Yesterday in Annapolis K. and I both spent big bucks on new and improved sunglasses. The cheap pair I had been using were better than nothing, but every day I was experiencing severe eye fatigue and eyestrain that I believe was contributing to the frustrated and tired meltdowns I have often had at the end of a day on the water.
So I finally got a really good pair of sunglasses, the darkest available on the market, polarized and featuring other high tech optic technology to protect my precious eyes.
While I was enjoying them this morning while sailing for several hours straight into the glaring sun, I pondered how in the heck people sailed, boated, and fished for thousands of years without things like sunglasses. Forget not having a motor or a map or a depth sounder. They didn’t even have sunglasses! My respect for the hardiness of sailors from days gone by goes up daily.

While I’m at it, here are some other random reflections…..
Of all the places we have been so far on this first leg of our trip, the place I have found the most gorgeous is where we started: Lake Champlain. It is the primary place we have been that I would like to go back to and spend more time (although not right now because it is even colder up there!!!). One of our favorite spots on Lake Champlain was Chipman’s Point, which we mentioned in an earlier post. While we were there, we met another couple getting ready to go sailing on a boat the same size as ours. (they are literally the only other people we have met living aboard a sailboat that small, and they impressed us greatly by telling us they had spent 10 years living and sailing around the world on their 27 foot sailboat!)
Yesterday while we were walking down the street in Annapolis, we ran into the couple from Chipman’s Point! They recognized us and came over to chat. It was so fun to run into people we (sort of) knew! They are traveling without a cellphone (gasp!) and were telling us of their adventures trying to find a payphone. They had asked around to the locals and someone told them there was one down the street but that it was rumored that the phone company was going to take it out day now. They located it and made some calls, and then ran some errands and came back to make some more calls a few hours later only to find it had just been removed! Pay phones are becoming a thing of the past, and soon we will ponder how in the world people could ever manage sailing without a cellphone….