Kinship and Matthew are still in Annapolis while Kathleen spends a few days in Ottawa visiting a friend who is sick.

Annapolis is a good place to hang out, the mooring ball is cheap – $35 a night and there is a lot going on.  The city is full of well preserved 18th and 19th century buildings. Annapolis was the temporary capital of the US following the Treaty of Paris in 1783.  Today Annapolis is capital of Maryland.  There has been a concerted effort to maintain the look of the city, modern buildings use brick and design cues to mirror the architecture of the existing buildings.

Our time at the sailboat show was productive and we got a lot done.  We have our new cockpit cushions, navigation lights for the dinghy, sorted out and ordered the parts for the lifelines,  ordered AIS SARTs for our life jackets, visited with Viking to take a look at our life-raft inflated – hopefully the only place we will see this.  We talked to lots of suppliers and found a lot of new products, but we stayed focused on our list and we stayed on budget.

The cruising community is quite small and the authors and film makers that fuel the dream that turns wannabes to cruisers are enthusiastic and keen to meet and chat.  We talked to the Shards of the Distant Shores TV show, about the process of designing their new boat – Distant Shores III and their plans for the next year while they are boat-less.

We found Lin Pardey, selling her latest boat and we talked about our idea of sail the Pacific on our third trip, she was, as expected, very encouraging and she invited us for her cruisers Thanksgiving dinner when we get to New Zealand.  Kathleen was impressed enough to buy the book, but perhaps not the Pacific trip just yet.

During our passage down the New Jersey coast Kathleen was assaulted by a collection of Nigel Calder books we forgot to secure.  I told her to give Nigel a hard time when we see him. Well, standing at the wine area at a World Cruising Club event, who should turn up but Nigel himself.  We got to have a good chat, a laugh about the attack of the books.  He is a fan of the Saga 43 and he had Allan Poole stories.  He was attending the show with Sail magazine so he had a handler by the name of Ali. Poor Ali was just about dying with embarrassment as Nigel told us stories about Allan and others that will never make the magazine.

During the boat show the dinghy dock moves from the end of Ego Ally to the police dock on Prince George Street.  The capacity is a lot less, and this leads to a certain amount of congestion at the dock.  Crawling over dinghies to get to shore becomes the norm.

No trip to Annapolis is complete without a visit to Bacon Sails.  Bacons is an Annapolis institution, focusing on reselling and consigning used sails and other equipement  We made a trip last week and found a few little gems, a star finder for $20, a pin wrench for $10.  I took my bike over later and bought line for a new main sheet and the main traveler.  As I got to the store I spotted 2 more Bromptons, these ones belonging to Jean and Yolène on Caffe Latte, they are also on the Caribbean 1500.  We are starting to meet more crews as we go to events, it will be great to arrive in the Caribbean already knowing lots of boats.

The sailboat show last weekend is followed by the power boat show on now.  The transformation as the docks are dismantled to let the sailboats leave and then reassembled around the power boats, all happening over less than 2 days is really impressive.  Lots of boat traffic and the sailboats gave us our own parade as they did a run down the harbour before leaving or anchoring in the bay.

We are off to Solomon’s Island next week for a haul and paint, but more on that later.