Determined to see this year's Perseid meteor shower, falling on a weekend for a change, our managing editor heads for a quiet cove on the Wye River.
by Ann Levelle
illustration by Richard C. Goertemiller
August on the Bay invariably brings two things: unbelievably hot and humid weather and the Perseid meteor shower. Now, I'm not always in tune with the skies-I hardly ever know when a meteor shower is coming and usually hear about them after the fact. But this time I was paying attention. The 2006 Perseid shower was going to peak on a weekend, and word had it that the good stuff would light up the skies between nine and one. NowthatI could get behind. All I had to do was sail to a dark, quiet creek and get to stargazing.
The question was where to go? We'd have to head to the Eastern Shore to escape the Baltimore/Annapolis corridor for sure, but could we find somewhere within a day's sail that was far enough away from it all? I scanned the charts and decided on the Wye River-although still close to Kent Island and St. Michaels, it would be dark enough for the purpose. No sooner had I decided on the Wye River than husband John came in from his office with bad news-the waning moon would still be 87 percent full during the Perseids, making the dark sky awash with moon glow. "Moon schmoon," I said. "We're going." Even if the moon was going to light up the sky like the Vegas strip, we'd at least have a quiet night on the hook. And it wouldn't rise until ten, anyway, giving us at least an hour or so to work with.
Saturday afternoon proved me wrong on one count-the "invariable" August weather took a break and gave us an absolutely beautiful day. The humidity lifted and left us with a sunny, 75-degree day-plus a perfect 15-knot breeze. We had a ball getting down to Bloody Point, romping along and getting the ol'Dancing Outlawto point higher than she ever had. Once we got into Eastern Bay, we changed our mindset from racing to cruising and let out our trolling lines. Still new at it, we found it rather hectic to fish while tacking back and forth amidst throngs of other sailboats. But we did manage to hook our first fish (though we never actually got it onboard).
Our wind died as we rounded Rich Neck into the Miles, so we fired up the engine. Not long afterward we caught our second fish, a tiny rockfish. We followed the small stream of boats heading into the Wye and took in the idyllic scene-tall grasses, herons, lusciously full trees and stately houses. We passed Shaw Bay at four, and already there were more than a dozen boats at anchor. We skipped that hot spot and moved on to neighboring Lloyd Creek, where only a trawler and small powerboat were on the scene. After circling around the creek several times, not unlike a dog circling its bed, we dropped the hook amidst the four houses, a small duck blind and tiny dock-the perfect quiet creek.
With time to kill before nightfall, I had hoped to go for a swim, but the jellies were out in full force, so I stayed aboard for some reading and a catnap instead. What a life! After dinner and a fantastically orange sunset we turned our attention north (where the majority of the shower should be) and waited for the show to begin-though, skeptic that I am, I couldn't help but worry that we'd come all this way for nothing.
But as we positioned ourselves comfortably in the cockpit, pillows and beer at the ready, I found myself feeling perfectly mellow about it. Seeing meteors wasn't allthatimportant. As the sky continued to darken, I could see the Milky Way and plenty of stars I'm sure I had never seen before. The sky was dotted with so many twinklers I was awestruck, even without seeing any of nature's pyrotechnics. But before long it happened: The "stars" began to explode-like fireworks without the booms. We saw some that were quick bursts of flitting light, others that streaked across the sky with long tails of bright light following and some that even had tinges of color. And when there were none, we could see satellites crossing the sky at a slow, steady pace . . . small pinpricks of warm glow traveling about our starlit hemisphere.
But then, at 10 o'clock on the dot-just as predicted by the guys with the slide rules-the eastern sky started to glow, soon followed by a giant orange moon rising above the treeline. Within half an hour we had lost quite a few of the fainter, smaller stars, but we weren't going to give in just yet. The meteors now appeared to come in sets, three to five at a time. And despite someone having turned on a gigantic halogen bulb to the east, we were still enjoying the show. By midnight, though, we'd had enough. Our necks had been craning since 8:30 and by now moonlight had flooded the sky.
When we awoke the next morning the man in the moon (whom John pronounced to be bucktoothed) was still staring down on us. We figured he'd had a good night watching all of the shooting stars, too. From his vantage point I bet the show was phenomenal.
The Perseid meteor shower (named for the Perseus constellation) is actually caused by falling debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, the tail of which Earth passes through every summer. This year's shower will peak on August 12 and 13, a Sunday and Monday, during a new moon. If the weather is clear it should be quite a show. Look to the northeast for Perseus (which looks like a hangman stick figure without a head) and Cassiopeia (which resembles aWtilted counterclockwise a bit) around 11 p.m. If you're not a night owl, you might catch a more rare, even more spectacular phenomenon called Earth grazers. These are slow-burning, bright and colorful Perseid meteors that only skim the Earth's atmosphere, rather than penetrating it (think of a skipping rock). They're apparently quite a sight and may occur between 8:30 and 10 p.m.-a drizzle before the storm, really.
[8.07 issue]
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