Annapolis to Solomons Island

Tilted chairs at the closed up bar are a sure sign the summer season is over.

We had our visit to (and departure from) Annapolis all planned out because we are such awesome planners (I'm pretty sure we can use the word awesome even though we have probably less than a 1-in-3 success rate). Although pretty much nothing worked out the way we thought it would, we are much better off because of it. This is in spite of nearly a week of solid rain and chilly weather in a roll-y anchorage.

We had planned to visit our friends, pick up a few things and then leave Annapolis before the boat show to avoid the crowds and the unnecessary expenditure of money. Well, we got sidetracked waiting for parts and ended up staying for the boat show. In the meantime, Mark and Conrad spent many days playing with their friend Zach. They also met new friends on boats anchored nearby. We adults had our share of fun with great conversations and laughter with our friends and meeting a lot of wonderful new people.

We even went to the boat show (thanks for the tickets Derek!), which was a different experience after having owned our boat for almost a year. Refusing to step onto any of the new boats to ward off envy, Matt had fruitful conversations with many vendors and was able to solve some of the issues on our list. He was able to meet a surprising number of people he has dealt with solely on the phone or over email while troubleshooting many of the boat's systems over the past year.  We also met Greg and Deneen, from Mantus, the company that manufactured our anchor.  We already love the anchor, but really appreciated the customer service when they discovered we had an early model of their anchor hook.  They've since made it even better and they insisted we have a newer version of the hook--for free.

While on the topic of customer service, we also have to give a major thanks to Steve and his folks at Bacon's.  They went out of their way to deliver (on multiple occasions) a spinnaker pole and various parts to us at a local dingy dock since we didn't have a car.

Another benefit of sticking around was that we even got to see our good friends Nick, Kate and their daughter Francis, who happened to pop into Annapolis, took us to lunch and brought us the most delicious homemade brownies and Virginia peanuts.

 

Finally, over the strenuous objections of our kids, we left Annapolis this morning with our first partly sunny day in a week and arrived at Solomons Island. With the season mostly over, things are sleepy here. And our anchorage is perfectly still for a change--no water taxis or 2-mile fetches. We head south again tomorrow, towards Norfolk.