AILSA CHANG, HOST:
It's finally spring. For many people across the country, it was a long, cold winter. And in Annapolis, Maryland, people gather every year at this time to usher in the warmer weather by making a ritual sacrifice of their socks. This springtime tradition is the unofficial start of the sailing season on the Chesapeake Bay. NPR's Scott Neuman has this story.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAIL FLUTTERING)
SCOTT NEUMAN, BYLINE: Manuel Skow and his race crew aboard Bear Away are wrestling sails back under their cover after a frustrating day out on the water.
MANUEL SKOW: Today was a beautiful day, other than there was no wind. So we didn't race.
NEUMAN: Today, it was lack of wind, but a few weeks ago, ice was the problem. Skow is competing in the Annapolis Yacht Club's annual Frostbite Series. As the name suggests, it's not for fair-weather sailors, but this year has tested even Skow and his fellow Frostbiters. The winter's lingering cold delayed the racing season.
SKOW: The problem is, we had so much ice. Really, two weeks ago was our first race.
NEUMAN: A week later, the sun is shining and it feels like spring. At the nearby Annapolis Maritime Museum in the city's Eastport neighborhood, a ceremonial burning of socks marks the unofficial start of boating for the year. Kelly Swartout is the museum's vice president of development. She says it all began with a harsh winter like this one.
KELLY SWARTOUT: So the whole premise of the sock burning started back in 1977 during one of the coldest seasons we had. It's when the bay froze over. Everything was happening. And a local sailor was so fed up with all the cold weather that at the spring equinox, he decided he was going to take his socks off and burn them.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NEUMAN: That single act of seasonal defiance has led to an enduring tradition. Today, hundreds of people are out on the beach for a party, hoping to cast off the need for winter socks. There's live music, alcohol and a Chesapeake Bay favorite - oysters.
(SOUNDBITE OF OYSTERS BEING TIPPED OUT)
SCOTT WILKE: We've already had several raw, a couple of baked. Couldn't be any better this year.
NEUMAN: Scott Wilke is originally from Glasgow, Scotland, but now lives in Mason Neck, Virginia. He's been coming to the sock burning in Annapolis for 15 years now. He clues me in on how the socks are chosen.
How do you make the selection? I mean, you don't pick the brand-new ones, I assume.
WILKE: Hopefully not. No, you dig in the bottom of your drawer or the bottom of your closet somewhere, and you - hopefully you find one that's got, you know, one hole in it or two holes in it. Hopefully not moth-ridden.
NEUMAN: Poet laureate of Annapolis Jefferson Holland recites a poem as the flaming pit on the beach crackles nearby.
JEFFERSON HOLLAND: So if you sail into the harbor on the 21 of March, and you smell a smell like Limburger mixed in with laundry starch...
(LAUGHTER)
HOLLAND: ...You'll know you're downwind of the Eastport docks, where they're burning their socks for the equinox.
(CHEERING)
NEUMAN: It's the main event. Not an orderly affair, but a free-for-all with dozens of socks of all colors and fabrics arcing overhead and raining down on the sandy pit. Some land squarely in the flames. Others miss the mark and have to be helped into the fire. It's a fitting end to a brutal winter and time to get back on the water. Scott Neuman, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAN LIKE PAYPA SONG, "THE LAST EPISODE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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