Annapolis Sailboat Show—It’s Not About The Boats
Published: Tuesday, September 24, 2019
By: Molly Winans
It’s not about the boats. Sure, there are hundreds of them and thousands of people from all around the world who come to see them, but the boats are secondary to the show.
For local sailors, the Annapolis Sailboat Show begins before the gates open the Thursday of Columbus Day weekend. It begins when we see the fence start to go up at City Dock, our hearts skip a beat, and we realize it’s almost show time. When the docks get built out into the harbor, changing the shape of the place for two weeks, we locals don’t mind. We like to watch the temporary docks grow and evolve. Next, the boats file in, seemingly overnight. The colorful flags go up the halyards. The sound of hundreds of flags flapping in the sweet October breeze signals that the show has begun.
You can’t swing a life ring in Annapolis without hitting someone who’s worked at the Annapolis Sailboat Show, whether as a yacht dealer or gatekeeper, a hardware vendor or boat shoe salesperson, a sailmaker or rigger. We have worked long hours in this labor of love and have come back and done it again, and again. We’re part of a tribe, part of a tradition. Even when it’s hard work, the show brings back fond memories.
The show brings old friends together. When we arrive as workers or as attendees admiring yachts along the docks, we’re reunited with like-minded sailors from Newport, San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee, Plymouth, La Rochelle, Sydney, Auckland—name your sailing port. No sailor attends the show just once. We all return, some every year for a decade, some every year since the beginning 50 years ago, when Annapolis entrepreneur and visionary Jerry Wood dreamed of an in-water sailboat show.
So, you see, it’s not about the boats. It’s about running into friends and giving them bear hugs on the docks on your way to see a new boat. If you sit and observe the show unfolding, you will hear greetings and squeals of glee as friends reconnect. It’s about giving hugs and handshakes, passing out boat cards, and catching up over boat drinks. All, of course, leads to more sailing.
It’s about friends under sunny skies, clad in sun hats and boat shoes, who meet for crabcakes and Pusser’s Painkillers before boarding the next new boat. It’s about the scent of crabcakes and pit beef cooking on the Fleet Reserve Club deck; laughter and French and Australian accents mingling with southern and New England accents on the docks; and about tropical music flowing from the Waterfront Hotel roof.
The show is about friends you haven’t met yet, some quite famous. Have you heard of the YouTube sensation of “Sailing La Vagabonde”? These well-known Australian circumnavigators will be at the Annapolis show in 2019, as will authors and cruising sailors Lin Pardy and Behan Gifford. Have you ever met the marine electronics expert and author Nigel Calder? You can meet him at the show where he and the others are giving seminars. You can also meet ocean racers and Olympians. They’re walking the show docks along with ordinary sailors like us.
For sailors like us, the show is not about the boats as much as the new boat smell, learning about cool new boat gadgets and electronics, feeling the new teak decks on our bare feet, and sitting in cushy saloon seats (some too luxurious for us, but, man, they feel good). It’s about discovering how much headroom we need onboard, what cabin layout feels natural, whether we can imagine ourselves making spaghetti in the new galley, or whether we envision cruising to the next creek or to the next continent. It’s about the quest for a boat that feels right, a boat we could call home.
The Annapolis Sailboat Show isn’t about the boats. Whether you’re a beginning sailor or an old salt, it’s about the sailing dream. It’s about sailors coming home. www.annapolisboatshows.com
Oct. 10-14, 2019
Find out more on our Events Calendar
About the Author
Annapolis sailor Molly Winans attended her first Annapolis Sailboat Show 30 years ago as a gatekeeper. She still works at the show every year as editor of SpinSheet Magazine (booth F6).
This article first appeared in the Fall Issue (Sep/Oct) 2019 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
tags: Boat Show, East Coast, Feel Good Story, Sailing
