I cancelled the hotel.
Then I moved out away from the festivities, which is probably the nautical equivalent of backing the boat away from the dock while pretending you haven’t decided whether you’re actually leaving.
So, basically, it’s not looking good.
I started looking at the roster of people who aren’t going this year and found myself thinking that maybe that is the saddest part of the whole thing. Not the hotel. Not the money. Not even the long drive north. It’s the empty spaces where familiar names used to be.
Twenty years in a row.
At some point you have to ask yourself what it means to be the last sailor standing in a group of sailors.
There is something strange happening out there. YouTubers are quitting sailing and buying trawlers. Sailors are swallowing the anchor. People who spent years telling the world how wonderful this life was have discovered that apparently they meant it right up until the moment they didn’t. Some wrung every drop of content, attention, sponsorship, notoriety and algorithmic oxygen out of the cruising life, rode the thing to wherever it was going to take them, and then quietly wandered off toward the next thing.
And that’s fine.
People change. Priorities change. Boats change. Bodies change. The world changes.
Hell, I’ve changed.
But standing here twenty years later, looking at the people who aren’t going, you can’t help wondering whether the event changed too.
Maybe the Annapolis Sailboat Show is still exactly what it has always been. Maybe I’m the thing that moved.
That is an uncomfortable possibility.
I’ve got a holding tank that needs fixing. I’ve got a collection of hatches that apparently believe rebedding themselves is beneath their job description. I’ve got projects stacked up like unpaid bar tabs. I’ve got the Bahamas rattling around in my head, which is usually a pretty effective cure for any desire to spend a weekend walking through a parking lot full of fiberglass while somebody explains the revolutionary properties of a $14,000 lithium battery system.
And suddenly the thing I had been looking forward to doesn’t look nearly as much fun.
I blame myself.
I’m the curmudgeon. I’m the old guy. I’m the guy sitting in the back of the room counting the people who didn’t show up instead of admiring the people who did. I’ve been around long enough to remember when these things were less about personal brands and more about people standing around boats telling lies about weather, engines, passages and how much they enjoyed fixing something that had just broken.
I know what a pity party sounds like.
This ain’t one.
A pity party requires somebody to feel sorry for you.
I don’t.
There is no tragedy here. Nobody died. Nobody sank. Nobody stole the rum. This is just what change looks like when you finally notice it.
The people move on.
The boats change.
The audience changes.
The people who were once standing beside you are suddenly standing somewhere else, explaining why they don’t do this anymore.
And eventually you look around and realize you’re one of the stubborn bastards still doing it.
Maybe that’s the joke.
Maybe that’s the whole damn joke.
Because while everybody else is figuring out how to monetize the dream, abandon the dream, upgrade the dream or explain why they were never really dreaming in the first place, I’m still sitting here with a holding tank to repair, hatches to rebed and the Bahamas on my mind.
Which means I’m probably still going.
Maybe.
And if I do, it won’t be because I need an invitation.
It won’t be because somebody saved me a seat at a party.
It won’t be because the sailing celebrity machinery has decided I’m important enough to be photographed standing beside a cooler.
I’ll go because it’s an event.
That’s what it is.
An event.
And despite what the couch surfing, crunchy couch commentariat may decide to whine about from whatever damp corner of the internet they’ve chosen as their command post, an event doesn’t owe you a personal experience.
You show up.
You look around.
You see what changed.
You see who isn’t there anymore.
You wonder what the hell happened.
Then you decide whether you still want to be there.
That’s the interesting part.
Because sometimes the most honest way to understand change is to stand in the middle of the place that used to feel like home and realize that you’re looking at it differently.
Not better.
Not worse.
Just differently.
And maybe that’s what twenty years gets you.
Not wisdom.
Just a better view of the exits.
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