Wednesday 3 October: Road trip to St. Michaels, and we meet Pete Goss at the OCC dinner.
Another bright warm day with clear blue sky. We head for a road trip south, towards St. Michaels. On the way, we pass over the double suspension bridge, which we sailed under few days ago, to the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. A bit of a long drive, but very pleasant through beautiful countryside. A mixture of woods, harvested fields of corn and beans, vivid green golf courses, quaint houses and perfectly maintained roads. We are again impressed with this area of USA.
St. Michaels is a historical village, with a maritime museum, couple of marinas and the usual main street with colorful houses and shops. We walk on several streets, admiring the houses and their gardens, listening to the birds chirping in the trees and then settle in a nice cafe for our usual late morning coffee. Unfortunately, we do not have enough time to visit the Maritime Museum, which is a 15 acres facility with lots of very interesting exhibits and stories, as we have a deadline for the airport run today.
We return to Cloudy Bay for lunch and Alex to pack, then it’s off to Baltimore (BWI) airport. Good byes are always sad, but we do not have much time to linger on our heart aches. We have to rush back to Cloudy Bay to get ready for the Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) reception which we attend this evening, and we dress up a little for the occasion.
We are surprised to find quite a large crowd, maybe 100 people attending, and from not knowing anybody here we soon find ourselves chatting away with various groups of like minded cruising people.
At one point, Glen becomes all excited for me to meet another couple, Pete and Tracy. He is clearly over the moon with happiness, but I couldn’t exactly gather why that was. Till we sit at the table and Glen manages to brief me. Pete is Pete Goss, Glen’s sailing hero, probably the best sailor of all times.
And after dinner Pete delivers a speech, which was so upbeat and full of amazing stories wrapped up in a funny presentation. Secretly we all hoped he would keep talking for many more hours. It was that good!
After dinner, we drive Pete and Tracy to their accommodation, and once we drop them off, Glen can finally release all his excitement: “oh, pinch me, pinch me. Did I just sat at the same table with Pete Goss? And I gave him a lift? OMG!” And the rest of the evening continues on the same theme, with me learning about yet more adventures and achievements of Pete Goss.
We go to bed all hyped up, wondering if we can fall asleep with all this excitement!