I just spent a day doing something I don’t do much with people I haven’t seen often enough, and therefore learning and experiencing a lot of new things. The world is separated into people who love boats and boating and those of us landlubbers who never really caught that bug. In my youth in Wisconsin, the land of 15,000 lakes (even though neighbor Minnesota brags about having 10,000 lakes), I did my share of boating. At summer camp in Northern Wisconsin (Camp Red Arrow), I spent time canoeing, rowing boats, waterskiing, wakeboarding and tubing behind motorboats and even sailing (both dinghies and bigger multi-sail boats). But while the appeal of boating had a small spot in my consciousness, the opportunity only ever presented itself for canoeing when we moved to Maine. After that, there was a transatlantic crossing on the Italian Line Michelangelo, a few client events at the Americas Cup races in Newport (lots of seasickness involved for me), a long weekend schooner charter from Garners Bay and eventually even a three-year ownership adventure of a 23 ft. Chris Craft mahogany lake cruiser on Lake Cayuga. None of it infested me to the boating or sailing life. My standard go-to line was something about never finding a place to sit on a sailboat without a cleat up my ass. Fun storyline, but the reality was that I felt like a duck out of water on a boat. Since that I should choose to live for ten years in the South Street Seaport of lower Manhattan, staring at the tall ships every day from our terrace.
I flew into Dulles Airport to go visit my college friend Ann and her husband Russ. Ann grew up at a rustic campsite on Cayuga Lake and was no stranger to boats. Russ grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia on the James River and developed a great love for sailing…not boating…sailing. After a lifetime os raising a family and living in suburban Maryland, Russ & Ann’s retirement dream was to move to Annapolis, on the Chesapeake Bay and live in a condo on the water with their boat in a slip at their door. To be fair, that was more Ross’ dream than Ann’s but Ann is a sportswoman and outdoorswoman who had little trouble getting into sailing. Her lakeside upbringing and love for antiques also made the Annapolis waterfront a great retirement venue. When I arrranged to visit them during my trip east, I made the mistake of thinking Dulles was where BWI sits and therefore an hour closer to their home. Once I landed and looked closely at my GPS, I realized that the D.C. Beltway lay between me and them. Hertz also decided all on their own that since I was heading to Annapolis, the Delaware Shore and Ithaca, I must be a frat boy that needed a Jeep Wrangler instead of the mid-sized SUV I had ordered. I pulled into Annapolis in my Jeep looking like I was checking in for the summer session at the nearby Naval Academy.
Perhaps that was a good trauma to soften me up for the calm and tranquil scene of the Annapolis waterfront as viewed from Russ & Ann’as condo deck, which looks out on sailboats of every manner and church spires that evoke the colonial maritime heritage of this historic hallowed ground. We dined on the deck on pan-seared crabcakes and roasted pinenuts and swapped stories. Russ had rushed about to fix a malfunctioning spinnaker sail roller so that we could go for a sail in the morning. But along the way a contingent medical quasi-emergency unfolded involving a tick bite Russ had gotten in the woods and the need to get the analysis of the mite to avoid dancing with Lyme Disease. The morning sail got waylaid while Russ sorted out his medical issues (it turned out not to be a deer tick, so crisis averted), but the delay stamped paid on the sailing plan. Instead, we called the local water taxi to come and get us to take us over to the old town of Annapolis. It’s a great way to come into a seaport town and we walked all around the town and saw the Maryland state capital, the Naval Academy and St. John’s College, not to mention the array of quaint stores that made me feel bad that Kim could not be with us. We ate at a restaurant overlooking the harbor and noted a new project underway designed by the Dutch to combat the seasonal urban flooding that plagues Annapolis. Global Warming is wreaking havoc all around the world to most waterfront towns like this.
We caught the water taxi back across the Bay as I needed to get in my rented Jeep Wrangler and drive through the eastern shore area of Maryland and across little Delaware to visit my son Roger and his wife Valene, who live in a similar, but more beachy than boaty waterfront town of Lewes. The waterfront life has not always been so appealing to Americans who just wanted to live by good transportation, but not where the tides, surge or surf could destroy their homes and property on the whim of a late summer storm. That’s all different now. My son loves his boardwalk waterfront for different reason than Russ & Ann love their oyster shell pathways and sailboat buoys, but the briny air is similar and the ambiance of gently moving water and bobbing boats bring dreams of fun and distant lands to them both. It would be hard not to see the pleasure one can get from the settings. Even the landlubber in me gets it and I really enjoyed communing with the Chesapeake for a brief moment…something that I had never experienced before but long wondered about as I starred at my South Street Seaport masts. John Masefield’s famous Cargoes poem echoes in my mind. As I move on to the Delaware Shore before heading north to the Finger Lakes and yet another form of waterfront, I am thinking of Russ & Ann and wishing them a tick-free summer on a waterfront that clearly connects with their retirement soul. Ann promises to take some sailing lessons to help Russ more on their boat and I imagine Russ will think twice about rolling in the grasslands with his grandson. Meanwhile, the boats moored outside their windows just keep bobbing along keeping the idyllic painting of historic Annapolis looking its waterfront best.