Road Trip to Annapolis

We’ve been to so many boat shows throughout the years but never the sailboat show at Annapolis. After committing to stay in the states for hurricane season this year, we knew it was an obvious opportunity to catch up with some old friends and meet many of the internet friends we’ve made over the last year.

So we rented a car, loaded up the pups and drove to Maryland for the show. Through our contacts at the Young Cruisers Association and SeaPeople, we had the opportunity to volunteer at the booth, help out with the International Cruiser Awards and even spoke briefly at a seminar about how we afford to cruise before retirement. It’s also always fun to check out the fancy new boats and latest products on the market. In a nutshell, we had an absolute blast!

SeaPeople
In January, we signed up as alpha users of a new social/community sailing app called SeaPeople. At the time, they were specifically looking for people in Florida and the Bahamas as test subjects to use the app, determine what worked and what didn’t, and provide overall feedback to the team for enhancements.

What is SeaPeople, you ask? It’s an app that helps connect like-minded people on the water. It’s like social media for cruisers on steroids. You can track and share your trips, send out hails to nearby boats and see where others are traveling. Many of our stops in the Bahamas were informed by SeaPeople who generously offered up recommendations of their favorite spots. We send all of our kudos to the team who made SeaPeople a reality. It was no small feat.

If you want to learn more, here’s a pretty awesome video about how SeaPeople came to be. The app is now live for everyone to download too. Get after it!

Home (here and there)
Now that we are back home on the boat, recovering from a busy week away, we’re feeling extra grateful for our community and inspired for what’s to come. We’re shifting focus now to getting the boat ready to get off the dock.

We got very lucky in Brunswick with Hurricane Milton, even though leaving the boat so close to harms way was hard. We just finished putting things back together after our whole solar array went flying off the boat in the middle of the night during Hurricane Helene when Milton started knocking on Florida’s doorstep. We left for Annapolis with the boat prepared as if she was going to get more weather than forecast. Luckily, it wasn’t bad at all and everything stayed in place, right as we left it.

There are so many people who have faced absolute devastation this season, losing their homes or boats or absolutely everything. We know much work goes into the restoration after a major event and our hearts are with all of those impacted and recovering.