Essex River/Hog Island row

It doesn't get any better than this: 7:30 AM, Fri. July 2: - Paulie and crew load 7 RnR boats onto Bertha, so that Bertha (and the 7 of us - Paul, Chris and Terri Leake, Jean Verbridge, Jane, Stephanie and myself)) can have a field trip to the Essex River. We snake through the streets of Marblehead, Beverly and Salem, with Paulie expertly handling the tiller and Bertha trailering right behind behind. We arrive at the boat ramp at 9:15, meeting up with Stefan and Stephanie, who brought (their?) motorboat from Marblehead -- Stefan and his bearing our supplies for the day . It is low tide when we set onto the water, which, on the Essex, means very few boats are moving. We carefully make our way past all of the tied-up boats in the narrow channel, some riding high-and-dry on the sand at low tide, until we hit the wider waters in the salt marshes. Blue skies; dry and cool temperature; and some very happy rowers! We pass the Blue Sky Farm, clammers doing their thing in the mud flats, cormorants and egrets working the water, and grass, grass and more grass. On the far side of picturesque Hog Island (where the movie version of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" was filmed), we pull our boats out on a broad, sandy beach flanked with grass-covered dunes at our back). Paulie heads off to find Stefan (on the motor boat) and Stephanie (rowing like a champ, as always) because his radio signal doesn't make it over the dunes separating us from Ipswich Bay. He returns shortly, to lid "Huzzahs!" because all of the food is on the boat. Lunch includes the Leake's famous curry chicken salad, fruit salad, brownies and much more.

We return circumnavigating Hog in the opposite, and longer, direction, as the tide has come up .... but not all that much. At one point, 4 of us are rowing though narrow cuts through the salt grass which at times are not even as wide as a fully-spread pair of oars, but Terrie and I in particular delight in being in this hidden watery world.

As we approach the harbor on our return, the tide is much higher, and there are many more boats moving, including some that seem to want to run us down in the tight channel. But all hands return safely, and most of us stop at Furman's to refresh ourselves with beer and fried clams.

Kudos to our social chairs who planned this great trip.