Four quiet anchorages within an hour of Pier 6
Where to drop the hook for lunch and a swim on a day boat, and which one to choose for
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In 2006 six boats left Pier 6 on a Friday evening in August, sailed through the night across the Chesapeake, and tied up in St. Michaels in time for breakfast. Nobody called it a race. It became one anyway.
This year thirty boats made the passage. Here is how it started, how it works, and why so many of our members plan their summer around one night in August.
The first passage was an idea from the bar of the old clubhouse. Six skippers, most of them members since the sixties, wanted to see the sun come up over the Eastern Shore from the water. They left at seven, kept a radio watch through the night, and arrived in St. Michaels as the bakery opened.
They did it again the next year with ten boats, and by the fifth there was a trophy, a start line and a committee boat.
Halfway across, the islands of the Eastern Shore at first light.
The course runs south past Thomas Point, across the shipping channel and up the Miles River to St. Michaels, about forty miles depending on the wind. Fast boats do it in six hours. Most of the fleet takes nine or ten, and a few drift in for lunch.
“We never meant to start a race. We just wanted breakfast on the other side.”
Three of the original six skippers still sail the passage, one of them on the same boat she raced in 2006.
Every boat carries at least four crew, and every crew keeps a watch through the night, two on deck and two asleep below. The club's launch shadows the back of the fleet and the committee boat keeps a radio schedule every hour until the last boat is in.
The finish is off the maritime museum, and the prize giving is breakfast on the lawn. The trophy goes to the first boat on corrected time. The prize everyone remembers goes to the last boat in, which gets the first slice of the cake.
Entries for next year's passage open in May. Crews are always looking for one more hand on watch.
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