Festive December Boating

BALTIMORE INNER HARBOR
Saturday, December 3rd


I've been very remiss in my writing, even though I've had several great opportunities to blog.  I've taken two cruises - a 5 day Royal Caribbean cruise to Bermuda from Baltimore and an MSC cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas, where I could tell stories of big seas, seasickness, and new found friends.  We've also taken the boat out on several occasions for short periods of time.  I even miss it- I got used to being ever vigilant of good shots, good stories and good quotes).    Anyway...  last weekend we took a short jaunt to the harbor for the day and I thought this was a good opportunity to put it on paper (or at least in to words). 

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and so much to do all over the city that day- bands in harbor east, tubas in the harbor, the boat parade, the light show at the power plant, and I was ready to get in to the holiday spirit.  We had lots of friends that would be downtown too.  So I talked Buddy in to going to the city and staying on the boat before it was winterized (it wasn't very hard). 

When we got to the marina, Clark said he wanted to take his boat out so we unloaded, turned on the heat and headed over to F pier.  I immediately noticed something VERY attractive about Clark's boat (not that it isn't a beautiful vessel anyway), but the cockpit was WARM!  A HEATED COCKPIT!  I was in heaven since anyone that knows me knows I hate to be cold.  He fired up the engines, and off we went.  We cruised around the harbor and enjoyed seeing how crowded & festive the city was.  It was especially entertaining when we pulled up alongside the wall at the Inner Harbor.  There were over 100 santas walking from Tir Na Nog, in front of our boat and on in to Federal Hill.  (The annual Santa Stumble that benefits inner city schools).  We were cracking up - some of the santas were even themed!  There were viking santas, elvis santas, geeky santas, skinny santas, fat santas, even a jewish santa!  They were certainly spreading good cheer!
We decided that would be a great place to watch the boat parade and tied up in front of the old J. Pauls (didn't even know it was gone!).  Right away we had some friends hop on board, and just as the santas were drifting out of site, then what to our wandering eyes should appear?  But 200 tubas coming in near.  No kidding!  Tubas, tubas everywhere.  They played beautiful holiday music for an hour and then the tuba parade began again. 

Next up?  The Baltimore Parade of Lighted Boats, of course!  A few more firends came aboard to watch the boat parade, now in it's 24th year here in Baltimore and put on by the Fells Point Yacht Club.  Well over a dozen boats of all shapes and sizes were decorated in varying degrees to festively entertain.  My personal favorite was Santa's Sleigh, with the Choo Choo Train (and accompanying life-like horn) in a close second.  There were two aweome boats from BMC Lighthouse Point (that I know of) there to represent our marinas.  And the whole time I was toasty warm in the cockpit!! 

So after the fabulously festive day we had, we said so long to our guests and started the engines, made our way back across the harbor to the marina, where I finally had to step out in to the cold night's air.  A bonus boat ride in December - LOVE IT!