Silver Heel Sailing

Katie was looking forward to a slow Saturday morning.

Saturday morning promised to be more relaxing than usual, and I was looking forward to a prolonged breakfast thanks to our aforementioned labors by light of the dying rays of Friday’s sun.  As it turns out, however, habits have a stubborn way of dying hard, and a new challenge popped up to take the place of the mast raising for the Saturday morning early-birds at Bachelor’s Hope. 

Sitting down to enjoy my cereal (Saturday is usually a simple breakfast; Sundays are normally a bit more ambitious, but more on that later), I took a look out the window to see whether the Island Lark had yet joined us for the weekend.  They are regulars on my grandparents’ dock for the Chestertown weekends, but there was some confusion as to whether they’d be making it up this weekend (they didn’t).  Anyway, the Lark wasn’t there, but in its place was a considerably less expected visitor, in theform of the 30 or so foot waterman’s boat Mildred of Chestertown.  My interest piqued, I asked my grandmother what this crabbing boat was doing sitting there, and she informed me that it had washed up on the dock at some point in the middle of the night.  Furthermore, the boat seemed to have been stolen, and calls to the Coast Guard to come and recover Mildred had gone unanswered.

A visitor in the night.

The wind on the Chester was unusually brisk this year, and a fresh southwesterly was already building by 7:30am, pinning the rocking Mildred to the long dock.  Soon enough, Wayne Brady (aka Cap’n Wayne…not the other Wayne Brady of Chappelle’s Show fame (insert inappropriate-for-family-content quotation here)) popped in and argued that because of the potential damage to both the dock and the Mildred, we couldn’t wait for the Coasties to get the stolen off of its precarious landing spot.  Wayne has been around Bachelor’s Hope taking care of the farm and the boats since my mom was kid, and as far as I’m concerned he is the distilled essence of the Eastern Shore, as friendly as can be and always knowing the right solution at the right time, so his word was all I needed to shake me out of my Saturday morning relaxation time.  With me and my cousin Pierce in tow, Wayne led the way out to the Mildred. 

Pierce intrepidly heading out to the Mildred.

A closer inspection of the scene confirmed Cap’n Wayne’s suspicion, as the Mildred was moving to and fro against the dock, already having uprooted several dock boards and threatening more.  The boat herself wasn’t in too rough shape, although a few wooden supports for her canopy had broken and the trot line winch seemed to have narrowly escaped being bent by the dock—although that could change with the breeze starting to whip up. After getting rid of a few jammed dock boards with a massive crowbar he’d brought along, Wayne hopped aboard to try to drive the Mildred off the dock, but as soon as he turned over her engine, she shot straight backwards before the engine cut out.  It was one of those moments that makes you cringe as you anticipate the inexorable damage that comes with boats hitting immovable objects (or other boats) and can’t do anything about it, but thankfully no further damage was caused by this attempt.  After a few “dangs” and “dog-gones”, the Cap’n assigned Pierce and me to hold the crabbing boat off the dock and hopped into our little bateau, which always proves a solid towboat what with all of its 10hp—a good thing, since the Yetsgo was occupied, standing vigil aside the Silver Heel.

Stolen boats and docks, not a match made in heaven.

Having chugged around the dock, Wayne tossed me a line, which I made to the Mildred.  With Pierce still fending against the onslaught of the ever building chop, I hopped onto the bateau and this time the reverse was purposeful as we tenderly pulled the Mildred off the dock (for the sake of steerage, towing a large boat with a tiny boat is almost always better done from the bow in reverse).  We made good progress, pulling the waterman’s boat around the Osprey nest standing guard on a piling at the end of the dock and over towards a mooring on the leeward side of the dock with no difficulty. 

As we approached the mooring, a larger crabbing boat motored over, having been alerted early by Wayne that Mildred was at the Hewes’.  These crabbers were friends of the owner of the Mildred, and we gladly handed our charge over to them.  Standing back now to take in the damage, the scene was not pretty.  Although the physical damage caused by a night pinned to windward of the dock was minimal, the people who had stolen the boat had absconded with most of the expensive instruments on board the Mildred.  One of the crabbers rescuing the boat sneered in disgust as he tossed a few dead crabs overboard—the fruits of an impromptu fishing expedition for the thieves the night before.  A few beer cans were all that these people had left behind to commemorate their time aboard the Mildred.

The bateau was pressed into service.

It’s too bad that the hardworking crabbers of the Shore have to deal with the occasional dirtbags who don’t at all respect the property of those who help to make the Eastern Shore so special.  More tragic about the whole affair was that we were told that the owner of the Mildred was going through a spell of particularly hard luck, with health troubles and home repairs stacked on top of his now stolen and damaged boat.  Somewhat ironically, the owner of the rescue boat let us know that the thieves had tried to make off with his boat first, but his engine was fitted with an auto-shut-off that the hoodlums couldn’t overcome.  That crabbers need to fit their boats with such devices is a sad commentary on affairs, but thankfully this is a rare event (from what I can gather).  Wayne and the crabbers suspected a group of local young “drugheads,” but whoever it was, hopefully they’ll get caught.  There’s no place for such actions in the relaxed and collegial atmosphere of the Eastern Shore rivers.  At least for our sake, though, it was a little unexpected adventure.

So anyway, so much for the relaxing Saturday morning!