6 Pound Milkshakes and Cockpit Blues in the Key of A

Annapolis – 10 miles by car , 7 kilometres walked

We were up early to get propane and return the rental car then had a brisk hour long walk back to downtown to meet up with our friends at Chick and Ruth’s, a local celebrated breakfast establishment, famous for its 6 pound Colossal Milkshake. We considered ordering one because if you are able to finish it they post your picture on the wall and reward you with a t-shirt, but then we found out you still have to pay the 35 bucks for it. Instead, we enjoyed a classic American fry-up then explored a few of the shops downtown. We met a lady named Pat at the Sea Bags Maine store who we talked with for a very long time. She told us all about Annapolis - the shifts in demographics that have happened over time, skyrocketing rents, inflation, the challenging retail environment, then gave us an insider view on her platform for when she becomes the country’s benign dictator. One plank of her platform involved mandatory vasectomies and possible castration for all men over the age of 45 getting to prevent them from marrying 25-year-old hotties after divorcing their menopausal wives. She was an interesting lady.

 

After our walk it was back to SeaLight to do some cleaning. Ana went crazy with the vacuum and scrubbing brushes and cleaned the inside of the boat and the cockpit while I gave the deck a salt water scrub which I planned to rinse with fresh water tomorrow. When the cleaning was done Ana and I sat down together and planned out our next few days of travels, plus calculated the pace we’re going to have to maintain to get ourselves down the ICW and to south Florida by the middle of December. We figured that if we can average 40 miles per day then we will need to travel four out of seven days per week. And that will be a bit less if we go offshore and do one or two 24 hour overnight runs. We are going to be covering a lot of territory in the coming weeks.

 

We had invited our new friends over for a sundowner on SeaLight, which we shifted from 5:30 to 4:30 after remembering the time change. In all we had eight people – Wayne and Gwen, Ana and Kevin, Kate and Ben, then Ana and I and we had a great time together. Wayne brought one of his harmonicas and was ripping on with supreme mojo while I played a 12 bar blues shuffle on the ukulele in the key of A. Ben joined in by singing a bunch of nautical-themed dirty lyrics and we mesmerized the entire mooring field of international boaters with our spectacular music. Then we quit after one song and got back to eating and drinking.