The Wind-Down

By the time the Annapolis Power Boat Show was in full swing, we were getting a little burned out on the whole experience. There is definitely a different feeling with the powerboat show; it’s far more aggressive and masculine, while the sailboat show is easier going and light hearted. The crowd was not nearly as international as the sailboat show’s was; however, it was far more diverse. The powerboat show was more boat driven, while the sailboat show seems equally driven by the boats and the boat “stuff”. We did hop on a few spectacular boats; the Aicon 64, the Ferretti 55, and the Azimut 55 represented the opulent luxury of Italian yachts, and we finally got to tour a NC made Hatteras yacht and were impressed with its quality and elegance. Nothing compared with the Nordhavn 64 for us, though; it isn’t a yacht, it is a ship. When we finally got onboard the Nordhavn, the only person available to show it to us was the captain, and he spoke with us as if we were captains who were also considering taking positions on an owner’s Nordhavn. We ended up getting one of the most technical and informative tours we’ve ever gotten in a boat show. I actually left the two of them in the engine room and headed back to work after a while.

Once the horns finally signaled the end of the show on Sunday night, everyone was ready for it to be over. Some vendors had been there for 2 weeks and were just as burned out as all of the staff was. We didn’t do too much work on Sunday night, but we were all there at 6:30 am on Monday morning turning the boat show back into the Annapolis waterfront. We broke down all of the tents and gathered up all of the signs and temporary buildings and took them to a central parking lot in front of the harbormaster’s office, where everything was organized, placed on pallets, and put on tractor trailers to take to “site X”, a holding area about 3 miles from the show grounds. I was really surprised how fast it went, and at 8pm they let most of the staff go for good. They only have a small crew finishing up Tuesday, which includes Reinhart but not me. They’ll be taking out the last of the floors and moving the 8 trailers which made up the boat show office complex. Both of us will be working Wednesday through Friday, though; making sure everything at “site X” is packed up properly and moving it from “site X” to its actual storage area 25 miles from Annapolis.

They are throwing a dinner for all of us on Thursday night and we are really looking forward to that. Some of the cruisers will be heading south before that though, so there will be a pre-party Tuesday night. It seems funny that folks with such casual existences as cruisers can’t wait another day or two for the party; however, lots of these folks are at anchor and these nights in the 30s are getting old. I expect the ICW will be crowded with sailboats headed for Florida in the next week! We still haven’t made up our minds when we are leaving; it is almost like leaving home again, since we have spent half of our time in Annapolis since leaving the triad. It will be sad, but it will be great to get back on the water again…then we’ll get to see how cold it actually is since we won’t be hooked up to shore power again. Everyone here has been trying to convince us to buy a generator before we leave though, and we might actually do that…but we are also interested in a satellite phone and a spinnaker, and at some point we have to make some tough choices.

We’ll let you know when we decide to leave and where we are going from here in a few days.