Photography By Dave Hawxhurst
Annapolis may be the sailing capital of the world, but that’s no help to the boatless. Until recently, I was one of these hapless landlubbers, staring wistfully out into the harbor, those teasing breezes taunting me as I watched sailboats skimming effortlessly out into the Bay. To the boatless, I say, take heart. There is a way to see the Chesapeake from the water and a luxurious one at that: on a six-day sailing cruise aboard the three-masted schooner Arabella.
Normally when I hear the word “cruise,” the images that pop into my head are accompanied by the inevitable seventies TV theme songs: Isaac dispensing advice along with frozen drinks on the lido deck or Gilligan’s ill-fated three-hour tour. I’ve never set foot on a cruise ship before, due to a healthy fear of dressing for dinner, sitting at the captain’s table, and playing shuffleboard. But those fears disappear when I first see the Arabella.
Even from shore, her graceful lines stand out in a harbor filled with expensive yachts, and tourists are including her as background in their dockside pictures. At 160 feet in length, she’s too big to maneuver closer to Ego Alley, but deckhand Tom Braun corrals all eleven passengers into the tender to take us out to the boat for orientation. The first close look doesn’t disappoint.
Built as the 116-foot Centurion in the early eighties by luxury yachtmaker Palmer Johnson, the ship was first owned by Top Gun actress Kelly McGillis and her husband. The current owners purchased the boat at an unusual discount. “It was kind of a fire sale,” says shore manager Kim Paltridge when I inquire after the history of the vessel. She means it literally—the boat docked next to the yacht caught fire, also damaging the Centurion, and its sultry celebrity owner walked away from it. Repair was a simple matter of slicing the hull in half, and adding over forty feet, a main salon, and a mast: a process that took over two years. Completely refurbished, she has been rechristened and repurposed into a luxury commercial sailing yacht.
As the tender rounds her hull to tie up, I can’t even tell where the addition was placed. The slim white aluminum hull, dotted with cabin portholes, is trimmed with gleaming woodwork and topped by a large cabin. As we board, a hot tub and lounging cushions beckon from the deck. And before we even get a look at our cabins, the two stewardesses, Jill Paquette and Jana Broome, greet us with a welcome drink and a smile. The cocktail goes down easy in the large salon, where the bar looks out over tables which can be pulled up for a larger party; twenty-four-hour coffee, tea, sodas, and snacks stand to one side.
Belowdecks, our small cabin seems a pleasant refuge, its porthole revealing a floating hotel room with all the comforts of land. Though the floor space is miniscule, a queen-size bed, full head and shower, satellite television, phone, and storage space are all cleverly tucked inside. Polished wooden trim, a soft blue and green duvet and accent pillows complete a tranquil look. It even has its own climate control, which feels great after the 90 degree heat.
While milling around and waiting for the captain, I take stock of my fellow passengers.
With twenty staterooms, the Arabella has room for forty passengers, which means I’ll definitely be bumping into my boatmates. But this shoulder-season cruise is less than half full, and with nine crew members aboard, the service is close to a one-to-one ratio. As expected, some have come from afar to see the sights and culture of the Chesapeake up close, including Colorado couple Stan and Karen Lush, who have a special con- nection to the sea, having met on a transatlantic voyage almost fifty years ago. But to my surprise, some of the passengers live just down the road, including Tilghman Island resident Raymond Albert, who decided to join the cruise as a pre-retirement trip. “I don’t have a boat, so I don’t get to see the Bay from the water side,” he explains.
The trip does seem like it could be a boon for both tourists and locals who want to see their native waters while traveling in style. Since the Arabella only draws fifteen feet, it offers unique capabilities for a luxury cruise on the Chesapeake, since it can access smaller port towns on both shores. That’s a far superior option for the shallow waters of the Bay; if the Love Boat had ventured from the main shipping channel, its only date would have been with a Chesapeake sandbar.
The crew’s job is to make sure we get that true sailing experience, and Captain Sandy Sutherland is clearly suited to the task. With his weathered, cheerful face and woolly ginger beard, I almost expected to hear a pirate’s “yar” or two during the briefing. Sandy has been guiding the Arabella from the Caribbean to New England for more than three years. To an outsider, it sounds like a full-time vacation, but the captain and crew are working for months at a stretch. “It’s a hard job, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. The crewmates have become his surrogate family. “I give the girls in the crew more gray hairs than my wife,” who stays behind on the couple’s own live-aboard boat in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The captain is not the only crewmember who lives and breathes boats. Deckhand Tom Braun tossed out a stockbroker’s life to go to sea after realizing that a boat “is an R.V. for the world.” Even a job on a swordfish boat (luckily he got off before it hit the famous Perfect Storm, which it survived) didn’t convince first mate Tom Motley to stay ashore. And relief captain Iver Franzen doesn’t just drive boats, he designs them—tall mast historic sailing vessels, to be exact. Their enthusiasm is infectious, making me eager to get underway so I can see them in action.
We’re sent back to Annapolis for dinner, but I finish up my rockfish early, returning to the boat for a drink and some exploring. The Arabella’s brightly lit masts are visible from almost any point in the harbor as are the far-off lightning streaks across the Bay behind her. Sipping my wine out on the bow, I have a fine view of the lights and nature’s power. I also get a good feel for how the other half live.
The next morning, the harbor is steely gray and still as glass, and the boat makes barely a ripple as she gets underway, en route to Oxford. Almost everyone on board is milling around the bow, clutching coffee mugs, searching in vain for one missing element—the wind. Though it would be ideal to slip into one of Maryland’s oldest towns under full sail, we will have to wait until the next day to pay homage to the port town’s wind-powered roots. As Arabella’s engines quietly hum, I realize Annapolis has already fallen far behind us. “We are flying!” yells one of the passengers, and, in the early summer haze, it does seem as if the boat is barely skimming the surface of the water. With no sails to marvel at, I settle in for the “cruise” part of the trip—gobbling up a buffet breakfast of smoked salmon and fresh-baked blueberry muffins, curling up upon a green cushion atop the main salon, and finishing up a good book.
By the time we anchor in the soft mud off Oxford on the Tred Avon River, the summer haze has made the air thick and steamy, like there’s a thunderstorm just over the horizon, itching for a fight. I may be wilting, but the town’s resident amateur historians, Leo and Jean Nollmeyer, are full of energy as they take us on a walking tour. We touch on the sights from the oldest privately owned ferry in the U.S. to an impromptu sing-along in the old Episcopal church. Oxford was home to Robert Morris, Jr., known as the financier of the American Revolution and close friend of George Washington, though, as Leo points out wryly, “as far as we know, he never slept anywhere in Oxford.”
But in this town, Robert Jr. is overshadowed by the story of his father, Robert Morris, Sr., who died after being struck by a ceremonial gunshot as he rowed in the harbor. That night, at the inn bearing his name, a Morris impersonator pays us a visit as we feast on Oxford’s other claim to fame— James Michener’s favorite crab cakes.
The next morning’s run to Solomons Island starts bright and early, and with a major difference:
18-to 20-knot winds. Despite the persistent drizzle, we all run out on deck as word spreads…The sails are going up. The hydraulics hum as the jib unfurls, and the deckhands hoist the stasil and main aloft. Decked out in orange rain gear, relief captain Iver Franzen is at the wheel, and the moment we’ve all been waiting for finally arrives. The engine goes quiet, and all I hear is the sighing of the wind as the sails flap and the Arabella cuts cleanly through the waves. The mizzen, and smaller sails called fishermen, are winched tight, and we are effortlessly, breezily, blissfully sailing. The surrounding land is green and distant, and the water splashes softly as we travel the way people have traveled the Bay’s waters for centuries. Though we will go on to tie up dockside and kayak around Solomons, eat a crab feast at St. Michaels, and see the bright lights of Baltimore from the deck of this long, graceful sailing yacht, this is it. All of us, passengers and crew, the boatless and boat-obsessed, experience the first moment of sailing silence. I could get used to this.
Sara Edelson is a TV producer and freelance writer who lives in Washington, D.C.
