Quite some time since we signed on and sent along a blog update. No excuses just Alice and I worked our senior citizen a...es off.
I figured the boat shows would be an experience worthy of investing three to four weeks. Well little did I know the extent of the experience. MANUAL LABOR times one hundred.

Up at 6:00 in the dark, temps in the 40ties, ride the dinghy to shore to report for work at 06:30. Out onto the docks to build a floating city in three days. Monday morning there was nothing at the Annapolis Harbor Basin, by Tuesday at noon there were floating docking, pilings driven, tents and sailboats were arriving.

Those of you familiar with Annapolis may recall the area called Ego Alley. It's where the bigger boats tie up to stroke their egos as the public passes by and gawks. We'll it was emptied out Sunday evening and then by Tuesday it was filled with boat show boats each assigned a specific space with floating docks for their displays. Each floater has to be transported across the Severn River and then installed by the water crew, that's me and about twelve other unsuspecting soles. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining but I have to admit that I was overwhelmed by the amount of work, the nature of the work and then length of the work days. I would get back to the boat by 22:00. It is truly an amazing feat, an amazing accomplishment of logistics and sometimes brut force was the only solution. I can report that no boats were scratched, captains and owners were very pleased and the sailboat show was a tremendous success. It is a site to behold and my words fail me in attempting to describe the physical, emotional, the human-to-human relationships and the fatigue.

Enough said I guess, I could go on about so many things that occurred to Alice and me but the bottom line is it is over and in fact this concludes the first phase of our journey. We now shift our focus on the Caribbean 1500.

Tonight we've invited two other cruising couples who also worked the show to have our own debriefing and story telling. Tomorrow or the next day we once again turn southward heading for Hampton, VA where we will me up with Randy Wurtsbaugh and Jeff Merrill who will join us for the cruise to Tortola. Can you believe it, we may be finally finding warmer waters and temps. Oh I hope so. The last nights have been four blanket nights. Sitting for dinner with breath vapors filling the cabin and condensation dripping off all the metal parts. Enough, enough of this cold stuff; shorts for ever!!!!!