The biggest catamaran at the U.S. Sail Boat Show is so highfalutin that only VIPs can board. Orion is reserved for the invited guests of Cruising World Magazine.     You and seven friends could charter the 90-foot Catana — with amenities including four cabins, indoor and outdoor dining salons, Jacuzzi and crew of four — for a week in the Caribbean.     It would be “time out of time, a magical experience,” says charter broker Ann-Wallis White of Eastport, that would cost you only $39,000 — off season.

Bill Brewer plays croquet with the dedication of a founding father.     From his back yard, croquet rose from an excuse for a party “with lots of rum” to a championship game played by ambitious senior Olympians.     Next week, Maryland Senior Olympics competition adds its first croquet tournament. Brewer’s team, the nationally recognized West River Wickets Croquet Club, will be there to strike for gold.

For the difference he makes in “the fabric of life for South County residents,” Bay Gardener Frank Gouin was honored this week with the Southern Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce’s annual Gene Hall Community Service Award.     “He’s done so much for the community in so many levels,” says Chamber board member John Hiser, last year’s Hall award winner.

You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but Spiggy is this year’s Calvert You Are Beautiful Volunteer. Yes, Richard ‘Dave’ Spigler, the guy who added frump to female impersonation by donning a hog nose, big-hair wig and old grandma dress. The very Spiggy whom with a cadre of friends, formed the Washingon Redskins’s Hogettes cheering section for 19 years.     The beauty beneath that surface is a big heart dedicated to raising big bucks for good causes.

Scarce as candidates are, Annapolis’ chambers won’t be empty come November. Thirteen Annapolitans have stepped up, enough to fill all eight council seats and offer Primary voters a choice in the mayoral race and in two of the eight wards.     The nine in competition answered questions and stated their views in an 11th-hour forum sponsored by local chapters of the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters. Enough likely voters showed up that the Heritage Baptist Church parking lot looked like a revival was on the calendar.

Diamond Jim has been caught.         True to the legend tagged to him by Maryland Department of Natural Resources, he brought riches to his captor.

For bicycle riders in the Haiti 80, your pleasure in speed and endurance bring hope and help to the school children in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, where more than half the people live on less than one dollar a day. La Resurrection School in Gros Morne has been under the wing of St. Martins-in-the-Field Episcopal Church in Severna Park for 28 years. A newer bright idea, only two years old, puts some spin on that partnership.

Twelve-year-old Colton Clayton caught a Maryland record largemouth bass while fishing at a farm pond in his hometown of Huntingtown, in Calvert County, on July 31. The fish was 11 pounds, 6 ounces, 26 inches long and 18 inches around. Clayton caught the fish using a spinning rod loaded with eight-pound test line and a plastic worm, rigged weedless and without a weight.

Versatility is a life preserver through changing times, and these are changing times.     For Labor Day’s Back to Work feature this year, we wanted to explore how citizens of Chesapeake Country were riding the waves.     So we set out in search of career changers.     That choice meant we’d be talking to people who’d been in the water for a while; thus people of a certain age. Our sample brought us ages from 42, Jared Littmann, to 75, Jim Lyles.