Week 6
Columbus Day weekend marks one of Annapolis’s biggest events: the United States Sailboat Show, which will be followed the next weekend by the United States Powerboat Show.
This year marks the 44th return of the sailboat show to Annapolis and the Capital tells us that this year, “more than 40,000 people are expected to attend the show.” Exercising my prerogative as a local to eschew the big local tourist event, I wasn’t one of them. But having skipped the party, I did attend the after-party.
The boat show starts in nautical fashion with the firing of a cannon. The Capital relays this vignette from 2004, the first year the signaling cannon was used to start the show: “The cannon recoiled, fell off a ledge and bounced down a flight of stairs leading to the harbormaster’s main office. A spokesman for the boat shows was ready to put it in context: ‘So we started with a loose cannon.’”
Anyone at the show on Friday evening would have gotten drenched as the sky turned black around 6:30 with heavy rainclouds. But the weather was perfect the rest of the weekend. Late Monday afternoon, when I showed up just before the sailboat show ended to hit the after- party at Pusser’s Landing, the temperature hovered around 70.
I parked on the Naval Academy’s yard, where I had an excellent view of the boat show from the sea wall. Right after 5, a crew began to break down the dock, creating openings for a parade of giant sailboats to exit from the City Dock into Spa Creek.
From the seawall, it was a short walk to Pusser’s Landing in the Annapolis Marriott Waterfront, where a large crowd was gathered at the two-story dock bar. Margaritaville-style music played over a loud speaker, including the execrable Escape (The Piña Colada Song). The hotel’s balconies were also crowded with observers. A cheer went up as each massive sailboat departed its slip. The best part: Pusser’s Landing’s Painkillers were on sale at the dock bar, in $7, $8, and $9 versions, depending on rum content. I’ve enjoyed a Painkiller at the British Virgin Island’s Soggy Dollar Bar, where it was invented. The bar gets its name from the fact that it has no dock. Boats have to drop anchor a few feet from Jost Van Dyke Island’s shore. The bar can be reached only by wading through the water like MacArthur returning to the Philippines. The natural result is a wet wallet, hence the “Soggy Dollar Bar.” There’s actually a clothes line behind the bar from which bills are hung to dry. The bar’s seating includes a hammock stretched out between two palm trees on the beach. In this idyllic setting, the Painkiller was born: orange juice, pineapple juice, cream of coconut, dark rum, and nutmeg. At the Soggy Dollar Bar, the bartender applied the final ingredient by grating fresh nutmeg over the drink, sprinkling the foamy top with auburn shavings. Pusser’s can’t capture the ambience of Jost Van Dyke, but still makes an excellent imitation Painkiller – though, sadly, the bartender at the Pusser’s dock bar sprinkled nutmeg from a stainless steel shaker onto the top of the drink rather than grating fresh nutmeg. For an extra fee, the Painkiller could be purchased in an enameled metal “Pusser’s Landing Painkiller Club” cup featuring the Painkiller recipe on the outside, flags from the Caribbean on the inside, and, on the bottom, a drawing of a sailor hanging by a noose from a yardarm above the words, “Good to the Last Drop.” The recipe on the cup includes, “Stir & grate fresh nutmeg on top!” Even the exclamation point failed to compel the stainless steel sharker-wielding bartender to obey that command. But reagardless of the nutmeg’s freshness, the Painkiller was refreshingly smooth, though in my hazy recollection, the Soggy Dollar Bar’s Painkiller had a higher ratio of cream of cocunut to pineapple and orange juice.
With drink in hand and the procession of sailboats leaving in front of me, this seems a perfect transition from the sailboat show to the powerboat show. Because none of those sailboats are leaving under sail: they are all under power.
County Seat: An Anne Arundel Blog 