After nearly two months at the dock in Annapolis, we have finally managed to extricate ourselves from the comforts and conveniences of  two cars and friends all around to resume our cruising lifestyle.  It was a chore to pull up our two anchors which had been sitting on the mucky, muddy Chesapeake Bay bottom for so long, but Friday morning, just over four years after we first departed from the very same dock, with a liberal use of water to clean off the gunk, Zia was cruising again.

      It was a long, hot motor up the Chesapeake Bay, but we enjoyed the sensation of being mobile again even though we weren't sailing.  We anchored overnight off the north shore of  the Sassafras River.  We planned to catch the tide through the C&D Canal Saturday morning and indulge in a good night's sleep before a 400 mile passage to Boston.  After a quick swim, we sat and watched as a huge storm approached us from the southwest, delivering rain driven by 30 knot winds and plenty of lightning and thunder to keep us on our toes.  Welcome back to cruising!  There is no doubt that sitting out a thunderstorm in the comfort of a home is infinitely more pleasurable than on a boat.  That is one of the minuses of cruising.  

     Our voyage up the Chesapeake, through the C&D Canal, down Delaware Bay, up the Atlantic Coast of New Jersey and Long Island, through Buzzards Bay and the Cape Cod Canal, and finally across Cape Cod Bay to Provincetown, evoked memories of our first passages on Zia.  Yet it feels very different.  Ninety-nine percent of the fear has evaporated with our four years of experience.  Diminished also are the excitement and adrenaline I remember from our early days of cruising.  Confidence we didn't have in our timid initial months allows for a liberating abundance of flexibility. 

     "Sure, we can anchor here, right off the shore just outside the ships channel."

     "That weather doesn't look threatening despite the radio's daily warnings for severe thunderstorms. Let's just make a beeline for Boston."  And then halfway there: "Let's go anchor up in Provincetown for a night or two before we have to sign up for a marina in the city."

     Provincetown was as wild and happy a place as we remembered.  Like nowhere else, P-town is New England's playground for gay couples.  Our favorite street performer graced the same square outside City Hall, gathering crowds of locals and tourists alike with her old show tunes.  Ellie/Eliot has been performing in Provincetown since 2003 and is the personification of the city she calls home.  77 year old Eliot finds his freedom and happiness in his expression of Ellie, the sexy young female residing inside of him.  Whacky, born-again, flamboyant and ever-smiling, Ellie proves that you can be whatever you want to be, and be accepted with open arms, in Provincetown.  The kids enjoyed the show, both Ellie and the people watching in general, as much as we did.  Four years older and much wiser to the ways of the world, we didn't have to craft any creative explanations to skirt the issue of sexuality like we did last time we were here.  As a friend told me recently, we've spent the last four years traveling around the world and then go to P-town.  "Turns out you really didn't need to leave the US to go to another world, did you?"

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