Borealis: Day 89- Solomons, MD

We finally got out of Annapolis! I lost count but I think we were there for more than 10 days. Pablo had serious ants in his pants and was dying to move on. It was a test on multiple levels for us. We had little wind and thus not much power generation. Pablo hasn’t fully installed our solar panels but rigged them up temporarily which helped a little. We reached capacity on our holding tank. Our kids have been troopers about a lot of things on this trip but I think reached a limit when we told them they couldn’t use the bathroom until we could pump out. Something about not being able to use the bathroom for a bit makes everyone NEED to go NOW. As productive as our time is in places like Annapolis it is also very frustrating. We find it hard to bridge boat life and regular life. We don’t have all the ‘tools’ (like a car or two cell phones, unlimited power to charge computers etc…) to do things as efficiently as everyone around us, so it becomes frustrating after a bit. It is much easier to stay in more remote places where the pace of life is slower and thus our expectations seem to be lower also.
Our trip to DC was fun and successful. I spent the morning in the State Department Office of Authentications. Bet you’ve never heard of that one. I had to get some documents authenticated in order for the Finnish embassy to release my passport. After delivering the docs to the very modern embassy building (fancy compare to the El Salvador embassy which was basically a strip mall store front with a flag in front) we saw the White House, had a tour of the Treasury Dept Bureau of Printing and Engraving (see Mia's blog for more info) and went to the Air and Space museum. I could spend a lot more time exploring DC.
From Annapolis we sailed south to the West River and anchored for the night. In the morning we walked in to Galesville, a nice southern feeling town, to mail a letter. We spent the rest of the day sailing to Solomons, MD.