Down The Bay

Frances A. "Fran" Wilkins called the other day to talk about a recent column I had written about the fate of the old Port Welcome, the popular excursion vessel that sailed out of the Inner Harbor for nearly 30 years before being sold to new owners in Michigan in 1987. The object of Wilkins' veneration wasn't the Port Welcome, but rather the Wilson Line's Bay Belle, which she boarded each summer with her family during the 1950s. They were off on their annual voyage to Betterton and a two-week vacation at the end of July and into August at the now-demolished Hotel Rigbie.

Ed Stawinski writes from Perry Hall: "The Great Lakes give off 'lake-effect snow.' Why doesn't the Chesapeake Bay give off 'bay-effect snow?'" It can, and it has, but rarely. Ideally, lake-effect snows require cold winds across broad, open water, then rising terrain to lift and cool the air, forming snow. The bay is small, with flat terrain on the lee side. Still, north winds down the bay have dropped snow on Norfolk.

I'm going to wander away, awayWhere there are islandsI'm going to sail on down the BayWithout a thought for the night.

The Martha Lewis, one of Maryland's few remaining skipjacks, will return to its home port in Havre de Grace today with a cargo of watermelons from the Eastern Shore. The crew promises to give away dozens of hefty melons in exchange for a donation to the Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy, the ship's owner. "Be here about 6 p.m., and the crew will sign the watermelon, too," said Mac Taylor, a volunteer sailor who was making the three-day trip to St. Michaels and back. The ship, flying its Maryland and Havre de Grace flags, sailed from its berth in Tydings Park Thursday, loaded with about 400 pounds of grapes, harvested that same morning at the nearby Mount Felix Vineyard.

Ed Stawinski writes from Perry Hall: "The Great Lakes give off 'lake-effect snow.' Why doesn't the Chesapeake Bay give off 'bay-effect snow?'" It can, and it has, but rarely. Ideally, lake-effect snows require cold winds across broad, open water, then rising terrain to lift and cool the air, forming snow. The bay is small, with flat terrain on the lee side. Still, north winds down the bay have dropped snow on Norfolk.

In the summer of 1906, there was something simple that made "thousands of people come home happy." That thing was a daylong steamer sail down the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore to southern Anne Arundel County. In an Aug. 20 advertisement in the morning Sun, family excursions on the Emma Giles to Annapolis and the U.S. Naval Academy , as well as smaller waterfront communities, were described as a saltwater tonic for mind and body. "Then the whitecap sail down the bay: West River, Galesville, Chalk Point ... . A day of rest, advised by all the leading doctors for children."

Although the 1993 sailing season is winding down for most Chesapeake Bay racers, the season for the Naval Academy's Varsity Offshore Sailing Team is only a couple of weeks old.New skipper and team assignments were made recently, after the midshipmen returned for the academic year.But despite having new skippers in place on the boats, and with only four or five days of practice, the midshipmen dominated the Gibson Island Yacht Squadron's Cedar Point Race on Saturday.They took best overall in IMS and PHRF divisions and swept four of the top five slots in PHRF A-2.The Cedar Point Race doesn't go to Cedar Point any more.

A Mass of Christian burial for Timothy Lee Malone, a retired Chesapeake Bay pilot, will be offered at 10 a.m. today at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, Ritchie Highway and Cypress Creek Road in Severna Park.Mr. Malone, who was 78 and had homes in Severna Park and in Naples, Fla., died Wednesday of cancer at his Florida home.He retired more than 20 years. He had taken ships up and down the bay since joining the Association of Maryland Pilots in 1928.A native of Baltimore, he graduated from Calvert Hall College High School.

In a brisk fall breeze, a colorful fleet of 39 sailing vessels set out from the Bay Bridge yesterday on the 11th annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race to Norfolk, Va. Conditions were close to perfect for the start of the 127-mile sprint down the bay, with the sun shining and a 15- to 20-knot wind from the northwest. By dusk, with the fleet off Cove Point, led by Wondwind, Imagine..!, and Californian, the wind had dropped to below 10 knots, and half-a-dozen boats were in a pack behind the leaders.

Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2 [By Radio] -- World War II ended officially at 9:18 o'clock Tokyo time, this morning.It ended with the words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur: "These proceedings are closed."Japan's dream of conquest died under the frowning guns of the mightly battleship Missouri when Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu, chief of staff of the Imperial Headquarters, affixed their names to the instrument of surrender which placed Japan unconditionally in the hands of the Allies.

Frances A. "Fran" Wilkins called the other day to talk about a recent column I had written about the fate of the old Port Welcome, the popular excursion vessel that sailed out of the Inner Harbor for nearly 30 years before being sold to new owners in Michigan in 1987. The object of Wilkins' veneration wasn't the Port Welcome, but rather the Wilson Line's Bay Belle, which she boarded each summer with her family during the 1950s. They were off on their annual voyage to Betterton and a two-week vacation at the end of July and into August at the now-demolished Hotel Rigbie.

In the summer of 1906, there was something simple that made "thousands of people come home happy." That thing was a daylong steamer sail down the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore to southern Anne Arundel County. In an Aug. 20 advertisement in the morning Sun, family excursions on the Emma Giles to Annapolis and the U.S. Naval Academy , as well as smaller waterfront communities, were described as a saltwater tonic for mind and body. "Then the whitecap sail down the bay: West River, Galesville, Chalk Point ... . A day of rest, advised by all the leading doctors for children."

TOMORROW, they will bury one of Baltimore's finest. He was neither powerful nor a politician, not a famous personality or patron of the poor. He was a public servant, a hard-working, honest man whose devotion to his family and his god was matched only by his devotion to this city and the municipal leaders under whom he served. Most Baltimoreans didn't know Richard A. Lidinsky. But they benefited from his service to the city of his birth. Except for a stint in the Navy, Mr. Lidinsky worked almost nowhere else.

For the crew of the Donnybrook, the race begins even before the start gun fires. As skipper Jim Muldoon steers the 73-foot sailboat through Spa Creek, the crew struggles with the sails and lines, positioning them for the moment when the Donnybrook will be powered only by the wind. First they have to get to Buoy Marker 2, the start line for the 70-mile, overnight St. Mary's College Governor's Cup Yacht Race. And they are down a crewmember - Pat Kilbride never made it to the dock in Annapolis; he was stuck in traffic en route from Washington.

In a brisk fall breeze, a colorful fleet of 39 sailing vessels set out from the Bay Bridge yesterday on the 11th annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race to Norfolk, Va. Conditions were close to perfect for the start of the 127-mile sprint down the bay, with the sun shining and a 15- to 20-knot wind from the northwest. By dusk, with the fleet off Cove Point, led by Wondwind, Imagine..!, and Californian, the wind had dropped to below 10 knots, and half-a-dozen boats were in a pack behind the leaders.

They once were lost but now they're found -- the African-Americans who escaped slavery by sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to freedom, who built the great ships that roamed the world from Baltimore, who died on the decks of the oyster boats they captained.Their names were lost to history, buried in old census records and "colored directories." Their stories were not told in coffee-table books celebrating the bay's maritime tradition. If they were known at all, they were known as crab-pickers and deckhands, not as business owners and union leaders and masters of their own fates.

For those with patience and fortitude, this year's 80-mile Annapolis Yacht Club Skippers' Race made for a memorable night of sailing.Sailors had to wait out more than six hours of drifting gently down the bay on an ebb tide Saturday afternoon before a breeze of about 15 knots filled in from the south to carry the fleet the rest of the way down to Cedar Point Light and back again to Annapolis.There were dropouts in each of the three classes, including IMS I, II and a combined PHRF A and B class.

For anyone who cares about Chesapeake Bay there's awarning in the Environmental Protection Agency's threat to cut off cleanup funds for Virginia. Once again we are reminded how many jurisdictions control the water that flows down the bay. If one fails to meet its responsibility, the whole watershed suffers. There is also the reminder that political commitments need to be renewed with each change of local administration.While none of the four jurisdictions in the bay's watershed -- Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia -- managed to meet a deadline for plans to reduce the amount of nutrients flowing into its waters from their tributaries, Virginia has done virtually nothing for two years.

The spring rockfish season opens tomorrow, with the possibility of excellent -- and perhaps protracted -- bay fishing for striped bass from Brewerton Channel to the Virginia line.According to reports from Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service biologists, the peak of the annual rockfish spawn has yet to occur in the tributaries and reaches of the upper Chesapeake, which bodes well for Baltimore-area anglers.The minimum length for rockfish through June 14 is 28 inches, with a creel limit of one per day, and Fisheries Service biologist Martin L. Gary expects the early days of the spring season to produce good numbers of stripers well in excess of that length.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- As another October faded, there was a new look to the afternoon light. On a couple of mornings there had been a touch of frost, and the nights were filled with the sound of migratory geese. On an autumnal migration of my own, I set out in my old wooden boat for the Eastern Shore.It's a migration which raises eyebrows in Havre de Grace. ''Denton? You're taking your boat to Denton for the winter? That's a hundred miles away!'' Well, it's about 103, actually, and at the rate the Sea Horse chugs, it's a 10-hour trip.