A safe haven for Black boaters

David Turner, whose father and grandfather worked the Chesapeake Bay as crabbers and oystermen, recalls “getting up at the crack of dawn” as a kid to help out on weekends and summers.

“I hated it,” he says. Turner’s childhood experience on Kent Island left him wanting “nothing to do with the water.”

“That’s why I went to college,” he says.

He also remembers his father and grandfather’s stories of racial discrimination they encountered on the bay. “They couldn’t get parts,” he says. “They couldn’t get fuel.”

Turner’s dislike for the water eventually faded. In fact, as he got older, he found that the Chesapeake Bay was “in my bloodstream.” He bought a boat. Then another. Eventually, in 2007, he joined the Seafarers Yacht Club of Annapolis, MD. – Full report