zoom. I loaded it with one precious roll of 200 speed film and carefully guarded each shot.

Today music rang out from the steam calliope boat, from the hurdy gurdy guy. Masts lined the waterfront. We got fish and chips on the dock and climbed aboard a riverboat, rocking in the chop, to eat and look out across the sunlit river and sleek sailing vessels of all sizes.

I boarded the doughty skipjack Elsworth, built in 1901. She used to ply the Bay for oysters; skipjacks are simple, the kind of boat kids draw when they draw a “sailboat”. They’re also easy to sail (crew of three), you needed a boat that took care of itself because you were busy pulling up the oyster dredge.

We set out in the midst of a floating timeline, a TARDIS of epic proportions.

Here’s a taste;

the mainsail goes up like ocean water on Elsworth

Elsworth’s main in full sail

skipjack Sigsbee

some tough kayakers keep pace with Elsworth

Kalmar Nyckel

light fills Kalmar’s square rigged sails

Pride of Baltimore II seen past Elsworth’s boom

Pride fires her cannon

schooner Sultana

Elsworth at dock

furling sail on Kalmar

aloft on Kalmar