Lifeisgrand: The Slaughter on the Water and Stella’s Graduation

Sunday, November 3, 2024

The Slaughter on the Water and Stella’s Graduation

Annapolis – 1 miles by dinghy, 8 kilometres walked

That whole morning movie thing worked out so well for me that I did it again today. I fired up The Fall Guy at 6:30 am and despite my low expectations, I loved it. I only got about halfway through, but it is very funny, so I’ll finish it off tomorrow.

I decided to take a day off boat work today. After giving Kevin and Ana a dinghy ride into town (they were off to Washington for the day), I went for a long, hot shower at the marina office then started on a long walk to explore Annapolis. It is a beautiful, historic town with a marine tradition unlike anything I’ve seen before. I found a couple restaurants I want to take Ana to when she’s back. I found this amazing little bookstore that had a copy of Marcus Aurellius’ Meditations on the discount rack for six bucks so I grabbed it. I explored St. John’s College, founded in 1696. I found a children’s park and did some pull ups. I walked across the bridge to the town of Eastport and found the Maritime museum, a lot of historic houses and buildings, and a thousand or two people and a dozen food and booze vendors and bunch of bands gathered for the Slaughter on the Water Tug of War competition with Annapolis. And yes, the tug of war takes place by stringing a thick rope right across the entire bay and stopping all boat traffic for a few hours.

The party was already going by 10:30 am and most people were carrying a beer or two. I wasn’t ready for drinking yet, but I did grab a half dozen delicious oysters for the ridiculous cheap price of nine bucks. This is the 25^th anniversary of this event and the crowd was really into it. I stayed for the first of ten or so tugs. There were at least 30 or 40 people on the rope and the other side of the bay was so far away you couldn’t make out details, but I assume they had similar numbers on their team. There was a five second countdown then the tug began and the crowd went wild! It went on for several minutes and sadly the Eastport team started giving way and lost the first round. But it didn’t dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm.

I walked back over the bridge to check out the Annapolis side and there wasn’t much of a party going on at all – just the tuggers and a couple hundred spectators. I was told by somebody there that the big party is always on the Eastport side.

I had lunch back at the boat, then after the competition finished and the rope was removed I was able to dinghy some tools over to Ben and Kate, then I gave them a bit of help installing a new stove on their boat. Really, I just handed Ben the tools.

After that job I returned to my favourite coffee shop and found an exuberant lad on the front counter who would great each customer as they walked in the store with a booming voice hollering “HELLO LADY AND GENTLEMAN AND CHILDREN OF ALL AGES! WELCOME TO BIDDY AND BEAU’S! THE GREATEST COFFEE SHOP IN THE WORLD”. It was awesome.

While there Ana called with two pieces of great news. First, Magnus was going to be spending a week with us in Florida before flying to Edinburgh for his next school semester in January. He found a crazy flight that was just as cheap as flying directly to Scotland. Also, because he will be arriving five days before he’s able to move into the university residence, our friends Steve and Abby have graciously agreed to host him for those days at their house which is in a small village called Jedburgh, not far from Edinburgh and I am sure they will give him a fantastic introduction to Scotland. So on December 26 Magnus, Ana, Stella, and her friend Anna and will all fly into Fort Lauderdale and take over SeaLight. Secondly, Ana attended Stella’s grade 12 graduation ceremony today and sent me an image of the program that showed Stella had won a whole slew of awards and scholarships. I am so proud of her! She worked so hard at school and is such a good student so I’m happy to see her recognized for her efforts and leadership.