We arrived in Oxford on Wednesday, Sept 27. Oxford was described as the ‘perfect little town’ so we were anxious to see it. It has a famous B&B/restaurant, the Robert Morris Inn, that people from all over the north east drive to for the weekend. Author, James Michener, believes that they have the best crab cakes ever. Robert Morris, Jr. is credited as the ‘Financier of the American Revolution’. He spent his personal savings to finance the continental army and, a close friend of Washington, became the first Finance Minister of the United States. Both the restaurant and the B&B are beautiful and we were glad that we went there for lunch. However, as much as we wanted to have the best crab cakes ever, we have had too many crabs and had sandwiches instead!
We are anchored in what is called Town Creek which is actually much larger than a creek and runs through the main part of Oxford. We can see marinas across the water and new mansions behind us. I don’t think you can buy a house in Oxford for less than $1 million. My dad tells me that there are more millionaires per capita here than anywhere in the US! We took the dingy in to find a place to have lunch. It is sad that many of these ‘water’ towns have lots of marinas but no dingy docks for transient boaters like us. We have had trouble finding places to land the dingy to go ashore to help their economies. Guess they just haven’t thought of it from that point of view. We found a restaurant about ¾ of a mile from where we finally put the dingy in so we got some much needed exercise. Lynnie had her second blue crab fix and Rick had a Chesapeake Club, which consisted of rockfish, topped with crab and melted cheese. Of course eating crabs have to be chased with a beer or two. Below, two makeshift dingy docks.
We could see the wind whipping up the water and came back to Rickshaw to see that she had dragged anchor so that we were part way in the channel – which is a no-no and we could wind up with a fine if the local water police stopped by, I guess sort of like parking half way on the highway! Anyway, since a storm was coming we closed up the flybridge “smiles” (…which are the zippered clear vinyl windows…), put the dingy back on the boat, picked up the anchor and moved.
Now, to steal from Snoopy’s writings … “It was a dark and stormy night”... it was a doozie of a storm and our anchor dragged again. We were getting close to a private dock but since it was raining so hard and the wind was about 20 knots, and it was dark, we were afraid that moving the anchor would do more harm than good. So, we kept an eye on where we were vs. the dock, with everything ready to start the engines, if needed, to keep her stationary and into the wind. First time we have had to stay up all night on watch! But we made it through and moved it in the morning after the wind died down. We can't complain because we have had such fabulous weather most of the 2 1/2 months we have been in the Chesapeake.
We took the dingy into town for a second day and rented bikes. We tooled around the town which only took about 2 hours since it is a really small town! Following are some miscellaneous shots of the town. You can see the ferry terminal behind Rick's right shoulder.
We left Oxford on Monday morning, 10/3. After being here 6 nights, it was time to move on. We had a very relaxing time with each of us doing some chores around the boat. We are heading back to Solomons, MD which is half way to our next stop, Crisfield, MD, back over on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake.
