Wednesday – Thursday, June 12 - 13, 2019
Havre de Grace, MD, Tidewater Marina
We had a couple things to do on our way out of Herrington Harbor North at Tracys Landing.
1 - Pump-out, which was on the same dock as us, free, and do-it-yourself – yay! But we had to move the boat to it, all of about 50 feet away! Ugh! Start her up, move the short distance, and change direction 180 degrees, pump-out & done!
2 - Fuel, which meant stopping at Herrington Harbor South since they only carry fuel at the harbor that does not have the working yard and mechanics. (Really?) So off we went about 4 miles south, filled up our saddle tanks and were finally on our way by 9:30am. Whew!
We have decided to skip some of the typical stops along the east coast so we can get up to the remarkable Canadian waters we’ve heard so much about. We can always do the east coast by car another time. Passing Annapolis and Baltimore were two such stops we skipped. Instead we pushed on up to the Susquehanna River and stopped at Tidewater Marina in a quaint little town called Havre de Grace, Maryland.
It had been a nice day on the water until just before we arrived at the marina when the wind kicked up. The entrance was narrow and after entering the marina we had to turn the boat 180 degrees so we could tie up at the end (the T) of one of the docks with the bow facing the incoming waves. Brian did a fantastic job – got us in the harbor, turned around, and with Sue and the dockmaster's help while the strong winds were blowing us off the dock, got us securely tied up by 4pm. Whew!
Where did this town get its French name from? Well, it seems that during the Revolutionary War, General Lafayette had visited this small town and stated that it reminded him of the French seaport called Le Havre, which had originally been called Havre de Grace. When the town incorporated in 1785, the citizens chose to use the name of the port Lafayette had mentioned. For those non-francophones like us (though Brian did take 1-year of French in HS), its translation into English is Harbor of Mercy.
Now you may have been thinking - how should one pronounce that French name? Sue’s first thought was … Football's Brett Favre’s last name is pronounced /far-v/ … plus it seems a lot of French words don’t pronounce the final letter(s), so maybe something like… /har-v deh grahh/ with sort of a French accent. Then we learned that if you try to pronounce it any other way than how it is written in English, you would be stared at like you were speaking a foreign language. The correct pronunciation is /have-er de grace/ with /have-er/, not /hah-ver/, and grace rhyming with the word race. Though correct, it felt strange trying to say it that way, so we just never said the name of the city – simple solution!
With rain expected the next day, we decided to stay an extra day rather than move on. We walked into town for a late dinner and called it a night. The rain arrived overnight as expected and continued throughout the morning leaving a muggy, mostly cloudy afternoon for us to take in the town. Havre de Grace is a very ecologically-minded town with recycling everywhere, and public gardens built for storm water filtration and soil erosion control using native plants. There is a three-mile, self-guided walking tour called The Lafayette Trail, that we did not do, but it is uniquely set up with a dark blue strip along the sidewalk that could be followed and a phone app that describes various locations along the way. Instead, we walked along the waterfront promenade which started at the Concord Point Lighthouse and had historical information boards all along. It also took us to their maritime museum which was interesting, especially the exhibit named “Beyond Jamestown – Life 400 Years Ago.” The Decoy Museum was also along the promenade but we skipped that in favor of a stop at Bomboy’s Homemade Ice Cream Shop – soooo good!
More rain was predicted in the evening and we’d hoped to beat the storms by getting to a restaurant before they arrived. Unfortunately, we weren’t so lucky. A giant thunderstorm blew up just to the west of town and half-way to the restaurant, the downpour hit. Our umbrellas were mostly worthless as the nearly horizontal rain pummeled us mercilessly. (So much for the Harbor of Mercy!) We walked into the first restaurant we came to, MacGregor’s, soaking wet, to find an open table for two in a packed restaurant – that was lucky! After great meal and the storm had passed by, we walked back to the boat, still in wet clothing, but happy that it was no longer raining.