MINDING THE ROOTS AT TAVERN CREEK-2
When you're fifteen or sixteen, you are invincible. A no brainer. Course, that's what my parents (rest their souls) said constantly. Some of the things you do are without the use of that thing between your shoulders.
My first boat, all mine, was about 14 feet long. A plywood, run-a-bout with two cockpits and a sixteen horse power Mercury outboard engine. I thought the thing flew, until I raced my buddy who had a 14 foot with a bigger engine. Immaterial-----I took that little thing all around the Chesapeake Bay over the course of about five years. When we bought the boat, it needed to be rebuilt. I did that, and think I really did my father proud. At least the thing floated and gave our posse in Gratitude water transportation. We almost flipped once in heavy water, had blue water coming over the bow, and never ran aground because all you did was get out and push. We did have a great respect for the Bay and what could happen to us, but we were teenagers..........what'ya want.
I guess we figured that if we got into trouble we'd just pull up on a beach or a pound net like this one and wait till somebody came looking for us. Great place to be a kid.
This is a view of the Eastern Shore of the bay from the mouth of the Chester River looking North. I always try to point the camera north because the colors are more saturated in that direction as opposed to the other three points of the compass. Tavern Creek is just inside the point of land off the bow of the sail boat. The water at this spot is probably around ten to fifteen feet deep, so we would have had a long swim if something went wrong. But we knew nothing ever went wrong!
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