CLICK HERE PHOTO LINK –>> October just disappeared 

This month has just vanished in a whirl of activity and preparations.

We travelled to Annapolis to attend the International Sailboat show.

The area that the show was located was by the old town and it was just charming, very British/Colonial with the narrow streets and quaint shops. There were the small individual shops that specialized in their merchandise, just how it was many years ago in most towns. Many of the shops had water bowls and dog snacks outside for the residents who were walking their dogs. Dogs were very popular and could be seen everywhere walking their owners. John and I both enjoyed walking around, exploring the area.

The boat show was just amazing. The boats were unbelievable and there were stalls from every marine vendor imaginable.

My favorite being Sailrite where I was exceptionally happy to buy a hot knife, which will make canvas work so much easier.

John’s favorites were there too #1 being West Marine where we managed to get a dinghy at show price, which was quite a savings. His 2^nd best buy was a wifi set up for the boat so we can now pick up hot spots within 5 miles or more. Reliable internet is just wonderful. I believe we visited every vendor at least twice.

Most of our time was spent attending seminars that we both thoroughly enjoyed.

On the Thursday we attended Jimmy Cornell’s Long Distance Cruising seminar, which lasted all day and basically covered sailing conditions around most parts of the world. We also were able to purchase his World Voyage Planner and Charts. It was a fascinating seminar; Jimmy is very humorous with his presentation and full of amazing stories from worldwide.

The next 3 days we attended seminars by numerous presenters that again were excellent. One was by a fellow Matt Rutherford who had sailed around the Americas single-handed in a 27′ Albin-Vega. This adventure began from Annapolis in June of 2011 and was 23,000 nautical miles in its entirety.  His arrival at the Northwest Passage was in early August, which is only open for six weeks due to the icebergs and sheet ice.  After exiting the Passage, he headed for Cape Horn, rounding it by March 2012.  Then he headed north up the east coast of the America’s heading home for Chesapeake Bay, passing the Caribbean before hurricane season. He had raised money for a charity supporting the disabled, CRAB. He was so young and just so entertaining to listen to tell about his amazing voyage. Read about it here: http://www.solotheamericas.org

Another speaker Don Street, we attended 2 of his seminars was 82 years old with 72 years of voyaging experience. He is another admirable character who has a wealth of interesting knowledge and advise. We bought one of his books to use when we head south and intend to follow the path less trodden or the passage less sailed just as he suggested.

Once back at Salty’s it was back to work getting Aeeshah ready.

We discovered we needed to register the boat in Bermuda, as foreigners cannot take a USA registered boat out of USA waters even if they own it. So that was task #1 getting all the paperwork and then sending it to Mr. Robinson. During the process we had to have the boat surveyed, which went really well. The surveyor basically found no faults so we know we are good to go. Plus we are now able to upgrade the insurance. We hope to have the paper work back by next week, fingers crossed.

The next challenge was stocking the boat with everything needed that we can’t get down south.

That required hiring a car and took 5 days of shopping. No it was not fun, I found it quite stressfully as it seemed excessive. For example buying 12 boxes containing 200 Splenda packages, or 12 boxes of 100 tea bags and then all the toiletries, canned tomato sauce, the cases of canned beer and the huge bottles of vodka, spare parts, so forth and so on……… Followed by the days of inventory of all/every item on board, taking off all the unnecessary packaging, putting nearly everything in zip lock bags, (some items like bread four had to be double covered), followed by stowing everything imaginable in an orderly fashion according to the inventory/plan so that we can then find every single thing that is stowed away. All I could think was thank goodness I did the stock for the whole of the BHS Primary Department as that really gave me the experience I needed. By this time the boat is much deeper in the water, but well able to accommodate the load.

There was a sense that the seasons were changing as the crows returned. They now fly in at dawn every day by the hundreds landing on every available perch, caw to each other as the sun rises and then disappear for the day.

As the weather had cooled I had the inspiration to start my walk/jogging again but injured my knee on the 2nd day out. That has left me limping around for the rest of the month. Not even able to ride the bike much. We are however back to our rides to the shops and enjoy the cooler early morning air. With hurricane Sandy we received lower temperatures, outright cold at night in the 50s and 70s during the day.

We have had several lovely evening spent with friends. Out to dinner with Peter and Marty, having drinks on board with several of the friends we have here and on board Sue and Al’s boat with their precious dogs Sophie and Chelsea. Oh how I wish we could get a little dog! Sue and Al would like us to travel to the Bahamas together. We hope to but it all depends on what the weatherman brings in the next few weeks.

The next entry that I post will hopefully be from somewhere in the Bahamas.

Books that were enjoyed by us this month were:                                                                                             The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton;                                                                                                                     The Misremembered Man by Christina Mckenna                                                                                               The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves.” Marcel Proust