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Volume 50
Number 10
PUBLISHER
John Stefancik
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Meg Walburn Viviano
MANAGING EDITOR Chris Landers
Cruising Editor: Jody Argo Schroath Multimedia Journalist: Cheryl Costello Contributing Editor: Susan Moynihan Editors at Large: Wendy Mitman Clarke, Chris D. Dollar, Ann Levelle, John Page Williams Contributing Writers: Rafael Alvarez, Laura Boycourt, Larry Chowning, Ann Eichenmuller, Henry Hong, Marty LeGrand, Emmy Nicklin, Nancy Taylor Robson, Karen Soule
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jill BeVier Allen
Contributing Photographers: Andy Anderson, Mark L. Atwater, Skip Brown, André Chung, Dan Duffy, Jay Fleming, Austin Green, Jameson Harrington, Mark Hergan, Jill Jasuta, Vince Lupo, K.B. Moore, Will Parson, Tamzin B. Smith, Chris Witzgall
Who’s coming to help you?
PRODUCTION MANAGER Patrick Loughrey
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Mike Ogar
ADVERTISING Senior Account Manager Michael Kucera • 804-543-2687 m.kucera@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Senior Account Manager Megan Tilley • 919-452-0833 megan@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
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CIRCULATION Susan LaTour • 410-263-2662 office@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
CHESAPEAKE BAY MEDIA, LLC Chief Executive Officer, John Martino Executive Vice President, Tara Davis 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403 410-263-2662 • fax 410-267-6924 ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Editorial: editor@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Circulation: circ@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Billing: billing@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
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Chesapeake Bay Magazine (ISSN0045-656X) (USPS 531-470) is published by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC, 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. $25.95 per year, 12 issues annually. $7.99 per copy. Periodical postage paid at Annapolis, MD 21403 and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes or corrections for Chesapeake Bay Magazine to 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. Copyright 2021 by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC— Printed in the U.S.A.
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contents
CBM
Nature’s Engineers p. 52
FEATURES
52 Beaver Believers
Marty LeGrand busies herself with the best dam engineers on the Chesapeake.
58 Retire by the Bay 66 Into the Dark
Brennen Jensen looks at the best places to settle down and live it up.
March 2021—Volume 50 Number 10
Mark Hendricks goes underground with Maryland’s
bat man.
16
Where We’re Headed
52
52 Long Green Creek
TALK OF THE BAY
16 20 24
16 Baltimore
Women of Steel Rafael Alvarez talks
64
with the women who built America.
64
Easton, Md.
20 Salisbury, Md.
Erick Sahler Kate Livie takes a look at
20
an artist’s pop vision of the Eastern Shore. 72
Trash Wheel Charlie Youngmann
72
Sandy Point
58
Williamsburg, Va.
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION
36
Buy, Finance, Insure
58 On the Cover: Chincoteague, from artist Erick Sahler’s “My Hometown” silkscreen print series.
What you need to know in this red-hot boat market.
March 2021
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
WILLIAM PAGE PULLY/ MDDNR
meets the newest member of the trash wheel family.
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contents
March 2021
72
Columns
28
Chesapeake Almanac: Living Rocks Capt. John Page Williams looks at
32
On Boats: World Cat 400DC-X
72
Jody’s Log: Remembrance of Sails Past Capt. Jody Argo Schroath
28
the Bay’s laziest workers.
An adventurous dayboat with room for a party of 12 —Capt. John Page Williams.
looks back on past triumphs and close calls.
Departments
Bay Partners
12 14 80
36 75 79
From the Editor Online Stern Lines
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CBM
from the editor
Unsung Chesapeake Heroes by Meg Walburn Viviano
F
ill in the blank: The Chesapeake Bay is known for its . I’m willing to bet that in this word association game, a lot of people would come up with “Crabs!” “Oysters!” or, among the angler crowd, “Rockfish!” It’s true, these creatures are iconic on the Bay. They appear on state license plates. We catch them, love to eat them, and we go to great lengths to protect them. Besides being delicious, all three species play key roles in the Bay’s health: the scavenger, the filter feeder, and the predator. Still, crabs, oysters, and rockfish get all the press. We at CBM think it’s time to look beyond the stars of the Bay and instead focus on its unsung heroes. For example, why shouldn’t mussels get as much credit for the water they filter as oysters do? Naturalist John Page Williams examines the power of this lessfamous bivalve (p.28). And how about beavers? Did you know they’re making a quiet comeback in the Chesapeake watershed? Stormwater managers are realizing beaver dams can serve as natural runoff prevention, just as they did long ago. As Marty LeGrand tells it (p.52), these furry mammals are water restoration volunteers— just with longer teeth. Even bats—yes, bats—are crucial to the Bay watershed. They keep our insect population in check, and if you’ve ever spent the night anchored on the lower Eastern Shore in July, you’ll applaud any animal who feeds on the bloodthirsty mosquitoes that feed on us. Bats need our protection right now, as they battle an awful disease for which there is no cure that can wipe out entire cave populations (p.66). Yes, bats, beavers, and mussels could use a little love. But let’s not stop there. Another hero in Bay restoration has just been “born”. Baltimore’s largestyet Trash Wheel has just arrived on the Patapsco River, intercepting litter and debris before it can pollute the waterway (p.24). My favorite unsung heroes of all in this issue are the female steelworkers that toiled in ship construction for decades at Bethlehem Steel. These women were tough as nails, performing their jobs capably in a man’s world. On p.16 we show you the open-air exhibit chronicling their history. Chesapeake Bay Magazine has been celebrating the Bay for just shy of a half-century (our 50th anniversary is only two months away!) and a lot of you have loved the Bay for at least that long. It’s high time we dig into some oftoverlooked, but brilliant, Chesapeake Bay players. (Don’t worry, crabs. We still love you.).
Meg Walburn Viviano, raised on the Magothy River, spent her college years rowing on the Chester for Washington College. She wrote her first Chesapeake Bay Magazine feature as a 19-year-old intern. After a decade producing TV news, Meg returned to CBM to launch the Bay Bulletin online news source. She now leads all of CBM’s media content, and enjoys the Bay with her husband and two young sons. You can reach her at meg@chesapeakebaymagazine.com.
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VIDEO: Sea Shanty Craze on TikTok Includes Bay Music Sea shanties become an unexpected viral video trend among young adults, and one of the trending songs comes straight from the Chesapeake. Cheryl Costello shows us how it all started. Watch the video at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/ seashanty. u Read more and sign up for Bay Bulletin, CBM’s free weekly e-newsletter online at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/baybulletin.
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CBM
talk of the bay
Alberta Buckson found a good-paying welding job at Bethlehem Steel.
Women of Steel A Baltimore museum celebrates the women who built America by Rafael Alvarez
BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF INDUSTRY PHOTOS
S
he was part of Black America’s Great Migration, destination (though she didn’t know it at the time) Sparrows Point. When a teenage Alberta Buckson made her way to Baltimore from Chester, South Carolina in the 1950s, she had a strong desire to work but not much education. “I took jobs as a domestic back home and in Baltimore,” said Buckson, now 84. “I cleaned houses and looked after other people’s children.” For that, she said, the pay was about eight dollars a week. Then, after years of struggle, she saw a notice in a local paper to learn a trade and trained as a welder. To Buckson’s surprise, she was a natural with an acetylene torch and landed a good union job at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard on the Patapsco River. Except for the occasional strike or lay-off (during which she was able to find welding work on the side), the longtime West Baltimore resident never had to worry about feeding her family again. “Believe it or not, I loved it,” said Buckson, who was intimidated—but not for long—upon glimpsing welders practicing the craft while hanging off the sides of mammoth ships.
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“Once the bosses knew I could do the job, they didn’t have no mercy on me,” said Buckson, whose early career included work on five supertankers built by Beth Steel in the 1970s. “They worked me on those ships all the time.” She now makes ends meet on a steelworker’s pension. It’s not what it might have been had Beth Steel not declared bankruptcy in 2001 and final dissolution two years later, but together with Social Security she has some peace of mind each month. Buckson’s career at what was once the largest steel mill in the world—an expanse of four end-to-end miles and more than 3,000 acres that employed tens of thousands at its height—is one of many now celebrated at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Key Highway. The exhibit, mounted outside in deference to the coronavirus pandemic, is called “Women of Steel.” Devoted exclusively to Buckson and her steelworking sisters—just one of many nationwide salutes to the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote via the 19th amendment—it will remain on site through the end of April. Later this year, perhaps by October, a larger exhibit about all aspects of Bethlehem Steel’s long presence in Baltimore will go up. Depending on the status of the pandemic, it may be constructed inside the museum, or on the waterfront at 1415 Key Highway. Both exhibits—including protective gear, wooden “shoes” that wouldn’t melt near the ovens, tools, photos, and maps—were made possible with funding and artifacts donated by Tradepoint Atlantic, the logistics, warehouse, and distribution company that purchased the massive Sparrows Point site in 2014. “Some of the old mill buildings and the administration building were left untouched for years—papers and other personal objects left sitting where people left them the day the mill
closed,” said Aaron Tomarchio, the company’s senior vice-president for corporate affairs. “A lot of our preservation work was done just ahead of the demolition cranes.” As far back as the early 20th century when they were clerical workers, before moving into labor jobs in the 1930s, many thousands of women earned a living “down the Point.” Addie Smith, a crane operator, was one of them. One day, said a museum official who took down Smith’s story, Addie did not have childcare and had to get to work. So she swaddled her baby in blankets and took the child to work with her—100 feet up a ladder and into the crane on a 12-hour shift. That should put her in the “take your child to work day” hall of fame. “We want to educate the community about the work these women did,” said Claire Mullins, marketing director for the BMI.
Addie Smith (left) operated a crane at the steel plant.
Aerial views of the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point Shipyard, with the Bethlehem Steel Plant in the background.
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CBM
talk of the bay
“And what unions look like—the chance for a decent paying job that allowed [workers] to buy a house, solid, well-paying jobs that suddenly evaporated [with the decline of Beth Steel].” Blame greed or politics or China, whatever bottom-line boogeyman you like, but those jobs and their accompanying benefits went away slowly and then suddenly; jobs that sustained large sections of Baltimore City and its immediate suburbs for most of the 20th century. The last ship built keel to crow’s nest at Sparrows Point was the U.S.N.S. Tanner, a Navy ocean mapping vessel launched in 1990. “I did heavy work and had my shoulders operated on three times.” said Mary Jacobs Lorenzo, who worked in the electrical repair department and served as chair on the civil rights committee of the local steelworkers union.
Now 80 and living in Essex, Lorenzo said she “replaced worn-out bearings in the crane shafts. They had to line up within a thousandth of an inch. You had to sort of twist your hand backwards to hold the new bearing and slip it in without dropping it.” Which took its toll. “After the last surgery, they said if I went back to work it would happen again,” said Lorenzo, who retired in 2001 at age 61, after 31 years of service. Michelle Marsh, of the Turkey Point Road neighborhood not far from Sparrows Point, joined the rank-andfile in 1995, following her sister into the mills. “It was like no other job I had before,” said Marsh, now 56 with more than a half-dozen different positions on her steel resume. “I’ve never witnessed such a lack of respect and such hatred between the employees and the management.”
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Marsh initially worked for Bethlehem Steel and then a handful of companies that took over in its wake—five different owners that tried and failed to make a go of it in the first decade of the 21st century. By 2012, the making of steel on the peninsula just outside of Dundalk was gone for good. “The pride was being able to have a good-paying job making an American product,” said Marsh. “The workers saw each other more than we saw our own families. We became family and I made sure I pulled my weight. “Even though I was often the only woman [in a particular crew], I didn’t see myself as a female steel worker. I saw myself as a steelworker.” Rafael Alvarez is the grandson of a Bethlehem Steel shipyard machinist. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail. com.
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CBM
talk of the bay
Erick Sahler creates “Eastern Shore art for the rest of us.”
Celebrating the Delmarvelous with Artist Erick Sahler by Kate Livie
A
turquoise pickup truck ambling down a technicolor street in Snow Hill. A log canoe heeled over, hiking boards skyward, on a bluebird Miles River day. A Warhol-esque cup of golden Thrasher’s fries with the tagline, “No ketchup.” In the world of Erick Sahler’s silkscreen serigraphs, Delmarva’s destinations and local cultural touchstones are elevated to the iconic with a signature style that’s 60 percent WPA travel poster, 30 percent Madison Avenue marketing pitch, and 10 percent native son nostalgia. For Sahler, the lower Eastern Shore’s small towns and traditions are more than mere inspiration—they’re in his blood. Born and bred in Salisbury, Md., almost all of Sahler’s life has been happily spent in his hometown. The notable, reluctant exception was four years studying graphic design at college. “The only reason I left then,” Sahler says, “is because my dad wouldn’t let me stay in Salisbury for college, and wanted me to leave for a few years and try life off the Shore. So I picked UMBC [University of Maryland Baltimore County] because it was the next-closest school, and after about three years, I couldn’t wait to leave. I’d had enough of the city life and I was ready to come home.” Pulled back into the orbit of his hometown, Sahler saw the landscapes and scenery with a fresh perspective. Though the techniques he used to capture them were new, Sahler’s childhood Eastern Shore haunts had long fueled his artistic imagination. As a boy, Sahler’s natural talent was honed under the instruction of Eastern Shore artist Keith Whitelock. Whitelock, who specialized in maritime
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scenes of workboats and the seafood industry, took the young Sahler under his wing and into the local waterways on art field trips. On excursions to boatyards and harbors, the pair sketched the people who made their lives on the water, along with their boats, tools, and scenery. These trips with Whitelock helped Sahler develop his talent while kindling a lifelong love of the Shore’s inimitable sense of place. “Keith became my mentor and my hero,” Sahler says. “He taught me how to draw, how to paint. And Keith was the one who really opened my eyes to how special Chesapeake country and the Eastern Shore are.” Through Whitelock, Sahler met Salisbury screen printer Dave Rossi, and would go on to work as a teenager in Rossi’s screen-printing shop throughout high school and during college summers and weekends. Sahler credits Rossi with introducing him to the concept of graphic art and how to powerfully present an idea—whether on a book cover or a billboard—in a narrow palette. “Working with Dave forced me to see the world in very limited colors,” Sahler says. “We had a six-color press, and we charged more money for more colors. I drew crabs, I drew mud trucks, I drew workboats in only two or three colors. Eventually all of those elements just fell into place as far as my artwork goes.” Sahler’s subject matter and technique are perfectly suited for his preferred style, a vibrant, lighthearted mashup of Mad Men-era marketing and retro travel posters. The result is a larger-than-life celebration of the Chesapeake’s unique landscape and culture. From scrapple to Dolle’s saltwater taffy, Chincoteague’s waterfront to the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry, the places and experiences of lower Delmarva—past and present—are presented as icons, rendered in bold colors with a local’s sense of pride.
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talk of the bay
“My work is meant to be a celebration of this place, and to appeal to people that are perhaps left a little cold by more traditional work, like a decoy or a painting of a skipjack,” Sahler says. “The idea from the beginning is that I would make Eastern Shore art for the rest of us, and create ways to elevate and recognize beloved Eastern Shore places and culture that have flown under the radar of the art world.” In 2021, Sahler, a former newspaper graphic artist and illustrator, will have spent a decade making art dedicated to the joy of Delmarva’s places and pastimes. To mark his 10 years of work, the Dorchester Art Center will hold a month-long retrospective in July, featuring everything from Sahler’s teenage T-shirt designs to his newspaper illustrations and limited edition, handmade screen prints.
ABOUT THE ARTIST When asked if he thinks he’ll ever run out of fresh sources of inspiration, Sahler’s response is characteristically upbeat. “Every new design can lead to an artistic revelation, and you love each work for a different reason,” Sahler says. “They might be a milestone in the illustration of a print, in the subject matter of a print, or in a new experience that becomes the seed for a new idea. But there’s always something new to explore.” For Sahler, the source for new ideas will only dry up if he ever stops being an enthusiastic tourist on his own turf. With his penchant for adventure and passion for place, that doesn’t seem too likely. “I haven’t gotten past St. Michaels yet,” Sahler says. “My first print was of Downtown Salisbury, with the idea that I was proud of this place, I believe in this place, and darn it, we’re going to
To learn more about artist Erick Sahler’s work, visit his website at ericksahler.com or follow him on Facebook at facebook/ ErickSahlerSerigraphs. To learn more about his July 2021 show, “RETROspective: Erick Sahler,” at the Dorchester Art Center in Cambridge, Md., visit dorchesterarts.org for updates.
celebrate it. And the concentric circles have just gone out from there.” Kate Livie is a Chesapeake writer, educator, and historian. An Eastern Shore native and current faculty at Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society, Livie’s award-winning book Chesapeake Oysters was published in 2015.
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CBM
talk of the bay
John Kellett with his latest big wheel.
Keep on Turning Baltimore spins up another trash wheel story & photos by Charlie Youngmann
T
here is a new bundle of joy joining the “family” of trash wheels cleaning up Baltimore waterways. Still relatively new, the trash wheels were invented by John Kellett and constructed by his company, Clearwater Mills LLC, out of Pasadena, Md. Kellett first came up with the idea about 13 years ago when trying to address the trash floating around the Baltimore Harbor. “I was constantly confronted with the fact that Baltimore has a beautiful harbor, but trash was a major problem and an impediment to people enjoying the harbor,” Kellett said. Upon further investigation, Kellett realized the trash wasn’t coming from the harbor itself, but rather flowing in from tributaries after heavy rains. While the city would send boats out for trash collection, Kellett figured it would be more effective to stop the trash before it found its way into the harbor. “I called the city and told them we really need to do better with the trash in the harbor. And, to their credit, they said, ‘We’re open to ideas,’” Kellett said.
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Noting that trash flow was often at its worst when water levels were high, Kellett thought a good strategy might be to use the existing flow of water to power the trash removal. Kellett made a couple of models where he refined his idea with miniature water wheels powering tiny trash-collecting conveyor belts. Kellett showed his model to the city, but because this type of device had never been built before, he had to seek funding elsewhere. The Abell Foundation offered to fund a working prototype and Kellett went to work constructing the world’s first trash wheel in 2008, with his business partner Daniel Chase. Upon completion, the two began testing their wheel at the Jones Falls outfall. The Jones Falls flows nearly 18 miles
from North Baltimore to the Inner Harbor, picking up plenty of litter and runoff pollution as it goes. “No one had really ever stopped the trash that’s coming down before and tried to pick it up. So, there were no real good estimates on how much trash was actually coming,” Kellett said. Through testing, the machine made a substantial dent in the amount of trash dumping into the harbor. It was clear that while Kellett’s idea worked, the next wheel would need to be bigger, stronger, and faster to make a lasting impact on the quality of the harbor. The Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, a group of businesses, nonprofit organizations and stakeholders around the Baltimore Harbor, secured grants and donations to build a permanent one. Mr. Trash Wheel was installed in May 2014 at the mouth of the Jones Falls. In December 2016, the Waterfront Partnership had Kellett construct another wheel for Harris Creek, in the Canton neighborhood, known as Professor Trash Wheel. Then, in June 2018, the Port of Baltimore hired Clearwater Mills to construct a Captain Trash Wheel for
Masonville Cove, in the shadow of Interstate 895. The name of the newest and largest of the trash wheels, the Gwynns Falls wheel, will be decided by public vote. Over the past few years, the trash wheels have held up under heavy floods and rough conditions. Kellett explained that the rugged and simplistic design has allowed his fleet to go with very little maintenance. The prototype was attached to a plastic floating dock, but steel barges were used as the base of all the permanent wheels. Most of the wheel, conveyor, and canopy frame are made of galvanized steel for weather resistance, Kellett said. The wheels themselves are not entirely low tech, however. The power of the river that turns the water wheel is supplemented by solar energy. The panels store energy in large battery boxes along the platform of the trash wheel. The batteries inside power water pumps to turn the wheel when the current itself isn’t strong enough. While Kellet’s prototype had three panels and a small wind turbine, the new wheel has 72 solar panels powering its pumps. The highway
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Kellett models a mask that features his creation.
overpasses that cross its area block the sun during much of the day, meaning the wheel needs to capitalize on the few hours of direct light it gets. These days, Clearwater Mills employs four to six people, depending on their project load, and is internationally known. Kellett’s team currently has projects in development in Texas, California, and Panama. So far, more than 60 countries and dozens of states have contacted Clearwater Mills about trash wheel projects. “Our company hasn’t grown much from a personnel standpoint, but certainly our reach has grown,” Kellett said. While his company may construct and maintain the trash wheels, Kellett takes little credit for the personalities that have been given to his creations. “They make it talk and see with the eyeballs, and we make it eat,” said Kellett. The talking and seeing is handled through the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore and the various, quirky social media accounts they run for the trash wheels. Adam Lindquist,
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Director of the Healthy Harbor Initiative at the Waterfront Partnership, stressed the importance of making environmental projects like the trash wheels something everyone can relate to. “The Harbor is a great tourist attraction, people love to take photos with the Baltimore Harbor, but they weren’t really connecting to the harbor as a living, breathing ecosystem,” Lindquist said. When it came time to make Kellett’s trash wheel more engaging to the public, the partnership consulted various creative firms for ideas. Eventually, a company called What Works edited an image of the trash wheel by giving it a pair of googly eyes and making it speak. The idea stuck and the machine was given the name “Mr. Trash Wheel,” and a public-facing personality soon followed. Each of the subsequent trash wheels were given their own identities, complete with likes and dislikes. Baltimore’s response was overwhelmingly positive. When asked if children thought of Mr. Trash Wheel
as a person, Lindquist laughed and said some adults even think of Baltimore’s trash wheels as people. “Mr. Trash Wheel is really beloved by the city of Baltimore. He’s like an unofficial mascot,” Lindquist said. Tattoos, Halloween costumes, and birthday cakes, all in the likeness ANNAPOLIS of Mr. Trash Wheel, have confirmed the city’s adoration of Kellett’s invention. Though in the long term, simply removing the trash may not be a permanent answer. “We don’t want to just pick up the trash from the Baltimore Harbor indefinitely,” Lindquist said. “So how can we use this device to help promote behavior change and policy change that will reduce the amount of trash we’re seeing in the Baltimore Harbor?” The popularity of Mr. Trash Wheel and his cohorts has led to the formation of several environmental projects, including the “Order of the Wheel,” which asks pledges to complete a series of tasks to join a “secret” society of conservationists. Lobbying efforts made towards policy change have led to Maryland being the first state in the country to ban usage of polystyrene food containers. Kellett feels a great deal of satisfaction in the ways Baltimore reacted to his invention. While he agrees that removal alone cannot become the ultimate solution to the harbor’s trash troubles, Kellett said he can still appreciate the work his ANNAPOLIS machines have done to clear up the water and spread their message. “Hopefully, sometime in the future, trash wheels won’t be needed. We’ll tackle the problem and there probably won’t be as much trash coming into the water to begin with,” Kellett said. h Charlie Youngmann graduated in 2019 from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. He is a former CBM intern.
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chesapeake almanac
The Anacostia Watershed Society raises thousands of mussels in baskets at various points along the river.
Living Rocks Celebrating the Bay's laziest ecosystem engineers by John Page Williams
WILL PARSON/CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM
"D
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on’t try to anchor there,” said the man standing on the barge. “There’s all kinds of junk down there that’ll hang it up, old refrigerators, rusty I-beams, scrap concrete full of rebar, whatever. You can tie up here.” In those days, 35 years ago, the barge served as a James River tour boat’s wharf at Rocketts Landing in downtown Richmond. I had just run Noel C., a Chesapeake Bay Foundation workboat, up from Hopewell for a special event. That was near the end of more than a century of abuse that the James endured from my native city. “Out of sight, out of mind; let the river take it away,” was the mantra from both Virginia’s capital and upriver. Except that there was no away. Sooner or later, whatever got dumped, from steel to invisible chemicals, runoff, and upriver sediment, stayed put or traveled somewhere else. What was dissolved or suspended moved downriver, before settling or feeding algae blooms. Heavy stuff like the concrete and refrigerators stayed put. Either way, it accumulated somewhere, seriously damaging the river ecosystem. Fortunately, that damage wasn’t the end of the story. Today the James River is gradually recovering. Last year, it won a prestigious international river prize. Happily, most of the Chesapeake’s other urban rivers and harbors are recovering too, albeit slowly. Now we are able to think about how they worked ecologically and restore the natural systems that our forebears trashed without realizing the damage they were causing.
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Since it began in 1983, the Chesapeake Bay Program partnership has focused on living resources, especially wetlands and underwater grass beds (submerged aquatic vegetation). We call them keystone communities, because they form fundamental operating elements of the Chesapeake ecosystem. In the Bay and the lower rivers, restoration has also focused on oyster reefs, for their water filtration and the habitat they provide. We tend to attach special status to Bay creatures that offer direct benefits to us, and oysters fit the bill, to the point that many of us have begun growing them not only for food but also for the obvious benefits their reefs provide. They become pets, lovingly tended living rocks, in cages at private and public piers. But oysters aren’t the Chesapeake’s only living rocks, and their reefs weren’t the only live bottom communities in the Chesapeake when Captain John Smith explored it 400-plus years ago. The bottom eventually receives all the living material that live in or fall into the water above it. Scavengers like blue crabs and their mud crab cousins (about twenty species in our Bay system) pick up the larger bits from the bottom, but the Chesapeake’s many filter feeders catch the small-to-tiny-to-microscopic fragments more efficiently. In general, they pass or pump streams of water over catchment structures in their bodies, straining out anything digestible and moving it into their intestinal tracts for absorption.
Nature has developed multiple effective designs for filter-feeding. Some of the most successful are bivalve mollusks, animals with paired shells of hard calcium derived from the surrounding water. They have flexible hinges and strong internal muscles to clamp the two shells tightly when threatened. They pump water through their gills, catching algae, bacteria, suspended decaying plant and animal material, and fine sediment, improving water quality and packaging sediment in mucus so it settles out instead of continuing to cloud the water column. These are our living rocks—hardshelled and seemingly inert chunks of mineral. Our beloved oysters are obviously members, and so are the three species of mussels—hooked, ribbed, and dark false—that we find on oyster reefs, marsh banks, and dock pilings. Although individual mussels don’t filter as much water per day as oysters do, they make up the difference in their huge numbers. They also feed fish, crabs, birds, and mammals like river otters, muskrats, and raccoons. All of these hard-shell critters are found in salty or brackish water. The Chesapeake’s headwater streams, creeks, and rivers benefit from living rocks, too.
In tidal freshwater and above the tide lines, great variations in stream environments throughout the Chesapeake and Susquehanna watersheds have allowed an array of freshwater mussel species to develop. “Mussel” is something of a misnomer for these shellfish, because they bury in stream bottoms more like clams. Pennsylvania lists 12 species with colorful names like elktoe, brook floater, and rainbow. Maryland houses 18 species, including some on Pennsylvania’s list, plus eight species it shares with the District of Columbia’s Anacostia River. Virginia’s Chesapeake drainage grows a dozen, including alewife floater, tidewater mucket, and James River spinymussel. They benefit their streams through their appetite for whatever their waterways give them. In turn, they feed channel catfish, river mammals, and herons. Their rough bottom beds create habitat for insect larvae and tiny fish that also feed on organic material and provide food for predator fish. Once established, these shellfish live in their beds for amazing stretches of time—50 to 100 years. Buried in stream bottoms with one-way, downstream flow, these mussels face difficulty spreading their young. Oysters, living in tidal waters that move back and forth, broadcast
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While individual mussels don't filter as much water as oysters do, they make up for it with their huge numbers.
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their spawn for tide and wind to disperse. Freshwater mussels, meanwhile, employ their streams’ fish communities to spread their larvae. Some infect multiple species of fish; others specialize in one or two kinds of host. First, a female mussel draws in sperm emitted by nearby males, fertilizing the eggs inside her. The larvae develop in a sac, which she allows to hang outside her shell when they reach appropriate size. This sac can take a detailed shape, designed to lure a specific fish variety to bite it. In fact, lure is the operative word. To attract a predator like a smallmouth bass, the sac may be shaped like a minnow, even down to an eyespot, a stripe or two, and a forked tail that waves in the current. Other, less specific lures may simply be worm-like projections that loosely simulate insect larvae or other stream invertebrates that sunfish or catfish eat, or a spider-like web of larvae-filled mucus strands through which river herring or shad might swim. Once the fish strikes and breaks the lure or web, glochidia (parasitic larva) attach to its gills, fins, or skin with trap-like mouths, some including tiny hooks. The fish’s skin grows over these little hitchhikers, turning them into cysts. They grow as parasites that cause minimal damage, then drop off wherever the fish has taken them, creating new areas of live bottom. The long-distance prize for these relationships in the Chesapeake lies between eastern elliptio mussels and American eels in the Susquehanna River. There the eels historically carried mussel larvae several hundred miles, all the way to Otsego Lake above Cooperstown, New York. Thus, they helped build mussel beds all along the way in the big river’s main stem and many branches.
Dams built along the river over the past century-and-a-half, however, have blocked most eels, causing both eels and mussels to crash. We’ve also disrupted too many stream environments with debris like the anchor-fouling junk I found at Rocketts Landing, plus sediment, oils, and other harmful materials that never really go away. Several native species are threatened or endangered. Any harvest of freshwater mussels in the Chesapeake watershed is prohibited, even for bait. Today, however, a major effort seeks to improve eels’ access to the Susquehanna River system and to infect them with elliptio mussels. Elsewhere, staff and volunteers from the Anacostia Watershed Society are actively restoring beds in that now-recovering river. Laboratories rearing mussels for reintroduction include Maryland DNR’s Joseph Manning Hatchery, and the Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery on the James in Charles City, Virginia. Some James spinymussels grown at Harrison Lake are already building new beds in the James near Rocketts Landing and elsewhere. The ways these mussels intricately weave together the living communities in their unseen worlds has major advantages for water quality, stream flow, and ecosystem health, both in upland streams and in tide just below. No wonder scientists refer to them respectfully as ecosystem engineers. Who knew? Both saltwater and freshwater mussels have been unobtrusively playing key ecological roles for centuries. Maybe our streams, creeks, and upper rivers need mussel beds just as much as our tidal waters need live bottom oyster reefs. CBM Editor at Large John Page Williams is a fishing guide, educator, author, and naturalist, saving the Bay since 1973.
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u Learn more about the World Cat 400DC-X at worldcat.com.
World Cat 400DC-X by Capt. John Page Williams
W
orld Cat’s 400 DC-X is an adventurous dayboat built to accommodate a dozen people in comfort and safety. It could be a seated lunch or dinner for eight adults, with four at the children’s table. How about a round-trip run for those dozen people World Cat from Norfolk to Smithfield for lunch, or 400DC-X Deltaville to Onancock, or Annapolis to Oxford, with a comfortable ride home LOA: 39' 8" despite in the afternoon’s three-foot Beam: 12' 8" chop? On even rougher days, it still Draft: 25" (engines up) offers safe passage for the crew. Max HP: 900 Add in fuel efficiency at easy, Fuel Capacity: 464 gal. long-legged cruising speeds of 20–30 Dry Weight: 16,500 lbs.
COURTESY PHOTOS
Bridge Clearance: 8' 6" Available through Bosun's Marine (410-286-1350 or bosuns.com).
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mph (1.02–1.25 mpg), with twin Yamaha 425-hp XTO outboards and a top speed in the mid-40s, according to Yamaha’s Performance Bulletin. The horses in these big, sophisticated V-8 engines are Clydesdales, and their wide spacing on this catamaran provides excellent maneuverability in close quarters, especially when the boat is also equipped with Yamaha’s HelmMaster EX control system. By the way, those outboards and a draft of only 25 inches also make the 400DC-X readily beach-able at a favorite sandbar. So what does it take to create a boat with all of these capabilities? For World Cat, it’s a
commitment to power catamaran hulls. That’s all they do, in sizes ranging from 23 feet (for its intended purposes, the 23DC is one of the best multi-use family boats we’ve ever tested) up to this big rig, the company’s current flagship. Today, World Cat is the largest builder of power catamarans on Earth, with boats distributed globally, though the class really began its development in the rough waters of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand in the 1970s and ’80s. The appeal of the basic design is the wave-splitting capability of its narrow hulls, which almost magically eliminates the jarring, pounding ride we associate with monohull boats being driven hard. Some cat designs “sneeze” as the tunnel between the hulls blows incoming water back out and up, drenching the boats’ occupants as it moves forward. Some cats also lean outward, instead of inward, in turns, which can be unsettling at best and dangerous at worst. Fortunately, World Cat’s design team has long experience with the range of cat designs, as well as sophisticated design software that allows them to draw, test, and produce hull forms that eliminate such bad habits, while
maximizing lift with planing pads and strakes that also damp spray effectively both inside and outside. Watch carefully in the running videos (worldcat.com/models/400dc-x/videos/) to see how well they work. The lift allows high speed when needed but provides the 400DC-X great efficiency at “loping” speeds of 20–30 mph that are comfortable even in rough seas. Each World Cat’s VectorFlo tunnel between the hulls tapers inward going aft, so the combination of air and spray there accelerates rearward as the boat moves forward, creating a vacuum. The flowing mixture creates a cushion that helps to soften the ride. An “eyebrow” and a carefully shaped, molded pod just under the bow help accelerate airflow while damping any tendency to sneeze. Design also includes careful analysis of how the boat’s prospective owners will use it, from the layout of interior features to a meticulous weight analysis looking into balance changes like people moving around and fuel consumption while the boat is underway. A prototyping team builds a mockup of the interior to test its effectiveness, providing feedback for the final design. The engineering team uses Finite Element Analysis March 2021
ABOVE: (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) The bridge features its own entertainment center and a sliding windshield for rough days; the large bow includes double-wide seats; the aft cockpit has an optional outdoor kitchen with grill and refrigerator drawer.
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to work out combinations of composite materials (gelcoat, resins, mat, knitted cloth, and foam core) that maximize strength and minimize weight. Skilled lamination teams (some members with 20 or more years’ experience) prepare the molds and build the hull, deck, and interior to replicate the intricate design. Last year, World Cat built a new plant dedicated to its larger models. So what is it like to live with a 400DC-X? Well, that seated dinner for eight would employ the four doublewide seats in the huge bow, with two electrically controlled tables in between, which lower to the sole on command, freeing up space. Details in that space include strategically placed grab rails, cupholders, and storage beneath the forward seats and in hull-side pockets with 12-volt DC outlets. The bow deck
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has three hatches for access to the in-hull anchor, windlass, and washdown system. A bow shade is available for lazy days on the hook or at the beach. A sliding center windshield section and door beneath can close off the bow on rough or rainy days. The dual consoles offer a berth to port and a head to starboard, both air-conditioned. The catamaran layout gives these two spaces a special asset: each has 6' 5" headroom. The berth measures 46" x 74", with storage drawers beneath. This cabin also holds a hanging locker with more drawers, the boat’s AC/DC electrical panel, a remote starting panel for the 8 kW Fischer Panda generator (under the cockpit sole), a microwave, flat-screen TV and soundbar, and side-mounted fishing rod storage. A hull-side window and an overhead
skylight keep the space bright by day, with LED lighting at night. Under the helm, the starboard console holds a freshwater head with solar-powered vent, a holding tank with deck pumpout, a sink/vanity with LED lighting and storage, two 120-volt outlets, a walk-in enclosed shower with seat, another hanging locker, and a hull-side window. A structurally integrated hardtop with sunroof covers the bridge deck, with air conditioning in the space below. Seating below includes doublewide cushions at the helm and to port. The back of the port companion seat can swing to face a U-shaped lounge aft of it, with the electrically articulated children’s table (which can lower to provide a doublewide pad). The back of the after seat in the lounge also swings forward to provide an aft-facing view
for watching swimmers or tube riders. Two storage drawers pull out from this seat. The helm to starboard has a dash wide enough to accommodate an optional pair of 17-inch Garmin multi-function displays for linked sonar/GPS/chart/VHF/AIS/radar electronics, interfaced with the engines’ HelmMaster EX system. Aft of the helm is an entertainment center with seat (insulated cooler under), a drawer refrigerator, storage drawers, and a tilt-out trash can. The aft cockpit is a space for both on-deck action and below-deck maintenance. The port hull-side holds a locking door for swimming and docking by floating piers. The transom is adaptable for various owner needs. Two options are a portside insert holding a 25-gallon livewell plus cooler and a starboard unit with a sink, a cutting board, an
electric grill, and another drawer refrigerator. In between (another special catamaran feature) lies an aft deck extension with sturdy rails and a ladder for swimming and diving. There’s a pull-out hot/cold deck shower for swimmers. In the cockpit sole, two large (i.e., adult human-sized) hatches give access to the batteries (three Group 31 house, two Group 27 cranking), an optional Glendinning shorepower reel for 50 amp service, an optional Seakeeper, and the generator with its 24-gallon fuel tank. Also under the port hatch are pumps and a sea chest with tunnel-side pickup for the bow and stern raw water washdowns. On both hull-sides are drainage collection manifolds for the self-draining decks. One last but welcome maintenance asset tucked into the starboard transom corner is a Reverso remote
engine flushing system to keep the two Yamahas running happily for a long time. Power catamarans shine in the areas they’re designed for. World Cat has a long track record of paying close attention to input from customers, sales associates, and service techs. World Cat offers a range of custom designs for the interior. MSRP for the 400 DC-X is $850,000, but that’s a base price. The well-equipped one we examined listed at $993,838. For more information, contact Bosun’s Marine, Grasonville, Md., a winner of World Cat awards for both sales and service (bosuns.com), or visit worldcat.com. h CBM Editor at Large, educator, guide, and author of three quintessential Chesapeake Bay books, John Page Williams was named a Maryland Admiral of the Bay in 2013.
Enjoy the easy days on the Chesapeake Bay — on a new Parker Boat.
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March 2021
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CHOOSING A YACHT BROKER BEATS GOING IT ALONE by Jim Lodico
W
hen it comes time to buy or sell a boat, going it alone may look like an easy way to save a few dollars on broker fees. However, when you dig into it, working with a broker as both a buyer and seller can save significant, unnecessary expense, and there are advantages that go way beyond the actual purchase or sale of a boat. A boat owner jumps into the market as a buyer, seller or both around once every five years. Yacht brokers live in the market. With a solid command of supply and demand, they know what people are currently paying for boats, and how to set a proper price. Prepping a boat for the best possible sale takes more than hitting it with the power washer. A good broker can provide advice on what to repair and how to make the boat look its best. According to Mike Titgemeyer, owner of Crusader Yacht Sales in Annapolis, “Something as simple as hiring a professional boat detailer can make a huge difference in the successful marketing of a boat. The seller spends some dollars on a proper detail, and short list of minor repairs and wham the boat is meeting the market’s expectations and sells quickly and for a better price.” What else can yacht brokers offer? A huge network of buyers and fellow brokers and inside knowledge of owners who may be getting ready to sell. “A big part of our job is simply bringing people together,” says Titgemeyer.
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Special Advertising Section
2021 BOAT BROKER
SHOWCASE MARK ANDREWS 410.267.8181 mark@annapolisyachtsales.com
MIKE MCGUIRE 410.775.5885 mmcguire@annapolisyachtsales.com
ING KILAND 804.776.7575 ikiland@annapolisyachtsales.com
SHAUN GUEVARRA 410.267.8181 shaun@annapolisyachtsales.com
Mark is the current President of Annapolis Yacht Sales and strives to make the boat buying and selling experience an exceptional one for all of our clients. Mark has over 20 years of both marina and marine service management, as well as boat brokerage experience. With experience in both sail and power boats, Mark possesses the passion for the marine industry combined with the skills and experience to help maintain Annapolis Yacht Sales’ position as one of the region’s premier yacht sales, brokerage and service providers.
LEARN MORE FROM ALL OF CBM’S BAY BROKERS ON WHAT AN EXPERIENCED YACHT BROKER CAN DO TO MAKE YOUR BUYING OR SELLING PROCESS IDEAL
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Ing joined the crew of Annapolis Yacht Sales at our Deltaville location in July of 2020. Born in Coronado, Calif., and part of a Navy Family, Ing experienced a lot of opportunities to travel and meet many different people. He attended Christ Church School near Deltaville and then moved back west to live the life of a ski bum. His wife encouraged him to finish his degree in Conflict Resolution and they moved to Cottonwood, AZ to start their family. He and his family moved back east where Ing became a successful yacht broker of new and used boats. He credits his love for boating from his days on Coronado Island, watching aircraft carriers deploy from San Diego. He learned to sail on the Potomac River and in Virginia Beach, and thinks the Bay has some of the best to offer.
Mike joined the AYS Crew in the fall of 2020, and is based in our Kent Island Office. Mike has over 30 years of experience in the boating industry, from sales, boat building, fishing, and recreation. Besides boating, Mike has been involved with digital marketing, business development, and entrepreneurship. This experience has helped him become very in tune with the needs of his clients, from brokerage of their vessel or ensuring that they are buying the right vessel. When he’s not working in the boat yard or carrying a golf bag, he is an accomplished golfer as well as a fishing fanatic.
Shaun joined the Annapolis Yacht Sales team in the fall of 2018 at our Kent Island Office. Shaun leads up the sales floor as the Revenue Manager, developing new sales strategies and supporting new market areas. Shaun has been involved in the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Charters development, along with several new products entering the market. He was previously a crew member on the well-known Schooner Woodwind in Annapolis, MD. Shaun has worked in corporate and nonprofit environments, focusing on pricing strategy, and he owned and ran a water taxi company in DC for five years. Originally from Toronto, Shaun has called the Mid-Atlantic home since 2003. He lives on the water with his faithful Anatolian Shepherd, Willow, and enjoys sailing in the north end of the Bay, kayaking, crabbing, and fishing.
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Special Advertising Section
BRYAN HARRIS 843.478.4777 bryanharris@pocket-yacht.com
JOHN OSBORNE 410.490.6250 john@pocket-yacht.com
ROBERT TOLBERT 202.236.9930 robtolbert@pocket-yacht.com
BRUCE STALEY 443.988.3354 bstaley@bosuns.com
LOUISE CLARK 252.722.2623 lclark@bosuns.com
BOBBY WALSH 443.758.7570 bwalsh@bosuns.com
GORDON INGE 804.896.3003 gordon@dycboat.com
BLAKE STEPHENSON 919.520.7655 blake@intrinsicyacht.com
JON & ANNE HUTCHINGS 804.567.0092 anne@yazuyachting.com
Bryan Harris has been involved with the marine industry all his life in one form or another, from owning and operating a marine diesel service business to troubleshooting and servicing ballast-control systems on ships. Bryan has worked as a professional captain in charter and delivery service from the coast of South America to Nova Scotia, with a lot of the Gulf Coast thrown in. Going from owner/ operator/captain to sales has been a natural progression. Bryan has recently opened a new location for Pocket Yacht Company in New Bern, NC, and is a wealth of information regarding new Ranger Tugs and Cutwater Boats.
Bruce Staley has been in the recreational boat industry for nearly 20 years, currently representing many brands including Pursuit, Chris Craft, Cobalt, World Cat, and Jupiter. In the past he has represented well-known brands from a wide range of manufacturers, like Edgewater, Cobia, Everglades, Key West, Chaparral, and Robalo. Being from the Chesapeake Bay area, Bruce is acutely aware of how you want to use your boat, and the many destinations our beautiful estuary has to offer. His experience and understanding will help you purchase your second boat first, and aftersale guidance will ensure you enjoy many years of boating.
Gordon Inge, Chesapeake Yacht Sales Yacht Broker and General Manager of Deltaville Yachting Center/Chesapeake Yacht Sales, has a lifetime of experience in boating, service, and sales. CYS & DYC—located on Broad Creek in Deltaville, Va. and owned and operated by Lew and Onna Grimm since 2001—provides a friendly environment to buy, keep, and service your boat. Named “Best of the Bay,” “Best Place to Buy a New Boat,” and “Best Boating Facility,” CYS is a dealer for all models of Catalina sailboats and True North Downeaststyle cruisers. Combining a large inventory of preowned power and sail boats onsite with a professional network search, Gordon will get you in the right boat for your needs.
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John joined Pocket Yacht Co. more than seven years ago and quickly became one of their top performers selling Ranger and Cutwater boats. Being a salesman for these lines makes his job easier, as it’s his pleasure to show people the quality and value of these vessels. He also feels that his success is directly related to talking with customers and listening to what they wish to get out of the boating lifestyle to determine which boat is the best fit. John lives in Easton, Md., with his wife, Carol, and he hopes to be able to enjoy more quality fishing time on the Bay this year!
As an Aussie, Lou Clark had read about sailing on the Chesapeake Bay as a child; following a career in super-yachting, where she did everything from cooking to captaining, she found herself here selling the amazing range of quality products Bosun’s has. As much as Lou loves boats and boating, she loves happy clients more, and really loves spending time with people to discover what their perfect day on the water looks like, and which boat will help them achieve that. Lou describes the best part of her job as “waving to clients as they cruise away from Bosun’s dock, sharing their joy and excitement at taking delivery of their new boat.”
Blake is a yacht broker with a background in yacht design and sales. After three years as a yacht designer, Blake decided he wanted to spend more time with clients and manufacturers throughout the buying process and joined Intrinsic Yacht & Ship in July of 2020. His background and degree in Industrial and Marine Design makes him an excellent resource for his clients who want to customize a boat to perfectly fit their needs. Blake is available and ready to sell new boats or brokerage boats. To ensure your boat sells for top dollar, one of our certified technicians will evaluate your boat free of charge, and offer discounted service and detailing rates.
Robert comes from a lifelong boating background on the Chesapeake Bay. Two years ago, the Pocket Yacht company offered Robert the opportunity to manage their premier South Florida dealership in Jensen Beach. Located at the Four Fish Marina, it is the perfect place to begin your Ranger Tug or Cutwater adventure. One can head north to Cape Canaveral, east to the Bahamas, south to the Keys, or west across Lake Okeechobee to Naples. There is always a large inventory to view and choose from. Come visit Robert today so your cruising dreams can become a reality tomorrow!
Call a pro! Relying on yacht sales professionals is always your best bet when buying or selling a boat. Buying and selling a boat can be more complicated, problematic, and risky than a real estate transaction. Unlike real-estate transactions, only California and Florida cover vessel transactions under state laws. You can eliminate headaches by working with a qualified, reputable yacht sale professional who will help you navigate what could be a complex and difficult transaction. Call Bobby for your free market analysis of your current boat.
Jon and Anne Hutchings are Certified Professional Yacht Brokers who have been Deltaville-based “Dream Merchants” since 2004. Education professionals who sailed across the Atlantic from South Africa in their 35-foot sailboat, they lived aboard for seven years and worked as captain and mate on charter boats. Having lived the dream, they are passionate about the boating lifestyle and enjoy meeting new clients, fulfilling their connection to people and boats in one business. Honesty, knowledge, and commitment are the cornerstones on which they have established their business, while creating many friendships over the years.
877.269.3021 Maryland
BLUEWATERYACHTSALES.COM Virginia
North Carolina
Florida
EST. 1968
125' Westport 2020 - Call Clark: 919.669.1304
70’ Marlow MKII CB 2019 - Call Scott / Chris: 757.723.0793
65' Princess 2020 - Call Today: 877.269.3021
53’ Chesapeake 2017 - Call Mark: 757.406.1673
52’ Sea Ray 2006 - Call Jeremy: 410.507.4150
49' Grand Banks 2005 - Call Mark: 757.406.1673
48’ Chesapeake 1990 - Call Scott: 757.570.3944
47’ Mainship 1998 - Call Chris Jr: 757.509.0742
46’ Sea Ray 1999 - Call Mark: 757.406.1673
45’ Cruisers 2016 - Call Scott: 757.570.3944
43' Azimut 2006 - Call Chuck: 703.999.7696
43’ Grand Banks 2014 - Call Chuck: 703.999.7696
43’ Post 1989 - Call Carl: 757.287.2007
42’ Sabre 2005 - Call Chris Jr: 757.509.0742
41’ Cruisers 2016 - Call Randy: 917.478.4944
40’ Reliant 2016 - Call Peter: 910.262.3218
40’ Legacy 1996 - Call Connor: 757.968.2353
39’ Mainship 2000 - Call Scott: 757.570.3944
38’ Jupiter 2018 - Call Jud: 757.846.7909
38’ Fountain 2006 - Call Hank: 804.337.1945
36’ Cape Horn 2019 - Call Jeremy: 410.507.4150
34’ Regulator 2018 - Call Scott: 703.307.5900
31’ Regulator 2020 - Call Jud: 757.846.7909
31’ Red-Fin 2020 - Call David: 443.944.6122
BOATING’S BEST BRANDS (New model representation varies by territory)
BLUEWATER HAS EVERY VALHALLA, REGULATOR, SABRE & BACK COVE MODEL IN STOCK OR ON ORDER!
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SCOTT MACDONALD 703.307.5900 smacdonald@bwys.com
CHRIS HALL, JR. 757.509.0742 challiv@bwys.com
JUD BLACK 757.846.7909 jblack@bwys.com
Scott MacDonald brings a lifetime of boating experience and a passion for fishing to our Annapolis office at South Annapolis Yacht Centre. Scott is a career sales professional and former business owner. His 35 years of domestic and international sales experience assures that he can quickly assess the needs of his clients and use his experience to find the right boat at the right price, and to market his clients’ boats to maximize their returns. He is a licensed Florida broker and a USCG Master Captain.
Some of our associates may claim that they grew up around Bluewater, but in this case, it is true. His father Chris Hall started Bluewater when Chris was a year old. He began his career washing boats, has worked in service and run the marinas, among other jobs, leading up to his role as a sales professional. An accomplished sailor, diver, and fisherman, Chris has also raced inboard hydroplanes under the family name. Having experienced the business from production and service to sales, Chris has a unique perspective of the industry, which helps him in his position at Bluewater.
Jud Black is a partner in Bluewater and has spent nearly every working hour in the boat business since age 15. He joined Bluewater in 1988 to run their small boat division, selling Whaler, Seacraft, Zodiac, and Evinrude outboards. This division was later consolidated into Bluewater Yacht Sales, where he joined the ownership and management team. Over the years, he has been honored as one of the country’s top salespeople by Johnson Outboards, Regulator Marine, Hatteras Yachts, and Viking Yachts. He has been lending his extensive experience to Bluewater clients for over 30 years.
DAVID BLACK 443.944.6122 dblack@bwys.com
SCOTT JAMES 757.570.3944 sjames@bwys.com
MARK CONNORS 757.406.1673 mconnors@bwys.com
Captain David Black was born and raised in New Castle County, De. David’s first offshore experience came in his early teens, which was the point he fell in love with offshore fishing and sportfishing boats. Once an adult, David earned his USCG masters license along with adding several endorsements throughout his captain career. In 2013, he started his own charter business, My Cin Sportfishing, and ran it successfully for several years before becoming a yacht broker. David’s combination of sales skills, customer service, and vast boat knowledge makes him a great asset for helping clients find their next dream boat.
A lifelong resident of York County, Va., Scott James started fishing the Mid-Atlantic coast with his father at a young age, and fishing crab pots from his own boat while in his early teens. After graduating from ODU, he began a career in the electric utility industry that spanned 14 years. During this time, the saltwater kept calling, and he acquired his Coast Guard Masters License and left the utility business to make a living on the water. Over 10 years ago, Scott started selling and brokering boats and yachts, and has developed lasting relationships with boat manufacturers, marinas, and customers.
Mark Connors got his start in the marine industry in 1993 while living in Annapolis, Md. After attending Hampden-Sydney and Washington College, he began his career working for the Annapolis Sailing School and Powerboat School. Afterwards, Mark formed Connors Marine Services, where he ran a busy yacht delivery and maintenance service before becoming a broker for Baker Marine. Mark was recruited by Jarrett Bay Yacht Sales in 2006 as broker-in-charge of their Virginia office. A full-time broker since 1998, Mark has had experience with a wide variety of boat manufacturers spanning multiple styles and uses.
CHUCK MEYERS 703.999.7696 cmeyers@bwys.com
CARL BEALE 757.287.2007 cbeale@bwys.com
Chuck acquired his Coast Guard Masters license after graduating from Catholic University of America, and he made the decision to turn his passion for yachting into a full-time career. In 1994 he went to work managing a marina and boatyard, which furthered his skills in both maritime management and the yacht service fields. In 1999, Chuck started a career in yacht brokerage and has since established a loyal base of clients who have entrusted him with their vessels. Chuck is eager to help new and existing customers and is involved in all aspects prior to, during, and after the sale.
Carl Beale graduated from James Madison University with a degree in Finance and is certified by the FINRA as a financial advisor. He first joined the Bluewater team in 1995 and has been involved with the company at different capacities for over 20 years. Carl has worked as a boat detailer, a delivery captain, a demo captain, and a sales professional in his tenure, and his love for boating brought him back to the Bluewater team. Carl prides himself on helping his customers find the right boats so that he can watch them develop their appreciation for the water.
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
March 2021
Special Advertising Section
HANK SIBLEY 804.337.1945 hsibley@bwys.com
ROGER MOONEY 410.456.3659 rmooney@bwys.com
HAWK ENNIS 240.383.8128 hawk@bwys.com
Hank began in the boat business by working with his father at the boatbuilding firms Gloucester Yachts and Chesapeake Powerboats in the mid-1980s. He has since worked in sales capacities in the construction and marine supply businesses, and prior to joining Bluewater in 2011, he sold new and brokerage boats in Virginia Beach, Va. Hank is a long time sportfisherman and has known the Chesapeake since his youth. He and his wife Beverly have two boys and live in West Point, Va. His boatbuilding and fishing background is an asset in matching clients to their perfect boat.
Roger Mooney began in the yacht brokerage and sales business in 1995, working for a Maryland-based company which brokered quality-production powerboat lines. Having a desire to deal more exclusively with custom and production sportfishers, motoryachts, and trawlers, Roger moved on to work with Gilman Yachts in 1998, and then in 2004, Roger opened the Maryland office for Bluewater/ Jarrett Bay Yacht Sales, where he continues to enjoy serving his customers’ boating needs. Roger’s success in his career is not only due to his vast knowledge of the industry, but also due to the integrity and diligence he demonstrates to his clients.
In 2005, after a successful career in the mortgage business, Hawk decided to follow his passion for boating and began working with a yacht brokerage firm in Annapolis. He found what he was born to do and within a couple of years opened Hawk’s Yachts, which eventually morphed into Hawk’s Marine. During that time he sold over 300 boats, including new, used, and brokerage. He is now a proud member of the Bluewater Yacht Sales team, located in the heart of Annapolis. When not brokering or boating, he enjoys spending time volunteering, traveling, fishing, and visiting friends and family.
JIM OSBORNE 410.693.3311 josborne@bwys.com
RANDY WALTERHOEFER 917.478.4944 rwalterhoefer@bwys.com
JEREMY BLUNT 410.507.4150 jblunt@bwys.com
Jim Osborne has a premier reputation for delivering excellent service to buyers and sellers. He has earned various awards and accolades for selling success. He places the greatest importance on his relationships with clients by exceeding expectations, witnessing pride of ownership, and recognizing their overall satisfaction. His many industry connections and work history with Hartge Yacht Yard, Sabreline of Annapolis, and Osborne Yachts makes Jim a valuable asset to any yacht transaction. He is very delighted to bring his talents and skill sets to the new office of Bluewater Yachts at the South Annapolis Yacht Centre luxury marina on Spa Creek.
Randy joins the Bluewater team with over 10 years of experience in the boat brokerage business, working along the entire East Coast. As an industry veteran, he possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the products he sells and has won several top sales awards to back up his experience. He has been a licensed Florida yacht broker since 2010 and splits his time between residences in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Edgewater, Md., often traveling to chase the right deal for his buyers and sellers. He brings commitment, sales experience, and great comradery to the Bluewater Yacht Sales team!
Jeremy Blunt fell in love with offshore fishing when he went tuna fishing for the first time upon his arrival in Ocean City, and worked that summer at the Ocean City Fishing Center. He worked as the captain on several charter fishing boats and then began his broker career in 2007. In addition to being a sales professional, Jeremy is a tournament winning charter captain out of Ocean City. This gives Captain Blunt a unique perspective and experience that translates into the right deal for your dream on the water.
HARRY BARRITT 757.912.6784 hbarritt@bwys.com
CONNOR HALL 757.968.2353 connorhall@bwys.com
In 1980, looking to spend more time back on the water, Harry joined Bluewater Yacht Sales as a broker. Through the years, Harry has gained extensive experience with the sale of more than 250 new and used Hatteras, Viking, and many other brands of yachts. Harry’s sales expertise lies with the trawler and Downeast classes of yachts, especially those with some local Chesapeake deadrise flavor. Harry’s knowledge of the industry, combined with his integrity and diligence, can be measured by the volume of repeat business he enjoys and the many boating friends he’s made along the way.
Connor first joined Bluewater in 2013 at 16 years old as a dock hand in the marina. He worked the following summers commissioning Regulators in the service department. As a U.S.C.G. licensed captain, Connor has moved Bluewater inventory up and down the coast. After recently graduating in May 2020 from Hampden-Sydney College with a dual major in Business and Economics, he joined the sales team at Bluewater— something that had been a goal of his for quite some time. Joining Bluewater is more than a job opportunity for Connor; it’s a natural next step in his career.
Bluewater Yacht Sales’ new Annapolis location March 2021
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Special Advertising Section
GRADY BYUS 410.533.9879 grady@northpointyachtsales.com
DAVID M. COX 410.310.3476 davidcox@northpointyachtsales.com
PETER BASS 757.679.6991 peter@northpointyachtsales.com
JACK MCGUIRE 410.290.7066 jack@northpointyachtsales.com
DAVID MALKIN 443.790.2786 david@northpointyachtsales.com
BOB OBERG 410.320.3385 bob@northpointyachtsales.com
TROY WALLER 804.878.9097 troy@northpointyachtsales.com
KEN COMERFORD 410.280.2038 ken@northpointyachtsales.com
CHRIS BEARDSLEY 315.447.1251 chris@northpointyachtsales.com
Grady is a lifelong boater having been all over the world racing sailboats, logging offshore miles in power and sail, and enjoying time more locally fishing and sailing. He believes the Yacht Sales industry is rapidly changing, which is why his focus on the digital platform of boat sales through photography, video, and web presence helps his clients find success. Having previously run the service division at North Point, Grady is well-rounded with knowledge in boat systems and maintenance. His 14 years of experience at North Point adds value to every interaction throughout the buying and selling process.
Jack McGuire has vast boating experience, having grown up sailing on Narragansett Bay. He is active in racing both inshore and offshore, as well as fishing and exploring the Chesapeake Bay. Bringing his knowledge of both new and used boats in an always evolving boating market, he enjoys working with customers to help them find the best boat for their boating needs. Whether that be sailboat racing, cruising the bay, fishing, or day boating, Jack is sincere about sharing his lifelong passion with others through his work.
With several years in the yacht sales industry, Troy loves to meet new people to assist them with finding the perfect boat. He enjoys spending time with his current customers in finding solutions to the “joy” of everyday boat ownership. Troy has a passion for the water that started at an early age while growing up boating on the York River. As an active member of the Seaford Yacht Club, you can find Troy fishing, crabbing, cruising, and sailing with family. Reach out to Troy at any time, he has never turned down an opportunity to look at boats for you.
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David Cox is a Certified Professional Yacht Broker (CPYB) selling previously owned sail and power boats out of the Annapolis office with North Point Yacht Sales since April 2011. Growing up on the Eastern Shore, David was constantly on the water racing one-design sailboats competitively and continued his passion for racing sailboats competitively with offshore races, including five Newport to Bermuda Races. With the office at Bert Jabin Yacht Yard, he often travels to Annapolis and gladly goes where the boats are when the opportunity arises.
In 2007 David turned his lifetime passion for boating into a profession by joining North Point Yacht Sales. David understands the motivations, nuances, and complexities of sailboat and powerboat transactions. Here is what some of his clients have to say: “Can’t say enough about the professionalism of this company. I would highly recommend David if you are selling a boat or searching for a new one.” “Exceptional team, with deep knowledge of their brands. How many people get you more than your asking price on a boat sale? These guys did!” Beyond brokerage, North Point represents MJM, Tiara, Pursuit, Caymas, Hanse, Dehler, and J boats.
Our team is focused on building relationships and providing our customers an excellent buying or selling experience. We pride ourselves on being active boaters who are constantly on the water. If you have a question about boating, our team will have the answer for you. I encourage you to reach out to the North Point team because boating is not only our job but it’s our passion. We like nothing more than letting you put our obsession with boats to work for you.
One week after graduating from Dartmouth, Peter joined the hull crew in the Hinckley fiberglass shop. After stints in other production areas, sales and brokerage, rigging, sea trials, and customer handoff, he was named Production Manager in the mid-70’s. His fascination with boats, particularly their construction and outfitting, has remained ever since. There is nothing he enjoys more than using his knowledge base to guide clients in developing their own passion for boating. He is an avid saltwater fly fisherman and fly tier, whose success doesn’t always match his enthusiasm. Give him a call.
Bob made Annapolis his home after graduating from St. Mary’s College in 1994. He started his career as a boat tech and after 13 years moved into sales where he has spent the last 10 years. In 2016 he earned the prestigious Beneteau “Top Gun” as top overall salesman for North and South America. In 2018 he joined North Point Yacht Sales, specializing in Tiara, Caymas, and Hanse. As a lifelong boater, Bob has an in-depth knowledge of both sail and power and enjoys both. What’s important to Bob is listening to clients to find the perfect boat.
Chris Beardsley has spent his life on the water, from working in boat yards to delivering sailing yachts globally, including transatlantic and transpacific crossings. Joining North Point Yacht Sales in 2019, Chris strives to put his clients’ needs first, using his diverse knowledge of boats when searching for the right boat for cruising, fishing, or simply enjoying time on the water with their family. When looking to sell your boat, you can be assured of accurate representation to attract a new owner. When not sailing with his wife Tiffany and their two children, Chis can be reached at North Point’s Southern Bay office.
ANNAPOLIS 410.269.0939
TARTAN 395
SOLOMONS 443.906.0321
JEANNEAU 410
Featured Brokerage 54’ 2015 Riviera - Belize 54 DayBridge ......$1099,000 54’ 2020 Jeanneau Yachts 54 - Our Docks ......... SOLD 53’ 2004 Oyster 53 CC ....................................... $409,000 51’ 1986 Antigua 51 ........................................... $165,000 51’ 1983 WASA Atlantic 51 ..................................$57,000 51’ 2020 Jeanneau Yachtas 51 ................................ CALL 50’ 1988 Transworld - Fantail 50 ................... $240,000 50’ 2004 Viking Princess V50 .......................... $299,900 47’ 2011 Monte Carlo 47 .................................. $459,000 47’ 1999 Caliber 47 LRC .................................... $259,000 45’ 2005 Beneteau Antares 13.8 .................... $210,000 44’ 2021 Jeanneau SO 440 - In Stock .................. CALL 44’ 2005 Tartan 4400 .......................................... $327,500 44’ 2009 Tartan 4400 .......................................... $349,000 44’ 1993 Pacific Seacraft 44 ............................ $215,000 43’ 2008 Tartan 4300 .......................................... $399,000 42’ 2005 Catalina 42 ................................................... CALL 42’ 2006 Sabre 426 ............................................ $285,000 42’ 1985 Hinckley SW 42 .................................. $259,000 42’ 2005 Sea Ray 420 Sedan Bridge ............ $279,900 41’ 2016 Beneteau 41 Platinum .................... $230,000
41’ 2021 Jeanneau SO 410 - In Stock .................. CALL 40’ 1981 Nautilus 40 Pilothouse .................... $115,000 40’ 2000 Caliber 40 LRC .................................... $156,655 40’ 1977 Gulfstar Hood 40 ............................... $119,000 40’ 1998 J Boat - J / 120 .......................................$90,000 40’ 1997 Pacific Seacraft 40 ............................ $229,000 40’ 1997 Pacific Seacraft 40 ............................ $295,000 39’ 2021 Tartan 395 # 6 - February ...................... CALL 39’ 2021 Excess 12 Catamaran - IN Stock .......... CALL 39’ 1999 Mainship 390 ..................................... $120,000 38’ 2006 C&C 115 ................................................ $129,000 38’ 1984 Irwin 38 CC .............................................$59,900 38’ 2006 Sabre 386 ............................................ $215,000 38’ 2021 Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 389 .................. SOLD 38’ 2000 Lagoon 380 ........................................ $199,000 38’ 1986 Vagabond 38 ..........................................$65,000 38’ 1984 Warwick CT38 ..................................... $125,000 38’ 1985 Wilbur 38 Downeast Fly .....................$79,500 38’ 2000 X-Yachts 382 ........................................ $130,000 37’ 2008 Beneteau 373 ..................................... $109,900 37’ 2006 Beneteau 373 ........................................$95,000
37’ 2022 Excess 11 Catamaran - July ................... CALL 37’ 2001 Jeanneau SO 37 ...................................$75,000 37’ 2007 Tartan 3700 CCR ................................ $249,000 37’ 2002 Pacific Seacraft 37 ............................ $120,000 37’ 2006 Tartan 3700 .......................................... $210,000 36’ 2005 Bavaria 36 ..............................................$80,000 36’ 2008 Hunter 36 - Free & Easy .....................$79,500 36’ 2006 Hunter 36 - Trimeme ...........................$89,500 36’ 2019 Legacy 36 # 8 - Annapolis ............. $545,000 36’ 2021 Tartan 365 - June ...................................... CALL 35’ 1986 Baltic 35 ...................................................$69,000 34’ 2021 Jeanneau SO 349 - In Stock .................. CALL 34’ 1990 Pacific Seacraft Crealock 34 ..............$89,000 34’ 2009 X-Yachts 34 .......................................... $137,000 34’ 2008 Tartan 3400 # 65 ................................ $129,000 33’ 2013 Marlow Hunter 33 ................................$89,000 33’ 2015 Tartan 101 ............................................ $139,000 32’ 2007 Carmen 32 .............................................$59,500 31’ 1999 Hunter 310 ............................................$42,500 29’ 2019 Monteray 295SY ................................ $165,000 24’ 1989 Dana 24 ..................................................$49,000
CRUSADERYACHTS.COM
There has never been a better time to sell or trade your boat!
Crusader MAG 1220.indd 1
2/17/21 4:00 PM
The demand for quality pre-owned boats is at an all-time high and we need inventory! If you have been considering selling your quality pre-owned boat, let Annapolis Yacht Sales help. We have 4 locations across Maryland and Virginia, and strong partnerships with other dealerships and brokers. We will work to sell your boat fast and for top dollar.
90 Day Guarantee “Your Boat Sold” Program Call for details
Special Advertising Section
MIKE TITGEMEYER 410.703.7986 mike@crusaderyachts.com
DAN BACOT 757.813.0460 dan@crusaderyachts.com
Mike Titgemeyer is the owner of Crusader Yacht Sales, but does some new and used boat selling as well. Mike has a lifelong passion for boating and grew up on the shores of Lake Erie, sailing, racing, and power boating. He is passionate about all water-related activities and has been in Annapolis selling boats since 2001. Mike bought Crusader in 2010. Crusader Yacht Sales was founded in 1982 and is currently the Jeanneau Sailboat, Excess Catamaran, Tartan Yachts, and Legacy Yachts dealer for the Annapolis area.
Dan Bacot is a lifelong Chesapeake Bay boater and enjoys both sail and powerboating. Currently, Dan is sailing a 36’ Cape Dory cutter. His marine industry experience spans over 40 years, working daily with boaters in marinas, boatyards, and yacht sales. Raised in Annapolis, Dan started boating at the age of four when his parents purchased their first sailboat. In 1980, his family moved to Gloucester Point, Va. when they purchased York River Yacht Haven. York River Yacht Haven grew over the years to become a fullservice marina facility. It included 325 slips, a working boatyard, a ships store, yacht sales, an oyster farm, and a restaurant. Over 33 years, Dan actively managed every individual department and was the General Manager for many years.
DAVE VAN DEN AREND 443.850.4197 dave@crusaderyachts.com
TODD MOFFATT 443.775.9725 todd@crusaderyachts.com
DAVE & ERIN TOWNLEY 410.271.5225 townley@crusaderyachts.com
GORDON BENNETT 410.739.4432 gordon@crusaderyachts.com
ROD ROWAN 703.593.7531 rod@crusaderyachts.com
ROB SUMMERS 443.771.4467 rob@crusaderyachts.com
KEN JACKS 443.223.8901 ken@crusaderyachts.com
Todd began his career in the sailing industry 35 years ago. He managed several local and international based yacht charter companies before opening his own yacht charter & sailing school in Annapolis in 2001. Throughout his marine career he has logged many hours sailing, racing, maintaining and commissioning numerous multi-hull and mono hull sail & power boats gaining valuable sailing and systems expertise. Todd naturally progressed into being a premier yacht broker in the Annapolis area and is exceptionally qualified in the mono-hull, multi-hull, and power boat market.
Rod Rowan has been a stalwart of the Yacht Brokerage industry since 1984. Highly educated with a reputation for attention to detail and client-service, Rod has developed an extensive base of repeat and referral clientele. With an abiding passion for professionalism in the brokerage industry, Rod has served many roles with the Yacht Brokers Association of America, including President a few years ago. Known for his background in broker-education, industry practices, ethics, and standard contracts, he is often sought out by other Yacht Brokers for his considered counsel. Many boating-industry “insiders” have chosen Rod as their broker for their yacht transactions.
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A father-daughter duo, we bring experience, knowledge and professionalism to the yacht shopping and selling process. We strive to make your yacht quest as fun and productive as possible. If selling, our marketing far surpasses the competition. We’ve been aboard thousands of yachts over two decades, helping clients acquire the best boat we can find for the money they have to spend. We love to travel, nationally and internationally, to find great yachts and help bring them home. We’ve lived aboard as a family, cruised internationally, and we bring that unique background to your quest. Let’s have some fun!
Rob helps run the Solomons office for Crusader and is a lifelong boater with experience in both power and sail. He has cruised parts of the Mediterranean and Adriatic and has raced sailboats in Hawaii, San Francisco, and San Diego. Rob has owned several boats over the years, from day sailers to cruisers, and is now the proud owner of a traditional schooner built in the Deltaville VA area. He leverages this extensive experience to help buyers find the best boat for their individual needs, and to help sellers find the best home for their prized possession.
Dave van den Arend has been a live-aboard in Annapolis for 17 years, a broker since 2004, and a member of the Crusader Yacht Sales team since 2005. Dave has been involved with boating most of his life. He is a Master Mason, an active member of the Yacht Broker’s Association of America, and earned his CPYB (Certified Professional Yacht Broker) accreditation in 2007, maintaining that through annual CE credits. He has restored several fiberglass and wooden boats, and enjoys offshore sailing, cooking, and scuba diving. Dave’s knowledge and experience have helped his many customers, and he has made many friends in the process.
Gordon grew up sailing on Seneca Lake in upstate New York and his first job was as an assistant sailing instructor at the age of 15. He eventually bought a sailboat, cruised the east coast, and set the hook in Annapolis in 2002. He continued his boating career as an ASA award winning sailing instructor, base manager at SailTime Annapolis, and transitioned into a broker in 2016 Representing Group Beneteau products. “I love the entire process, from the first phone call, to the hunt for the perfect boat, to that moment when the client’s dream is finally realized.
Ken is a lifelong boater who has owned several vessels throughout the years, both power and sail. After retiring from the practice of law, he and his wife purchased a new 40’ boat and moved aboard full-time. They cruised the East Coast extensively from Maine to the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. Ken’s proficiency in all boat systems – mechanical, electrical, plumbing, refrigeration, and rigging – is a direct result of this DIY experience. He has held a USCG 50-ton master license and ASA instructor certifications, and is currently a Certified Professional Yacht Broker uniquely qualified to help you buy or sell your next boat.
Worldwide Yacht Sales | Yacht Charters | New Yacht Construction
1982 50’ Hinckley - $279,500 Curtis Stokes - 410.919.4900
1987 48’ CHB - $95,000 Lin Earley - 757.672.2778
2001 47’ Catalina - $188,000 Jason Hinsch - 410.507.1259
1988 46’ Grand Banks - $210,000 David Robinson - 410.310.8855
1982 46’ Irwin - $65,000 Jason Hinsch - 410.507.1259
1980 43’ Viking - $69,500 Tristan Weiser - 609.420.0469
1966 41’ Rhodes - $119,900 Bill Boos - 410.200.9295
2004 40’ Regal - $199,000 Ed Pickering - 410.708.0633
1979 40’ Bristol - $43,800 Jason Hinsch - 410.507.1259
1978 36’ Trojan - $30,000 Jason Hinsch - 410.507.1259
1987 36’ Marine Trader - $59,500 Mary Catherine Ciszewski - 804.815.8238
2011 28’ Mako - $89,000 Anthony Sayo - 757.427.4042
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Annapolis, MD • St. Michaels, MD • Delaware City, DE • Deltaville, VA • Woodbridge, VA Telephone: 410.919.4900 • Email: info@curtisstokes.net
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TOMMY OTTENWAELDER 443.684.3814 tommyo@whalertowne.com
JAKE BOULAY 410.827.8080 jake@whalertowne.com
BART HILTABIDLE 410.267.9731 bart@whalertowne.com
RICK BOULAY, JR. 410.827.8080 rickjr@whalertowne.com
WES WILLIAMS 410.745.4992 wwilliams@cbmm.org
P.J. CAMPBELL 410.829.5458 pj@campbellsyachtsales.com
CORI WILLIAMS 804.366.8461 cwilliams@oystercoveboatworks.com
JOHN KAISER 443.223.7864 john@yachtview.com
Tom “Tommy O” Ottenwaelder joined Chesapeake Whalertowne’s sales staff in October 2018 after 29 years of Active Duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard. With a Master 100GT professional captain’s license and lifetime of boating experience, Tommy O brings a unique perspective to recreational boating sales and service. He uses his experience not only to help clients find the right boat but to further guide them to a relaxed and enjoyable boating lifestyle.
Rick Boulay, Jr. has been a member of the Chesapeake Whalertowne sales team since 2006. Since joining the sales team, Rick has become one of the highest volume sales producers for Boston Whaler nationwide and an expert within the Boston Whaler Yacht program. Whether you are looking for brokerage services or new boat sales, Rick can help you get the boat you are looking for (or looking to sell) quickly and for the best value. Rick is the General Manager of Chesapeake Whalertowne and also a member of the Boston Whaler Design Team.
Whether you are looking to sell your boat, buy a new/used boat, or service your existing one, OCB is here to ensure a smooth, effortless, and enjoyable experience. With almost 10 years of sales experience, let Cori put her skills to work to find you your next boat. She treats every customer like they are the only one she has, and works from start to finish to ensure they are getting the best price, condition, and value for the money. With knowledge, enthusiasm and a love for the water, let Cori help you with your next boat.
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Jake Boulay has been a member of the Chesapeake Whalertowne sales team since 2015. Prior to moving into sales, Jake handled logistics and service management. During his tenure he has gained an in-depth knowledge of the Boston Whaler and Mercury Outboard brands. Jake’s lifetime of experience on the water gives him a true understanding of the best boat to fit your needs.
The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s Charity Boat Donation Program, run by director Wes Williams, has made donating and buying boats straightforward and easy for more than 20 years. From luxury boats to dinghies, CBMM accepts and sells donated boats year-round. Whether you donate or buy a boat, 100% of the proceeds benefit the children and adults served by CBMM’s many enjoyable and educational programs.
John Kaiser, Jr. maintains a 100-ton USCG Master license since 1985. Growing up in a boatbuilding family (Kaiser Yachts in Wilmington, DE), John has been directly involved in the construction, design and chartering of the highest quality yachts. Founded in 1988, Yacht View Brokerage, LLC located in Annapolis, MD, has been successfully listing, selling and co-brokering listings with many of the finest yacht brokers locally and around the country. Yacht View even offers customers complimentary dockage (for up to 80’ feet) in a beautiful, secure setting on the Severn river. With a target listing to sale time of less than 90 days, John and Jackie are a true power/sailing couple on the Chesapeake Bay.
Bart Hiltabidle is one of the most recognized names in the Annapolis boating community. Bart has helped shape Boston Whaler’s legacy in the Annapolis area. Whether you are in search of a 13’ Super Sport or the flagship Boston Whaler 420 Outrage, Bart has the knowledge and expertise to help narrow your search to the perfect boat. Chesapeake Whalertowne opened a new and exciting location in downtown Annapolis in 2018, featuring waterfront access and an indoor showroom at the base of Ego Alley.
Campbell’s Yacht Sales has extensive experience in listing, selling, and helping customers buy the boat of their dreams. P.J. Campbell has been a part of the yacht sales for the past six years and has sold boats ranging from small power boats to large power and sail boats. Campbell’s uses YachtWorld to list their boats, in partnership with their website and social media outlets. Campbell’s Yacht Sales would love to help you sell your boat or find you the boat you are looking for!
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GETTING READY TO BUY YOUR NEW BOAT by Jane M. Tayman
W
ith spring approaching at a rapid pace, this is the time to start preparing to shop for your perfect boat, whether new or used. The boat buying market has been in full swing for many months, so it is strongly advisable to get pre-approved even before you set out on your search. Having a pre-approval prior to making an offer not only gives you the comfort of staying within your budget, but also allows you to move quickly, letting the seller know that you are ready to buy. Most financial experts do not recommend obtaining a personal loan or using a home line of credit for discretionary items, so a boat loan is the best option. Lending programs ultimately depend on factors such as the age of the boat, loan amount, down payment, loan term, and credit qualifications. Fixed and variable programs are available with terms that range from 10 to 20 years. Turnaround time for a pre-approval takes approximately 24–72 hours, depending on the size of the transaction. Rate locks vary from 30–60 days and loan commitments can be secured for up to 90 days. You should expect to provide two years of tax returns and a personal financial statement for loans over $150,000; for smaller transactions, a recent pay statement is sufficient. Experience and knowledge matter when it comes to finding the right partner to finance your new or used boat. Choose a marine finance company that can customize your personal needs and requirements with the right lending source. Don’t wait, it’s time to get back out on the water. Your dream is closer than you think.
VERA SOHOVICH 410.533.7588 vsohovich@bwys.com
Vera Sohovich established and runs Bluewater’s all-inclusive marine finance department. Prior to joining Bluewater Yacht Sales, she worked for Annapolis Yacht Sales, and held key positions including Comptroller, Finance Manager and Sales Manager. Vera developed and managed the in-house finance department and established relationships with the best banks and lending institutions to provide clients with competitive rates, great terms, and unsurpassed service. She now works to provide Bluewater customers with complete financing and documentation solutions so they can complete the buying process with ease.
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LAURIE KISER 443.223.8425 laurie.kiser@banknewport.com
Marine Product Manager at Ocean Point Marine Lending, formerly known as Just Boat Loans. We provide financing for recreational sail or power boats and yachts. Small or Mega, brokerage or new, we will work for you to fulfill your dream! Nationwide lending, with the most funding sources and program options than any other lender. So we can provide the best rates paired with unique programs to fit any buyers needs or situation. Professional with quick responses. Let’s get you on the water!
JANE M. TAYMAN 443.336.8499 jtayman@tridentfunding.com
Jane is a native of Annapolis having grown up in Eastport. She grew up boating on the Chesapeake Bay which started her love and passion for the water. She has worked in the marine industry for over 35 years and earned her position as Regional Sales Manager through her hard work, professionalism and integrity. Her extensive knowledge and years of experience in marine financing, as well as being an avid boater herself, will benefit you in all stages of the boat buying process.
Boat Loans Trident Funding has the most knowledgeable and experienced sales and credit team in the marine industry. Allow Trident to help match you with the best boat loan program and lending partner no matter how large or small. Trident Funding has been in business for 25 Years – work with the team you can trust.
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Special Advertising Section
INSURANCE BROKERAGE by Gary Golden
Y
ou may have read in these pages past advice regarding seeking insurance for your craft that provides “replacement cost protection up to an agreed value.” That truism is as valid today as ever, just as being sure to only accept coverage from insurers rated A- or better by A.M. Best Co. remains important. While many insurance companies will not offer boat insurance for older boats, there are plenty that will so long as a surveyor has favorably reported on the condition of the vessel sometime in the past year or so. As boats age, the cost to insure them becomes less. Sometimes a boat can be replaced so inexpensively that it becomes sensible to purchase only liability insurance and not insure against the loss of or damage to the vessel itself. Unlike auto insurance, there is no government mandate to have liability insurance on a boat, but the majority of marinas require it. And, if you are borrowing against the value of the boat to purchase it, the lender will require that you purchase full coverage. Unlike auto insurance, there is no standardized boat policy among the various insurance companies, so it is not just a matter of shopping for the best price, but of understanding what is covered. Often, a higher priced policy can offer enough additional benefit to make it worthwhile. Those differences are the reason marine insurance is most often handled by specialty insurance brokerages rather than general insurance agencies. Manifest Marine is an independent insurance brokerage based in Fredericksburg, Virginia, focusing on boat and yacht insurance, as its founder, Gary Golden, has since 1987. 540-785-0398 • mail@manifestmarine.com • manifestmarine.com
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BE AVER
BY M A R T Y L EG R A N D
B E L I E VE R S For these Bay conservationists, it’s one dam thing after another. e’re wading into Narnia on a bright fall day. It’s darker in here. And tangled. The water nearly reaches the tops of my muck boots. Unlike the fantasyland of children’s literature, this “Narnia of nature,” as my guide calls it, is quite real: a swampy, surreally diverse little ecosystem hidden in a mundane patch of northern Baltimore County, Maryland countryside. The realm we’re exploring represents a promising retro approach to ecological restoration and, very possibly, a dirt-cheap way to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. Cows once grazed here, stream restoration specialist Scott McGill says, as the two of us plunge deeper into the swamp. These days the bovines’ ex-pasture looks like a drowned forest that’s cohabitating with a freshwater marsh. Around us, the trunks of sturdy sycamores, scaly-barked river birches, gnarled boxelders (a type of maple) and an imposing, multi-forked black willow poke out of the water. Grassy hummocks offer drier passage as we slosh along. Tall reeds and sandbar willow saplings rise within grabbing distance should we start to slip in the bottom ooze. A variety of willows thrive here, being the favorite food and building material of the creature whose domain we’re invading, Castor canadensis, the North American beaver. Although we don’t see Mr. or Mrs. Beaver this day (beavers are nocturnal by nature), their infrastructure is evident, and their neighbors are active. During our trek, we hear small birds chatter, startle several great blue herons and flush a flock of wood ducks. Hawks soar above us. Reaching deeper water, we watch small circles dimple the surface where brown trout are rising to feed on insects. Trout are one of several fish species—including dace, chubs and sculpins—that consume bugs and aquatic plants living in the impoundment’s cool, clear, nutrient-rich water. McGill points out the resident beaver colony’s nearly six-foot-tall dam and the rambling, domed main lodge they’re constantly remodeling with sticks and mud. I stumble, literally, on one of their transportation networks, accidentally plunging one leg into a deep, beaver-dug channel the animals use to reach distant food sources.
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WILLIAM PAGE PULLY/MD DNR
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In the mid-1990s, as a volunteer with Trout Unlimited, McGill worked on a stream improvement project along this very stretch of Long Green Creek, a Gunpowder River tributary that meanders through the forests and fields of Baltimore County. The landowners wanted to improve habitat for trout, a coldwater-loving species, in the stream that flowed through their pasture. They agreed to fence off a portion of the creek and have trees planted to shade the stream. McGill returned in 2005 to expand on the restoration, this time as founder and CEO of Ecotone, a Harford County ecological restoration company. His team graded streamadjacent land and planted acres of trees to form a shallow, 10-acre seasonal wetland. Then beavers moved in. By the time the landowners summoned McGill back to the site 12 years later to address a beaver-landowner conflict (the former’s dam was flooding the latter’s access to a back cornfield), he had had a “beaver epiphany.” Instead of trapping the relentless rodents, as the landowners were doing reluctantly, why not incorporate beavers’ natural construction inclinations into Ecotone’s stream restoration projects? In other words, allow the beavers to build upon and maintain— at minimal cost—work the company had begun. Some environmental professionals had been preaching the practice in the West for years. McGill says he scoffed at their “nutty” notion initially, then became curious. He
Scott McGill embraces beavers’ natural stream restoration ability.
Beaver habitats reduce runoff sediment, flooding, and erosion.
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BEFORE: Eroding streambanks at Long Green Creek.
attended beaver-focused stream restoration workshops by experts such as Utah State University fluvial scientist Joe Wheaton and ecosystems analyst Michael Pollack, co-author of the Beaver Restoration Guidebook. He became an eager reader of beaver books. From Frances Backhouse’s pithily titled Once They Were Hats, he learned that before beavers were nearly wiped from the land in the name of fashion more than a century ago, they performed instinctively the work that companies like his do when they “repair” today’s compromised natural landscapes. Now that the animals are returning in greater numbers, McGill figured, why not work with them? “I’d go back to stream restoration projects we constructed twenty or thirty years ago, and what I was finding was that beavers had colonized most of these sites,” he says. Wherever restoration specialists planted riparian vegetation— native trees and shrubs—along streams, and protected floodplain corridors with conservation easements, beavers arrived and enhanced the habitat. “It was almost like, if you build it, they will come,” McGill says. Take Long Green Creek, for example. “Ecotone did a very good job on this wetland project,” he says. “It was very successful. The trees survived. The wetlands hydrology was there. But the beavers came in and made it ten times better ecologically and hydrologically.” Thanks to the beavers, Ecotone’s 10-acre, seasonal wetland has become a larger, deep-water mosaic of wetlands that supports a diverse array of fauna and flora, and also serves as a natural filtration system for Long Green Creek, whose waters ultimately reach the Chesapeake Bay. “This is like a huge multimillion-dollar storm management pond—for free,” McGill says of the waterscape around us. Runoff sediment tends to settle here harmlessly. Dissolved nutrients such as nitrogen are taken up by plant roots and bottom soils. When storm waters rage, the beaver pond holds and then slowly releases them, diminishing downstream flooding, damage to infrastructure and stream bank erosion.
AFTER: The restored wetlands support diverse flora and fauna.
As for the landowners’ drowned farm lane, Ecotone installed flow devices, manmade beaver-flummoxing gadgets that permit water to flow freely through beaver dams and reduce the surface elevation of beaver ponds. Two flow devices were all it took to allow the beavers and the farmer to coexist, albeit tenuously. Beaver management—resolving human-beaver friction—has become one of Ecotone’s growing service sectors today. And McGill believes in partnering with nature’s ecosystem engineers in as many of the company’s restoration efforts as possible. As we wade back out of Narnia, McGill explains that this wetland’s biodiversity represents one of the payoffs of Ecotone’s beaver-centric philosophy. He’s seen eagles here, as well as duck species he’s never seen anywhere else in the local landscape. “Well, if you think about it, beaver and ducks and trout all co-evolved in the Chesapeake Bay watershed for thousands of years—long before Europeans arrived. We just took these guys out of the equation to the point where they were almost nonexistent,” he says of beaver. “They’re a part of our history, but they’re not a part of our culture.”
W
hen Europeans first set foot on the North American continent, it’s estimated that there were at minimum 60 million beavers present, perhaps as many as 400 million. By then, the Europeans had already nearly exterminated their native beaver population, Castor fiber, using various beaver parts to make hats, clothing and perfumes. In the New World, fur trappers decimated the U.S. and Canadian beaver population, reducing it to about 100,000 Castor canadensis by 1900, according to author Backhouse. Since then, their numbers have rebounded to between 10 and 50 million, thanks to trapping regulations, reintroduction by conservationists and the animals’ resiliency. (Biologists have repatriated some beavers in the Northwest by parachuting them in wooden crates.) Beaver advocates—they are many and quite passionate—maintain that beavers are, and always have March 2021
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BeaverCON brings together those who see the value of the species.
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been, far more valuable alive than they ever were as the stuff of hats, fragrances or Roaring Twenties outerwear. Beaver, both Castor canadensis and Eurasian Castor fiber, are widely regarded as a keystone species, animals whose preternatural ability to alter and enhance their environment greatly exceeds their numbers. McGill and others are trying to spread the beaver gospel. Last March, just before the coronavirus shut down such gatherings, Ecotone co-hosted BeaverCON, the East Coast’s first conference for beaver practitioners, researchers and journalists. It’s where I was introduced to McGill. Part business convention, part fan fest, the three-day event attracted several hundred attendees from the United States, and a handful from Canada and Europe. The gathering was held in a Marriott hotel just north of Baltimore. But it wasn’t your standard business conference. Most attendees were dressed for a day in the field (flannel shirts, fleece vests, the occasional Maryland DNR uniform) rather than a conference hall. An Ecotone employee in a caped beaver costume popped in and out of the proceedings. And as conference-goers filed into the Valley Ballroom the first morning, they were greeted by an editorial tableau: a beaver diorama, the kind you’d see in a nature center. But this taxidermy Castor, permanently poised to chomp on a sapling, seemed to be glaring at the object next to it on a display table—a vintage felted-beaver top hat. Attendees embraced varied stages of beaver belief, from mildly curious to devoted apostle. They were welcomed by co-hosts Bill Callahan, a beaver practitioner, educator and founder of a management best-practices organization called the Beaver Institute, and by the ebullient McGill, who opened the event with a hearty, “Goooood morning, Beaver—CON!” In lectures over the next few days, a who’s who of beaver cognoscenti advanced the argument that an environment imperiled by climate change and human habitation urgently needs more beaver-enhanced Narnias. Castor’s habits can be bothersome, believers concede, but they are eminently manageable and well worth the effort. Long-time Chesapeake Bay journalist Tom Horton has been persuaded. BeaverCON’s opening lecturer, Horton began his talk with a confession. When he had his greendesigned house built on a Bay tidal creek more than a decade ago—landscaping the property with native plants—he took swift action after two beavers did what beavers do and ate the tender vegetation. “In retrospect, I was a little ignorant, still not thinking holistically. I called the trapper and put them out of business,” he told the group. “I would not do that now.” Instead, he urges his environmental studies students at Salisbury University and others to “think like a watershed.” Consider, he said, the interconnections affecting all 64 million square miles of Chesapeake Bay’s vast and challenged ecosystem, home to 18 million people and countless pigs, cattle and chickens, all of whose waste contributes to Bay pollution. Removing even one of the system’s natural
elements can cause profound imbalances, he said. “The Bay watershed, more than almost anything else, would wish to have held on to its historic population of beavers, whose dams checked sediment and took out a great deal of the nitrogen pollutants . . . turning them harmlessly into gas,” he told the gathering. Human intervention— improved sewage treatment, regulation of air pollution and agricultural runoff—can do only so much, Horton said. The importance of what he called the Bay’s “systems of natural resilience”—oyster reefs that filter Bay water and beaver ponds that denitrify stormwater runoff—has been forgotten or neglected, he said. It’s especially true of beavers. “The Mid-Atlantic has been kind of a black hole of beaver knowledge. My trapping proves that,” he said. “I’m supposed to be knowledgeable of these things and I wasn’t. I think this conference could be the start of a really substantial education/ re-education project.” Felled trees, flooded roads, clogged culverts. Beavers tend to litter their landscape with collateral damage. Advocates say that non-lethal intervention in beaver-human conflicts is practicable and preferable to traditional methods of controlling the furry, 40-some-pound animal, North America’s largest rodent. As inexorable builders, beavers are notoriously persistent: trapping one or two usually won’t solve the problem because more arrive and resume the destruction. Tearing down their dams risks downstream flooding and likewise invites replacements that renew the activity. Enter the Beaver Deceiver, the invention of New England biologist and entrepreneur Skip Lisle. When introduced at BeaverCON, Lisle received celebrity-status applause when he mentioned his popular creation. If there’s a Thomas Edison of beaver exclusion technology, it’s probably Lisle, who didn’t so much conceive of beaver barriers as build a better, trademarked one. Deceivers and other flow devices of differing design—Castor Masters, beaver bafflers, pond levelers, culvert fences and diversion dams—are engineered to outwit beaver, a task more complicated than you might think. Scientists believe the animals respond to the sound and feel (pressure) of running water by instinctively trying to build a dam or plug what they perceive as a dam hole. If the breach is a culvert, they’ll clog it with woody debris, causing water to pond and the roadbed to flood, a common, costly humanbeaver conflict. Modified over the years to adapt to its adversary, the Deceiver uses beaver-proof fenced barriers connected by long pipes to protect stream intakes and outlets, funneling water in a manner the beavers can’t detect or disrupt. The goal is to “filter water in and beavers out” on a permanent basis, Lisle explained. Most beaver-excluding gadgets are made of wood, metal fencing and plastic piping readily available at hardware stores. Lisle said that the technology is less expensive than reaming out blocked culverts regularly.
(Several studies support his claim. In 2004-2005, for example, Lisle helped install 33 flow devices at 14 roadway sites in Tidewater Virginia. According to a Christopher Newport University study, the Virginia Department of Transportation had spent more than $300,000 annually to control beavers and repair beaver damage at the sites. After the devices were installed, annual beaver management costs—including device installation and maintenance—fell to $44,500 a year.) Beavers’ extended absence from the landscape hasn’t helped their cause, BeaverCON speakers suggested. Beaver ponds disappeared from the Chesapeake between the late 1700s and the late 1800s, destroyed when trees were felled for farmland, according to Grace Brush, a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. “We forget what we’ve lost as generations go by,” she said. Even in Oregon, “the Beaver State,” where Castor canadensis has been the official state animal since 1969, they’re considered a predatory critter, protected on public lands but not on private property, where landowners can kill “nuisance beaver” without a permit. Activist Stanley Petrowski said he’s lobbying to change beavers’ status from “noxious predatory rodent to a keynote species” in his home state. Filmmaker Sarah Koenigsberg believes beaver rebranding is in order. She advocates storytelling. Koenigsberg’s award-winning documentary, “Beaver Believers,” was screened on the first night of BeaverCON. It follows five scientists and one eccentric beaver lover as they reintroduce the animals to Western states beset by droughts, wildfires, floods and other ravages of climate change. Aside from the beavers, the film’s indisputable star is a scrappy Denver hairdresser who live-traps urban beavers and lovingly relocates them. (“Sweet love bucket,” she coos to her bucktoothed charges.)
B
ack at Narnia, McGill has another, nearby, restoration project he wants to show me. It’s a far different landscape, a scruffy, open field bisected by a meandering stream. Ecotone began planting vegetation along Bear Cabin Branch in Harford County in 2018. Several months ago, three beaver families moved in. Since McGill lasted visited here five days ago, one of their rudimentary dams has raised the water level a full foot in a portion of the creek. That will allow the flood plain to widen, he says, mitigating downstream flooding and trapping more sediment. “I can’t get a permit to do this,” McGill says of the impoundment. “But a beaver can do the work for free, and the water quality benefits are much better.” It’s a natural partnership, he says, “We’re restoring the Bay one beaver at a time.” h
Maryland native and award-winning contributor Marty LeGrand writes about nature, the environment, and Chesapeake history. March 2021
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Best Places T O R ET I R E BY T H E BAY S
ittin’ on the dock of the Bay watching the tide roll away … Any number of people who love the Chesapeake dream of making Otis Redding’s words their reality when retirement comes knocking. Could it get much better than relaxing in retired bliss, grabbing a meal at a cute bistro, getting in a leisurely nine holes, or maybe puttering about on your boat? If you want to retire in Chesapeake Bay country, the decision to make is where, exactly. The region offers a lot to retirees, with urban, suburban, and small-town options for every pocketbook. That means there really isn’t one question to ask yourself but rather several jumbled together. Do you want to get away from it all, or to it all? How will your healthcare needs be met? Will there be fun things to do and other retirees around to do it with? Will you need a car for every errand or is walking an option? And last but not least, what can you afford? We’ve taken some of the work out of determining where to spend your post-work days on or near the Chesapeake, by turning first to the numbers. Numerous organizations and websites crunch the data on communities to rank or grade them. The AARP Livability Index, for example, examines facts and figures related to an individual community’s housing, neighborhoods, transportation options, environment, health, engagement, and opportunity. While scores technically range from 0-100, anything above 50 is good. (The Index’s highest rated place in the nation—Madison, Wisconsin—only earns 66.) Another cruncher, Niche.com does a similar analysis, providing overall grades while also scoring places as particularly suited for retirees. We pulled in accolades from a few other sources, and finally added our own intimate knowledge of the region to create a list of retirement bright spots, while providing alternatives for each pick that are either cheaper or geographically different. (The populations are rounded estimates.) If you are looking forward to taking it easy every day, take a look at these options.
BY B R E N N E N J E N S E N
ANNAPOLIS, MD P O P. 39,0 0 0
aryland’s colonial-era capital busies itself in the shadow of the oldest state house in continuous use, thrums with the rumble of speedboats showing off in Ego Alley, and features streets full of uniformed Navy midshipmen most of the year. There’s lots to see and do in the historic Anne Arundel County seat, so retirees looking for a host of cultural and recreational options should consider the “Sailing Capital of the World.” It’s also the largest town on our list, and because of its size, there are options to consider within this option. The Annapolis suburb of Parole, for example, is Niche’s #4 place to retire in the state. Annapolis draws high marks on the AARP Index, particularly for healthcare (63) and civic engagement (62), but its subpar housing score (49) is a reflection that this can be an expensive place to buy or rent. AARP Livability: 58 Niche rating: A overall
LESS COST LY S HO R E ALT ER NAT IV E—Sa l i sbu r y, M D (pop. 33,000) has historic neighborhoods, a walkable downtown with collegetown flair, and the Shore’s largest hospital—all with housing costing a third or more less than its western shore counterpart. These are just some of the reasons why U.S. News & World Report has the Wicomico County seat on its “Best Places to Retire” list.
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BAYSIDE ALT ERNAT IV E— Poquoson, VA (pop. 12,200) This water-lapped Hampton suburb is close to urban amenities (and VA medical facilities for military retirees) but backs up to a sprawling wildlife preserve.
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ounded in 1632, there’s a lot more to this quaint corner of the populous Hampton Roads urban area than the renowned colonial-era living history museum at its core. For instance, the College of William and Mary assures that this ancient setting has youthful vigor— and the cultural, athletic, educational, and nightlife/dining options you’d expect from a college town. Nestled on the Virginia Peninsula between the Bay-emptying James and York Rivers, Williamsburgers enjoy ready proximity to not only Hampton Roads, but Richmond as well. The best in healthcare is never far away. Indeed, the senior-focused real estate blog 55plus.com has it on its “Best Places to Retire for Health Care” list. As a tourist town, getting the kids and grandkids to visit shouldn’t be a problem. Have fun putting the “bad” grandkids in the colonial stockades and take the “good” ones off to the amusement parks—either Busch Gardens or Water Country USA. AARP Livability: 54; Niche rating: A overall
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he waterfront of this Harford County river town, where the Susquehanna meets the Bay, sports perhaps Maryland’s largest boardwalk west of Ocean City. The community’s cute and walkable downtown has numerous eating options, parks, a historic district, and a plethora of marinas to dock your boat. Despite the small-town feel, Baltimore’s big-city attractions (and big-time medical facilities) are only 45 minutes away. You can even catch a train to Baltimore and Washington from nearby Perryville (where there is also a casino). Havre de Grace is French for “Harbor of Grace” and while the community was attacked and plundered by the British in 1814, it has enjoyed peace and grace ever since. AARP Livability: 61 Niche rating: A- overall
PAT VENTURINO PHOTOS
EAST ERN SHORE ALT ERNAT IV E—Chesapeake City, MD (pop. 700) also has a historic district, waterfront dining and small-town appeal—all about 30 minutes from Wilmington, Delaware. It earns high marks for outdoor activities and nightlife.
HAVRE DE GRACE, MD P O P. 14 ,0 0 0
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YOURS TRULY PHOTOGRAPHY
HOPE & GLORY INN
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small yet sophisticated charmer on Virginia’s bucolic Northern Neck, Irvington’s remoteness may appeal to those no longer commuting. Spend your work-free days here enjoying life at the tasty crossroads of both the Chesapeake Bay Wine Trail and the Virginia Oyster Trail. A plethora of Bay recreation opportunities are close at hand and when feeling a little indulgent, head off to the world-class Tides Inn resort for dining, golf, or some spa time. Just minutes away, the larger town of Kilmarnock is a hub of commercial activity (i.e., has a Walmart), leaving Irvington’s tiny core a quiet home to eateries, a steamboat museum, and an historic inn. Niche rating: A for retirees
I RV I N GT O N , VA P O P. 4 0 0
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EAST ERN SHORE ALT ERNAT IV E—Cape Charles, VA (pop. 1,000) This 19th-centur y town’s cute restaurant- and shop-lined main drag ends at a capacious public Bay beach. While it feels remote, it’s less than an hour from Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The Bay Creek Resort includes both Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus signature golf courses. Coastal Living calls it the “Cinderella of the Chesapeake,” ranking it the “Third Happiest Seaside Town.”
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ALYSSA MALOOF
BERLIN, MD P O P. 4 , 60 0
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LOWER-COST ALTERNATIVE— A little sleepier and a lot less expensive, Pocomoke City, MD (pop. 4,000) has been dubbed “the friendliest town on the Eastern Shore” and has a performance arts center carved out of a 1920s movie theater, as well as a riverfront park.
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his is the fictionalized film setting where Julia Roberts was the Runaway Bride, and retirees might consider running to Berlin for its laidback allure. The town’s tree-shaded downtown sports new cafes and boutiques watched over by the hoary Atlantic Hotel that’s been serving guests and diners since 1895. You can toast your leisure years at one of the Shore’s most popular breweries, Burley Oak. There are golfing options galore and a 15-minute drive brings you to Ocean City’s sand and surf. Niche rating: A for retirees
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WAT ERSIDE ALT ERNAT IV E—Chester town, MD (pop. 5,100) on the namesake Chester River mixes colonial quaintness with the youthful buzz of Washington College.
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he Talbot County seat hits many sweet spots for retirees. Its historic and attractive downtown evokes Mayberry and includes the Avalon Theatre, one of the Shore’s largest live performance venues. Walkscore.com, which ranks communities by how easily errands can be done on foot instead of in a driver’s seat, rates Easton “highly walkable.” The town is not on the Bay
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itself though there is a small marina on the Tred Avon River, and plans are in the works for more development there. But the Bay and its larger tributaries are close by, as is the charming waterside town tourist town of St. Michaels. Publishers ranging from Readers Digest to Kiplinger have praised Easton, the latter calling it “a great place to retire.” Niche rating: A for Retirees
wylderhotels.com
Cave bats like the tricolored bat are vulnerable to whitenose syndrome.
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Spelunking for science with Maryland’s bat man ph oto s
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liding through tight rocky crevices, Dan Feller moves with relative ease as twists his body at every turn like a contortionist. Rappelling by rope downward into the dark labyrinth and crowned with a headlamp-covered helmet, he’s enthusiastic about this difficult sport. Feller is a talented caver and biologist. He is also Maryland’s resident “bat man.” Today, he dons his white Tyvek coverall suit to survey bats in hibernacula—their winter dwellings. Feller’s fascination with the world of caves began as a young boy. “It was a sign for Meramec Caverns that I saw a sign on vacation with my parents, and I cried when they told me we couldn’t stop,” he says. “I had awesome parents; they turned around, we went in. I still have the stamped coin today from that visit.” The almost otherworldly fauna of caves, like woodrats and blind invertebrates with no pigment, led him to biology. “My primary interests as an ecologist were cave-adapted invertebrates and small mammals, so bats joined those two niches.” Our excursion took place before the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, any bat research that requires the handling of bats or entering caves is on hold in many states, including Maryland. Native bats are not the ones suspected to be responsible for the pandemic, but they could be threatened by it. Research is underway to investigate the possibility of infecting native bats with coronavirus, and the spread of the virus from humans to bat populations. Maryland is home to 10 species of bat. Four of those, including the eastern red bat, are tree bats—which, as the name suggests, roost in trees and usually migrate southward to avoid the frigid temperatures of winter. The other six are cave bats, and the subject of Feller’s survey. These bats, such as the big brown bat and tricolored bat, hibernate in caves and mines during the winter months due to the mild temperatures and high humidity. It is within these ancient formations that the bats are most vulnerable to the threat of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a disease caused by a fungus (Pseudogymnoascus destructans or simply Pd) introduced from Europe and first discovered in a cave near Albany, New York in 2006. By 2010, the disease had spread to Maryland. It was confirmed in an Allegany County cave near Cumberland, and later discovered in multiple caves and abandoned mines and tunnels in the western portion of the state. Its spread has been very rapid. WNS is now confirmed in 33 states and seven Canadian provinces. It’s a nasty disease that first attacks the skin of bats when they are hibernating in caves. As the fungus progresses, the bats become more active and engage in odd behaviors such as flying outside during daylight hours in the midst of winter, when they should stay in the hibernacula. This causes the depletion of stored fat they need to survive the season. Perhaps the most infamous symptom is the white powder or fuzzy looking substance that is
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found growing on the skin and muzzle of affected bats, evidence of the fungus visible to the naked eye. This awful disease is now responsible for the deaths of more than 5.7 million bats in the eastern United States, and there is no cure. Caves that once hosted thousands of bats are now empty. A 30 plus-year veteran of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Feller has witnessed the devastation. “Hibernacula were littered with dead or dying bats often covered with the white fungal hyphae characteristic of WNS,” he says of the early years after its arrival. Feller initiated the state’s annual bat hibernacula monitoring program and was able to confirm the extent of the disease’s impact. White-nose syndrome “has wreaked havoc among cave hibernating bats, reducing populations by more than 90 percent for most species. Many of our most common species, such as the little brown bat, tricolored bat, and northern long-eared bat, have become remarkably rare. The latter is now listed as threatened in Maryland and nationally as a result of WNS,” he laments. Other caves where WNS has been documented experienced 100 percent mortality in hibernating bats. Bats are the only species susceptible to this disease, and it causes no ill effect to humans. So how did it spread, and spread so rapidly? Its introduction to New York was most likely from humans who had been caving in Europe. The fungus is easily spread if left on clothing and gear that has not been decontaminated. In 2016
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the fungus appeared in Washington State. The next closest site contaminated with the fungus, though, was in the Midwest. The most plausible explanation is that it arrived via humans entering the cave who had unknowingly carried the fungus on their gear. (This is why Feller changes coveralls between caves.) Fast forward to the present: It is believed that the fungus is mostly spread from bat-to-bat contact. Vulnerable species of cave bats hibernate together in close clusters, from only a few to very massive numbers, essentially acting as a petri dish for the fungus to grow. It’s an unfortunate reality for such remarkable animals. Besides the bat’s uniqueness as the only mammal capable of flight, they also echolocate like aquatic mammals, making them adept at navigating and hunting insects in total darkness. And let’s not forget bat biodiversity, which is
A reluctant patient’s muzzle is swabbed.
Dan Feller collects a swab to test for white-nose syndrome.
simply incredible. Some migrate, others hibernate. Vampire bats feed on blood. They also serve multiple notable ecological niches. Some bats pollinate plants while some fruit-eating bats are responsible for seed dispersal. They also eat a lot of insects—so much that it is estimated they provide billions of dollars worth of insect control service to farmers in the U.S. alone. Bats are essentially nature’s perfect insect control team. Feller conducts his surveys in western Maryland, within the Appalachian region of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. He is currently involved with a continental-scale study investigating WNS transmission and surveillance to better understand the disease and combat its spread.
Weaving through the cave in an almost poetic fashion, he meticulously scans a wall. If bats are located, he makes note of the species, the cluster size, and how close they are. He also records details of the cave’s microclimate, as there are multiple studies underway that are investigating links between the pathogen’s spread and the hibernaculum microclimates. On this cave visit, he locates a bat within reaching distance, giving him the opportunity to swab it. He does not find any evidence of the infamous white fuzz, the obvious superficial sign, on this bat. But that doesn’t mean the fungus is not present. “In recent years, remaining diminished bat populations in hibernation rarely show obvious signs of the fungus as it’s taken on a March 2021
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more diminutive form but may still be observed fluorescing under UV light. The fungus does not disappear even though all the bats at a site have perished; it continues to persist in the cave environment on other organic material,” he adds. This big brown bat briefly awakens from its torpor state and emits a slight hiss. Once Feller completes a swab of its muzzle, he places the sample in a vial and records his notes. The bat is back in hibernation within minutes of the interruption. A growing number of biologists and scientists are working on combatting the WNS invasion. At a
January 2020 Northeast Bat Working Group meeting, representatives from federal and state agencies (including Feller) as well as biologists affiliated with universities, conservation organizations, and even private consultants gathered to make presentations, share current data, and discuss methodologies and management practices to better protect bats. Current research into potential treatments and curbing the growth of the fungus was presented. Of particular note were the preliminary findings in a controlled study, where researchers from Temple University, Lock Haven University, and the Pennsylvania Game
Commission observed that the growth of the fungus is slowed on bat wings at colder sites in a hibernaculum. As this infliction knows no borders, it is through collaboration and the sharing of methods that researchers hope to gain traction on the disease. If there is a silver lining regarding the plight of hibernating bats, it is that there appears to be a growing appreciation of these fascinating mammals. “WNS has created a new focus on bats, with research documenting their importance and the public gaining interest and acceptance of the once-maligned creatures,” says Feller. This includes compliance in not
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service maintains the whitenosesyndrome. org information page including ways you can help the bats, such as by installing a bat house in your yard (which will help reduce your mosquito and other flying bug issues; a single small bat can capture upwards of 1,200 mosquitos in an hour!), planting a pollinator garden, and reducing your outdoor lighting. b at
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Samples are catalogued and recorded.
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entering protected caves, of which there are many in Maryland. “Conservation efforts have stepped up management efforts such as gating caves to reduce disturbance during hibernation and creating more batfriendly forest management practices,” he adds. So, how can you help bats? First and foremost, do not enter a cave that is closed off. It is dangerous to go into a cave without the proper gear. The cave is closed for a reason, most likely to protect bats. (In fact, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service requests that cavers refrain from caving in all WNS-affected states. Cavers should also not cave anywhere during the bat hibernation months, which run September through May.) States hit hardest by WNS are closing more and more caves to protect the bats. Additionally, it is critical to decontaminate your gear after caving. The fungus is quite resilient and can survive on clothes, boots, gear, bags, and even research tools for a long time. If you observe a bat outside during the winter months, make a note of when and where, and contact the Department of Natural Resources Wildlife and Heritage Division at 410-260-8540, or Daniel Feller via the DNR Appalachian lab at 301-689-7202. In the chill of the fresh air, I walk with Feller down a path as our eyes readjust to the daylight. He points to a small rocky opening at foot level that leads to a cave. “That one requires belly crawling for about 150 feet before you can stand,” he says. “We don’t have to do that one today.” h
ABOVE: For this tricolored bat, the ordeal is over quickly. BELOW: Dan Feller carefully enters a bat-dwelling cave.
Mark Hendricks is an award-winning conservation photographer and author whose work focuses on the habitats of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. His book Natural Wonders of Assateague Island was released in 2017 and he is currently at work on his second book. markhendricksphoto.com
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jody’s log
Heading inside Camden Point on the North River, towards particularly foreboding clouds.
If Proust Were a Sailor The remembrance of things past is a boater’s antidote to the long, cold wait for spring. story & photos by Capt. Jody Argo Schroath
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s I write this, winter is still dragging its mud-caked feet toward spring, with launch season still a few months away. But not in my head. There, inside my cheery cerebellum, the sun is warm, the breeze is constant, and the seas are always less than a foot. Today in my brain I am heading out Back Creek for the Bay. Should I go north or south this time? Rock Hall or Deltaville? Fairlee Creek or Mobjack Bay? And just like that, I’m off. But then, more often than not, my new adventure reminds me of a former adventure and before you can yell, “Hard alee!,” I’m deep into reliving a time when the breeze was not always constant and the seas were definitely more than a foot. But then, nearly all boating memories are fond ones, and even the worst adventures have taken on a burnished glow. I have two particular adventures that have been popping up in my head like meerkats all winter. The first one took place years ago. It was my first solo sail in Snipp, my little Albin Vega 27, a boat I remember with outsized affection. She was housed at a small marina up the South Branch of the Yeocomico River, near the mouth of the Potomac, and she needed a bit of work, as we say euphemistically. But finally, on a bright spring day, I got up the nerve to take her out by myself. I started the motor and cast off the lines in the usual way, and ship’s dog Skippy
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and I set off. As I unspool the day in my mind, I find as much pleasure in all its little details as the adventure itself, depending how much time I have to waste. Here is Mundy Point, I say to myself, and there is Tom Jones Point. Remember to go wide at red “2”. Reaching the long straightaway to the entrance marker, known locally as Birthday Cake (named for the original marker, which I imagine must have looked like something from The Great British Baking Show, because the current one certainly doesn’t), I turn into the wind and put the engine at slow idle. Then I hop quickly up on deck to haul up the main and then pull up the hanked-on jib. Time to leap back into the cockpit to grab the tiller and praise Skippy for staying put. I haul in on the flapping main just until it begins to fill and pull us off the wind. I feel the sail catch its first bite of wind, as the balance of power shifts to the boat. Now I trim both main and jib, pushing the tiller over to put us back on course for the Birthday Cake. Finally, I cut the engine. Sailing! Glorious! But wait, no time for bliss because there is still the business of getting out into the Potomac. And this requires a couple of short tacks. But at last it is done, and we come out past the lee of Sandy Point. Here, the wind finds us and sets us heeling as the water begins to foam merrily down Snipp’s lee side, and we race toward the Maryland shore and the wide entrance to the St. Marys River, five miles away. I ease the sails slightly to spill a little wind and relax a bit. I decide to try to balance the sails and helm to let her go on her own. After some fooling around, and to my immense pleasure, I actually do. I sit tight for another few minutes, holding my breath like a nervous aunt, and then I do it. Moving practically on tiptoe, I climb gingerly up on deck on the windward side and grab the side stay. And there I am, standing on the
deck of my little boat as she pelts across the Potomac under her own steam. I feel the wind and the sun on my face. I look across the river and then back to the cockpit with its empty helm and slightly anxious dog, and I am suddenly filled with joy, absolute and pure. I nearly explode with it. I know in some part of me that I will probably never feel quite this way again. But I’m satisfied because I also know that to feel it once is enough. I’ll always have the memory of it. And it’s that memory, and the thought of adventures yet to come, that warm me on the coldest, darkest winter day and keep me company.
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he second memory revisits me like Marley’s ghost. It begins one day this past June when the ship’s fur-bearing crew, Sammy and Bindi, and I were on the home stretch of a trip back to the Chesapeake. We
transit North Carolina’s AlligatorPungo Canal—a lonely and desolate place that seems perpetually on the verge of turning into a Stephen King movie—and then the Alligator River. For the last half-hour before we reach the Alligator River swing bridge, I’ve been watching thunderstorms build over the flat, pine-spikey marshland to the west. Now, directly after we’ve come through the bridge, one of them gets close enough that it seems prudent to pull off the channel and anchor. We wait. Nothing happens as the storm veers south. It’s 2:30 p.m. now, with severe storms predicted by NOAA radio for the rest of the afternoon. And we’re sitting near the entrance to Albemarle Sound, an infamous body of shallow water that can be whipped up to legendary fury at the slightest provocation. The next day’s winds are forecast at 15 to 20, with gusts to 25
from the northwest. That’s not just a provocation, that’s a declaration of war. I dither. Maybe the wind won’t materialize tomorrow. That happens a lot. On the other hand, maybe it will and maybe it won’t leave for two or three days. On the other other hand, maybe I can make it across now before any more severe storms show up. I decide to chance it. I really want to get to the other side of the Albemarle. The radar is clear for the moment and the sun is out. I take a deep breath and pull the anchor. Bindi and Sammy settle back into their cruising spots, and we zig-zag through the markers and out onto the Albemarle. If we get caught in a squall out here, I am thinking, we’re going to be in a heap of trouble! Even in re-living the memory, I am nervous all over again. It takes Moment of Zen, under power, about two and a half hours to
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Charming & Walkable!
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jody’s log
cross the 15 miles of Albemarle Sound from the Little Alligator River to the North River on the other side. We could aim for the Pasquotank River route through the Dismal Swamp instead—it’s about the same distance—but unlike the North River, there’s nowhere to hide once you get there. And that hiding place is just what I’m counting on. Inside its entrance, the North River bellies out behind Camden Point to the west, with depths of eight and nine feet nearly to the shore. It doesn’t look like it on the charts, but I know from experience that this strip makes a wizard anchorage in anything from south to northwest winds, depending how far you go west off the channel. All I need is two and a half squall-free hours to get there. For the next two hours, I divide my time between scanning the horizon and trying to raise a signal on my cell phone to check my radar app. The crossing takes forever! I spot a few storms now and then in the distance, but nothing headed our way. Then about a mile from North River, I get my cell coverage back and look at the radar. Holy cow! The radar shows a storm the size of Nebraska headed directly our way. A few minutes later, the wind picks up behind us, rushing toward the squall. I begin making little hurry-up noises to myself. Just as the wind clocks west, we reach the entrance channel. Now we have five closely spaced markers to negotiate before we can cut west behind the point. Finally, we come through the last of them and I make the turn. Two miles later, we are finally far enough in that the land begins to block most of the chop and at least some of the wind. Now I can let the anchor go. I force myself to let the chain out slowly ... slowly, to make sure it’s well set. I get out 80 feet on my Rocna, check the set, and go forward to tie it off. I’m on my way back to the cockpit when the
storm finds us. In spades. For the next 20 minutes the wind howls like a banshee. Then comes the lightning, which strikes all around us, and finally the rain comes down in front-loaders. I watch from the cockpit for a while and then shoo the dogs into the cabin, where I can have a small nervous breakdown and a cup of hot tea. That was a close-run thing! Before I think too much about the idiocy of that adventure, burnished or not, I shake myself back to the present, and hope I haven’t passed my exit or put my laundry from the dryer back into the washer or something. But all that aside, if you are still reading this (or I should say still reading this and it’s still winter), you might consider whiling away a few hours reliving a few boating adventures yourself, or safer yet, dream up a few new ones. CBM Cruising Editor Jody Argo Schroath, with the help and not infrequent hindrance of ship’s dogs Bindi and Sammy, goes up and down bays, rivers and creeks in search of adventure and stories.
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by Greg Garrett
12 REASONS
water tap fees and new environmental laws that have spiked our land development costs significantly above inflation, it is exponentially more expensive to develop land for new housing projects. This is forcing the cost of new construction to be disproportionately above resale homes which is a cyclical precursor to resale home price appreciation.
Homes in Eastern VA Could Appreciate 15% in 2021 and up to 50% by 2026!
Housing prices have gone up 350% in the United States since 1986, while housing prices in Hampton Roads and Richmond have gone up slightly less than 100% during that same time. We are way behind the appreciation averages. Our recovery didn’t start until somewhere around 2014, as compared to 2009 and 2010 in most regions of the country. Our turnaround has been much slower and that’s the major reason why our housing values are very close to where they were in 2006.
Here are the reasons that housing prices are going to continue going up in Hampton Roads, which will also affect Richmond, over the next several years SUPPLY DECREASE 1. Our inventory has been cut in half from 2019 to 2020. DEMAND INCREASE 2. Ship Repair: In prior years there were forced military spending cutbacks. Now, ship repair is going at full throttle. 3. Shipbuilding: Newport News Shipbuilding and other Hampton Roads shipbuilding facilities have multi-decade contracts for shipbuilding where we anticipate a continued, much larger than normal workforce for Navy shipbuilding over the next several decades. At Newport News Shipbuilding alone there is a $45 Billion multi-year backlog as the US Navy is spending what is needed to fulfill its 30 year plan to increase its fleet.
This 4,000 mile undersea cable creates opportunities for more companies to move to Hampton Roads to take advantage of this data entry point. 6. Our Port: We have the deepest Port on the East Coast and a commitment to dredge five more feet which will ensure that we will continue to have the deepest East Coast port here in Hampton Roads. In 2020 alone, our Port’s capacity increased by 40%. 7. Working from Home Factor: The phenomenon of people working from home is going to enable people to seek marketplaces that have a higher quality of life and lower housing costs. On October 29th 2020 Upwork Inc released a poll that determined 11% of households plan to relocate as working from home becomes more popular. 8. Continued Growth and Expansion of our Military Installations: Recent announcements that the Air Force is bringing a F-22 squadron to Hampton’s Langley Air Force Base and the Navy’s decision in January 2021 to move Amphibious Assault Ships to Norfolk, continue to confirm the DOD’s commitment to the 757.
4. Wind Power: Wind power generating devices will be installed off of the Virginia Coastline. Job creation estimates range from 7k-14k.
OTHER FACTORS 9. Roadway improvements: The new addition of 4 lanes going east/west connecting Hampton and Norfolk through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel system & hopefully a future widening of the interstate between Williamsburg and Richmond to 6 or 8 are a precursor to the RichmondHampton Roads mega-region which will also stimulate unprecedented growth.
5. Transatlantic Global Data Cable: The TGDC connects Europe to the east coast and comes ashore in Virginia Beach.
10. Escalation of New Home Prices: Because of the shortage of land around our major employers, increased sewer/
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11. Companies/jobs moving here for quality of life: Our quality of life includes thousands of miles of waterfront, an above average education system with several outstanding universities, below average crime rate, and below average house prices vs. comparably sized metropolitan areas in the country. In a report by 24/7 Wall St, Hampton Roads was named as one of Americas 20 Cheapest Cities Where Everyone Wants to Live Right Now! The report further cited half of the people searching our area for homes from the outside are in Washington DC where housing costs approximately 2.5 times more than our homes. Currently the median home in the Washington DC metro area is getting close to $700,000 while our median home value is still significantly under $300,000. 12. Cost of Renting vs Buying: In a normal economy and currently across the vast majority of the USA monthly payments cost 35% - 50% more than renting. Currently in Eastern VA for homes up to approximately $400,000 the cost of monthly renting is MORE than the house payment to purchase that same home. Prediction 50% appreciation in residential real estate in Eastern VA by Sept 2026
(For the full text, with more details, visit our blog @ http://ggrva.com/blog or scan the QR code below with your mobile phone)
Greg Garrett CEO/Founding Partner Garrett Realty Partners #1 in sales in many Hampton Roads cities/counties for over 20 years!
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garrett Realty Partners presents
COASTAL VIRGINIA’S finest $1,100,000
$1,400,000
taylor farms
Truly ONE OF A KIND home lacking nothing!! Seller has invested over 2.2 mil in home!! Heated pool, outdoor shower and bathroom, massive pool deck, covered patio, 3 car garage, whole house generator.
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Poquoson
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fords colony
Luxurious, 3-story home on the water in desired WILLIAMSBURG, award winning Fords Colony community... Stunning water views from many vantage points! Whole house gas generator & MUCH MORE!
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Your Northern Neck & Middle Peninsula of Virginia Real Estate Specialists
Virtually tour all our listings!
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This cozy home has been lovingly maintained by the same family for over 50 years. It features beautiful views, 3 Bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, boat house with boat lift & newer: roof, windows & heat pump.
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ou might be thinking I am referring to monetary value. And maybe your home has increased in monetary value. However, I am referring to the growing desire for an improved lifestyle at home. With the pandemic, we all have been forced to stay at home, work from home and go to school at home. We have also been trying our best to find ways to safely socialize with friends and family while maintaining a safe distance. Wow, what a year. My clients have come to us with a major increased personal value placed on their home and want to improve its functionality and livability. Now that the home has so much more purpose in so many different ways, new designs and spaces with different purposes are necessary. Homeowners have new needs now based on working and school that can require proper desk space, office equipment and possibly sound proofing to family time, socializing with friends and personal quiet time. We are commonly asked to “create the feel and luxury of my last vacation get-away destination”. My clients want their home to be a place of happiness, relaxation and peace that they are always anxious to come home too. professional training on YOUR boat! Get affordable If this feeling is familiar, start writing • Maximize Your Navigational Equipment your thoughts down and discuss with your • Master Your Boat’s Mechanical family what is truly importantSystems to you. Then • Perform Maintenance (it’sup funwith & saves you $$$) put the items you come in priority • Dock Like a Pro in All Weather Conditions order. You are now ready to start the • Anticipate & Manage Onboard Emergencies transformation. I don’t see this changing • Empower Your First Mate anytime soon; rather I see it continuing to increase in importance over the years. Also Learn more @ CaptainFrank.NET remember with good, smart design, not or call 570.656.1712 only will your livability increase in value, but done correctly, your monetary value can Gain confidence. Boat safely. increase as well.
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410.867.0407 remodelthebay.com 410.867.0407 March 2021
ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com
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WATER F RO N T L I V I N G EX PE RTS
MARKETPLACE
Has your home increased in value?
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stern lines
Fossil Hunting
photos & text by Jay Fleming
E
roding cliffs on one of the Bay’s tidal rivers reveal that the much of the Chesapeake region was once under water. As pieces of the cliffs fall into the water, the fossils are exposed on the shoreline and washed by wave action and twice-daily tides. I made a recent fossil-hunting trip with friends, timed with the negative low tides that coincided with the new moon. We found abundant Chesapecten, a genus of multiple scallop species that went extinct in the early Pliocene Epoch. The eight different species of Chesapecten can be difficult to identify, but there are very subtle differences in shape and texture. Shells from this site were Chesapecten nefrens. The scallops were fragile, many of them broken in fragments and scattered along the shoreline, but some, recently exposed, were in perfect condition. The sizes ranged from smaller than a thumbnail to the size of a small dinner plate. Below the low tide line, we found a variety of fossils, including two specimens of the Maryland State Fossil—Ecphora gardnerae. This small snail-like mollusk is incredibly delicate, and both that we found were broken. Turritella, large barnacles, an Eagle Ray Crushing Tooth Plate and Ark Shells were among the other fossils we found and identified with the help of the Calvert Marine Museum’s fossil identification guide. The exact river where these photos were taken is a closely guarded secret, but there are plenty of popular and public spots for would-be fossil hunters, including Calvert Cliffs State Park in southern Maryland. Note: Collecting fossils fallen from cliffs is legal, digging them out of cliffs themselves is not.
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March 2021
Family-sized adventures.
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