Father's Day Weekend: Part I

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time.

Otis Redding -- "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"

Welcome to the maiden voyage of the Miss IndiKate! Old Shoreman lore dictates you name your boat after your daughters because "your wife can leave you but your children never will". Aside: I wanted to call the boat the "Freudian Sloop"...Tracy said "But honey, it's not a sloop"! Men are so literal. Our boat is truly a bit small for an offical name, but to us it is the "Miss IndiKate". Funny, Dad and I both came up with the same name. Great minds, huh Dad? The "Miss Short People" just doesn't have the same ring.

Saturday was our first time out with the Miss IndiKate. We chose the Bayside for this excursion because 1)it is a bit easier to navigate and 2) we wanted to spend all day Father's Day on the seaside on an island. The weather was perfect and the boat ran relatively smoothly. Tracy was amazing at docking and trailering, and managed to navigate the tricky idle and keep us from being stranded. I was duly impressed! Once he has the hang of things I want to learn how to do all of it too. It would be fun, for one thing, and, as Tracy says, I need to know how to take over if he "has a stroke or something". Sometimes being married to someone who works in a hospital is so cheery! I just worry about everyone's emotional stability; Tracy worries about Avian Flu and COPD.

We put in at Harborton, a little Bayside town with a public access dock about 5 minutes from our home, and were joined by our friends the Masons. A quick lesson in Eastern Shore vocab...if your family is from the Shore you are referred to as a From Here.If you have been here for two generations or less you are a Come Here. John and Susan are From Heres. They know all the nooks and crannies of the Bayside and seaside, who's waterfront home is who's, and interesting little tidbits about various spots.

The pictures from today are all from our Bayside trip on Pungoteague Creek. The Shore is covered with "creeks", like fingers of water that stretch from the shoreline out to the Bay and the seaside. The coastline here is not smooth like the Outer Banks. The photo below on the left is of a shack on a sandbar right at the mouth of the Bay. Tracy kayaked past this shack several years ago just as the remnants of a bachelor party, including strippers boated over from Hampton Roads, staggered out for the boat ride back to the mainland.

On the other end of the spectrum is the large waterfront home pictured above. The Shore is full of very old homes that look much like this one. What a view they have!

Our "Day on the Bay" was the perfect way to kick off a Father's Day weekend. Tracy was in boat-owner heaven and it is fantastic that the Short People are finally old enough that we can do these things as a family. Next post: The Seaside.