It's amazing how many beautiful fall days there are this year. The mornings are cool and crisp. When I go up on deck and breath in deeply, the smell and feeling are so refreshing as the inhaled air warms in my lungs before being exhaled in a little steamy cloud. I wonder if I can blow smoke rings on exhaling, but no... I can't. I wonder if fall has always been this nice? Probably. I may have just never noticed, or enjoyed it, because I was never out in it as much as I am now. The hustle and bustle of rising before light and traveling to work in the dark never left much time to enjoy that first burst of air that touches your skin as you crawl out of bed. Refreshing. Somehow getting up in the dark now is much different than having to rush around each morning getting ready for work. Each day feels like a weekend. It's very strange. Enough of my morning musings. It's a busy day today. Sail Rite store, hardware store, Fawcetts, and the boat show to pick up our davits for the dingy. In case I forgot to mention what davits are, they're a pair of hoists to raise the dingy out of the water and secure it to the back of the boat. A promised lunch at the officer's club (clams) makes all the running around more enjoyable as I prepare to become pack-mule patti.

Whoops! It's Columbus Day and the cadets are still on a long weekend. No clams for me today... The Officer's Club is closed along with most of the Naval Academy. We walked into town to the Sail Rite store to pick up some strapping and fasteners to attach to the dingy to the davits, then next door to the dingy man to see if he had patches with D hooks for us to attach to the dingy. He had those and the glue and cleaning solvent to prep the dingy and told us how to do it. He guarrrrrenteeeed they'd hold (we'll see - anything similar to rubber cement kind of worries me - but he's the expert). Went to Stevens (the hardware) to pick up the odds and ends, Fawcetts for the other boat stuff that the hardware didn't have. Then to the boat show to pick up our davits at 3 pm, out by 4pm and ohhh my sore back. This stuff is heavy. Walked it all back to the dingy dock and got it unloaded, then started checking out how to install the davits, and more importantly where (what part of the back do we put the holes in - OH NO!)...

Did I mention that we are now the proud owners of a "Fishing Ring"? Wayne's excited at the prospect of catching our first big ocean fish. The only problem is, we don't know how to fish (Midwesterners boy I'll tell ya). Little fish on the pond, but the hooks on this line are half the size of my fist...They're huge - not what I'm used to at all. Well, at least we have some very sexy looking lures to attract them with (they have little hula skirts) LOL. I know, I know, they're after food, not procreating...

Today is the end of the International Sailboat Show and at 5pm there's a parade of sailboats vacating the areas they set up for them. I'm amazed that they get them all out within 2 hours. Tomorrow they start setting up for the powerboat show, which is larger than the Sailboat Show (wow). We could see the masts going by from our mooring while having dinner. It's been an interesting experience watching them set up for the show, then tearing it down to get ready for the next one. Hopefully we won't still be here to watch them tear down the whole thing... Ray from the sailing vessel Maria will still be here until the end of the show to tear it all down, then will head south. He's worked it from beginning to end, and man, they work him. He leaves by 6 am and doesn't return till way after dark and my bedtime...

BBQ'd pork chops, broccoli, baked beans and hard rolls for dinner tonight. I must have been hungry - I scarfed it down like it was lunch time at school!