Rhode River 38 53.000N 076 31.761W
Thursday September 24th to Sunday September 26th, 2009
The
Seven Seas Cruising Association is a great organization for people like us. We've been members since we started cruising last year. We have access to a fabulous monthly newsletter electronically, and they have fun meetings geared to cruisers, both sail and power. We attended the gam (an old sailing term for getting together to exchange news) in Maine last year, and had booked to attend the Annapolis gam. The setting was the YMCA Camp Letts, south of Annapolis, Maryland, where there was plenty of space for people arriving by boat and by car.
The first event for early arrivals was scheduled as a dinghy raft-up cocktail party. A nice couple came around as we were working on the boat on Thursday and informed us that the location had changed to a beach on one of the small islands in the anchorage. We fixed our own drinks, and packed up a batch of brownies. In no time at all, the thirty or forty other cruisers were sampling each others food, and making new friends. Here's Charlie with fellow pony-tail buddies Karl and Larry.
Friday afternoon we dingied ashore to Camp Letts, checked in and received a lovely bag of goodies - information, magazines, coupons and freebees from vendors. The first workshop we attended was a very informative presentation on Collision Avoidance at Sea by John Martino of the Annapolis School of Seamanship. This was followed by happy hour sponsored by a local sailmaker. We met fellow Catalina 470 owner Bob Jones (Silhouette) who was attending with his Swiss friend Monika. We decided to have dinner together, and Bob and Monika brought steak and trimmings over to Lady, enough for all of us. We taught them the Mexican Train dominoes game. A fun evening!
Saturday was full of workshops and round tables. We particularly enjoyed the presentation on SSB/HAM radios, put on by our friends Bill Trayfors and
Dick Juppenlatz who had installed our equipment over the past few months. Another great talk was from Beth Leonard, who has done two circumnavigations, and detailed her three trips touring the islands of southern Chile and Cape Horn.
It rained all night. We had to wear our foul-weather gear to get to shore for the delicious cooked breakfast Sunday morning, following which we wandered around the nautical flea market, where cruisers had an opportunity to clean out their bilges and trade stuff. We only had a few books to exchange, but we were pleased to purchase some line and a small life-jacket, in case our grand-daughter is able to visit us.
A final talk on weather presented by
Lee Chesneau, Marine Meteorologist made us realize how much more we have to learn on that subject.
After lunch of pizza, we bid farewell, and returned to
Lady, the only boat flying an Oklahoma flag. The weather improved as the day progressed, which was pleasant for the boats leaving, but there were still quite a few
that decided, like us, to spend more time here on the Rhode River, waiting for the next weather system to come through.
We spent the afternoon working on wiring for the new solar panels, requiring a couple of trips into the lazarette for me, and drilling holes and pulling wires through the boat for Charlie.
