St Mary’s City MD USA

The forecast for Monday 11 June wasn’t great.  We checked with the National Weather Service at 0600 and saw a warning of northern quadrant winds building during the morning to reach 20+knots by about lunchtime, with a front (low cloud and rain) passing over the area in the early afternoon. A fair number of the yachts on the cruise decided to stay put for an additional day.  Those that left mostly went for an early start.  We joined that club and since Nicky was the Rally’s Net Controller we had the anchor up by 0700 [Ed: cue many, many buckets of water to remove the Chesapeake gloop], the mainsail up (2 reefs) shortly after that and were motoring out of Cockrell Creek and into the bottom end of the Great Wicomico River by the time that Nicky had to get on the air at 0800. Radio Net complete, we unrolled the staysail and about half the genoa and failed in the unequal struggle of staying ahead of Hullabaloo as she roared past us hard on the wind.  Those chaps at Oyster know how to build a good sailing machine!  The National Weather Service’s timings were a bit out and we had a good 20-25knots of wind hard on the nose between the Great Wicomico River and Smith Point at the southern entrance to the Potomac.  But we had a fun beat north despite the hammering rain and associated poor visibility.  As we rounded Smith Point light and started to look forward to a screeching reach west up the river, the front passed over us, the sun came out………and the wind dropped off!  It was a pleasant sail just the same but even with all the reefs shaken out it was a little on the light side.

Just in sight of the anchorage at St Mary’s City when we heard Doug’s radio call

St Mary’s City is about 4 miles up the St Mary’s River, a tributary of the Potomac.  We were so enjoying the sailing that we decided to beat up the St Mary’s River as far as seemed reasonable and we’re very glad that we did. We had a lovely sail and then about a mile short of the anchorage in the bend above St Mary’s City we lowered the sails to motor the final stage.  Just outside the anchorage we heard Doug Selden in Ithaca on the radio.  The fanbelt on his engine had shredded so he told Bill and Lydia (Dragon Run) that he was planning to beat up to the anchorage but that he consequently expected to arrive quite late.  By this time the wind was dropping and the outflowing current increasing.  Single-handed, Doug was likely to have a tedious beat and may not even make it all the way if the wind dropped too much, as seemed likely.  We turned around, rather to the surprise of Anne and Jonathon on Sofia who were just behind us and who hadn’t heard the radio call, and headed down river to offer him a tow.

Ithacain tow

We found Ithaca only a short way into the St Mary’s River, about 3nm downstream of the anchorage.  We set up a bridle from each of our primary winches, around our stern quarter cleats, and attached a long towrope to this.  I threw the towline to Doug whilst Nicky manoeuvred BVclose past Ithaca.  Slowly, slowly we took up the strain but when the tow was fully established found that we could quite easily achieve 4knots in the flat waters of the river.  It took us about an hour to get back up to the anchorage, where we slowed to halt with Ithaca still in tow so that Doug could set the anchor and settle back on the tide.  When he was happy that his anchor was secure we cast him ‘adrift’ and sorted ourselves out in the anchorage as well.

Sofia(foreground) at anchor off St Mary’s College

Once we were settled we had a look around the anchorage.  The weather was still rather grey and overcast so, to encourage the sun to come out, we set up the cockpit tent.  The fleet was grouped together in the southern corner of the anchorage with good spacing between the yachts but there was still plenty more space for the remainder of the fleet when they came up from Reedville the next day.  We could see St Mary’s College, well some of the buildings anyway, but there was no sign at all of St Mary’s City, which surprised us. We were wondering about going ashore for a look-see that evening when Julian and Patricia (A Capella of Belfast) came past in their dinghy on their way back from a wander ashore.  A short chat turned into evening drinks on BV[Ed: hardly sundowners with that sort of grey sky] and then a delicious Spanish stew dinner on board A Capella all cooked up in about 20 minutes flat using their pressure cooker – a meal that would have taken us an hour and a half using our pans.  Very generously Patricia gave us her old pressure cooker so, having managed to find a space in which to house it, we are now starting to learn how to use it.

Top:  part of the St Mary’s College complex.  Bottom left:  Memorial garden.  Bottom right: the OCC fleet at anchor

The following day, Tuesday 12 June, dawned bright and sunny (well done the cockpit enclosure for chasing the grey clouds away) and, as had become the norm, we spent the first few hours of the morning trying to work out why the engine was still unhappy about starting. This time I had a really close up look at the starter motor/starter solenoid assembly but nothing seemed to be amiss there.  I also replaced a relay in the starter circuit.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spare 70A relay to replace the one that I removed from the engine but we swapped it for a smaller one to see if it made a difference.  Sadly, there was little change to the engine start characteristics – time to order a replacement starter motor assembly and a new relay.

So, somewhat later than we had really wanted, we made our way ashore and walked up through the grounds of St Mary’s College to St Mary’s City.  By now we understood why we had been able to see so little of the city the previous day – the city is, for the most part, an archaeological site and living history museum. Founded in 1634, it is the fourth oldest permanent English colony in North America and was the capital of Maryland until 1695 when Annapolis took on the mantle.  It is considered the birthplace of religious freedom in America as it was the earliest North American settlement established with the specific mandate of being a haven for both Catholics and Protestants.  After relinquishing the role of state capital, St Mary’s City fell into decline but its remains were largely undisturbed by subsequent developments.  Archaeological excavations began in the 1930s and have continued to the present day.  Itis now an internationally recognised archaeologicalresearch areaand training centre for archaeologists, with over 200 digs having taken place in the city over the last 30 years.

Left:  Trinity Church, built in the 1830s on the site of and using bricks from the original State House.  Right: The State House, a reconstruction of the original 1676 Maryland Statehouse (Maryland's first capitol and the home of the Maryland colonial assembly), which stands close to the site of the original

We spent a very pleasant afternoon wandering around the living history museum, enjoying the many reconstructed buildings and ‘ghost’ buildings (timber-framed outlines of the buildings that had been on the site).

The Maryland Dove, a replica of The Dove, the trading pinnace that accompanied The Ark, bringing pioneering settlers and equipment from England to America in 1633/4

The museum also boasts a working replica of the The Dove, a trading pinnace brought over with the first settlers of St Mary’s City.  Unlike The Ark which was the ship that brought the majority of the settlers, The Dove remained in the New World, to act as a vessel for trade and exploration.  So successful were the settlers in St Mary’s City that they sent The Dove north to Boston to trade some of their crops after the end of their first summer.  The trading was successful but The Dove was lost on the return voyage.

Replica Native American longhouse, of the type that the first settlers of St Mary’s City lived in until they could construct more European-style housing

The site chosen by the incoming settlers was already a Native American village, occupied by members of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscataway Indian Nation.  Learning from the mistakes of earlier settlers, Leonard Calvert, who led the settlers, had brought with the group a former Virginia colonist who was fluent in the language of the Native American tribesmen.  Thus they were able to negotiate to buy land and longhouses from the tribe, which meant that they were able to immediately start farming the land rather than have to fight the local population for the right to remain or build shelters/houses to protect themselves from the weather.  As a result, the settlers were very successful in colonising the area and indeed were in a position to begin trading their own crops at the end of the first summer season – an almost unheard of feat when compared to other settlers.

Left:  Mackall Barn, the oldest standing building in St Mary’s City. Tree-ring dating of its timbers put it as having been built in 1785.  Over the years it has been used as a granary and a tobacco barn.  Today it is a museum exhibit.  Right: reconstruction of ‘Smith’s Ordinary’ one of several hostelries that existed in St Mary’s City in the late 17^thcentury

The St Mary’s City site is spread out over a surprisingly large area and we were unable to cover the whole site if we were to do justice to those parts which we did see.  Disappointingly, we later learned that there is an excellent archaeological museum near the main college buildings with some fantastic displays of artefacts found over the years of working on the site.  One for our next visit but we were lucky enough to have a guided tour of the area where the archaeological students had started digging for the summer – it looked as if it would be hot, dirty work but hopefully they will make some good finds to make it all worthwhile.

The Rally reunited at the pot-luck cocktail party in the St Mary’s College Memorial Garden (photo by Tony Gibb)

The day ended with an excellent pot-luck cocktail party in the St Mary’s College Memorial Garden, overlooking the anchorage, now much busier after a much calmer sailing day in which the remaining yachts had come up from Reedville.

Visiting tall ship Kalmar Nyckel

A better photo by Tony Gibb taken in daylight

As dusk fell, we were told of the arrival of a visiting tall ship,Kalmar Nyckel, so, along with Cate and Mike (Kealoha V) we dinghied around the corner to see her before it became too dark.

And a late evening exploration can only end in one way – with stories, tall tales and a wee dram or two on board. Many thanks to Cate and Mike for a great round-off to a lovely day.

St Mary’s City, MD, USA