Back to the Water
How lucky are we?
Having lived the first half of my life landlocked in America’s great Midwest, I look at the Chesapeake each day with gratitude and awe.
Now comes the time when fair days invite all of us children of the Chesapeake to do more than look.
Of course some of us are heartier than others. The Chesapeake and its many rivers are always there. Beachcombers and dog walkers go out in all seasons, even when nor’easters blow their hair southwest and throw sand in their eyes. If you paddle your own kayak or canoe, you’ll find good boating weather all winter long.
Anglers will abide most any weather, as Sporting Life columnist Dennis Doyle reminds us. With the opening of rockfish season April 16, the lure of trophy giants has fishermen and women biting just as they hope the fish will.
From now through November, Chesapeake waters will be the best place to feel what life in this region is all about.
So in this issue we take you there in ways we know best, words and pictures. Each of this week’s features takes us back to the water. A couple illuminate the lore and lure of sailing: Tom Hall’s story about high school sailing teams and the Annapolis Junior Keelboat Regatta; and Mike Rusinski’s first-person account of his midlife switch from power boating to sailing — Trading Our Combustion Engine for the Power of Wind is Rusinski’s Bay Weekly debut.
Another, Nostalgia by Diane Knaus, recalls the thrill of driving your own boat — as well as the pitfalls.
For safety’s sake on the water, our inquiring Chesapeake Curiosities columnist Christina Gardner reminds you to examine your life jacket.
Two more stories invite you to our rivers this Saturday, April 30: The Southern Maryland Celtic Festival and Highland Gathering on the Patuxent at Jefferson-Patterson Park and the inaugural Pigs and Pearls event on the West River at Pirates Cove in Galesville.
As getting you to the water is our goal, this issue also shines the spotlight on five Bay Weekly partners offering special opportunities on that element: the Wild Goose Chase bike tour at Blackwater Wildlife Refuge and Boaters Expo at Herrington Harbour North, both two weekends hence; plus the town of North Beach, Flag Harbor Marina and SUP2U Kayak Rental.
See you on the water, the element of the season.
Hale and Farewell: Lee Boynton
I cannot end My Back to the Water letter without paying tribute to Lee Boynton, the Annapolitan and American impressionist painter who died April 24 at the age of 62, taken by colon cancer. For I am one of hundreds taught by Lee to see the water as well as aspire to painting it.
In the beginning, there was light. Those are the first of Lee’s words recorded in my journals of the half dozen watercolor classes where I was his student. The life is in the light; the life is in the paint.
Lee radiated the light of life as he spoke those words. A religious man, he believed in the divinity of the light God had created.
Light reflects as well as illuminates, Lee explained as he sought to teach us to paint lowlights as well as highlights, gradations, reflections and shadows. We caught some of the reflection of his light. He made us understand, believe and see with his life-inspired eyes.
So I see the water now in the color it takes from light, sky and atmosphere. I search my vocabulary for the words for those colors and my palette for their pigments. With opened eyes, I see the atomic vitality of the dance of life. I am one scintilla of the legacy left by Lee Boynton on this earth.
Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and publisher; [email protected]