Spring Cove Marina – Solomons, MD

Tuesday – Friday, June 4 – 7, 2019

The trip from Deltaville to Spring Cove Marina in Solomons, MD covered 69 miles.  Our path took us near Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD. They have a couple target areas in the Chesapeake with exclusion zones during live fire practice. Fortunately, there was no live fire practice scheduled the day of our passage so we could pass through without having to detour around the area. There were lots of military aircraft buzzing around the area, so we kept our distance from their bombing targets the best we could just in case somebody did not get the memo.

We passed a very nicely painted freighter during the day named Mykonos (the freighters are seldom painted this brightly). Sue and I had a chance to visit the Greek Island of Mykonos a few years ago on a sailing trip around Greece, so it caught our attention on AIS, and we had the camera ready when it got in range.

This part of Chesapeake has fish traps in addition to the normal assortment of crab pots. Fish traps are marked with flags on floats. There are double flags and single flags that are supposed to help you determine the orientation of the net. However, once you spot one flag, you need to quickly search the area for the accompanying flags (which are sometime very hard to spot). The nets are supposed to be in deep enough water to allow boats to pass over them without becoming entangled, but we always try to stay clear just in case.

We did have a little bit of a scare with Bo. During the evening of June 3, he got very sick and was shaking for over an hour. By morning he was doing better, but this event, plus a cough had us looking for a vet. Fortunately, there was a vet clinic within walking distance of Spring Cove Marina in Solomons.  We got him over to the vet office as soon as we could and were pleased to find a very experienced vet when we arrived for the appointment. She checked out Bo and was confident it was nothing serious. He had some sort of stomach bug that caused the issues a couple nights previous and the coughing was due to allergic reaction to local pollen. 

Spring Cove Marina in Solomons is a very friendly and comfortable place. The marina staff was very helpful as were the local boaters. Solomons is a bike-friendly area so we rode our bikes to the UMCES Bio lab at end of island. They had some very interesting studies and research exhibits. Sue’s bio-major interests blossomed, and we spent a lot more time there than Brian thought really necessary. ;-)

The marina had a courtesy car you can sign-up to use for a two-hour time slot. We hit local grocery store, auto parts store, liquor store, and Walgreens all in two hours.

We took a few hours to visit the Maritime Museum and Lighthouse located very close to our marina. The lighthouse was originally located at Drum Point at the mouth of the Patuxent River and was moved (in one piece) to the Solomons museum location by the construction company building the local bridge in the mid 1970’s.   Drum Point Light is one of three surviving Chesapeake Bay screw-pile lighthouses. (“Screw-pile” is because the pilings put in the ground under the river were twisted in like a screw - see photo.)

One evening we walked to the neighboring restaurant where a fantastic guitarist/vocalist we playing in the bar. We stayed after dinner and ended up chatting with a retired couple form Canada and Ireland. They’d been together for many years but only got married a few years ago. While they werer at the courthouse getting a license for their boat, they decided to get a marriage license too, so then, they got married – why not?! :-) The guitarist played one song that was written about Key West, which if you’ve ever been there, makes sense: Tripped on a Chicken.