Here’s a “water-view” perspective re: a Chestertown municipal marina.
Include river cruisers as part of an up-graded municipal marina’s potential customer base. Accept that Chestertown is a river town, not a bay town, and that a boater doesn’t have to always be on the Chesapeake—even Bay aficionados know (or can discover) that river boating is often more interesting and lots of fun!
Given smart marketing of a full-service marina (showers, bathrooms, rec room, boat supplies, dock help, bike rentals, etc.) in Chestertown, any number of Bay sailors will elect to cruise up the Chester River as a welcome change from the Bay.
With no intense development along its banks, the Chester River has abundant unspoiled landscapes. There are even a few “legacy landscapes,” a term that describes areas so unspoiled that, from the water, they appear much like they did to early European explorers and settlers. For example, Eastern Neck Island, the National Wildlife Refuge at the mouth of the Chester, is considered a “legacy landscape,” and appears much as Capt. John Smith saw as he explored the Chesapeake in the 1600s. Wildlife on the shore and fish for the casting are come-ons, too.
Let’s face it, the Chester is a remarkably beautiful river, with beautiful tributaries, and boaters can surely be enticed to venture upstream with the prospect of gorgeous views the entire way and the promise of docking at a state-of-the-art marina, with a quiet anchorage, too! Plus, of course, there’s Chestertown itself, a colonial port just begging to be explored on foot or bicycle, a welcome, scenic, stretch-your-legs respite from a cramped vessel.
Gren Whitman
Rock Hall MD
Keith Thompson says
This is nice out of the box thinking and certainly should be one of the core considerations of building an economic plan around the riverfront. I think Drew and Chris over at the Sultana could come up with some good ideas along these lines. I do think there has to be some sort of commercial development that fits in with this, something that helps build the tax base and benefits the business community, but this is a nice starting blueprint in my opinion.
Warrior Bob Kramer says
Rocky… IF folks take the time to visualize the alternatives… then they’d understand what Chestertown would look like as an ordinary town beside a river. And IF they don’t accept being ordinary then they’ll understand what Chestertown would look like as a rivertown. Thanks for sharing your vision.
Steve Payne says
We are a successful commercial river cruise destination now. American Cruise lines came here last year and our own Joe Holt played piano on the cruise. He told me that they are coming again this year.
Lolli Sherry says
I don’t think Gren meant cruises from the Western Shore to the Eastern Shore, but rather short cruises down the river and back from Chestertown. These kinds of excursions are very popular on rivers and large lakes all around the country.
On a different note, Chestertown would be a guaranteed popular place for cruising clubs to hold rendezvous if enough transient slips were available. We cruise with the MTOA, a national trawler group with a very active Chesapeake Bay membership, and we are always looking for new places to get together. A typical summer weekend cruise would bring 25 boats to the town, That is 50 people cruising the streets of Chestertown looking for things to eat, drink and buy. We’ve been to Rock Hall but only rarely Chestertown where we have to anchor out.
If there were slips for as many as 60 boats we wouldn’t hesitate to bring our annual September “Northern Rendezvous” to Chestertown. There are a limited number of marinas on the Bay that can handle that many boats, so we circulate among Cambridge, Crisfield, Portsmouth and occasionally Baltimore although that is very expensive.
A rendezvous with 60 boats lasts 4 days. We spend a lot…using tents (need a place to put them), caterers, meeting rooms, audio-visual equipment. We also look for interesting field trips and speakers. Another 20 rooms might be booked by people who drive in. Everyone likes to lunch in local restaurants , and the gals love to shop boutiques. When the boats leave they need provisions…we run transportation to local super markets…and they need diesel fuel and pump-outs. There is bound to be a trip to West Marine in Rock Hall, and there is always a need for local marine service repairs.
We are only one of many sailing and power cruising clubs who, I can almost guarantee, would put a full service Chestertown Marina on their favorites list in a heartbeat.