Avelamer spent the last weekend of September at the Sausalito Boat Show, in booth 410 under a white tent at Clipper Yacht Harbor. It was the brand's first booth anywhere, and the first time the clothes had been out on a table where people could pick them up.
The banner hung fine from the top and lifted off the curtain at the bottom every time the air moved. Nothing in the booth kit held it down, so on the first morning I went over to Waterstreet Hardware on Caledonia Street for some string.
Waterstreet is as much a marine store as a hardware store, and on the way to the string I walked past a rack of dock line. I came out with two lengths of that instead. Back at the booth I tied a bowline through each lower grommet and ran the lines out to the tent frame with clove hitches. It took about ten minutes and looked like exactly what it was, a boat fix on a booth.
The second errand was Mollie Stone's, for something green. I came back with an orchid in a white pot and set it in the middle of the table between the caps and the totes. Only once it was sitting there did I see that it picked up the greens on the rack beside it, the Ebbtide Tee in Shallow Bay and the Spencer Long Sleeve in Bluff Sage. Anyone who had done a show before would have packed clamps and a plant. Next time I will pack both, though I am keeping the dock line.
Past the vendor tents, the show was mostly boats. New sailboats lined the breakwater with red flags run up their rigging, powerboats sat on trailers between the tents, and the model yacht association had a hand-built sailboat on a stand, green deck over a red hull. Spaulding Marine Center had a booth there too, a familiar name on grounds full of new ones.
Each of the three days kept its own weather. The mornings started under fog parked out on Richardson Bay, the masts at the far marina standing up out of the top of it. Friday turned hot by early afternoon, the gravel throwing heat back up under the tent edge. Saturday stayed mild from start to finish. Sunday, the wind arrived after lunch. It was nothing like the thirty-five knots we took under the Gate in August, but it was plenty for a gravel lot, and it kept lifting dust off the ground.
It was a simple booth, so small things got looked at. A few people stopped at the banner before they stopped at anything on the table. They were the ones who sail. They checked the knots the way you glance at someone else's lines walking down a dock, out of habit, and then they looked up at me and smiled.
One afternoon a woman who has lived in Sausalito for years came in wearing cream and tan, French by birth and dressed like it. She got the name before I said a word about it. She picked up the Caledonia Cap in Mainsail, named for the same street the hardware store sits on, and tried it on in front of the mirror. She took her time, turning a little each way, checking the cap against the rest of what she had on rather than against her face.
The first thing to sell was the Spencer Long Sleeve in Bluff Sage. I had brought it to be tried on more than bought, and I had assumed a cap would go first. Over the three days, pieces went home from every part of the rack and table, handed over in person instead of shipped, and that part did not get old.
Our neighbors were two other Marin brands, Westy, who make titanium sunglasses, and Brimroad, who make full-brim hats in felt, wool, and straw. By Saturday we were watching each other's tables during coffee runs, and by Sunday, a few rounds later, we were friends.
My wife came Saturday afternoon and stayed through closing. She told anyone who stopped how Avelamer got started, and she made friends with the neighbors faster than I did. That night the two of us stayed out late with a couple from another booth, over dinner and drinks at Notte Divino, the new place in the old Divino space on Caledonia.
Sunday's teardown came in the worst of the wind. Anything light in the booth needed a hand on it, a film of dust was settling over the table and the rack, and most of the row started packing an hour before close. I took the banner down last. The clove hitches let go with one tug. The bowlines broke open just as quickly, which is half the reason sailors tie them, and I had both lines off while Westy packed up beside me.
Kevin