A Sales Trip to Annapolis!

You know the slip is tight when you need to drop fenders on each side while tied up! The SeaClutch mobile sales room is docked!

The Annapolis Boat Show provided us with a great opportunity to market the SeaClutch boat and RV picture frame holder. It is one of the Northeast’s largest in-water shows and has many of the boat manufacturers represented as well as a huge vendor area. We had planned on having a SeaClutch booth, but we are still working with the manufacturer on the product and don’t have anything to sell!

As has been the case most of the summer, the weather failed to cooperate. We had made plans with some good friends to take our boats over on Friday and stay the weekend, but on Friday afternoon the weather service issued gale warnings and small craft advisories. I love boating, but that would have been awful.

Saturday morning we woke to cloudy skies, but the forecast was for calm winds until later in the evening. We discussed it with our friends and had almost convinced ourselves to skip the boat trip when Lisa said, “Lets go! It will be a better sales opportunity on our boat, and summer is almost over!” So we quickly loaded up the boat, let our friends know and headed to Annapolis! While in route we called one of our favorite Annapolis Marina’s, the Annapolis Maryland Capitol Yacht Club, because they had already let us know that they had a slip available. We also got a slip for our friends!

We love that marina, but our boat is 47 foot long and 16ft 6 inches wide. Their biggest slip is 50 ft long and 17 inches wide! To make it more “challenging”, the fairways are only 50 ft wide! Very tight.

After a pleasant ride across the bay, we arrived as the wind began to blow a steady 15 – 20 knots! As I pulled into the fairway the wind was pushing me from the stern, so I got as close as I could to the piling before I began my turn. The wind wanted to push my bow in the wrong direction, so I planted the port stern rub rail on the piling and powered her in! I had to really power her in, and after we were safely in the dock virtually every captain that was around came over to congratulate me.

That is so cool…

Our friends arrived a few minutes later and he got in much easier. As I was helping him with his lines, the dock master came over and said “I’m surprised you took the smaller slip! The one your friend took is two feet wider!”

That would have been good to know...

Next I’ll tell you how the boat show went, then back to the UPC code story line.