Crisfield, Maryland, Somer's Cove Marina

Next stop, Crisfield, Maryland, Somer’s Cove Marina

Crisfield is a little town on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay of Maryland. Somer’s Cove Marina is HUGE, having over 500 slips. The marina is well run, all the restrooms and showers immaculate, the docks well-made and maintained, the staff friendly and helpful. There is a bar, where they serve…well, bar food, and nice slushy drinks. The marina is state owned and run.

The town is trying to make a comeback after many years in decline. It is mostly a water town, like many (most?) on the Eastern shore. After Super Storm Sandy, which devastated the town, federal monies came in to allow them to redo many of the main streets, sidewalks, and to build this amazing marina. In the past, we are told, there was a 2 to 3 year waiting list to get a permanent slip. However, in recent years, there have been several townhouse or condo complexes built, each with their own docks. Consequently, there are actually very few boats in the marina. There are 3 or 4 good restaurants, and we tried them all!

We met some fellow loopers while in Crisfield, Debbie and Joe Martin. They had a big, white, Max-like dog, Abby. Max and Abby really took to each other!

We actually ended up staying in Crisfield longer than we thought…why, you ask? Well, there is a boatyard there, Sea Mark, whose owner, Mark Good, is known in the boating world. He is very familiar with Bayliners, and we were able to get our generator serviced. We haven’t used it, but Dan really didn’t want to do the contortion necessary to change the oil and filters!

The other reason we hung around Crisfield was that Mark knows the owner of Cruiseair Annapolis, one of the largest sellers and servicers of marine refrigerators, including Vitri Frigo! Yes, hope was born! Again! Dan talked to him, and, after a few false starts (we think he just forgot to call), he called Vitri Frigo on our behalf. His company won’t service our fridge, since they didn’t sell it to us. But, he thought contacting the company might help us more than our contacting them. We had told him about having the fan replaced before the last failure of the fridge. Here’s the sad sad bottom line: Vitri Frigo did not issue a service bulletin, but turns out you cannot just replace the fan (as was done for us at Atlantic Yacht Basin)..you must replace both the control module and the fan. Terrific. When the Cruiseair guy finally talked to Vitri Frigo about the needed parts, he found out that those parts are in such demand (virtually every VF and Norcold refrigerator owner needs the same ones), they cannot even tell us when they might be available. So, that’s that for now. Electric cooler will be it for a while yet. On with our life.

Max

This next part of the story is hard to tell, and was worse to live through. Two nights before we left Crisfield, we were sitting on the dock having some conversation and wine with new boating friends. Max went onto the boat, probably to get some water. When he was coming back to be beside us, the ramp from our boat to the dock came off the dock, plunging him headfirst into the water. It was dark, the water was dark, and, making matters much worse, when he came up, it was under the floating dock. He had gone into the water a couple of times, but was always able to swim until we pulled him out. But the floating docks don’t leave any air under them, so he struggled over a minute (a long time to be under the water) trying to find a way out. He was in pretty bad shape when we got him on the dock, vomiting and shaking. We watched him carefully over the next couple of days, feeding him a diet of chicken broth and rice. He ate it with appetite and seemed to be recovering. So, we went on to Tangier Island. While there, he seemed to continue to recover, until the second morning when he wouldn’t eat anything. That’s when we knew he was in trouble. There is NO veterinarian on the island, and the closest town was Crisfield, where we had just been, a two hour cruise away. There is no vet there, but they do have a car dealership that rents vehicles. We cast off as quickly as we could, got that rental van in Crisfield, and headed off to Salisbury, which was about 45 miles away.

To make a long sad story short, Max spent 4 days on oxygen and broad spectrum antibiotics. He had developed aspiration and bacterial pneumonia. We spent the third day next to him on the floor, loving on him, and praying for his recovery. But, it was not to be. His old body, riddled with some really bad arthritis, just couldn’t overcome the pneumonia. That fourth morning, the vet called us and told us he had taken a turn for the worse. So, we went, spent a few minutes loving on him and telling him how much we loved him, and then we let him go. Oh my, our hearts are broken. That canine had a really big place in our lives and our hearts.

Now, for a few of our favorite shots of this sweet boy.