Bidding Farewell to Annapolis

Monday afternoon we visited with the staff at The Annapolis Sail Yard to thank them for generously allowing us to stay at their dock while the work was being done to repair our boat. The location was convenient to downtown Annapolis and we had the extra treat of being able to drop into the Sail Yard office to kibitz with the staff. The ever delightful and cute as a button Terri was also kind enough to allow me to record her as she left a message for our daughters.





Monday evening as we had our final dinner at The Chart House, Captain Mark and I discussed our plan for getting out of our slip at The Annapolis Sail Yard. The fairway is very narrow and we were not quite, but almost touching the pilings both port and starboard. Mark had done a stellar job of getting us into the slip so I had every confidence that he would be able to get us out as well. So here was our plan: I would position myself aft (with headset in place) to monitor and relay distance while Captain Mark was in charge of monitoring how close we came to other boats off the bow. The plan was that Captain Mark would pull forward into the fairway and take an immediate hard starboard turn, straighten out the Lolligag into the middle of the fairway and then back down the fairway until reaching open water with me providing verbal direction. Backing in or out of the fairway is the only way to maneuver as there is no room to either make a hard port turn out of the slip or spin in the fairway in order to go forward out into open water. Captain Mark did an excellent job of executing his plan. I was calm as a cucumber on the aft deck because I was not able to see how close we came to the boats around us when Mark pulled into the fairway BUT if I had been able to see, I would have seen that we were not even close to the other boats at any time!