and other tourists going to be happy about the Crisfield come-heres, or at least with their outward and visible sign: condominiums? I threw off that shadow as Solomons Lump light passed to starboard and I started listening for the bell at green “5”. Pretty soon we would turn to head south in Hal’s 17-foot cutty until we reached the entrance of the Little Annemesex channel to Crisfield and Somers Cove Marina.
Somers Cove is definitely one of the big attractions for boaters visiting Crisfield. With more than 400 slips and famously easy to maneuver around, there is nearly always plenty of room for everyone. The marina was built in the late 1950s, while Crisfield’s favorite son, J. Millard Tawes was governor of Maryland. The state still owns and maintains it and, over the years, has expanded its slips and facilities. The marina is now also the site of the J. Millard Tawes Museum and Visitors Center. And it was here that Hal and I made our first stop, after tying up at a transient slip and arranging for the ship’s dog to cool his heels with a big bowl of water and a bully stick in the shade of the nearby picnic pavilion.
The museum is a great place to get a handle on Crisfield’s history. If you can do it, be sure to take Crisfield Heritage Foundation curator Tim Howard’s walking tour, which leaves the museum every morning at 10. Thanks to the fog, we didn’t manage to make it, but it’s going to be a prime motivation for my next visit to Crisfield. Howard, a Crisfield native, has an enthusiasm for the town and for history with a capital H running deep in this veins. Like so many men in Crisfield, his beginnings are inseparable from the water and the seafood industry, but like so many men in Crisfield he has been forced to look