In the last quarter of the 20th century St. Mary’s County Maryland still had outhouses, tobacco farms, fishing villages and plantations. One of the last live radio stations in America carried the only available daily news. There were a couple of traffic signals, a couple of dress shops, small community grocery stores and a Navy base that most military personnel considered a hardship posting.

Still, just as the first English settlers had determined 350 years before, there were always some who saw the remote and marshy peninsulas for what it is: a marketable paradise.



Sunday, May 13, 2012

Sinking and Floating and Sinking Again


The captain seems never satisfied.

By dusk the day after the skipjack, the Dee of St. Mary's, returned overboard the bilge pumps ran sporadically keeping her afloat. Apparently that isn't yet right.

By the next morning the plan was to move the bilge pumps higher into the vessel to allow water to collect in the bottom and climb nearly high enough to cover the keel and definitely high enough to cover the stringers.

Stringers are the four-by-fours, two running parallel along each side of the keel. Their purpose is to strengthen the bottom.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=592oCwGTsJ0

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Skipjack Floats

The Chesapeake Bay skipjack, the Dee of St. Mary's, returned to the water May 11, 2012.

She has been out of the water since May 12, 2010.

Structural repairs were completed during 2010; deck and hull repairs continued through 2011. By the mild winter and spring of 2012 she was ready to be sanded, caulked, painted, coppered and returned to her home element, water.