Dory's "Going With"

Dory’s “Going With,” you bet!

So we're going to the boat tomorrow, and I’ve been rushing around, putting stuff in my little overnight bag, in the bags and boxes I’m taking tomorrow because its early in the season so I'm moving spices and soups and rice on board, and Dory is looking nervous. The very worst thing that can happen for a dog who is so much a part of our pack is that she be left behind. . .

I keep telling her she’s “going with” but she’s not convinced. Finally I take one of the dog food containers we use on the boat and fill it with dry food (oh yes, with her help BELIEVE me!) and she and I agree: Yep, this is Dory’s food. So I put it in one of the boxes by the door. DORY’S food is going with, DORY is going with. Okay? And I put some Pupperonis and chews into various baggies and containers and then into a shopping bag and then into the box. Dory’s TREATS are GOING WITH, right? Okay. I put the lid on the box, and she’s watching the box. I’m thinking hm-m-m, maybe it’s too accessible. She is definitely watching the box. I put a tote bag on top of it, nice and heavy with my camera and some shoes. She’s watching the box. Hm-m-m. Maybe it’s still too accessible. So I take a big blanket of non-skid under-the-rug stuff that’s going and I drape it over all of it. And I take Dory’s collar and I put it across the top of the whole thing. “Dory’s going with,” I say. Ah! Dory IS going with!!! It was a light bulb. So she is STILL down there lying with her nose on the box. Don’t know when the last time was that I saw this dog sleeping NOT on a bed or blanket or couch or pillow. But she’s got her nose on the box that has her stuff in it, and the stuff on top of it that has her collar on it. . . . and it’s not going anywhere without her!

Dory on the Boat

Even though Dory practically has her own website she is very definitely part of this whole boat-and-bay thing for us so I really have to add a section here about her, and how she deals with the boat.

She’s a big powerful girl at 82 pounds, and what they call a “Fox Red” Yellow lab. We are seeing more labs of her color, which I think comes from crossing the yellows and the chocolates, but in any event she is beautiful, with yellow eyes, pink to reddish skin, and this great hound-type of nose and jowls. The nose and jowls work for her, as she is definitely nose-oriented, and when snuffling out something of interest her jowls flap to collect the scent. She would have been a great rescue dog, as once she’s tracking she’s “gone.”

We got Dory from Lab Rescue when she was 5 years old, and believe it or not we had to teach her to swim. She’d wade in, joyful, and then slow down and finally stop. “Oh, right,” she’d say, clear as a bell, “I only go up to the elbows, okay? Just the elbows.” She’d watch that stick (or ball, or Frisbee) go out there and by golly, if the water was past her elbows she’d just stop and watch it.

So one day Hans threw the stick and I chased it, bounding into the water with great splashes and shrieks and I got the stick! Oh-my-gosh!

When Dory is thinking (and she does that a lot because she’s really smart and figures things out by herself) she stands stock still, frozen, brain cranking, synapses firing. Her ears go up, and her mouth forms this little “o” as she purses her lips.

Well, the next time Hans threw the stick Dory got it, and she had to swim for it by golly and she hasn’t stopped since.

Unfortunately there is no handy transom door for stepping out onto the swim platform on Aqua Vitae. I don’t know quite what the freeboard is but it’s over my head, and maybe seven or eight feet up. So getting Dory down to the dinghy is tricky. But she is game for anything, and strong and athletic, and even though she is now ten she is STILL willing to do super-dog things to come and go.

She loves the boat. One of the best things about it is that we are all three of us there and captive to the company of the other two, which is just where she wants us to be. The other good thing is sitting on the foredeck, where the hot sun can bake your hide (until you can’t stand it anymore
and go into the saloon of the boat to pant in the airconditioning until you cool off so you can go back out again) and you can put your nose into the wind to suck in the smells that are being brought by the winds. Dory is very “nose-oriented.” Did I say that already?

Dory is definitely “going with!” . . . and that does sort of take it out of you, ya' know?

Knapps Narrows and Tilghman Island

Knapps Narrows is at the north end of Tilghman Island, its passage effectively making Tilghman into an island. The entrance is just south of the Poplar Island Straights, and when traveling from the north it will help you cut an hour or two of travel time when entering the Choptank River from the Bay.

The entrance to the Narrows is a narrow channel that takes you almost into the marshy areas that are just to the north of the channel. On more than one occasion we’ve seen sailboats aground just off the entrance mark, so a high tide entry would be recommended. This has long been one of my very favorite pictures of the Chesapeake Bay. The marshy areas, the wide open spaces and water all around, with just that dot of color that is the skiff the boys are fishing from, speaks of the Eastern Shore to me. Kids there can drive a boat almost as soon as they can walk.

Tilghman is where many of the Skipjacks dock when the Virginia oyster season is not open. (Oh! Skipjacks? I’ll be writing on those separately, so watch for that addition!)

The current through the Narrows can be “interesting,” running either in or out with the tide sometimes up to 3 knots. The Bridge opens “on demand,” and the bridge tender is always gracious about it.

The area has seen some growth in the last 20 years, with odd shaped houses popping up where there was no land before, developments of big fancy homes appearing amongst the hard earned and much simpler traditional homes of the area. New restaurants and Inns have opened on both sides of the channel, when before it was only The Bridge Restaurant (where for $1 you could have all the oysters on the half-shell you could eat if you ordered them as an appetizer . . . ) Those days are long gone, unfortunately.

The Tilghman Island Inn is on the south side of the narrows west of the bridge, and I can attest to the fact that this place has come a lo-o-o-ng way from its humble cinder block chicken coop beginnings. The chef is masterful! They have a dock for transients, although it will not accommodate large boats. It is worth a stop if you can manage it, for any meal!

There are many creeks and rivers feeding into the mighty Choptank, with several interesting towns on its banks (including the “back door” to St. Michaels!) so the trip through Knapps Narrows is almost a “must,” for any number of reasons.

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St. Michaels on Maryland's Eastern Shore

We love the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake.

It is quite different from the Western Shore, where you will find Baltimore, Annapolis, the Potomac River – BIG places, lots of people and boats. On the Eastern Shore you find quiet anchorages, farms, a slower pace, fewer people, fewer boats (except on holiday weekends!) and small, interesting towns.

We used to keep Aqua Vitae on the Eastern Shore at Lippincott Marine in Graysonville, MD. The marina is just on the other side of the Kent Narrows Bridge off Route 50. The setting there is lovely. The docks face Marshy Creek, where this picture was taken, and the land directly across the creek is owned by the Wildfowl Trust of North America. The place has a wonderful sense of peace.

I remember when St. Michaels was a sleepy little town, undiscovered - but you just knew that discovery would someday come. Well, it has, and summer weekends can be a challenge. I believe that the place has more boat shoes per capita on any given Sunday than anywhere else in the world. Well, except for Annapolis.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is in St. Michaels and is well worth a visit. As members we can dock our boat there overnight, which is great. It is two short blocks to town and restaurants.

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