By the late 1980s, a sign had been planted on Rowe Boulevard, the main arterial that rolls over Weems Creek and College Creek into the center of Annapolis, declaring the city “America’s Sailing Capital.”

“That context was the first time I ever saw or heard the phrase,” said David Gendell, a lifelong Annapolis sailor and the author of two books about sailing in the Chesapeake Bay.

The sign lasted into the 1990s, although it eventually was moved to the other side of town, in Eastport at the foot of the Spa Creek drawbridge. Ellen Moyer, who would become the city’s first woman mayor in 2001, helped popularize the unofficial honorific. By the 2000s, the sign had disappeared but the label — open to interpretation and debate — stuck.

It feels most true come October, when the world of sailing lives on the wharves of Annapolis.

The Annapolis Sailboat Show, renowned in the sailing world, opened Thursday and will consume Annapolis City Dock for five days. It is the city’s rite of fall, timed to the end of muggy days and the final weeks of sailing in the bay before sailors put away their boats or take them south for the winter.

“The growth and health of the maritime industry at Annapolis has been extraordinary,” Gendell said, “and events such as the fall boat shows underscore the strength of the location, the community and the industry.”

The stars of the show are the gleaming new sailboats on display in the water, but the show has grown into something more than an opportunity to sell boats and gear. It is sailing’s touchstone event, a moment the industry, the sport, the pastime and the culture convene in one place to geek out on all things sailing, yearly proof of Annapolis’ claim as the sailing mecca.

Other U.S. cities — San Diego; Charleston, South Carolina; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Chicago, among others — can boast of rich sailing culture and active racing scenes, but really only one other town, Newport, Rhode Island, is a challenger to Annapolis.

“This is a very special place,” Gendell said, “especially in the fall boat show season.”

The event has the feel of a large sporting event or concert, with significant ticket prices for admission and parking, and the various workshops and presentations within the show. The advent of social media has created a breed of celebrity sailors, cruisers who became YouTube famous and appear at the show as an avenue to meet their fans and market their brands.

There are some who also became famous by more traditional methods, by running schools or writing books or racing. One of the show’s hottest tickets this year is Cole Brauer, a telegenic young woman who finished second in the Global Solo Challenge, a nonstop, single-handed race around the world. Last fall, she was just about to start the race. This fall, she will be in Annapolis.

The notion of a fall, in-the-water sailboat show, was a novel one in 1970 when the show was first held. Boat shows were typically held indoors, in the winter, as a way of selling boats ahead of the spring and summer season.

According to a 1979 article in Sail magazine, credit for the invention of the show goes to Jerry Wood, a former toy manufacturing entrepreneur and operator of a local sailing school. He started thinking about staging a show on City Dock as early as 1963, about the time the mass production of sailboats made of fiberglass instead of wood began.

One of his students, Peter Carroll, happened to be in the business of promoting home and leisure shows. The two became friends and partnered to put on the first show, held when the weather in Annapolis was at its best and well ahead of the upcoming sailing season.

Sail magazine’s Bob Payne wrote in 1979 the show had grown so popular that “during mid-October it is nearly impossible for anyone without reservations to find a room in Annapolis.” Many other in-water shows followed; most large coastal cities now have one. But Annapolis remains the largest and the only all-sailboat show in the U.S., integral to its claim as the country’s sailing capital.

Annapolis would have no rival but for Newport, which frequently stakes claim to the same title. Newport also hosts a famous boat show in September. The city also hosted every challenge to the America’s Cup from 1930 to 1983, and it is the starting point for the Newport Bermuda Race. In 2019, the National Sailing Hall of Fame moved from Annapolis to Newport.

The sailing capital debate, like the debate over thin crust vs. deep dish, is ongoing. The Chesapeake is by far a larger bay than the Narragansett; it can feel like the sea at times. Newport, however, has the ocean at its doorstep, along with a protected bay.

The Chesapeake is the more varied cruising ground, with more places to explore and an infinite number of coves to anchor in. The seafloor is mud and sand, more forgiving than the rocky bottom of the Narragansett. The sailing season is also two months longer in the Chesapeake.

Annapolis is known for its infrastructure and as being a good place to fix, service or build a sailboat. Every type of expert, equipment and part can be had or found within the confines of Spa Creek and Back Creek and their boatyards.

Annapolis has the U.S. Naval Academy. But Newport has the New York Yacht Club, the decadeslong defender of the America’s Cup and home to America’s most famous yachtsmen.

“Newport is an absolutely epic place for a sailor, especially in June through August,” Gendell said. “There really is nowhere else like it at the heart of the summer. I remember being a young sailor there watching the America’s Cup boats coming in and out of the harbor and it was incredible, a real feeling of being at the center of the sport.

“In my early 20s, while working aboard racing sailboats, I remember being awestruck as we motored through the harbor. The quantity and quality of the sailing fleet at Newport was just extraordinary.”

The closest compromise has been to refer to Annapolis as the sailing capital and Newport as the yachting capital, where the moneyed aspect of sailing is most on display. There you will find the biggest, fastest and most well-appointed sailboats.

Newport is home to the elite sailor; Annapolis is home to the everyday sailor, the friends who race after work on club boats. The Chesapeake also has a tradition of sailing workboats, the log canoes and skipjacks found nowhere else.

“If you take a sampling of a hundred sailors from Newport and Annapolis, you will find nothing but passionate sailors who love each other’s cities, host fellow sailors in each other’s cities and respect each other’s histories,” said Molly Winans, the managing editor of SpinSheet, a local sailing magazine.

“Newport is definitely more yachtie, meaning they have more big yachts and a storied yachting history,” she said. “Annapolis has its own competitive sailboat racing scene, but it seems to me that we take more pride in our older, smaller boats and the sailors who keep them sailing year after year, who bring their teams together to sand and paint their hulls in spring, who gladly invite newcomers onboard and train them, who take great pride in their teamwork and race like it’s their job all summer long.”