Sport: Old Home Week

The annual Miles River Regatta, held off St. Michaels, a crabbing port on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is as plain as an old scow. Yachtsmen have been known to row up to the dock in their underwear, wander into the best pub in town wearing pajama pants and a battered silk hat. Ashore, some 5,000 folks loll around in shirt sleeves, suck Popsicles, guzzle beer, chase small fry who get lost in the crowd.

Anyone can enter a boat in the Miles races. Last week, for its 79 events, there were 1,500 entries: ranging from sleek sloops and speedboats to the work boats of local oystermen and crabbers. In the sailing classes there were Snipes, Stars, Comets (the Eastern Shore’s own baby), Scrappy Cats, Sneak Bores, Crickets. But the heart of the Miles River Regatta is the hallowed log canoe.

The log sailing canoe is indigenous to Chesapeake Bay. Modeled after those used by Indians in Maryland waters, its hull is hewn out of three or five huge logs, spiked together. Long before the Civil War, Bay fishermen used log canoes for tending crab pots. During the war, they were used to run the blockade from the Eastern to Western shore. The watermen of St. Michaels took to racing one another, began to build lighter, faster racing boats.

Today’s racers are 30-odd feet long, with sharp prows and raking twin masts that are taller than their length. Their beam is no broader than a man is tall. They are especially sporty and picturesque because they must be balanced by man power. Each canoe carries “springboards,” on which most of the crew scramble to windward when the boat heels. Despite well-trained crews, canoes frequently capsize under their towering clouds of sail.

Last week, in the race for the Governor’s Cup, the breeze was so spanking that two of the starters upset before the race was long under way. Winner: Noddy, owned by Oliver Duke of nearby Royal Oak, sailed by Duke Adams of Baltimore.