Point Lookout, Ridge, MD

On Sunday morning, July 12, Jonny ventured out to paddle among the jelly fish.  We recently learned that they are called nettles in this part of the world. And there were many of them. Apparently they arrived a month early this year - lucky us!  

While he paddled, Lynn settled in to start watching her favorite Sunday morning political shows.  But that was short-lived as Jonny was anxious to shove off. And so we did at 10:10 bound for the Potomac River.

The bay was sparkling and calm and though the temperature was still hot, there was much less humidity.  There was surprisingly little boat traffic.  We continued watching our morning shows until George Stephanopolous’ show mysteriously stopped broadcasting and ran endless commercials at which point we tuned into some other shows until we burned out on watching the depressing spectacle of our nation’s politics.

As we turned onto Smith Creek, we passed this pretty and unusual blue-roofed barn.

We arrived at Point Lookout Marina just inside the mouth of the Potomac River at 2:30.  We are continuing to stay at marinas for now because it’s so hot that we want to use our AC and our generator is broken so we can only use the AC while at marinas.  This one had good reviews so we thought we would give it a try.

We tied up with the helpful aide of the owner, a friendly woman named Jennifer whose reputation in the reviews had preceded her. There were very few boats on the docks, but as we explored the grounds we discovered many on the hard in the adjacent boatyard. The marina did have a pool but getting to it required us to walk through a hot dusty parking lot and the boatyard.  It was nowhere near as attractive as the pool at Spring Cove plus it was filled with kids.  We walked back to Zendo and relaxed and read in the coolness and comfort of Zendo’s AC.  

Before long and after a brief nap, it was 5:00 and we had lost our motivation to go swimming. Instead, we opted to try the marina’s on-site restaurant.  We donned our masks and walked over and were seated on their porch overlooking attractive grounds, a small koi pond and the river.  We were the only guests until finally about 6 tables were filled, all appropriately socially distanced. We had a surprisingly good dinner of steamed shrimp, crab cakes and especially delicious green beans (with garlic).  

Seated nearby was a couple who had recently docked behind us.  We were immediately attracted to them because they had a Catalina 30 sailboat, much like the one we used to have.  They were a very nice couple from Kentucky and were interested in our transition to a trawler.  We chatted with them for a bit  and invited them to come on board later to see Zendo.

They took us up on our offer and came aboard and it was clear that Rita was particularly impressed with the comfort level of a trawler vs. a sailboat.  Lynn got a kick out of the fact that she had read most of the books that Lynn had lying around and mentioned being active in the Black Lives Matter movement  back home in Kentucky.  This was a welcome antidote to the not uncommon siting of Trump flags on boats that we have encountered on this cruise.

After a beautiful sunset,  we just read and retired early.