Last weekend we were invited to an engagement party that friends Eric and Carleen were hosting for their son, Jeff, and soon-to-be-daughter-in-law Dorri. E and C have waterfront property and it was just too tempting to visit them by boat. We went for a day sail on Saturday and finished by dropping the hook off Truxton Park. We could just hear the announcer calling the Navy football game.

Rowing in to the party certainly made for a dramatic entrance and a great conversation starter. I even managed to keep my white pants clean, no mean feat when the dock was high enough that I had to climb out on my hands and knees. The guests were a fun mix of their neighbors, soon-to-be-inlaws, and boating friends like us. Many photos were taken of the happy couple with the sunset and the anchored boats in the background. Time passed way too quickly, and it was dark by the time we went back to the dock. The tide had risen and it was an easy step back into the dinghy for the row back home.


Next day, we had hoped to have our friends over for coffee in the cockpit, but they were just too overwhelmed with the party and their houseguests, so we decided to save that for another time. Instead, our day included a long chat with the folks anchored next to us. We took the dinghy and rowed up to the very end of the creek, far too shallow for our "big boat" to go. A man in a kayak smiled at us and said not a word as we watched a heron stalking the shallows, moving in that odd, articulated, mechanical way they have. It felt like another world, although less than an hour by boat from our somewhat congested home on Back Creek.


But it *was* time to go back to reality, so we packed up and headed out, trying to time our arrival with the every-half-hour bridge openings at the Spa Creek bridge. After all those times we waited in traffic behind the open bridge to get downtown, or Dan stressed behind the open bridge wondering if he would be late for work, now the traffic was stopped for *us*, as the bridge tender raised the bridge and through we went.

If you google "beaches" and "jellyfish" together, you get articles from the Med to Australia about resorts inundated with these stinging blobs. Here in the Chesapeake, NOAA publishes predictions of the likelihood of encountering sea nettles, based on water temperature and salinity: http://155.206.18.162/seanettles/ People are reduced to swimming in Lycra skins or in small areas fenced off with fine mesh nets. And much of the population explosion is due to overfishing the jellyfish's natural predators, sea turtles and tuna and other similar large fish.

The poor sea turtles! If that wasn't bad enough, when they do try to get a jellyfish meal, they can be far too often tricked by an imposter in the form of a plastic bag. We tried a little experiment:
We tried to see if we could make a plastic bag look like a jellyfish by putting it on the end of a boat pole and swirling it around in the water.

When a business gets you all excited advertising a new product or service, but the reality doesn't live up to the hype, you can be justifiably annoyed. But when a hurricane turns out to be less than predicted, instead of annoyance, there's relief. That's what happened with Hanna. We were prepared for stronger winds and more rain than we received, and had no damage.

Images of flooding at our marina, 5 years ago during Hurricane Isabel. Wonder what will happen this time?

Two more pictures from Isabel: our dock-neighbor Bill's boat at normal water level, and then in high water after surviving the storm. Hoping we all do as well this time!

Here's part of the spiderweb of lines holding us in place, as the waters started to rise:

I was all set to blog about jellyfish, sea turtles, and the plastic bag ban when this article about housebarges appeared in the Capital: http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/08_17-38/BUS Links to articles in the paper expire in 30 days unless you access them from a library, so I'll try to summarize: the article is about the growing popularity of houseboats and the controversy over whether they are allowed in Annapolis. Current zoning is very restrictive, the manufacturer wants to have "discussions" with the City. Similar discussions are popping up in a lot of places, like this NY Times article "Houseboats Emerge as a Cheaper Form of Housing: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE1DA1139F934A3575AC0A960948260 The manufacturer's spin on them is here: http://www.bayacht.com/aaa/Marina/InvestorMarina.htm Note that they're billed as "cheap waterfront living" NOT as boats. If your 3-year-old nephew saw one, he wouldn't say "Oh, look at the pretty boat." Nor would your Aunt Betty from Kansas. And that's my point.

Those barges? They look to me like doublewides on pontoons. And despite the manufacturer's claim, they aren't boats - can you imagine being in even mild waves in one of them? It is generally accepted that they don't move often, if at all. There are waiting lists for boat slips at many marinas here for recreational boats - do we really want to further decrease the opportunities?

I'll admit to my obvious prejudice - I live aboard because I love boating. The waterfront view and the community are tremendous plusses, but most of all I live this way simply because I like to sail. Most of all I think what offends me is this: Annapolis has tried hard to preserve its maritime heritage and feel. Enterprise zones to encourage marine industries to stay on the waterfront instead of ripping out marinas to replace them with endless condos. These housebarges impress me as a disrespectful way of trying to do an end run around that zoning.

The weekend weather forecast was absolutely astonishingly perfect, and we couldn't *not* go out and play. We motored around after work on Thursday to take a mooring for the weekend in the thick of the action in Annapolis Harbor. What a treat, to travel like a turtle, taking our home with us, and not have to pack! Mostly we just sat in the cockpit and watched the world go by - the water taxis and power boats making their tours of Ego Alley, the silent glides of the classic WoodWinds, the kids shrieking with delight as they played pirate on the Sea Gypsy.

My very favorite thing to do as a tourist is to walk and people-watch, and the weekend didn't dissappoint. It was the first weekend that the plebes from the class of 2012 had liberty, so downtown was full of mids in dress whites. Each one seemed accompanied by at least 4 or 5 others - parents, a kid brother or sister, a girlfriend or boyfriend. Lots of people on City Dock looking at the boats in the harbor - hey, that's us! And of course my very favorite Annapolis anachronism - tour guides in Colonial dress, on Segways. We did all the tourist things - checked out all the shops, bought the obligatory ice cream, went out to dinner (grilled salmon in citrus butter, yum!).

Somehow this visit had a different 'vibe' than I'm used to when we go to events downtown and I wondered what it was. Maybe just that our boat/home was right there? Then I realized ... parking! Anything we do in town is twice as enjoyable when there's no roaming the streets looking for a spot, or paying the meter. We simply took the dinghy, tied it at the restaurant dock or a public dock downtown, and started walking. There's a moral in there somewhere, but it'll have to wait for another time <*grin*>.

"So," asked my new colleague Trish sociably, "how're you settling in?" I had just moved here from Michigan and it was Day 4 of my new job at Headquarters. Husband Dan was still in Michigan finishing his teaching commitment; he would join me at the end of the semester.

"Well," I told Trish, "I'm still experimenting. I still haven't figured out the right time to leave to miss the worst of the traffic on the Beltway."

She rolled her eyes at my naivety. "Have you tried 4 AM? Why Annapolis, anyway? Why not somewhere closer to the office?" So I told her about our love for sailing and the water, and how we couldn't get this close and not take advantage of the opportunity to live in a place with such a distinctive character. Then she casually asked the question I'd been expecting and dreading: "How about your new place?"

Choosing my words very, very carefully, I answered, "Well, it's reeeally reeeally small, but it has everything - a place to socialize, a place to sit and think, a place to cook, and a place to sleep. And, if I look out the window over the range I can just see the boats going up and down the creek." Every word was perfectly true...and perfectly misleading. Because the part I'd left out was that our new home on the water was "on" the water in a literal sense - we were planning to live on our sailboat.

Why the secrecy? Well, I didn't have a sense of how my new boss would react - he was old-school gracious and stunningly conservative. Would he have second thoughts about his newest employee, wondering if he'd hired a hippie rebel, and how would she fit in? Nor did I know how Dan and I would react, if we would find friends in the people around us, and if even after 20 years of marriage we could fit our lives into a 33 foot boat. If our great experiment was to be a failure or a career-inhibitor, I wanted as few witnesses as possible.

Fast forward 5 years.

Living on a boat has been, most of all, fabulously fun. I've learned a lot about boats, and weather, and Bay ecology, and downsizing. I've learned how to figure out what things really matter. I've got a different relationship with my "stuff." I've found a tremendous sense of community in my fellow boaters and liveaboards. And my boss? My fears on that score were groundless. Most people were more curious than judgemental.

That curiousity is what inspired this blog, random thoughts about what day-to-day life in Annapolis is like, when "home" is a sailboat.

(An article about living aboard by the same title first appeared in the Capital on 5/27/07)