Ah, Annapolis

Some towns are just, you know, right. Not too big, nor too small. Not too posh, nor too grungy. And perhaps it helps to visit them on a warm and sunny week when everyone is in party mood for the biggest boatshow in North America. Whatever it is, we really liked Annapolis.

There are many, many boats in Annapolis. Come boatshow weekend, there are even more, as visitors arrive to fill up the anchorages, and local boats are pushed out of their marinas to let the show display hundreds of yachts to the rest of the world. We knew it would be busy and sure enough, the main anchorage, off the navel academy, was packed with boats. The books warned that this could be busy and choppy at the best of times, so we headed for a little place called 'Back Creek' about half a mile away. This creek is lined with marinas and the narrow channel was already filled with anchored boats swinging with inches to spare from the occupants of the local marinas. We joined them but didn't feel comfortable as Ty Dewi threatened to add new go faster stripes to a very expensive looking yacht berthed on the edge of the creek.

A brief exploration in the dinghy revealed more space further up, and we eventually decided copy another boat and anchor 'stern to' the bank of the creek. This involves dropping the anchor then reversing towards the bank and running ashore with a long line to hold us in place. It meant we wouldn't swing to the wind and current and could be sure of being out of everybody's way. It's a little more awkward to set up but we were staying for a full week so it was worth it. Max really enjoyed helping me to run the lines ashore and tie them to the nearest tree.

We found a local supermarket and laundry to get the basics dealt with. The laundry was quite a walk with all our heavy bags of dirty clothes, so we planned to do the washing first then carry the clean clothes back along the road to the supermarket, get the groceries and call a cab to get back to the boat. As it happened we got the laundry into the driers and Gesa headed off to get a headstart on the groceries.

I do the tedious folding and packing, load the kids up with a little bag each and lump the big bag of clothes over my shoulder. Sadly, dirt doesn't weigh much so they are no lighter on the way home. We've staggered about fifty yards when Max looks down into a nearby ditch and says 'Daddy, why do people throw rubbish there?'. I'm preparing an explanation of the evils of the world when I see that there is also a shopping trolley (cart, in this country) from the supermarket we are heading to. Seeing an opportunity to both do a good deed and ease our burden, I drop the laundry bag, scramble down into the (thankfully dry) ditch, and yank out one perfectly good shopping cart. We dump the bags into it, the kids hop on each side and I push the whole lot half a mile to the grocery store. Bingo.

The next day, we go to the boat show and have a lot of fun - a different post for that.

My parents arrived in DC on Tuesday and we rented a car to go and collect them. Having a car for a day allowed us to go and get a lot of shopping and other errands, so the boat is filled up with juice, tins, pasta and other heavy stuff that takes too much carrying most of the time. Max and I drove out to Dulles airport to pick them up and had a lot of fun doing that. Even the notorious Beltway traffic turned out to be blessfully mild on the way home and we all arrived in time to relax on board in our beautiful Annapolis anchorage before a good meal at the local pub.

We spent another day just wandering the town between boat shows - the sailboat show ends and a few days later the powerboat one begins. With quieter streets and more relaxed store staff, we had a nice day seeing a bit more of the place. There are some beautiful streets and buildings in Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland.

It has many claims to a place in history, and two of the more celebrated ones are the author Alex Haley and the lawyer Thurgood Marshall. Haley's classic saga 'Roots' is commemorated in a delightful series of statues near the waterfront where his main character, Kunta Kinte arrived in a slave ship from Africa. Marshall was the first African American supreme court judge and won the famous case of 'Brown vs Board of Education in Topeka' which sounded the death knell for the 'separate but equal' separatist policy towards education for black Americans. It's fun, and important, to learn more about these things and to give the kids an appreciation of how important they are and how fortunate we are to have so few of these issues and struggles to deal with.

We left Annapolis after a glorious week during which the sun shore regularly, temperatures almost hit 90 degrees, we met up with many friends and welcomed family back aboard again. What more could we want.