{"id":237,"date":"2014-08-08T22:18:53","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T22:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=237"},"modified":"2014-08-10T22:22:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T22:22:57","slug":"the-hood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=237","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Hood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0910\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By now you\u2019re all probably sick and tired of hearing about the progress (or lack of) with the boat jobs, so I thought I\u2019d try and stick my head out of the boat and paint a picture of what life\u2019s like in our little neighbourhood of Spa Creek.<\/p>\n

Well, first of all it\u2019s a very quaint and pretty place, and we get treated to some beautiful sunsets and sunrises, but peaceful? No. The day starts about 5am with the crows. LOTS of crows. I believe the collective noun is a murder, and they will be as soon as Bruce gets his hands on a slingshot or BB gun. They\u2019ve obviously identified the top of our mast as their ablution block \u2013 every morning there are large gobs of red berry bird shit all over the deck. No matter how fast we get the hose onto it, it\u2019s already stained the deck. And this week they\u2019ve managed to get Bruce fair and square on the back (twice!) while he\u2019s been fitting hatches. Their days are numbered. But I digress\u2026<\/p>\n

If you were able to sleep through the crow alarm, the next alarm is the church bell across the creek, that starts at 6am and rings every quarter hour. Charming at first, but becoming less appealing (haha) the longer we\u2019re here. Today is Friday, and every Friday morning at 6am the Naval Academy must hold some kind of mass training exercise with loudspeakers \u2013 complete with chants and cheersquads. Suffice to say, sleeping in is not an option!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0914\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the day progresses, the tourist boats and the \u201cHistorical Kayak Tours\u201d begin their procession past Toucan. I can confirm that we are definitely on the oldest marina in Annapolis, having heard that particular phrase several hundred times now!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0928\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Stand-Up Paddleboard (SUP) school at the end of the dock, which presents quite a nice distraction for both of us with the buffed male instructors and their bikini-clad students.<\/p>\n

Right in front of Toucan are the two barges complete with crane and pile driver for the reconstruction of the private jetty opposite us. They\u2019ve been here now almost as long as us and we\u2019re having bets that they\u2019ll still be here when we leave. In fact next door they\u2019ve demolished a house, and almost built a new one in the same time! So we also have the merry sound of machinery and nail guns as background noise.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0913\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You think that\u2019s it? Oh no \u2013 we haven\u2019t even started to talk about the sirens yet! The emergency services must be overworked here, as there\u2019s a regular wail of sirens throughout the day and night. We\u2019ve decided that Americans must be hearing-impaired as the sirens clearly aren\u2019t sufficient. No Sir-ee, they lean on the horns too \u2013 big, loud horns blasting their way over Spa Creek bridge!<\/p>\n

And then, the \u2018piece de resistance\u2019. All the hubbub of the day dies down, we repair to the cockpit for some R & R and a cold one (or two) and then just when we\u2019re nicely relaxed \u2013 \u201cBOOOOM\u201d!! The Annapolis Yacht Club has a tradition of firing a cannon (yes, a cannon) to mark official twilight every evening. It never fails to elicit an expletive and scare the crap out of us. You can see why we\u2019re pretty keen on getting off the dock soon and finding a nice quiet inlet to drop the hook!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now you\u2019re all probably sick and tired of hearing about the progress (or lack of) with the boat jobs, so I thought I\u2019d try and stick my head out of the boat and paint a picture of what life\u2019s like in our little neighbourhood of Spa Creek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-3P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}