Never too old to be parented

Dad cutting my hair after 7 weeks, here is the pile of hair he cut off my head.  It is better than ever to go home again, I think you appreciate it more when you are middle aged yourself than when you are a boomerang 20-something.  It's been great to sleep in air conditioning with a real bed and to get served meals as only your mom can make.  Hope the boat is ok on its own!

Think Baltimore, think red bricks!

We made it!  We arrived on July 3rd, Pete and Jeff sailing up the harbor for a grand entrance.  The city is celebrating the very patriotic story of Francis Scott Key writing the words of our national anthem while held captive on a British ship in the harbor.  Ft. McHenry stood sentry for the city and faught off the fierce bombardment, the American flag still streaming in the dawn's early light.  Just as we neared the fort, the staff fired off one of the cannon.  WOW!  The flames errupting from the gun and the noise you felt in the chest, along with the pall of smoke blowing downwind were very impressive.  No wonder the British were stopped short of Baltimore.  Ft. McHenry saved the largest port in the Americas, and the people never forgot it, resisting all attempts to use the land for anything else over these 200 years.  Pete said the cannon salute was for me, returning to my hometown after nearly 25 years.  Yeah, right...I don't think so.  The pictures are of the marine buoy marking the exact spot Key was during the battle, the fort still guarding the entrance to the harbor, SeaSpan at rest in her Baltimore slip, and the red brick rowhouses that start at the harbor and cover the city.  Baltimore is a BRICK city.  Nearly every building and some of the streets and sidewalks are made of red bricks.  Hundreds of millions of bricks; how cool is that??

Annapolis...sailing central

Annapolis street scene

St. Petersburg has about 3,000 sailboats.  Annapolis has 30,000.  Pete and I were astonished at how many boats were here.  The crowds of tourists, and the opulence of "Ego Alley" where boats are paraded and shown off was quite a shock after the backwaters of North Carolina and Virginia.  But....we adjusted after a few minutes and did what all sailing-afflicted neurotics do....we looked at boats until our eyes hurt.  We had a wet 4 mile dinghy ride in from the anchorage, but what fun, and dinner at a street cafe wasn't bad either.  Later, we returned for crab lunch at Buddy's.  We love this town.  For sailing afflicted it is like Christmas morning every day.

looking South down "Ego Alley" in Annapolis.

Out of the wilderness, into the cities

Large tug on a small canal

Indefatigueable Pete steers us through the North Carolina back country

Pete and Jeff had a transitional day today.  Pete took Elise's place on the boat when she had to return to St. Petersburg to work for a week.  We have been snaking up the ICW for 3 days, rarely more than a single home in view at a time, and most of the time only each other and the endless Eastern North Carolina to keep us company.  Today that all changed, after starting out from Centerville Turnpike, Virginia, we went from rural, to suburban, to urban in the course of a few short hours, hard to do in a 6 MPH sailboat.  Great barges passed us on the canal, and then, suddenly, was the huge port of Tidewater (Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, and Hampton Roads), Virginia and we were spat out like a seed into Chesapeake Bay.  One more overnight trip, a good wind, a flood tide, and a little luck, this will all be over in 24 hours.

Beautiful homes along the river in Virginia.

Cypress stands less than a day from Norfolk