Home, Stuff and Food...

After looking at my photos, I either had to label this post as "Miscellaneous" or, as I ended up doing, "Home, Stuff and Food".  I also considered "Angry, What to Do, Scary and Experimental".  In any case this post is an mix...a mongrel...with a variety of different issues and challenges. 

Home ownership is an investment, a significant cash drain and a source of frustration.  Our home was built in 1999.  Our neighborhood is built on rock...mostly limestone.  Issues arise with older homes.  Example: When one of our HVAC units needed attention, the good news is that despite its age, the problem was resolved for a relatively modest sum of money.  However, the owner of the HVAC company told me that a replacement unit for this particular Air Conditioning/Heat Pump, would cost $7,900.00!  Nuts!  

Anyway, back to the photo shown above.  We have a home inspector/builder who is doing some work for us.  Unrelated to his work he spotted some beginning separation of some foundational cinder blocks at one corner of the house and suggested that we should have someone come out and fix it to keep it from getting worse.  We checked around and contracted with AFS (American Foundation Service) to fix the problem.  It was not inexpensive!  In any case, despite specific warnings from my better half, the AFS crew not only made a mess, but they also severed our sprinkler system's main line.  We had a 2-story fountain until they figured out how to turn the system off.  Now we have mud everywhere with the broken line directly under that rock.  Laurie is all over AFS to have the repairs made, with a meeting with them scheduled today as I compose this post.  Aggravation!

On to more "fun", this time related to our upcoming garage sale.  

We keep finding things that we forgot we had and that we've been carrying around for many years now.  One recent 'find' was this Mrs. Stevens Candies Antique Christmas themed round tin box that is just packed with embroidery thread or floss, as it's sometimes referred to.  Pricing it for the sale is going to be a guesstimate at best. 

When I first moved to East Tennessee, I did a bit of fishing.  Before that, Laurie and used to take fishing vacations to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and up into northwestern Ontario in Canada.  It was a cabin in Michigan with a fishing boat...cook your own meals, etc.  In Canada, it was an all-inclusive deal...cabin, meals, guide with a boat and, in one case even a float plane fly-in to an isolated lake. (The pilot was no more than 19 years old)

So now our fishing days are over... How to price this this tackle box full of all kinds of gear and a plethora of lures for our garage sale?  

The same question applies to this tackle box and an even greater assortment of lures!  Then we also have a couple small tackle boxes, a small suitcase with more gear in it including a couple of reels...and let's not forget the 8 fishing rods with reels all ready to go fishing!

Next we have a family related note to report on... Unless you live under a rock by now you have heard about the tornado that came through St. Louis Missouri.  Major damage at the iconic Forest Park and the St. Louis Zoo.  The core group of Laurie's family lives in the St. Louis metro area.  Her sister Bonnie and Bonnie's husband Bill rode out the storm in a parking garage near their home.  This was to avoid hail damage to their new Subaru.  They live about 3 blocks from the area where the heaviest tornado damage was evident.  Even so, they were without power for almost 72 hours.  They transferred perishable foods to coolers or to the refrigerators/freezers belonging to their kids.  Laurie's other sister, Karole and her husband Bob were in Kansas City when the storm hit St. Louis.  When they returned home, the power was still out and they had to throw away all of their perishables.  Scary...but lucky compared to some.  No major issues...just threats of major storm damage here in East Tennessee. 

Now onto some food items...

We continue to try out/test the 'fast food', prepared food items from Costco.  We're looking for winners that we can rely on.

Caribbean Food Delights Jamaican Style beef patties/turnovers in a flaky cornmeal crust were not spicy...not by anyone's definition.  The 'ground beef' had a mushy texture with close to zero flavor.  No amount of the 4 different sauces we tried could save this product.  This is not a 'food' product that we would ever purchase or eat again.  I rarely throw food away, but I made an exception with this item!  Bye Bye!

The next item on the prepared food menu was this 'new item' that we bought at Food Lion.  This Shrimp Penne Pasta comes in individual servings.  Laurie liked it quite a bit and I thought that it was a decent meal.  There were enough shrimp in each of our dinners, one could pick up the bacon flavor and the pieces of jalapeno gave it a modest little pop of heat...just enough that you knew it was there.  To me it was a bit like an upscale mac 'n cheese with shrimp.  It had enough going for it that we will purchase it again... There was plenty of food for almost any level of appetite.

I didn't take a photo of the pack of thin sliced salmon that we'd purchased from Costco so I can't tell you the brand name.  Actually it was a twin-pack of salmon...almost too much salmon for two people to consume in a relatively short period of time.  On more than one occasion we had salmon in a swirl and salmon on crackers or thin sliced bread with and without crackers and capers.  Then I finished off the second packet of the salmon with the above breakfast entree.  My very enjoyable and satisfying breakfast consisted of a thin slice of rye toast, smeared with cream cheese, topped with 2 or 3 thin slices of salmon and topped with an over easy egg.  This is one time that I didn't use Tabasco with my fried egg. 

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them...

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

What a Mess! A Challenging Event!

Everyone encounters challenges in their lives... This post is tied to the challenges presented by our accumulation of 'things', 'stuff', and 'excess' that we've gathered over 46 years of marriage.  Adding to our 'excess', are items that came from my mother many years ago.  In an effort to declutter a bit, we decided to participate in our local neighborhood garage sale.  So much effort already...and so much more to do before the sale in early June.  Hopefully our marital union will survive the stress and trauma!

The first step was to post larger items on Facebook Marketplace just to clear space for all of the other 'stuff' we want to sell.  We posted 6 larger items... 

First there was this 'loveseat' sofa.

Then there was this large buffet that came from Rich's Department Store in Atlanta.

Plus there is this antique cherrywood rocker that we purchased many years ago.  It's from the late 1800s.

This solid oak possum belly baker's table and hutch was purchased at the same time at the cherrywood rocker.  Both purchases seemed rational at the time...

This more rustic antique rocking chair came to us through my mother's estate.

While we have had a couple of inquiries about the baker's table/hutch combination, that's been all the action we've had in the first 3 or 4 days on these furniture items.  We have managed to sell three of the larger items so far.

Neighbors purchased two of these types of almost never used deck lounge chairs.  They were used once or maybe twice and had spent the rest of their life with us in our storeroom.

A master gardener who has done a lot of work for us snatched up this dresser as it filled a need for her.

If you've ever been to an estate sale or an auction, you will have noted that no one wants chinaware.  We have had this nice set of Mikasa for more than 40 years.  It was rarely used and since we retired and moved to East Tennessee it hadn't been used at all.  As expected, we didn't get very much money for the set, but we did manage to sell it through Facebook Marketplace.

Then there is the rest of the 'stuff' that needs to go...to find a new home.  It's an eclectic grouping of odds and ends, collections and past activities or hobbies.  

For years we've been moving and storing this assortment of dolls and doll clothes that my mother had acquired or actually made.  

For several years in a row, Laurie and I headed to Northern Michigan or Ontario Canada for backwoods fishing adventures.  It had been 20 years since we headed north to go fishing although I did go fishing here in Tellico Lake many times earlier in my retirement.  We found the slickers and wet suits in a box we'd been moving from place to place.

I have very little hope that we'll find buyer for these remnants of a set of Czechoslovakian china that my great aunt had willed to my mother...at least 65 years ago.  I suspect that we'll end up just tossing it out.

Antique canning jars, a nicely framed print, folders, a classic candle holder, a pair of painted antique candlesticks, a signed Brooks Robinson baseball, a collectors plate, a set of German steins, a Tiny Tears doll and boxed toy trucks for kids or collectors.  These are just further examples of the mish mash we'll be offering at the sale.

In the preceding photos you will note a couple of items that were also in other photos.  We keep moving things around looking for the 'right place' to display them for sale.  Disorganization is still our condition...although we have priced more than half of what we're going to try to sell.  I still haven't addressed my fishing tackle (4 boxes) or my 9 fishing rods and reels.  Then there is our golf equipment!  At least 4 bags with golf clubs, balls, etc., plus extra clubs.  In addition, there will be a lot of clothing offered for sale.  The question is, how much can we sell vs. how much do we end up delivering to local charities?

Just click on any of the photos...

Thanks for stopping by!  Wish us luck as we'll need it!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum #3

…continuing with our tour of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum which is located in St. Michaels Maryland.  We were nearing the end of our family trip to explore part of the Delmarva Peninsula.

This final post about our visit to the Museum will look at a variety of exhibits…in no particular order.

The first photo shows a punt that's equipped with a punt gun… These were tools used in the commercial waterfowl hunting trade.  Restaurants in the big cities not only craved oysters by the bushel, but also a steady supply of waterfowl for their clientele.  The Chesapeake Bay area is a critical and massive stopover for migrating ducks, geese, etc.

Punts are small flat-bottomed boats with a square bow.  They are used in smaller rivers and in shallow bodies of water.  They’re propelled by pushing with a pole on the river bed.  Punt guns are oversized smoothbore percussion guns that are far too big to fire from the shoulder so they’re mounted at the front of the punt and could be aimed by the shooter.  Guns like this were charged with huge amounts of gun powder and shot…and then were aimed at a flock of water birds.  When fired, a hundred or more ducks could be harvested, just from one shot.

The second photo is one of the results of punt guns being outlawed.  To work around their inability to employ punt guns, market hunters built ‘battery guns’.  Basically they consisted of 3 – 12 old muzzle loaders secured to a wooden frame.  A powder filled ‘trench’ connected to vents caused the barrels to fire in a series. With the spread of gun barrels, they covered a wider area with shot pellets.  However they were dangerous to operate…

In any case, the use of punt guns or battery guns severely depleted the number of wild waterfowl and by the 1860s most states had banned the practice.  The Lacey Act of 1900 banned the transport of wild game across state lines.  Then a series of Federal laws in 1918 outlawed market hunting altogether.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has an impressive collection of artifacts related to water fowl hunting as a pastime and occupation.  As shown above this collection includes firearms and gunning skiffs but in addition there is a sizable collection of decoys…backed up by sinkboxes, tools and clothing.

The Museum’s large decoy collection includes working goose, duck, swan, and shorebird decoys made by more than 70 regional makers…many of them rather famous for their skills.  This display is part of the Museum’s long term exhibition “Stories from the Shoreline”.

Note: Not being a hunter I had to look up the term ‘sinkbox’.  It is a hunting blind consisting of a weighted, partially submerged enclosure that can hold one or more hunters.  Sinkboxes are suspended from a floating platform and are placed in calm water so the hunter can wait for his opportunity with the waterline roughly at shoulder height.  Since the early 1900s, sinkboxes have been illegal in the USA

The first photo shows the “model shop” at the Museum.  The volunteer Maritime Model Guild supports the Museum’s curatorial needs with exhibition models and building kits that are available at the Museum Store.  The Guild also offers classes for building models from scratch.  The Model Guild also hosts radio-controlled skipjack sailing races.  The Museum’s extensive ship model collection numbers more than 300 vessels.

I suspect that this handsome and detailed model of the “Peggy Stewart” was made by a member of the Model Guild.  The original “Peggy Stewart” was a Maryland cargo vessel that, with its cargo of tea, was burned in Annapolis Maryland on October 19, 1774.  It’s destruction was as a punishment for attempting to get around the boycott on tea imports that had been imposed in retaliation for the British occupation of Boston following that city’s “Tea Party”.  The burning of the “Peggy Stewart” in known as the “Annapolis Tea Party”.

Note: Incidentally, the most important cargo aboard the “Peggy Stewart” was removed from the ship before she was burned.  That cargo consisted of 53 ‘indentured’ servants.

The first photo shows the tugboat “El Toro” after it had been acquired by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and it had been renamed “Chessie”…and later “W.J. Harahan”.  The “El Toro” was built in 1928 and spent many years of her life moving railroad car barges across Chesapeake Bay. 

The second photo shows the 12 foot high compound 2-cylinder steam engine the tug boat was equipped with.  This engine produced 700 horsepower…just a fraction of the power needed for today’s tugboats.  As I’d mentioned, the Museum covers a wide variety of Chesapeake Bay endeavors…

…and the variety of displays at the Museum continues.  In this case it includes a collection of about 1500 historic and contemporary paintings, prints and other artwork.  Works by regional artists as well as contemporary artists are featured along with posters, print advertisements and detailed drawings.

I failed to note the photographic artist who took this eye-catching aerial photo of a creek or small river where it emptied into part of Chesapeake Bay.  Nevertheless, I’d love to have the original of this photo on my wall at home!  Nature's designs are endless...

I do love ship paintings…and this one is no exception.  This is a painting depicting the pungy “Geneva A. Kirwan” sailing along the Bay.  This vessel was built in Madison Maryland in 1882.  The painting was completed in 1933 by Louis Feuchter.  Feuchter was born in 1885 and died in 1957.  He was known for his maritime paintings and he was quite prolific. 

Many of Feuchter’s paintings can be purchased for less than $1,000 with many in the $500 range.  The highest price for one of his paintings was for a painting of the “Pungy Amanda F. Lewis”, which sold for $4,312. 

Note: Yes…I did have to look up the ship style referred to as a ‘pungy’.  Basically, a pungy is a two-masted schooner that was used for oyster dredging in Chesapeake Bay.

The “Stories from the Shoreline” exhibit also addresses the mass production and marketing of motorboats.  This modest display of outboard motors caught my eye as I’m always looking for items that tie back to my former ‘work life’ in some way. 

In this case, that small outboard motor to the left center of the photo did tie back to a former employer.  The close-up photo of the top of that little 7.5 HP “Sea King” outboard motor shows that it was manufactured for and sold by Montgomery Ward.  The company sold Sea King outboard motors from 1933 until 1986. (I didn’t join the company until 1987)

Primary manufacturers of a variety of Sea King outboard motors included Gale, Clinton and Chrysler Marine.  Some discontinued Lockwood (Evinrude/Outboard Motors Corporation) motors were also relabeled Sea King.  The same thing happened with some Thor outboards.  Apparently old/antique Sea King outboard motors are quite collectable with a number of them for sale on-line.  Another company advertises that they have replacement parts available.

This rather worn vessel is a five-log Tilghman Canoe.  It is the last of the 68 built by Robert Lambdin of St. Michaels Maryland.  These canoes were used in the fisheries industry along the bay.  This one was built in 1893 and it cost $212.57 at the time.  In 1910 this ‘canoe’ was converted to a powerboat by removing the centerboard and adding a propeller shaft.  It had been abandoned along the shore of Chesapeake Bay for several years before it was rescued and stabilized for the Museum.

…continuing with my boating or boat theme.  This is the “Bessie Lee”, a 20 foot long Seaside Bateau that is located in the Small Boat Shed at the Museum.  This is a two-sail periauger rig or “cat-yawl”.  In broad terms, a periauger or peroque is a shallow draft, often flat-bottomed 2-masted sailing vessel which also carried oars for rowing.  These vessels were often created by digging out a log, splitting it longitudinally and then adding at least one keel plank between the halves. 

Only small vessels with a shallow draft could enter many of the inlets around the bay.  But these bateaus were used by local merchants as well as blockade runners during the Revolutionary War.  A family’s boat ca. 1850s may have looked like this.  Bateaus did come in varying sizes depending on their planned use.

This is a Smith Island Power Crabbing Skiff.  Smith Island watermen used similar boats to sail to their crabbing grounds where they caught soft crabs using a dip net.  Originally these were sailing skiffs but engine-powered boats like this began being used ca. 1907.  Sailing skiffs continued to be used in the commercial crab fishery until WWII. 

After retirement from the fishery business, this skiff was used for pleasure.  She was found stored in a Pennsylvania barn but she has been restored to her original configuration and paint colors.  She was built ca 1925.

This early cabin cruiser was built in 1926 by the Mathews Company in Port Clinton Ohio.  The original owner spotted it on display at the Maryland Yacht Club in Baltimore and he paid $6,500 for it…a lot of money back in 1926.  Named the “Isabel”, she was a ‘show boat’ so it came equipped with anchors, life rings, monogrammed china, linen and silver.  Some of those artifacts are also on display at the museum. 

The family of the original owner spent almost 70 summers cruising the Chesapeake Bay on “Isabel”.  Her heirs were among the founders of the Classic Yacht Club of America and they participated in numerous rendezvous, parades and cruises.  With the exception of a new diesel engine, the boat retains most of its original equipment and fittings.  In 1995 the family donated this classic 38 foot cruiser to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

I’ll end our tour of the Museum with a photo of a more traditional Chesapeake Bay boat.  The 51 foot long “Old Point” was built in 1909.  The builder used 7 pine logs pinned together and then hewn to shape to construct this vessel.  She is a good example of the fleet of boats operating out of Hampton Virginia from the 1910s through the 1960s that were designed to dredge crabs during the winter. 

From December through March, captains and crews lived on their boats so they could leave every morning and dredge for crabs all day.  In the summer and fall, “Old Point” would carry fish and oysters to packing houses or to market.  The former owner of “Old Point”, Captain Ernest Bradshaw, had to transition throughout the year…from fish, to oysters and to crabs.  Part of the Museum’s ‘floating fleet’, “Old Point” was donated to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. DuPont back in 1984.

And so ends our tour of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  To learn more about the museum, its exhibits, waterborne tours, hours of operation and entry fees, just go to Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum | Home Page (cbmm.org).  We certainly enjoyed our experience at the Museum!

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum #2

…continuing with our late September exploration of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels Maryland back in 2023.  This is the second in a 3-part tour of the museum.

The Winnie Estelle is a ‘buy boat’ that was built in Crisfield Maryland in 1920.  She operated in the lower Chesapeake Bay for over 50 years, buying fish and oysters directly from regional watermen and then transporting the seafood to city markets or big seafood houses for packing.  The boat was named for the builder’s two daughters. 

In 1975 the Winnie Estelle was moved down to the Caribbean Sea to be used as a cargo carrier.  Shortly thereafter she was rebuilt for use as an island trader…carrying lumber from Honduras to Belize…and she was also used as a charter boat.  The 64 foot long Winnie Estelle was donated to the Museum in 2014.  As you can see, at the time of our visit the boat was in the boat yard being refurbished and refitted.  In the 9 years that she has called the Museum home, she has been utilized as an educational boat for school children and as well as a charter boat for guests.

The first photo shows the ‘Shipyard Building’ at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  As mentioned in a previous post, the Museum’s working shipyard is intended to preserve the tradition of the working waterfront and to insure that the skills and techniques of early shipbuilders are maintained.  Shipyard staff interact with, visitors answering questions and explaining what they are doing.  In addition, apprentices are trained in the skills required for wooden boat building.

The boat shown above in the shipyard building is named Mr. Dickie. This boat with a scaled down (36 foot) ‘buy boat’ look, is actually new construction.  Work began in 2022 and it was completed the month after our visit.  It was built with heart pine, white oak, Atlantic cedar and western red cedar.  The owner had started building Mr. Dickie at his home in Virginia but when he decided that he needed help he turned the project over to the Museum’s shipyard staff.

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum has an impressive collection of large and small watercraft.  The Museum’s new welcome center (which opened in December of 2023) is currently featuring a long-term exhibition called “Water Lines: Chesapeake Watercraft Traditions’. 

I took this photo of the recreational sailboat Fly when we toured the “At Play on the Bay” exhibit adjacent to the Hooper Strait Lighthouse.  In addition to small sailboats like this, visitors could view an early 20^th century canoe campsite, a boathouse, a 30 foot long Owens cruiser, a 1950’s tackle shop and a yacht club lounge.

This little sailboat was also found in the “At Play on the Bay” exhibit.  In 1932 Maria Wheeler asked a boat builder named C. Lowndes Johnson to design a sailboat that her sons could easily launch and sail on Chesapeake Bay.  The result was the ‘Comet’, an American sailing dinghy.  While the design has evolved and many are now built with fiberglass, this design has endured.  Over 4,100 sailboats based on the original ‘Comet’ design have been built.

At Play on the Bay examines the dramatic changes for Chesapeake Bay over the last century.  It started as a waterway for transportation, to a place to work in the fisheries and on to a place where so many come to play.  Historical moments are explored and the beginnings of tourism is examined, as is the role of sailboat racing and cruising.  Exhibits also include the founding of African American resorts as well as the mass production and marketing of motorboats.

We visited the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum during the ‘shoulder season’ but we did observe that some of the smaller watercraft from the Museum’s fleet were in use taking visitors on tours.  Reservations were required.  Looked like fun though…

The Museum is located on Navy Point in St. Michaels Harbor.  It first was opened in 1965.  When you consider that this area was once a jumbled collection of docks, workboats and seafood packing houses, you have to hand it to the visionaries who conceived of the Museum.

We found the exhibit focused on Chesapeake Bay’s Oyster industry to be quite compelling.  Looking at all those oyster tins, it’s hard to imagine just how many packing houses were operating at the peak of the industry. 

In the early 1600s, Capt. John Smith described oysters lying “as thick as stones”.  They were so abundant that their reefs neared the water’s surface, sometimes becoming navigational hazards.  Most oysters in the early days of the industry were ‘hand-tonged’ by watermen in small boats.  Then dredges imported from New England appeared, bringing about the “Oyster Wars”, a violent struggle between traditional harvesting and the dredgers. 

At the end of the 1800s, it is estimated that over 15,000,000 bushels of oysters were being harvested each year, just from the Maryland portion of the Bay.  Today’s harvests are about 1% of that total!

This photo of oyster-shuckers posing on an oyster shell midden was taken near a Crisfield Maryland packing facility ca. 1891.  It had to be tough work…monotonous too!  Injuries had to be common.  I can’t imagine just how many people were involved in the packing business.  In Baltimore alone, the center of the industry, close to 30,000 people were employed.  During that period as much at 160 million pounds of oyster meat was harvested every year.  An oyster cost just about a penny at retail…or the equivalent of 25 cents each today.  Oysters were on everyone’s menu.  It’s estimated that each resident of New York City ate around 600 oysters a year.  Today, the average American eats about 3 a year...

This boat, or actually a two-sail bateau, is 52 feet long.  The E.C. Collier was built in Maryland in 1910 and she is one of the 35 or so surviving traditional Chesapeake Bay ‘skipjacks’.  She belongs to the group comprising the last commercial sailing fleet in the USA.  The Collier was built mostly from Eastern Shore loblolly pine and white oak.  After 80 years on the water and with the oyster industry in steep decline, she retired from dredging and spent most of her time at a dock on Tilghman Island.  She was fully retired in 1985.  The E.C. Collier was donated to the Museum in 1988 and she is on permanent display.

I took this photo of Bonnie and Laurie on the E.C. Collier as they explored the working world of the Chesapeake Bay watermen.  The exhibit includes everything from harvesting equipment to an examination of the “Oyster Wars”.  The overall theme is about how the Bay’s oyster fishery shaped the area’s history, culture and landscape. 

Note: Did you know?

         ·         Oysters purify the water as they filter it for their food.  A single adult oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water each day.

         ·         Sediment and nitrogen cause problems in the Bay.  Oysters filter these pollutants by consuming them or shaping them into small packets which are deposited on the bottom where they aren’t harmful.

         ·         At one time the oysters in Chesapeake Bay could filter the equivalent of all the water in the Bay (19 trillion gallons) in a single week.  Today it would take the remaining oysters a year to filter this much water...

One more boat… This 41 foot long ‘dovetail boat’ was built in 1834 at Bishops Head Maryland.  She is named the Dorothy Lee.  She was built for oyster tonging as well as for trot-lining for crabs.  Her long narrow hull and light displacement made it a fast workboat.  These boats were equipped with gasoline engines and they have a stern the looks more like a motor racer.  The watermen really appreciated the speed these boats provided.

This photo is titled “Tonging Skiff Gypsy Girl 7”.  It was taken by Robert de Gast and it is on exhibit at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  This 1969 photo shows Tilghman Island waterman Ben Gowe carefully following the Maryland state icebreaker leading him back to a safe harbor after a day ‘tonging’ oysters during a cold snap.  It was a hard way to make a living!  During icy winters, the state deploys small icebreakers to help watermen return to port.  The photo was taken in preparation of a book entitled “The Oystermen of the Chesapeake”. 

In the early days fleet of locally made log canoes would venture into the Bay for a day of tonging.  Commercial hand tonging has been largely replaced by more efficient means of harvesting.  However, recreational tonging remains an ideal way to gather enough fresh oysters for a family or for a party.  All you need is a small boat, tongs and the location of an oyster bar or reef.  Both Virginia and Maryland have an open season for recreational oystering.  No license is required but the legal harvesting methods are via use of tongs or by gathering by hand from open rocks.  Maryland allows residents to gather 100 oysters per day and Virginia permits a daily catch of a bushel.

One more tour of a mixture of varied exhibits and themes explored during our visit to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum will follow…

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave