I don’t generally use this column to conduct magazine business, but there’s this irresistible proud-papa impulse at work, see. And it’s something that does affect most of you, the readers, rather directly and materially. So let’s forget the rules for the moment. There’s a birth announcement to be made.
She was born May 5, 2000, and she’s a beautiful, healthy baby, if I do say so myself. Her name is Chesapeake magazine. Some people say she looks like her sister, Chesapeake Bay Magazine. I don’t see it, but I suppose there’s bound to be a family resemblance—something in the editorial tone or the choice of typefaces, or just the way she carries her captions. Hard to put your finger on that kind of thing, no? At any rate, I think you’ll agree that she’s a beauty, and a smart little dickens too—again, just like her sister. Just the kind of magazine you want to have around the house.
And how will you know? How will you have the opportunity to agree or disagree with me on this? I’m glad you asked that question. You’ll have that
opportunity because, if you subscribe to this magazine, chances are you’ll be receiving the premier issue of Chesapeake within the coming fortnight. No need to lift a finger; it will come right to your mailbox.
But, you say, Chesapeake Bay Magazine gives me everything I could possibly want in a magazine about the Bay. What can Chesapeake offer that I don’t already get from Chesapeake Bay, with its great award-winning boating destination stories and its beautiful award-winning photography and all that invaluable, timely, award-winning boating information, and that handsome, suave, award-
winning editor—Okay, enough already, bub. Here’s your ten bucks. Beat it.
Well, I’m glad you asked that question too . . . um, sir. The difference between the two magazines is not the least bit subtle: Chesapeake Bay, as you well know, is a boating magazine first and foremost. From cover to cover, it’s all about boats and boating on the Bay, even if that’s sometimes tangential—
as it should be, for the sake of breadth and variety. Chesapeake, on the other hand, is not a boating magazine. It is a travel and leisure magazine, which celebrates the region as a weekend and summer destination, and as a place to live.
So what does it offer that you don’t already get in Chesapeake Bay? Broader horizons, to put it simply. Because we take our mission seriously at Chesapeake Bay—that we’re a boating magazine first and foremost—we can wander only so far inland and only so far from the nautical mindset. But Chesapeake is neither geographically nor thematically tied to the dock, as it were, and therefore can wander more freely throughout Chesapeake country—great inns and B&Bs,
off-the-beaten-path towns, restaurants, historic homes, weekend getaways,
nature trails, outdoor adventures, antiquing, museums and galleries. . . . It’s a traveler’s gold mine out there, and Chesapeake is your pick and shovel.
Look for it to appear in mailboxes and on newsstands around the first week in June. And just sit back and enjoy it.


Tim Sayles, Editor