For sailors, the annual “journey to Mecca” is a trip to Annapolis for the US Sailboat Show. It’s the gathering of the “faithful”; it’s just something sailors do if at all possible. As if on cue, the weather suddenly turns gorgeous. People come out of hiding in their boats, the dinghy beach is full, and the town radiates good cheer. We meet the couple on the boat anchored next to us. They stop by and notice that we have a short wave radio. Yes, we do, but we’re having some problems getting it to work successfully. Several hours later, Tom, a net controller on one of the major cruiser nets, has diagnosed our problems, helped us solve it, and given us some pointers on using SSB. We are grateful beyond words. We spend some time bicycling through neighborhoods in Annapolis.
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| Frank Lloyd Wright home in Eastport neighborhood - notice the prow shaped window on the right. |
Here residences aren’t just century homes, they are multi-century homes. Annapolis has definitely cornered the market on cute, but the cute is authentic.
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| Home of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence |
Our little neighborhood near Weems Creek has their annual Octoberfest on Sunday, and we enjoy eating brats to the tunes from a traditional German band. The streets are full of families strolling amongst the many vendors – West Annapolis has come alive.
On Monday preparations for the boat show take on a frantic pace. Mooring balls are taken out of commission, docks are cleared of other boats, and barges start appearing with huge wooden pilings and tows of docks. The next day the harbor is almost unrecognizable with temporary docks and multitudes of vendor tents, and by Wednesday evening all the show boats are tied up in this maze of docks. With a starting gun at 10 am on Thursday, the show is underway and Annapolis becomes anything but a quiet little waterfront town.
We won’t visit the show every day, but we do come in every late afternoon for what has become a tradition for us, Painkillers on the upper deck of Pusser’s.
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| View from Pusser's deck during the Boat Show |
Overlooking the show area, it’s a great place to meet up with friends. We chat with those we have met while on this trip and friends making the trip by road from Lake Erie. And it’s an opportunity to make plans to meet with groups for dinner.
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| Gathering with friends from Sandusky at the Boathouse Restaurant |
The days we do enter the show are packed. Burt and I each have our lists and go our separate ways. I am shopping for LED lights, touch up paints for our slightly battered mast, charts and cruising guides, and a WIFI amplifier. Burt is checking out new sails and information to resolve the battery charging problem we have been experiencing. In between time, we go to seminars on a variety of topics and take a gander at some of the beautiful new boats on display. It’s not everyday you get to check out a multi-million dollar sailing yacht. And finally, on one afternoon we volunteer to man the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s booth, meeting many potential cruisers and current members. It comes as a shock to find these people asking us questions about the cruising lifestyle; we don’t feel like experts on the subject yet, but we have made the jump to full time live-a-board status and that in itself is quite an accomplishment.
The show closes on Monday afternoon and that is also a major production. As soon as the closing announcement is made, small boats begin dismantling the docks and the sailboats pull out into the open water. It seems chaotic and we are amazed that there are no collisions, but actually it’s a carefully choreographed dance – docks move apart and boats join the traffic jam in the surrounding harbor. To add to the confusion, power boats are arriving for the power boat show that follows in a couple of days, and they will enter the docking area once the sailboats have vacated. We watch for a while from Pusser’s but the crowd is huge, so we leave for our dinghy and a real up close and personal view of the chaos.
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| Chaos reigns as the sailboats leave the show compound |
The next day we prepare to leave Annapolis. We do a big shopping spree at the local grocery and run a few other errands before leaving our home for the past two weeks in Weems Creek. We try to get fuel in Annapolis before heading south, but one fuel dock is having trouble with a pump and the other is chock-a-block with boats from the show waiting for fuel before heading out. We decide to head ten miles south to Galesville, our home the prior to Annapolis and purchase fuel at the dock there. We arrive just before closing, take care of the necessities and then anchor just out from the dock we occupied upon arriving in the Chesapeake. The weather has changed; it’s dark, drizzly, and the leaves are beginning to turn. The writing is on the wall – it’s time to head south.
