11/05/2023
My wife and I have been cruising the Chesapeake Bay for about thirty-five years now. We have gone through two wooden round stern deadrise work boats, an ancient wooden catboat and a not quite as ancient wooden lap strake folkboat. Our go to cruising boat is a twenty nine foot Webbers Cove down east pocket cruiser.
We have anchored from Mobjack Bay in Virginia, on up to the quiet sections of the Sassafras River. We visited many of the villages, towns and cities dotted along the bay. We both remain as enchanted as when we first started.
Such was the case on the Saturday evening during the Labor day weekend. It was time to get out of town. St. Michaels was overwhelmed with visitors, and we felt it only fair to give them plenty of room to have fun. Leaving Knapps Narrows, we headed west to the fish haven close by. Thought we might test our prowess as fisher people. That did not go all too well, so headed on down to the Little Choptank, looking for a quiet anchorage. We got settled in a nice cove with a prevailing southerly breeze, and wide open sky. Spent the evening chatting, like an old married couple does, watching the sun set and the stars come out. Later that evening I found myself standing on the aft deck, brushing my teeth, gazing absently into the heavens when I happened to notice this string of three or four lights just above the western horizon. Bizarre? Yes. A little research revealed this was a section of the Starlink satellite stream I’d heard about. For those that don’t know, Starlink is the name of a satellite network developed by the private spaceflight company SpaceX to provide low-cost internet to remote locations. As of July 2023, there are 4,519 Starlink satellites in orbit, with hopes for as many as 42,000 satellites. Where had I been?
Sunday, we found ourselves at a late afternoon anchorage in Edge Creek. We had checked on the possibility of a viewing that evening, 20:59 was the projected passing. And right on time, like a silent train traversing the heavens, a stream of twenty five to thirty satellites passed overhead, all equally spaced, to our everlasting amazement.
The night sky is filled with manmade objects, high flying planes, and the occasional satellite, but we have never seen anything quite like this. It is a testimony as to mankind’s achievements, and yet, the heavens have been altered, for better or worse. But then, so has the bay and the world for that matter. Enjoy what you have.
