October boat show time in Annapolis is Painkiller time, and for good reason.
Ingredients
2 to 4 oz Pusser’s Navy rum
4 oz pineapple juice
1 oz coconut cream
1 oz fresh-squeezed orange juice
8 oz crushed ice
Freshly grated nutmeg
Blend everything except the nutmeg.
Pour into a tumbler full of ice. Garnish with a slice of orange and a red-dyed cherry if you must.
Dust with grated nutmeg, the second most critical ingredient.
For boat builders and vendors, a Painkiller or two is prescribed medicine to carry one through the marathon of entertaining the crowd, and evenings of schmoozing inside of the boat-industry networks.
After an exceptionally active boat show stretch last year, one un-named member of our tribe started calling them “brain-killers.”
For boat show guests, Painkillers fuel the celebration of being a part of the recreational maritime culture, and research has shown that a couple of four-ouncers will produce the necessary courage to write the deposit check.
The formula was originally concocted in the 1970s at the legendary Soggy Dollar Bar, “a sunny place with shady people,” on the White Bay beach at the Sandcastle Hotel on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.
Technically, you can’t properly make one unless you’re using Pusser’s Navy rum, which is blended to the Royal Navy specifications that ruled the waves aboard British ships
for more than 300 years until July
31, 1970, the unofficial end of the empire’s nautical dominance, some might argue.
Newcomers to Annapolis will notice, and veteran boat show goers know, that Pusser’s Caribbean Grille abuts the show and one of the main ramps along Ego Alley into the show. Thus, if you make that your exit, a painkiller in hand is easy to acquire with a fist-full of soggy dollars on your way out, or back in, and back out again and again.
