Hard Aground in Oxford

Waiting for our generator fix, we’re stuck here in Oxford.  Literally, we are hard aground…though only twice a day for a few hours.  And it’s more like “squishy aground” since while the slip we are in has a controlling depth of about seven feet (we need about eight feet of water) it is soft mud under us that we settle into.  But when the tide goes out we see a lot more of the bottom of our boat than we’re used to.

In the mean time we are looking for ways to amuse ourselves in a town that in high summer would amuse for a weekend.  End of season it’s beyond quiet.  We’ve been here for a week.

There are several restaurants here.  But only the two really expensive ones ($$$ – three dollar signs and up on Yelp!) are still open regularly.  There’s no place open on a weeknight where you’d want to go wearing jeans with the whole family for a casual dinner.  Sure, in the summer time there are a couple of likely spots but now they are “Closed for the season – See you in April!” or operating on weekend only hours.  There’s a store…sort of…where you can pick up milk, eggs, snacks and booze – but not fresh vegetables, meat or anything with a shelf life less than a term in Congress.  There’s library a little larger than Evenstar’s main cabin, a local museum, a used bookstore we’ve not managed to catch open yet, and small but nice park with a gorgeous view.  It actually is very pretty here with lots of well kept yards and quaint, beautiful houses and we can totally see the appeal.  For a while.

But man is it quiet.  We don’t mind quiet, actually we seek it out most of the time.  Generally though it’s on our own terms – at anchor in some peaceful, scenic cove for a few days of time out.  But you can get off the boat, go on shore and walk around, and find things to amuse anyway.  What rankles a bit here is not the location (though we don’t love being in marinas) but the waiting, the sense that our destiny is out of our control while we wait for parts to be ordered and mechanics to come sort out the generator.  While we’re working on our own project lists, being someplace where you can’t walk out and get a screw the right size or a tool you need means it’s not quite so productive either.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad and I don’t want to sound whiny (OK, I admit I do sound a bit whiny…doesn’t mean I want to!).  We have found ways to adapt.  About seven miles away by dinghy up the Tred Avon River is the town of Easton.  Easton has a hardware store, a West Marine, grocery stores and (gasp) restaurants where you can feed a family of four for under $100.  A couple of days ago Kathy and I took the dinghy over there to do some shopping to restock our dwindling supplies.  We didn’t take the kids because the dinghy can’t get up on a plane and go fast with all four of us on it, and our average speed drops from 14 knots to about 5.5 knots, turning it from a 1/2 hour trip to an hour and a quarter.  So Kathy and I took off to pre-scout the town, do some shopping and run a few errands.

With Friday being a rainy washout in the morning we did some extra school.  Will took off sailing in the afternoon while the rest of us puttered around the boat and I finally got the power re-run to the Single Sideband radio.  In the evening one of the casual waterfront restaurants, Schooner’s, was actually open for the weekend and we’d been looking forward to a night without cooking and cleaning so off we went.  It’s a nice place for a casual drink and burger though I’d avoid the desserts as they’re a bit over priced.

Saturday was the planned Great Expotition to Easton, in which your protagonists look forward to getting off the boat, walking around, eating in restaurants and picking up some much needed project supplies.  As a family we would like to recommend The BBQ Joint as being both an excellent place to eat BBQ for lunch, but also one of the better casual stops for dessert as well.  Yes, we went there for lunch and went back for dessert on the way back to the boat.  At lunchtime we were stuffed silly with excellent barbecue and had no room at all to eat another bite.  But after walking out to West Marine, down to the other side of town to the hardware store and on to another set of retail plazas looking for a dessert and coffee break we could not resist the lure of the Apple Brown Betty, Pan Fried Chocolate Chip Cookie (with vanilla ice cream & caramel) or the “Hillbilly Pie” of the day which happened to be a first rate Tollhouse Cook Pie cooked in a cast iron pan.  After searching all over town for something that appealed more (too cool for ice cream now!) we ended up back where we had lunch.

Yes, it was a long dinghy ride.  We walked around half the day with damp tushes from the splashing crossing the most open parts of the water and we were all a bit salty.  And in the end we didn’t even DO anything exciting – no bowling (no one felt like it after walking around all day), no movies at the bargain matinee (nothing looked good), just some walking around, sightseeing, picking up a few things wee needed, and some really good family time.