meeting a friend for the first time

Over the last few days I have circumnavigated, by car, Chesapeake Bay.  I was driving up to Baltimore to see a ballgame with my daughters, heading north on the Eastern Shore and then back down south on the mainland.  Along the way I met an old friend for the first time.

Friday, northbound on a beautiful morning and having just arrived in St. Michaels, I received an email from Drew McMullen of the Sultana Education Foundation telling me Spartina had been accepted to attend the Sultana Downrigging Festival in Chestertown.  This is a wonderful event that I've enjoyed taking part in the last few years.  It is mostly a tall ship event, with limited openings for smaller boats.  I very much appreciate having Spartina chosen as one of those boats.  

Above is a screen shot of the first two vessels, outside of the tall ship class, invited to take part, Spartina and The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum's skipjack Rosie Parks.  This was a nice bit of serendipity as I was in St. Michaels to visit the CBMM where I would see the Rosie Parks and also meet, for the first time in person, my longtime email/blog friend and now president of the museum Kristen Greenway (known to readers of this blog as Kiwibird).

I spent that morning walking about the 18 park-like acres of the museum - not nearly enough time to see it all - getting a first hand look at the Rosie Parks, below.  There are skipjacks, buy boats, tug boats and countless small crafts there, plus a lighthouse, crab shanty and just about anything else you could imagine from the shores of Chesapeake Bay.  It felt like an old classic working waterfront, maybe because it once was a working waterfront.  How cool is that?

Late morning I met up with Kristen and we had a brisk walk (Kristen is the only person I know who walks faster than me) into town for lunch at a nice restaurant on South Talbot Street, the main road through St. Michaels.  

Over the past few years I've had occasion to finally meet people that I had gotten to know first through emails and blogs.  Offhand I think my friends Paul and Dawn, Barry and Curt.  Those meetings are always interesting because there is so much that you know about the person, and yet some very obvious things you don't know.

It was much the same with Kristen.  I knew about her kayaking, her family and her work, yet I did not know how to pronounce her last name.  She knew that I enjoyed taking photographs and sailed a boat designed by her fellow Kiwi John Welsford, but she did not know how to pronounce the boat's name (Spartina, with a long "I" and rhymes with Carolina). 

 

Lunch was a treat.  We started by talking about Kristen's dreams and goals for the museum, which was interesting and exciting, but then the conversation drifted off to about a dozen different topics - kayaking, sailing, John Welsford, family, tall ships, work, food, photography and friends - each topic leading to another, then another.  The lunch hour went much too quickly and I don't think we finished any one of those conversations.

Walking back to the museum we took a side road off of South Talbot, walked behind a church and then down Cherry Street between the homes to where the road turns into a small foot bridge near a marina.  There the view opens up to the beautiful Miles River, sailboats dancing in the distance, and the grounds of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  Kristen could not help but smile at the scene, and neither could I.   This is my view!" she said.  I think she has found the perfect place to be, and the museum has found the right person lead the way.  

Congratulations, Kristen, on the new job.  It was nice to have finally met you.  I'll look forward to finishing those conversations someday.