Dan: Let’s settle a debate: Which is the better cruising ground, the Chesapeake or Narragansett Bay? Personally, I’ll take Rhode Island over the tartar sauce-covered crustacean capital any day!
Wendy: Dan, Dan, Dan. You reveal your New England blinders so quickly. One does not use tartar sauce when eating the local Chesapeake delicacy Callinectes sapidus, the blue crab that prompted a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the culinary bonne bouche that sailors and boaters love to eat while imbibing Natty Bo and hanging out at the many terrific local dock bars and restaurants—so easy to access on the Bay, and for so many more months than up in Ye Olde Narragansette. It’s Old Bay, Dan. Old Bay. Let’s just start there.
Dan: Start there…end there for all I care. Two hours with surgical tools to get a couple scoops of crab—excuse me, Callinectes sapidus—is fun once, after that it’s called overrated, even it if it comes with a clever T-shirt proclaiming: “I got crabs in Annapolis.” I’ll settle for a cocktail in Newport, THE sailing capital of America. New England boaters have taste. Natty Bo…hah.
Wendy: Oh, we’re going down this path again, huh, THE Sailing Capital of America? Wah, wah. Let’s move on to something less based in dubious opinion. As in, when do you actually get out in your very tasteful yaaaachts up there? You guys are still up to your knees in mud in March when we are already launched. When was the last time you went boating on Boxing Day? We’re out nearly year-round, without resorting to a Franklin-style expedition. Hmm. Maybe not the best reference actually. Sorry.
Dan: Your biggest selling point for the Chesapeake is that you have shorter winters? In my world, you can just open the throttles and head south like proper snowbirds. The fact is, Narragansett Bay has it all. You can slow things down in Wickford, cruise in the wake of Herreshoff in Bristol. If city life is calling, you can head to Providence. And then there’s Newport, where you can tour mansions by day and dodge bachelorette parties by night. Ok, that last point is actually a win for you.
Wendy: And we have all that too, between Annapolis, Baltimore, St. Michael’s, and Kent Narrows, all within a stone’s throw. And yet, we also have 4,480 square miles of rivers, coves, protected anchorages, and places to meander. All without rocks. And fog. Can’t comment on the bachelorette hordes. Sorry, our Bay is the largest estuary in the U.S. of A., and you could spend a lifetime here and still not explore it all. And rich history? Come on. James Michener didn’t write Narragansett, did he? Nope. He didn’t.
Dan: I think you just came up with the region’s new tourism slogan: “The Chesapeake: A great place to meander.” Tell you what, I’ll blast down to Annapolis on my Bertram so we can pick the measly morsels of flesh from a crab while poking around abandoned coves. Then you can take two weeks to sail up to Narragansett Bay where we can have a meal that doesn’t need to be covered in Old Bay to mask the taste.
Wendy: You’re on. Have a straw boater I can borrow to blend in? I’ll bring the Old Bay.
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MHPS Winter 2024
