Return to San Domingo

The kids had a few days off this week so we ditched work and had a lovely sail to one of our favorite places--San Domingo Creek in St. Michaels, MD.  I've missed it so much!  For some reason we had missed some real gems on the south end of town during our past visits, maybe because the kids were younger.  Anyway, we hit up Eastern Shore Brewing, Lyon Distilling, and St. Michaels Winery for the first time.  While the wine wasn't quite our thing, the staff was great and there was a good variety to try.  The brewery and distiller will definitely be part of our return visits.  We walked the town, sampled the ice cream, ran into some friends from another Navy tour, and relaxed on the hook. 

“Spider Boat” returns

One of my best memories from cruising the bay was getting hailed as “Spider Boat” on VHF one day. Well, it’s back!

Finally! My kind of shopping @ the Annapolis Sailboat Show

We resumed our annual tradition today after two years off and headed to the boat show!  Frank actually went on Friday as well where he snagged a great deal on a new clock at the Weems & Plath scratch & dent tent--it's a perfect match for a barometer I got as a gift!

Here they are installed.

A perfect match!

This year's list was pretty short.  The clock (check!), mattresses for the kid's rooms (check!  Portland Boat Mattress), and some leads on a good canvas shop to replace our dodger and bimini.  I also got to meet the team from Sailrite!  I love how they work hard to give their customers confidence to succeed with any project!

Eeeeek!  Celebrity sighting!

Otherwise, we did what any good sailors would do--ordered Painkillers from Pusser's and looked at boats!  Of course it rained (poured!) since I was there, but we still had fun.  A date lunch at the Boatyard Bar & Grill and a stop at Fawcett's rounded out the day. 

Hatching a weekend plan

It was a blustery, gusty weekend on the Bay so we decided to tackle part of boat chore list. The big winner? New hatch seals! We’ve had a leaky one and with 10+ years on the others it seemed like a good idea to replace them all. After reading some blogs (“It’s so easy!” and “It’s horribly difficult.”) and watching some YouTube videos, we were ready! We used genuine Lewmar replacements to increase our chances of success and figured the extra expense was worth it. We learned a lot on the first one and took time to clean up the frames and seal tracks. It took a lot of muscle, and getting the windows back on took some patience, but they turned out great!