We ended up spending 4 nights at the Eastport Yacht Center here in Annapolis. Kind of expensive at $4/ft per foot per night during the boat show, but we needed the downtime and the space at the dock we got here was quite excellent, only a few steps away from the main building, etc. And we are glad we did, as it's been really nice here in Annapolis.
We had a nice dinner at Davis's Pub, right near the marina in Eastport Annapolis. Lots of history in this area and this pub has been around here in some form since the 1920's. I had a very delicious Gumbo which really hit the spot.
After getting in, and having a sleep, the next day we booked tickets for the Annapolis boat show and walked over. The boat show is quite an event, and the Annapolis one is very large. There were an absolute ton of boats at dock you could tour, and you could probably have spent the entire day doing just that. We toured the Tartan's, Catalina's, J/Boats and a crazy modern trimaran. We do really like the Tartan 335. The new Catalina series are looking very nice too. The J-40 is a real sweet spot between performance and crusability. And the J/9 (28ft) was a very cool looking day sailor. I can't imagine ever buying a new boat ($$$), but they are fun to look at.
Touring all the vendors and stuff is also fun, just a crazy amount of neat things to see. Aria mostly liked picking up candy offered by the various vendors, and enjoyed entering a few of the guess the quantity contests. We saw Atkins and Hoyle were there all the way from Napanee! We didn't get a chance to say hello as they were a very busy booth. They refurbed our hatches and cut our new ports and companion way hatch acrylic over the winter. Excellent work, super happy with the results.
After the show we strolled up Main Street, and toured some of the neat shops. Stopped for dinner a nice Thai restaurant. I've been missing my asian food on this trip, and it's nice to eat out whenever we find a good place along the way.
Our second day was pretty chill, and we mostly hung out at the boat for a while with plans to go over to the Kids4Sail meetup in the evening. It was an hour walk, or a 10 minute dingy row to the location, so we launched the dingy and paddled over. This turned out to be a great stop and a very large turnout of families with kids. Aria eventually got pulled away and found some kids to play with, and it was nice to just chat with other cruisers, and hear about how they got into it, how they are doing it, managing with kids, etc. Great group of people, and really appreciate the people that put this all together.
The last day we had originally planned to get up and head out, but after waking up, kind of realizing we hadn't provisioned much, and there weren't a lot of great options for it coming up, we decided to put in one more night, which gave us a bit more time. Thankfully this also ment we had time to visit the Annapolis Maratime Musem, which we are glad we did. Very cool small musem with lots of really high quality interactive displays. Learned a whole lot about oysters, and the health of Chesapeake Bay. Very cool.
After that we took an uber out to the shopping area of the city (all city's have this mall area where all the giant stores exist), and stopped at the best buy for a new bluetooth speaker, and some wireless buds for Aria. We then walked over to and through a giant mall, and then over to a craft store for a few supplies, and then finally to a Trader Joe's for a large reprovision run.
And with all of that back to the boat, we stowed things away, and should now be ready to be out of Marina for a while. It's been nice to be settled for a while after all the long passages, but I think we are ready to push forward again.
Interesting as well, we've started to noticed the weather lately. It's October and things are still pretty warm here. All shorts and t-shirts for us the past couple of days, 27C today and only down to 17C tonight. I think this is a warm day, but it generally is in the high teens to 20's here this time of year. Also the boat in the slip beside us was winterizing their boat for the past couple of days, and I didn't think much of it, but after they were done, I realized they weren't hauling out. They just winterized the plumbing, took down the sails, covered up a few things, and that is it, the boat will just stay there in the water at the dock for the winter. A slight bit easier than our winterizing at home with a haul out, mast down, etc etc...
Didn't take any pictures while land based in Annapolis, so no pictures with this post unfortunately...