Tuesday, September 6, 2011

September 5, 2011.

Holy shit, we're still sailors after all. We had torn the headsail and I made a temporary repair while we were underway back in May. I dropped the sail off at Doyle Sailmakers here in Annapolis 2 months ago. I told em' to take their time as we weren't leaving the slip until October. Fortuitously I got the sail back Thursday just in time for the 3 day holiday weekend.

Usually we use the extended time off to do boat chores. But this year both of the girl children showed up to spend the 3 days with us.
Allyson brought along her boyfriend Sunil so we decided to cast off and do some gunkholing for the weekend.

On Saturday morning we slipped the lines and soon found ourselves dodging hundreds of racers as we tacked our way south down the bay.
A splendid day under sail ended with us ghosting into Spa Creek to take a mooring near Truxtent Park. Late that evening Ashlee completed her long drive from upstate New York and I dinghied in to pick her up.

On Sunday with everyone aboard we once again headed back out to do a little more sailing.
Again we were treated to perfect breeze and in the afternoon we headed up the Severn River. We turned into Salt Creek and picked up a vacant Navy mooring. The “kids” spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun and using the main halyard as a Tarzan swing.
The end of the day was spent enjoying the 3 D's; Dinner, Drinking and Dominoes.

We lost a few vanes off the raw water impeller so we sailed into the mouth of Back creek before starting the motor for the short trip in to wedge ourselves back into our slip.

Since we were back in the slip at a reasonable time we decided to take the kids, gather some friends and spend the evening performing the age old sailing ritual....the pub crawl. The five of us were joined by the Alibi II's and the Savage Sons as we headed out in search of a pleasant cocktail experience.

We walked down to The Boatyard Bar & Grill for the first beer of the evening. The bartender was obviously the love child of Marcel Marceau and Frankenstein. The dude never said a word as he plodded back and forth from one customer to the next. The plan was to hit several pubs for a single beer and then move on. With this droid for a bartender I was glad we had a plan.

Next we headed over to The Rockfish Grill. The experience was the complete opposite of the Boatyard. Between the good bartender and the engaging patrons nobody minded when we had to settle in for a second round as it began pour outside.

The rain let up so we headed across the bridge into Naptown proper and stopped in at the Acme Bar. We tried on a few different styles from their wing menu so that led to another 3 beers or so. Good drinkin' place.

After that we grabbed a table at one of my personal favorites, The Armadillo. After another 2 beers we popped in next door and had ourselves some ice cream. I'm not usually a beer and ice cream kinda guy but hey, we were in the neighborhood.

We opted to end the evening by walking back into Eastport and stopping at Davis' Pub. We settled in (the plan was out the window) and had more than our fair share of beers. We drank, we laughed, there may have been a few tears, we ate, we dodged the rain and everybody got home safely.

Its been a nice weekend.....

6 comments:

Randy said...

Omg you just brought back so many memories from last year when we were they with our friends from mi. We went to all the same pubs but the armadillo. It was great to see the kids hanging off the hilliard but where was dad?
Randy

S/V Veranda said...

Dad is smart enough to know better...

Sabrina and Tom said...

The Boatyard, Acme, Davis's - good stuff. We hit all those multiple times when we were there in Feb for marine diesel classes. Beer and ice cream - sounds very high school homeroom - except we ditched homeroom for doughnuts and beer. HA!

~~_/)~~
Sabrina

S/V Veranda said...

The funny part is that I forgot we even stopped in for ice cream until I was writing the update...

Anonymous said...

Great pic of Mom and her girls. Glad yoall had a great weekend, it can't get better than that!

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