Date: Friday 24^th October 2014

I flew back to Baltimore on 18^th September, and arrived at Herrington Harbour late at night.  In the morning I made a start on the usual but tedious jobs of cleaning, painting, polishing, fixing, putting sails back on and so on and so on that has occupied me at least once every year since 1999. After a few days everything was ready for the boat to be put back in the water.  This is always a glorious occasion as living on a boat whilst it is stored on the land is not terribly convenient.

On October 5^th Eileen flew out to join me.  There were still many jobs to do on the boat before we could leave the harbour but now that we were together we managed to fit in some sightseeing of the area around the harbour. In order to get around we hired a car.  We asked for and were promised a small car, but when we turned up to collect it, the rental company apologised that they had no small cars left.  Would we accept a larger one.  Imagine our surprise when we were presented with a Dodge Ram 1500 truck.  Here is a picture of it:

As it happened we really enjoyed driving around in the truck, which turned out to be very comfortable.  Maybe it had something to do with its 6 litre engine.

We made several trips into Annapolis including a day at the boat show which is held there every year.

We also managed a trip to Washington where we visited a number of the museums. Here’s yours truly about as close to The White House as they would allow us to go.

We also managed to make a trip up to Gaithersburg to see Eileen’s nephew Sam and his family.  They live just outside the town in a fantastic countryside setting.  Sam has a couple of record shops, one of which is in the nearby town of Frederick.  We got to visit the town and see the shop.

By now it was starting to get quite cold, particularly at night.  It was definitely time to head southwards.