Hurricane Sandy (31 October - 3 November)

This blog entry is about Sandy and its immediate aftermath. Most of the news we have is good, though I will admit that there is a little bit in the not-so-good category. We are going to discuss the good first and the not-so-good at the end. I know some of you will be worrying about the not-so-good all the time you are reading about the good stuff. Well, this is my little contribution to helping you smell the roses before you look at the … er … uh … glass half empty. (Ok, so maybe I am not too good at using metaphors appropriately. But you know what I mean.)

Ok, on to Sandy

Travelling Soul facing down Sandy

Some of you might be wondering why we didn’t have the boat hauled out of the water and put up on blocks. It is a decent question, but we didn’t do it this time and won’t do it next time for several reasons. First, it cost money. For our sized boat, it is about a BU. True, our insurance company would pay for ½ of it, but that’s still that’s quite a bit of money. Moreover, we were not in Sandy’s path and if we had Traveling Soul hauled every time a hurricane came within 500 miles, we wouldn’t have any money left to spend on repairs. Sure, there were predictions that in Deltaville we might get 50 MPH winds and have four feet of surge, but we had already weathered 40 MPH winds in the Bahamas and weren’t particularly worried about 50 MPH and a super high tide. Now if they had been predicting 100 MPH and ten feet of surge, it would have been a different story. But come on guys, if you can’t handle 50 MPH winds and a four foot surge – with plenty of warning AND while sitting in a marina – you probably shouldn’t be living on a boat.

Perhaps more importantly, many of the local boaters have longstanding arrangements with marinas in the area to haul their boats automatically in case of a storm. When you add to this the fact that many or most of them had already made reservations to have their boats taken out of the water over the next couple of weeks for the winter, you discover that there are simply not that may lifts are available to haul non-local boats – especially when they are as big as ours.

Knowing what we know now would we haul the boat next time? Nope. The storm was, as predicted, 50 MPH winds with a four foot surge.  Our boat handled it very, very well. We did learn some lessons, though. In fact, that is one of the reasons for this particularly entry. In addition to letting everyone know how we fared, in addition to continuing to chronicle the adventures of Traveling Soul and her intrepid crew, we are using this particular entry to organize our thoughts so we can draw some decent lessons for the next time we stare into the abyss – AND I want to practice my especially dramatic writing about which I will warn you with an occasional DRAMA ALERT.

Ok, so on Wednesday after the work on the boat was finally completed, we heard about Sandy and decided to wait her out on a day-by-day basis. From all indications, it seemed we would k now something by Friday or Saturday. At this point, I have to tell you that we were still hoping to get out of Deltaville by Sunday or Monday. By Thursday afternoon, though, it was becoming increasingly clear that Sandy had chosen her direction and that, though we were not directly in her path, she was going to give us some problems.

(DRAMA ALERT) But we were not going to let Sandy run roughshod over us; not us, your intrepid Traveling Soul adventurers. We would point our bow into the wind, tie ourselves to the dock and force that damn storm to confront us head on. We might not be able to stop her, but we could slow her progress by a fraction of a fraction of a mile per hour so our fellow cruisers could be better protected. Yes, we would do our part for the human race. So … how’s that?

Friday morning

On Friday, we put fuel in the boat (that has nothing to do with the hurricane, we just needed fuel) and moved Traveling Soul to a new slip. In the old slip she was broadside into the wind and was pretty much open to the elements in all directions. In the new slip her bow faces into the wind and she is located between two covered sheds that have both made it through Irene and Isabelle. Although we still have a substantial northerly fetch, we are hopeful the sheds cut down any wind which has either an easterly or a westerly component. We are port side-to and, on Friday morning, put a total of six lines on the boat – one from the bow to the dock, one forward spring line (so the boat doesn’t move forward), two aft spring lines (since the wind is going to be pushing us backwards, the aft spring lines should prevent us from moving in that direction), and two aft lines – one to port and one to starboard. We also put on four fenders, one each opposite the pilings on the port side of the boat. When I asked one of the marina employees if there was anything else we should do, he suggested we take down our canvass. Lord, I don’t want to do that, so we are going to give it a day or two and see if the forecasts get better or worse.

Ok, so once the boat was in position and fairly well prepared, we spent the rest of the day talking to Grover and Judy, watching several episodes of “30 Rock,” and trying to figure out exactly what this damn storm is going to do.

Early, early Saturday morning. (I almost always wake up at 0300 or so – especially when there is weather – and walk around the boat seeing what I can do. So, early, early is about 0300.)

(DRAMA ALERT) I heard the sound of rubber grinding against the side of the boat at about 3AM. It is that sound you hear when you rub two balloons together, but deeper and more ominous. (In another place, at another time, I would have described the sound as kind of like that of a machine gun – and you would have known what I meant. But here, now, skillful mariner and observant author that I am, I was pretty sure it wasn’t pirates.)  Once I dismissed that thought …

I was afraid that it was our rub-rail scraping against the rain-sodden wooden pilings – which can make a similar eerie sound. I checked my anemometer and, though the wind was 25MPH gusting to 35, I donned my trusty rain jacket and ventured forth. It turned out that some of our fenders, which are about 24” long, were catching the piling on the last 4” or so of the rubber – making a deep, rubber against rubber sound. It wasn’t close to either the rub-rail or the hull. That was good, but I would need to move the fenders a little.

As I went around the boat, I made a mental checklist of what I would need to do in the morning. First, I would need to add some fenders – after all we have eight, we might as well use all of them. Second I wanted to tighten the aft line on the starboard side so it will hold us off the dock more effectively. Third, I wanted to tighten some of the spring lines (both fore and aft) so the fenders would stay in one place relative to the pilings and would stop making that rubbing sound. In addition to making the checklist, I also logged on and tried to determine where the storm was and where it was going. It looked like it might be going a little further north than I had feared – but not far enough north to make us happy.

Saturday Morning

As I got coffee in the captain’s lounge, I looked around and noticed that nearly all the boats that are left in the marina had taken down their canvass. I didn’t like it and I knew Ann wasn’t going to like it, but I thought we better take ours down too. It is bound to reduce windage substantially. We did, and it wasn’t as complicated as we had thought. The real test would come when we put it back up.

After coffee, I checked the items from my 0300 list: tighten the aft starboard line, check; adjust the spring lines, check; add four fenders, check. I also decided to two more lines, one at the bow line and another forward spring. We now had two bow lines, two forward and two aft spring lines in addition to the two aft lines; that gives us a total of eight lines out overall. The average breaking strength of our ¾ inch nylon lines is 16,700 pounds, and the safe working load is 2,500 pounds each. So, no matter how you cut it, our boat wasn’t going to float away from the dock. We would have put out more lines, but I was running out of places to tie them. Instead, we dedicated two more ¾ inch lines to act as a reserve; we would keep them in the salon and use them if, when and where necessary.

When we added the extra fenders, we wanted them both to reinforce the fenders we had, but also to extend the effective length of the fenders. So, rather than stacking them directly on top of one another, I offset the bottom one by about six inches, so it stuck out from the top one. That way, instead of having the fenders cover 24 inches, they covered about 30. It seemed to work reasonably well.  

We found out the Grover and Judy found someone to haul their boat, so they are staying Saturday night and then heading up to the DC area. They came by and asked if we wanted to have a pizza-hurricane party that evening with everyone else that was staying. Did someone say party? Of course we would be there.

Saturday Afternoon.

That afternoon the dockmaster told us that when the water came up over the top of the fixed docks (that included us), they were going to shut off the power. If the water was going to be over the dock AND there wasn’t going to be any power, we figured we probably shouldn’t stay on the boat. We started looking for a motel room for Sunday night and Monday night, which, we figured, would have the highest tides. Deltaville has only one motel within about 15 miles. There are other places to stay, of course, but they are B&B’s. The cost of “The Deltaville Dockside Inn,” was reasonable and was within a mile of the marina, so we decided to go ahead and stay there – despite the less-than-glowing reviews on “Trip Advisor.”

Not to get ahead of myself, but when we told some local boaters that we were staying at the Dockside Inn, they raised their eyebrows and kind of shrugged but didn’t say much. That probably wasn’t a good sign, we figured, but what the hell, we were only going to stay a couple of nights and were going to spend most of our time at the marina watching after Traveling Soul. When we mentioned our plans to Grover, however, he said that he had considered staying there a few weeks earlier, but had found a review on the web where the reviewer showed off the bedbug bites he had received at the Inn.  At that point, we ran, not walked to Ann’s phone to find one of the B&Bs nearby that could take us. The good news was that none of the B&Bs in the area were busy (we should have been able to figure that out – who, in the name of heaven, would book a B&B along the shore in the midst of a hurricane?) so availability wasn’t an issue. Anyway, we made reservations at the Edentide Inn near Deltaville. It was about three miles from the marina, but it was the closest we could find. Moreover, they offered to transport us to and from the marina as necessary. In the event, it turned out to be a wonderful little place that we would recommend to anyone.

Later that day, Jack Dozier (the marina owner) as well as just about everyone who worked for him came by checking boats. I didn’t count, but my guess is that there were only about 40 or so boats left in the marina. Many (most?) of the full time marina residents had left. It seemed as if they had long ago made arrangements to have their boats hauled their boats out of the water when hurricanes threaten.

DRAMA ALERT: Us? Ha! We scoffed at the danger. We had no intention of moving from Deltaville or of abandoning our boat. Whenever we saw small groups of people quaking in their boots in anticipation of the Storm, we tried to embolden them and to pass on some of our courage. “Bring it on, Sandy,” we taught them to say. “We’re ready for you!” We told others to repeat the mantra, “We are boaters and friends of boaters. We will NOT be intimidated by a mere Category 1 ‘cane!”

ANOTHER DRAMA ALERT: Later that day, Ann and I were on the dock walking back from the Captain’s Lounge and we heard a weird sound: Clickety-Clack. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clickety-clackety-clack. Oh my God, it couldn’t be, could it? For an instant – just an instant – Ann and I both had a Stephen King moment. Could Sandy be … could Sandy be … after us?

Ok, so maybe it had nothing to do with an anthropomorphized hurricane. Docks are usually not made of one solid piece of wood, they are built with slats that have ½ inch or so between them. The waves come at the dock at something of an angle. So as the water slaps the underside of the plank they make a click or clack sound. When the wave slaps the underside of the slats in rapid succession, it sounds like Clickety-Clack. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clickety-clackety-clack. Alas, it wasn’t the hurricane – this time. Instead, Sandy was saving her evil for later. Read on.

At about 1730 Grover and Judy had pizza delivered to the captain’s lounge. They are a great couple who are a lot of fun. In addition to Grover and Judy, there was Ann and I, of course, and Chuck and Fabin. Chuck and Fabin live on board their Defever 48. They have stayed at Dozier’s this summer where Chuck has served as the temporary dockmaster. He and Fabin were on a much more exposed slip than we were, but they were tied to a floating dock – so their dock could never go under water and did not need to have their electricity turned off. They were going to ride out the storm on their boat. In addition, they had a car and offered to take us wherever we needed to go.

Saturday night we stayed on the boat and Ann and I both got up during the night to check on the boat. Ann’s focus was on what was going on inside the boat, while I checked the fenders, lines, pilings, etc. on the outside. We made all the little adjustments and fine-tuned our preparations.

Sunday Morning

By Sunday morning the wind started picking up a little – probably 30 MPH gusting to 40 and it had begun raining. It wasn’t raining that hard, but the wind was propelling the raindrops hard enough that when they hit bare skin they really stung.

Sunday Afternoon

As Ann and I talked about going to the B&B, it became clear to both of us that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep well wherever we went. Eventually, we decided that Ann would go to the B&B, and that I would stay in the captain’s lounge where I could get up a couple of times during the night and check on the boat. The next morning, if everything was going well, she would stay at the captain’s lounge while I slept at the Inn. Provided, of course, we could get a ride back and forth.

I should have mentioned earlier that one of the MAJOR lessons we learned from Sandy is that the next time we are in the path of a major storm, we WILL rent a car. Dozier’s marina has courtesy cars that you can borrow during the day but they are not available after hours and, even then, they do not want you to go more than two miles from the marina (the distance of the grocery store). During normal times that is okay, but for several reasons, not the least of which was our desire to get to and from the Inn, we could have used a car. 

Anyway after Ann went to the Inn, I continued my Traveling Soul vigil. Of course, since I could not spend every waking minute watching the boat, and since the Captain’s Lounge had a nice TV – the quality of which was really wasted watching the Weather Channel – and since it was Sunday afternoon I figured it was okay to rest my eyes by occasionally watching just a little bit of football. 

After football I went back to watching the boat … OOPS!… I meant to say that high tide was scheduled for about 2300. I had no intention of walking on docks that were under water, so I decided I would check on the boat at 2200, before high tide, and again at 0100 after high tide. I would check again at around 0400 (or so) and at 0700ish. In each instance, when I checked on the boat I would make sure the fenders were positioned correctly and were doing their job (adjusting if necessary), I would check all the lines and make sure they were tight enough without being too tight, I would go aboard and look for leaks around the windows and other places where we had had problems in the past, and I would check on the bimini. The bimini  is the canvass “ceiling” to the flybridge. While we had taken down most of our canvass and isinglass the day before, we had thought (mistakenly as it turned out) that the nearby sheds would protect our bimini. Every time I got on the boat I would hear a flapping from up above and knew it was bimini. Anyway, I got into the habit of checking it and, in fact, tried to tie it down. It didn’t work.

0700 Monday

During my 0400 check I had noticed that the wind had changed direction and that the boat was no longer being pushed into the dock, but was being pushed away. In fact, it took some effort to pull the boat close enough so that I could get on. When on board, I checked the bimini and noticed that it was starting to chafe and to tear exactly where I had tied the lines earlier. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.

At 0700 the boat was even further from the dock than it had been three hours earlier and it took a lot of pulling to get the boat close enough for me to get on. As a result, I added a line to the aft-port side (that made three aft lines, one to starboard and one to port). I had to get the new line tight enough so it would take some pressure off the existing line. The only way I could do that was literally to stand on the existing line until I got a little slack, then to pull the new line tight around its cleat. Because the wind picked up significantly even while I was performing this task, I didn’t have much time to tighten the new line even when I was able to generate 6 inches of slack in the old one.  It was stand on the old line – generate six inches of slack – pull the new line maybe three inches and repeat.

After all this work, the boat was probably five feet from shore. I now had a problem – I don’t know if I could ever have jumped the five feet from the boat to shore, but I know that in my 60’s I couldn’t. I pulled on the line to get the boat closer to shore, then backed up to jump. But every time I backed off, the boat recovered the distance I had pulled it. Although I am not great at estimating distance, I am guessing that I was able to pull it to within 3½ to four feet of the shore. Twice I was almost ready to jump, but then stopped and decided against it. Eventually, I saw someone on an adjoining dock coming to check his boat. I hollered at him and asked if he could give me a hand. He was more than willing.

Between the two of us we pulled the boat to within about 3 feet of the shore. I decided this was as close as it was going to get, so I made the leap. Actually, I made it across! However, there was a problem. Remember that surgery I had about ten weeks ago on my Achilles Tendon? Well, apparently the tendon detached when I jumped. In addition, I tore the scar tissue that was keeping the tendon in place. The result was a lame boat captain and a lot of blood.

I like to think I am pretty good at writing a blog and am trying to improve in my ability to write drama (a task at which I am sure you will agree that I need practice), but have I ever been very good at writing about gore – especially when it is my own. So I am going to skip the details. Suffice it to say Bruce Miller is the former Coastie who had the well-stocked first aid bag that took care of me initially and who, after Ann arrived from the B&B, had the car that got us to the Emergency Room at the Gloucester Walter Reed Hospital. Thank you, Bruce.

After our trip to the hospital, we finally rented a car and headed back to the boat – which, at this point, was easy to board. From there we called my orthopedist in Northern VA and, though he could not see me Tuesday (because of the storm), he could see me Wednesday afternoon.

Now, I know some of you are wondering why we sent you an e-mail saying that everything was okay – except for a trifling wound to Mike – when the trifling wound actually wasn’t that trifling. Actually the ER doctor did not see any major issues (other than the open wound and, oh by the way, the pain I was in!) In fact, on Wednesday my orthopedist looked at the wound and didn’t think it was too bad, either. It wasn’t until he got me in the OR and looked around my Achilles on Thursday that he discovered the detachment. So, here I am back in Woodbridge, VA at Dave and Joan Wolf’s house, recovering from surgery in a splint. The splint comes off and the cast goes on next Thursday. I wear the cast for two months, then into a walking boot for another month. I know this routine because I just went through it.

I know, I know you are wondering what this does to Traveling Soul and its magnificent crew? Will they continue their trip south? Will they make it to the Bahamas? I am not going to keep you in THAT much suspense – the answer is yes. The real question is how we are going to do it. For answers to that question and many more, you will just have to read our next  blog.

ANN’S NOTES:  I was going to let Michael sent out this blog without my notes, but I changed my mind.

Needless to say I have had a few Zantac days. I can measure my level of stress by how many Zantac pills I have to take in order to reduce the acid level in my body.

I must share with you that especially in times of stress I know that my family, friends and fellow boaters are always ready with a helping hand. Michael was well cared for when he had his accident. Hurricane Sandy was pretty much in full force, 50 mile-an-hour wind gusts, rain, and it was dark and scary outside. Yet Bruce was more than happy to give us a ride to the hospital and he would have stayed with us longer if we had needed him. Other people at the marina were checking on our boat making sure our lines were holding and secure. In addition, the people at the bed and breakfast that drove me back and forth to the marina were wonderful. They even offered to lend me their SUV. They also gave us dinner, homemade chicken and rice soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  It was good comfort food and meant one less Zantac. We are now back at Dave and Joan’s house. They are, as always very kind.

I think we are coming up with a new set of intentions that may get us back on track so we can still spend the winter in the Bahamas. We have to work around a few set dates that the doctor said we had to meet.

I am excited about the thought that our son may be able to join us in our cruise down to Charleston S.C.

Even in the middle of a hurricane all the people that came into our lives were more than kind and only wanted to help. The universe is a kind when you most need it to be…I am a big believer in Karma.

Just one more thing … Michael told me that I was “the best foul weather gear he had”… that, my dear readers, is a huge compliment coming from him…

Traveling Soul…OUT

BOAT REPAIRS

As you may recall, our last blog entry ended with the sentence, “The next blog entry from Traveling Soul will be SOUTH of Virginia.” OOPS! That was, of course, the plan, but a couple of things have happened to slow us down. The first, as you might have expected, was the fact that the work on the boat didn’t quite go as fast as we wanted and expected. Second, there is this little thing called Hurricane Sandy that is holding us in place.

As far as work on the boat, several things were completed on time and within budget:

·         The cutless Bearings were replaced

·         The stuffing boxes were serviced

·         The hull was waxed

And two things took longer than expected:

·         Replacing the toilets

·         Repairing the generator

And, as I am sure you have already guessed, there was one unbudgeted, unexpected repair – fixing the Purasan (the on-board sewage processing system for the aft head). Read on.

The main reason we went back to Detaville was to have the cutless bearings replaced and the stuffing boxes serviced. I added the hull waxing because the hull was starting to look especially bad, because I was laid up with my walking boot and frankly, because I was too lazy to wax that whole thing. All of this went well. The waxing job isn’t perfect, but it did get all the major marks off the hull and the appropriate amount of applied wax to protect it during the up  coming adventure. For a little over ½ boat unit, it was worth it.

Then came the time (and money) consumers. I told you in our last entry why we were replacing our toilets. When identifying which toilets to buy, we wanted the new model to be as similar to the old model as possible. The old ones had, after all, lasted 20+ years – plus we hoped that the hose and electrical connections for the new models would fit right into the hose and electrical connections of the old ones. That would surely save time and money.

Or so we thought. (Here, you might hear a deep mournful sigh.) As always, there were issues. Somewhere between me identifying the model and Zimmerman’s Boat Yard ordering the part, we ended up with toilets that were almost the same as the ones we wanted, but the size of the bowl was different. We received the marine size bowl (built for very small butts), when we thought we had ordered the household size bowl.  The technicians didn’t realize the mistake (and there was no reason they should have) until after they had almost finished installing one of the toilets. That meant they had to re-order the toilets and take the completed one out and put the new one in. There was another issue. Apparently, over the years, there had been some ever-so-slight modifications to the new model, so while everything fit, not all of the connections matched up. Among other things, that meant we needed some woodwork done on the pedestal where the toilet sits and that, of course, meant a little more time and money.

Still, the toilets were installed by Friday the 19^th, as we had hoped. But then we had to wait on the generator. It turns out that I was right that there was a small electrical issue (the preheat solenoid needed to be replaced), but I was wrong when I thought that was the ONLY problem. For the past several weeks we had noticed that once in a while when the forward bilge pumped out there was a slight sheen on the water – meaning, of course, that some petroleum was leaking. It wasn’t much and didn’t happen all the time so we weren’t too worried about it. As the technicians started working on our little electrical problem, however, they found that we had a fuel leak at the generator’s injection pump. (The reason the sheen didn’t appear every time the forward bilge pumped was that sometimes we had used the generator and sometimes we had not – it all made sense.) That meant we had to have the injection pump rebuilt. That, in turn, meant we could not leave on the Monday as we had planned, but would have to wait until Tuesday at least.

(At this point I should give kudos to Zimmerman’s. They knew that I was a l-i-t-t-l-e bit upset that we had to postpone our departure date. So, they made a special run to the “rebuild subcontractor” with the old injector and had the rebuilder come in over the weekend to finish the job. As it turns out we are STILL in Deltaville, but I do appreciate the effort.)

So, now it is Tuesday AM and we are ready are ready to leave, right? Hahaha! If it were only so easy!

 On Monday afternoon we decided to replace a chlorine cartridge in the Purasan. It is really a simple job, but as we were doing it we noticed that the old cartridge did not seem to have been used very much and that the inch or so of water that was supposed to be at the bottom of the dispenser was not there. Hmmmm ‘twas a puzzle. We checked the system and called the manufacturer. Hmmmm still no answers. But as we started looking more closely we discovered that the two tubes flowing into the dispenser (one carrying water in and one carrying chlorinated water out) appear to have been reversed. Now I had never touched this system so it had to be a mistake by the Zimmerman’s technician who initially installed them – last June. I called the Boatyard and told them that I thought their man had made a major mistake. They responded immediately, sending someone to take a look. Sure enough I was right. He spent about 4 hours (at their expense) fixing the problem.



Mike holding is nemesis -- the walking boot.
It is finally off!!



Now I’ll bet you are thinking, “Whew! Since they disposed of the Purasan problem Monday afternoon, they should have on their way Tuesday morning,” right? Hahaha! Oh ye of so much faith. When they re-routed the tubes into the dispenser, we discovered that the pump in the aft toilet (the only toilet we did not replace) did not have the oomph to push water up to the tablet dispenser, so the Purasan could not work. Now what do we do? We came up with three options. Option one was to take out and rebuild the pump. The trouble was that we didn’t know if that was possible. Option two was to trade out the toilets: un-install one of the new ones and the old one and change their positions. That would give us a new toilet and new pump in the Purasan head, and an old toilet in one of the Lectra san heads – and the Lectra Sans do not need particularly strong pumps. Option 3 was to forget about it and go with two heads. Having spent so much money on heads over the past several months, I didn’t want to go with Option 3.

I won’t keep you in suspense. Early Wednesday morning (Ann was still in her PJ’s and I hadn’t had my coffee yet) one of the techs came over, took the pump back to the Yard, rebuilt it and reinstalled it. We tested it and there was plenty of oomph in the rebuilt pump and everything seemed to be working well. Total time? About four hours. Although we had now missed our Tuesday departure, we were prepared to leave on Wednesday morning. All we had to do was talk to Zimmerman’s about who was going to pay for the repairs. They had already agreed to pay for re-routing the tubes as that was their man’s mistake. I suspected, however, that they were going to tell me that the pump rebuild and re-install were on me – as that had nothing to do with the initial installation. I can tell you that IF they had told me that, I would not have been a happy camper. I was pleasantly surprised when Zimmerman’s suggested that we split the time and materials for the rebuild. I figured that would be in the neighborhood of $160, but hey, it was better than any of the alternatives.

Okay, it is Wednesday morning and NOW we are ready to leave, right?? Hahaha! (I know some of you are wondering what all this hahaha laughing-stuff is all about. Well, as the pundit once said, “You have two choices in life: you can laugh or you can cry and, it's always better to be smiling.” I know that doesn’t sound like me, but in boating you have to be careful about gushing water. If we cried about all the “issues” that came up, the flow of tears would probably sink the boat.) Anyway, on Tuesday afternoon we heard that Hurricane Sandy might be coming our way. Several of the models show it heading off to Bermuda (which would still cause us significant winds), but one of them showed it coming right up the coast. So, on Tuesday afternoon we determined to take it day-by-day and see what that damn hurricane was doing before deciding to head south. We decide to do the same thing on Wednesday morning and again on Thursday morning.

SO, OTHER THAN THAT, HOW HAS THE PLAY BEEN MRS. LINCOLN?



Ann VROOM! VROOMING!

We have been doing some of our own maintenance and other projects. We took possession of our dinghy on Friday the 19^th. (There is a story behind the dinghy, but don’t worry I am going to skip it.)  Anyway, after playing with it a little bit – VROOM! VROOM! –  we had to make a cradle to hoist the dinghy to the second deck. Our dinghy has four attachment points for our cradle, so we got four thin, very strong, non-stretch nylon pieces of cordage (rope) and attached them to the dinghy and to the hoist. We then raised the dinghy, trying, through a process of trial and error, to keep the dinghy level as we raised her. It took us several lifts and a couple of hours, but we finally got it right. Then we had to go to West Marine and, using the cord as a template, cut and prepare four pieces of steel cable. Voila, right? Well, not quite.



Our dinghy with its new cradle in its new davit.



Although we could now hoist the dinghy, we need to put it into something when we raised it so it would stay in one place and not bounce all over. The Whaler had a davit and, while we knew the dinghy wouldn’t really fit, we were hoping that it might come close enough so we could jury-rig something that would work for us.  We THINK we have come up with something. Both the problem and the solution are too much to explain here, but if it works, we will be very proud. We’ll see.

We also cleaned the boat. I am generally responsible for cleaning most of the outside and, because of my splint, cast and walking boot, I haven’t done any cleaning since shortly after we arrived at Herrington North. The boat was filthy but between Ann and me, we gave it a pretty good scrubbing. It needs some more work and, depending on how long Sandy keeps us here, we may give it another cleaning.

We also changed the oil. I have been dreading the project for a month or more, but finally decided that I had to just do it. I still have to pull the five gallons of old oil out of the engine through the dipstick tube. But the real challenge and believe me it is a DIRTY job – is to change the oil filter. It doesn’t take long, but you have to unscrew the filter (which for some reason has a very smooth metal surface) with your extremely slick oil-covered hands while oil spills out of the filter and covers the sides. I now have a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that Ann calls my “oil changing clothes.” She didn’t get nearly as dirty as I did, but she was still a great help in getting everything done.

I know, I know, you are all thinking, “Hey, I thought this boating stuff was supposed to be fun! Haven’t you guys done anything but circulate money in to the economy and work?” Well, the answer is that we certainly have (I’ll get to that in a moment), but remember, we knew this was going to be a preparatory stop. And when we get to the Bahamas we will not be able to fix things – or to have things fixed – quite so easily. 

Steak, Lobster and champagne!
Celebrating the removal of  my walking boot.

Anyway, it hasn’t quite been all work and no play, as I finally got my walking boot off! In celebration, Ann cooked us steak and lobster. Mmmm! I do love lobster, oh, and steak too!

In addition, we have met some folks at the marina. Grover and Judy just bought a Nordic Tug 42 named Toucan. Although Grover used to be a boater, he got away from it for a time while he and Judy became RV people for several years. In August, they decide they wanted to become part-time cruisers – while maintaining their home in Tucson, AZ. For those of you who don’t know, that is where Ann and I met, went to High School and where our respective mothers currently live. Anyway, they had a rental car and took us to a place in Topping, VA called Merroir. They call the place a “tasting room,” in part because they have beer, wine and oyster tastings and in part, I have just learned, because they were unable to obtain certain site permits for a restaurant, so they are legally-obligated to call themselves a “tasting room” instead. You would have to see the place to believe it. It kind of looks like an old oyster house with some tables and chairs located on a large porch, and few picnic tables in the yard. The oyster boats are right next to the parking lot and the view of the Rappahannock is wonderful. The view, the food, the beer, the wine and good friends – what else could a guy want!!

Finally, as some of you know I have been involved in a project with the Carnegie Corporation. There are four of us who will be listed as authors, though some people did far more work than I did. My task, in addition to commenting on what everyone else wrote, was to write the introduction, including specifically a section on “net assessments,” and to keep the project focused on the net assessment approach – which was a requirement of the organization funding the project. (I know, most of you don’t know what the net assessment approach is. Of that, I am very glad because if everyone knew, I wouldn’t have had a job.) As you DO know (or can imagine) in any publication where academics are involved there is a cut-off date for changes, an absolute-cut-off-date, an absolute-absolute-cut-off-date and a TTIRMIAACUD (This-Time-I-Really-Mean-It-Absolute- Absolute-Cut-Off-Date). Well, on the Carnegie Project we have reached the TTIRMIAACUD. Actually, the TTIRMIAACUD is next Friday, so I am taking a day-long sabbatical to write this blog entry.

It is now Friday morning and we are still in Deltaville. It looks increasingly like we will be here through at least Monday and probably until Tuesday or Wednesday. The real question is what will Sandy do? Will she swing north or hit closer to our temporary home? To find out, you will have to tune into our next blog entry. We will try to publish it before we head south, but in any event, we’ll let everyone know how we are doing.

ANN’S NOTES:   I guess it is my turn to put my two cents worth in the blog.

I keep telling Michael that boaters do not … repeat … do not have plans. We have INTENTIONS. As you can see intentions can change very quickly when you have to deal with repairs and weather.

We did get a lot of work done over the past few weeks. This boat is very big when you start to clean all the little marks with a Mr. Clean magic eraser. Michael does all the decks and I follow behind and do the detail work. I was glad that is was a cooler fall day and not a hot, humid Virginia summer day.

I have stated before that almost everything done on a boat is a “two-person” job. Luckily Michael and I work rather well together. Getting the dinghy on the second deck is a good example of working together.  Jury-rigging the cradle was a full day job. My poor body has black and blue marks in some very strange places! Lying on the deck under the dinghy and adjusting blocks of wood may explain why I have those marks. The bottom line is we got it done!!!

I   have had my first experience of being ill on the boat. I had been fighting what I thought was a sore throat and a nasty cough for about a week. Finally on Monday the 22^nd, with what I thought would be an eight day cruise ahead of me, I went to a Dr. Kauffman walk-in clinic / office. It turned out that I had a sinus infection … Yuck. I am now taking an antibiotic and Robitussin…plus a few codeine pills at night to stop the coughing. The codeine pills I had on board … Dr. Kauffman told me to use a Neti pot and hot showers, I am doing both but I have to tell you that the codeine pills work much faster.

I also joined my new friend Judy in a local Yoga class, it was good to get some “girl time” in and the teacher was good. Not as good as MY Yoga teacher, Rixie, but still I had some mat time and that felt great.

I guess that is all for now … we just have to wait out hurricane Sandy and than our Intention is to head south …

Traveling Soul … OUT

Around the Chesapeake (28 September - 15 October)



Another afficianado of the Harriet Tubman Foundation singers.
Actually, we are not sure where he came from,
but we gently removed him and placed him ashore.

 You may recall the while we visited Cambridge, MD we were tied up at the public dock, which is just outside the Dorchester Country Administration Building. Well, about 8 AM on Friday, just before we started to leave, members of the Harriet Tubman Foundation began forming up in the parking lot of the Administration Building – which coincidently was outside our port side windows and portholes – for their annual walkathon. Now I wasn’t a big fan of the speechifyin’ that went on; I could have gone without the Pastor’s comments, the Mayor’s speech and certainly the mini-rally for President O’bama, for example. But they also had a couple of Gospel singers from one of the local churches – and I am here to tell you that those ladies could sing!! I am not much of a Gospel fan, but when they have beautiful voices and they are belting out that Gospel music about 50 feet from your breakfast table – while you are drinking your morning coffee, of course  – man, that ain’t too bad!

After coffee and the morning serenade we left Cambridge and headed to Oxford, MD. (Now some of you might be wondering why Maryland has two boating towns so close together named after two of the most famous universities in the world. Well, I think that is a very good question and I haven’t a clue. (If you find out, please let me know.) Oxford has a limited number of anchorages. The most convenient is inside Town Creek and which has a very short dinghy ride to town. We went into the anchorage, looked around and decided that we really didn’t like it very much – there wasn’t much swing room and the water was a bit shallow – so we decided to go to the next little cover over, Flatty Cove. Flatty Cove has reasonably good protection from the south, east and west, but not so much from the north – and while we were there, the wind was from the north. Luckily, it was only 10 – 12 knots and didn’t cause us much of a problem because the holding was so good. The only challenge we had was that it was a little over a mile to town by dinghy and we weren’t quite sure how much gas we had.

This picture was taken from the park in Oxford, MD.
It is so artistic that I think we should copyright it.

I know, I know. You are expecting me to tell you we ran out of gas. Haha! Well, the joke’s on you because we didn’t! In fact we glided right into Town Creek and to a gas station. We did discover, however, that notations in Active Captain and other publications notwithstanding, there was not a public dinghy dock on Town Creek. So, we talked to the bartender at Schooner’s and he let us use one of the small slips the normally keep for customers.

Oxford officially marks 1683 as the year of its founding because in that year it was first named by the Maryland General Assembly as a seaport. Actually, however, the  town got its start between 1666 and 1668 when 30 acres were laid out as a town called “Oxford” by William Stephens, Jr.  By 1669 one of the first houses was built for Innkeeper Francis Armstrong. Oxford first appears on a map completed in 1670, and published in 1671. In 1694, Oxford, and a new town called Anne Arundel (now Annapolis), were selected as the only ports of entry for the entire Maryland province. Until the American Revolution, Oxford enjoyed prominence as an international shipping center surrounded by wealthy tobacco plantations.

A couple of centuries later, though, Oxford became something of a bedroom community. Yes, it has a small recreational marine industry with a couple of marinas and boatyards, but there are not many touristy shops, like there are in St. Michaels – and like Cambridge would like to have. In fact, there probably aren’t more than half a dozen stores in the whole town, including a convenience store and a book store that specializes in mysteries. They do have a very nice museum with several interesting exhibits. Did you know, for example, that prior to the Civil War the Maryland Military and Naval Academy was in Oxford? In addition, there are also a couple of restaurants, the aforementioned Schooners being one. At this point you are probably wondering why we went to Oxford. “It may be a nice place,” I suspect you are thinking, “but surely there are other places on the Bay to visit.” You would be right except for one thing: the Robert Morris Inn.

Now the Robert Morris Inn isn’t one of those typical Bay restaurants where the view is more important than the food. While it certainly is not the best restaurant on the Chesapeake Bay and maybe not even the best on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I am here to tell you that they make some awesome crab cakes. (I’m sorry, in re-reading that sentence I am not sure I conveyed the real deliciousness of those crab cakes. They were absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it GREAT.)  Anyway, The Robert Morris Inn has both a Dining Room and a Tavern, neither of which have a waterview. Instead they rely on strange things like the quality of the food, the excellence of the service, the quaint ambience of the room, and yes, just a little bit, on the price. By that I mean that – while it ain’t cheap – neither is it THAT expensive. In fact, if you will remember the last time we reported on great crab cakes, it was a result of our meal at the Narrows, on Kent Island. Ann and I agree that the Robert Morris Inn has better crab cakes – AND the price is less. (At the Narrows it was $37 for LUNCH crab cakes; at the “Inn” (as the cognoscenti call it – I have always wanted to use that word J  – the price was $27 for DINNER crab cakes.)  I kind of like writing about the Robert Morris Inn because as I do I can almost taste the crab cakes again. Sigh.

Well, after Oxford we weighed anchor and pointed the bow south. The first day we went 65 or so miles, arriving at Smith Creek, at the mouth of the Potomac, about 3:30. It was about five miles up the river from the Bay proper, but it looked to us like it was the best anchorage in the area – and we didn’t want to have to go another twenty or so miles before dropping the hook. Anyway, the anchorage was nice and very well protected. In fact the next day we went out to the Potomac and found it to be a bit rough – with a little chop and 2-3 foot seas. But in Smith Creek, we hadn’t even noticed it.


Tell me this isn't a great picture and a wonderful anchorage. It was on Smith Creek, just off the Potomac.

Our night at Smith Creek marked a milestone of sorts. We had now spent 8 nights on the hook without going into a marina. That would not have been possible without our watermaker. It faithfully produced about 30 gallons a night, and we used only about 40 gallons per day. Although we might not be able to stay our indefinitely (we do need this thing called “fuel” occasionally – but I won’t know how much of that we used until we fill up in a week of so) the watermaker has given us a lot of flexibility.

As I was saying it was a little rough on the Potomac and, for the first part of the morning, on the Bay. The forecast called for 1-2 foot seas, but (once again) the meteorologists were off. It was 2-3 feet minimum, with an occasional four footer rolling in. Since we are almost always prepared for 2-4 footers, the seas didn’t bother us and we continued our journey south. We ran through a rain shower or two then turned east up the Rappahannock. It was about 20 miles or so from the mouth of the river to Urbanna, VA where we intended to stay three days.

Urbanna is kind of a quaint little village that Ann and I both like. The Nimcock Indians first settled what would come to be known as Urbanna.  The Nimcocks (the word means “Indians who live in towns,”) lived in huts within fenced-in villages designed to thwart attacks from other tribes. In 1649, Ralph Wormeley patented 3,200 acres on the Rappahannock, including the lands that the Nimcocks had cleared for their settlement and crops, forcing the tribe upriver.  Landowners like Wormeley established plantations on Virginia’s navigable rivers, which they used as private ports, shipping tobacco directly to market without the inconvenience and expense of going through an official port of entry. The 1680 so-called “Acts of Assembly” passed at Jamestown changed all that. They ordered local officials to establish 20, 50-acre port towns, at a cost of 10,000 pounds of tobacco each, through which all trade would take place. One of these towns was a small part of Ralph Wormeley’s “Rosegill” Plantation that would, in 1705, be named Burgh of Urbanna, or “City of Anne.” The town was named in honor of England’s Queen Anne.

Within Urbanna there are a dozen or so touristy shops, a coffee shop, eight or nine restaurants – including one inside a drug store that looks exactly like a 1950s era soda fountain – and one decent grocery store. But what makes Urbanna a special place for cruisers is that everything is within walking distance; you don’t need a car. While walking around we found the last “saying” I wanted for my “saying wall.” It is from the children’s book Wind in the Willows and goes:

Believe me, my young friend, (said the water rat solemnly), there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing … nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy and you never do anything in particular …

Kenneth Grahame

Wind in the Willows

There is another good thing about Urbanna. We sold our dinghy!!!! Now why are we so hung up on our dinghy. Well, as I pointed out during our time in Marathon Key last year,

“For cruisers, the dingy is the equivalent of the family car. It is the vessel you use to do everything from going grocery shopping to picking up friends who come to visit. Now, our dingy is a really cool 20 year-old, 11’4” center console Super Sport Boston Whaler with a 30 HP outboard; on the dingy circuit it can be basically described as a classic overpowered sports car. Moreover, like many other things on our boat, cosmetically, it has been very well cared for in that it has a well-varnished teak console and seats, as well as a highly-polished chrome steering wheel. Everywhere we go, people comment on the coolness of our dingy. The problem is that we need an SUV, not a sports car. Our dingy, for example, can only carry three people; our visitors usually come in pairs, making it necessary to make two trips to and from the shore; we can only carry a limited amount of groceries; we can’t use much more than ten of the thirty horsepower.”

So what was wrong with our dinghy? I thought I had explained all that in an earlier Blog entry, but after looking through the archives I can’t find it. Basically, there are two problems. We store our dinghy in its davit on the second deck of Traveling Soul. The Whaler weighs around 600 pounds, so we don’t muscle it up and down, instead we use a winch – and you know about the problems we have had with our winch. When the winch isn’t working, we simply do not haul the dinghy up and down. Even when the winch is working, however, the weight is a problem. While our winch raises and lowers the boat, we have to employ muscle power to push the Whaler from side to side. Basically, to raise the dinghy from the water to the second deck, we have to move the empty crane arm so it is extending over the starboard side of the boat, lower the cable about 20 feet and hook up the dinghy, raise it using the winch, then, using muscle power (and a specially created block and tackle apparatus which gives us about a 4:1 mechanical advantage), move the crane arm back to the center of the boat – while it is holding this 600 pound dinghy – so we can lower the Whaler into its cradle. Now moving the dinghy to the center of the boat when there is no wind is challenging, but doable. When, however, we get wind in our faces, that damn boat is tough to move – with or without our block and tackle apparatus.

Our last glimpse of the Boston Whaler.
She was a beautiful boat.

There is another problem with the Whaler. Rather than bring it up on deck, sometimes it might be easier to tow the boat from one location to another. But it has only about a foot of freeboard (the distance between the water and the boat’s “rim”). If we are towing it in our wake and there is any chop on the water at all, we are afraid we would swamp the boat.

The RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) we are buying weighs about 300 pounds (with motor) so it will be substantially lighter than the Whaler when we try to move the crane to the center of the boat when redeploying and raising it. Moreover, in the front the AB dinghy has about 2 feet of freeboard, making it more difficult to swamp. In addition, the Whaler has a maximum capacity of three people, where the RIB we are buying has a capacity of five; the Whaler requires us to keep her teak polished and shined, while the RIB does not. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Now the Super Sport model Whaler that we had is very desirable to a lot of people. There are folks who buy them and fix them up – just as other people might do for sports cars – and resell them. We got almost two-and-a-half boat units for ours and there were a couple of potential buyers willing to step in and give us good money (though not quite as much) if the original deal went south. Though that is substantially less than the cost or our new dinghy it is a decent price for a twenty year old boat with a twenty year old outboard.

After Urbanna we took the boat to Deltaville and left it for some work to be done. This time we had:

·         Cutless bearings replaced. Cutless bearing encircle the propeller shaft both where it leaves the hull and where it is supported by the struts. So, since we have two shafts, we have a total of four cutless bearings. The last time the boat was out of the water, the technicians at Zimmerman’s told us that our cutless bearings are worn and that is why we felt a bit of a vibration around 1400 RPM. We decided that before we headed south we would have the cutless bearings replaced. That time has come.

·         Stuffing Box serviced. The stuffing box is a casing in which material such as greased wool is compressed around a shaft or axle to form a seal against the ingress of water. It is used, for instance, where the propeller shaft of a boat passes through the hull. Most stuffing boxes allow a small amount of water to drip into the bilge. Ours is a “dripless” stuffing box which makes it better, in some respects, but needs occasional maintenance to ensure that it continues to keep out the water.

·         Two toilets replaced. What can I say? Toilets are toilets. On boats, they (apparently) never work very well. (Note: these are the toilets themselves, not the Lectra Sans. The Lectra Sans are processing systems, the toilets are … toilets. The Lectra Sans appear to be working well.) Anyway, marine toilets have a pump that brings in seawater to flush the toilet. The pumps on two of our toilets weren’t working very well. Although you might think that it would be less expensive to have the pumps repaired, we are beginning to think that when  you add the labor costs, it is often less expensive to replace the major end item rather than individual pieces of the systems.

·         Generator repaired. Our pre-heat solenoid and our fuel injector, apparently, weren’t working properly.  Although the more I think about the problem we had, the less I am sure that they diagnosed the issue correctly. I will have to double check when we get back to Deltaville.

·         Hull waxed.  Because my foot is still in a cast, we have not really cleaned the boat since we arrived in Herrington Harbor last June; it has gotten pretty dirty. Moreover, Traveling Soul has not been waxed since we have owned her. Since I am not going to be able to wax her while she is out of the water (which is the best time to do it), I went ahead and splurged – and spent ½ of a BU for a hull wax job.

While the boat was out of the water we spent time with our Virginia kids and grandkids, and with our friends Dave and Joan Wolf. We also spent the week pre-provisioning our boat and going to the boat show. We had to be careful about pre-provisioning AND about the boat show as we needed to get all our “stuff” in Dave and Joan’s car – as they were taking us back to Deltaville. In the event, we did buy quite a bit of stuff – and it all fit!! Coming back, we stopped at CoCoMo’s, which it a Bay Bar and Restaurant in Deltaville and you know what? It wasn’t half bad. If we come back next year, we’ll definitely give it another try.

ANN’s NOTES: It has been a busy summer… we have had a lot of family and friend time. We also have had all our medical check-ups and procedures done. Michael is excited about not having to wear that damn walking boot … it comes off on Thursday the 18^th… champagne will be poured that day. I will have extra time in the morning when I don’t have to strap/Velcro him into the boot any more.

I have to admit that when we leave I will miss the wonderful chill in the fall Virginia air. Fall and Spring are my favorite seasons…followed by winter and then summer. I know what you are thinking, why do I head south for the winter? Well … that is the direction my floating home is going and my husband. Besides what is not to like about traveling, adventure and having friends/family visit.

I am happy to be back on the water and going again. Spending eight days without the support of a marina was fun. Having the ability to make your own water is amazing … add some water conservation to the mix and we are really independent. Now if we could only make our own fuel …

As Michael told you we delivered the Boston Whaler in Urbanna … I was a little sad to see her go … you must think I am crazy but she was a nice ride and a pretty little boat. Just too heavy to launch and a strain on the winch system we have. She went to a good home, a sixty foot Hatteras.

We get our new ‘car’ tomorrow and I can’t wait to drive her!!!

I want to thank Tim and Carrie (son and daughter-in-law, more daughter than in-law) for all the help in making this summer fun.  Sharing their time and keeping our computers running. Also for having such beautiful grandchildren and allowing us to spent time with Caylin and Gavin. We also could not do what we are doing without the love and support of our other family, Dave and Joan Wolf.  I cannot express how much they do for us, their home is always open to us and they have put many more miles on their cars – taking and picking us up from where ever we may be. Thanks you both very much and we love you always.

Next blog entry from Traveling Soul will be SOUTH of Virginia.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading.

Traveling Soul…OUT

On the Road Again: St Michaels and Cambridge, MD (23 September – 28 September, 2012)

 On the road again -
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is making music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again

Goin' places that I've never been.
Seein' things that I may never see again

And I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again -
Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We're the best of friends.
Insisting that the world keep turning our way

…

Yes, we are on the road again. Finally! On Monday, 24 September we left HHN, set out into the Bay and headed towards St. Michaels, Maryland. After St. Michaels went to Cambridge, MD and will head for Oxford, Maryland tomorrow. Then we will mosey on down to Urbanna and Deltaville, VA.

Mike, in hte salon, with his new walking boot.
You can see the crutches in the lower left.
We are now done with them!!!

Before I tell you about  St. Michaels and Cambridge, though, let me tell you about the past month. I know I promised not to bore you with tales of my woe so I won’t. Instead, I’ll give you a quick summary.  I had two different kinds of surgery: orthopedic surgery on my Achilles tendon and dermatological surgery on my neck (a little bitty, not-to-worry-about cancerous thing). After my tendon surgery I progressed from a splint, to a cast, to a walking-boot-with-crutches, to a walking-boot-without-crutches. The latter is my current means of conveyance and will be for the next 22 days (not that I am counting or anything).  We had to wait until I was off crutches before we could leave the marina, but, as I said, we are now on the road again. My neck surgery also went well in that they got all the cancerous stuff. So I am now (almost) whole and by October 23^rd (the day the boot comes off) I will be better than new. In case you were wondering, this getting old crap ain’t for sissies.

While I was getting worked on, so was Traveling Soul. Before I get to the two repairs we had completed, I have a major announcement to make. Those of you who have been reading this blog since last year may remember that there is one item we swore we were going to sell when we got back to the Chesapeake. That’s right WE HAVE SOLD THE BOSTON WHALER!!! How it occurred is kind of amazing.  Every time someone complimented us on the Whaler (and a lot of people did), we told them we were going to sell her as soon as we had the chance. When we visited Urbanna, VA last June we happened to mention to the dockmaster that we had a Boston Whaler that we wanted to sell. He took our card and said he would let us know if he heard o anyone who wanted the boat (yea, right). Well, about two months later he called and told us that one of his customers, who owned a 60’ Hatteras, had given his little Whaler to his grandson and now didn’t have the heart to ask for it back. So, he wanted to buy ours.

Ok, on to the repairs. First, we finally got the winch replaced! As you may recall, the winch that lifts our dinghy onto the second deck (aka the “boat deck,” hasn’t been working right for several weeks. Because Zimmerman’s in Herrington Harbor is so understaffed, they couldn’t fix the winch until they got someone up from the Zimmerman’s Yard in Deltaville. Luckily, he knew what he was doing (at least he seems to have known what he was doing – that damn winch has tricked me into thinking it was working before) and we can raise and lower our Whaler. Don’t get me wrong, raising and lowering the dinghy is still a major task, but at least we can raise and lower it now.  

The second completed task was making the watermaker work. As you may recall, the repairmen in Deltaville didn’t have time to finish the repairs before we headed out for points north. When we got to HHN, we found that Zimmerman’s didn’t have anyone who could fix it, but they sent us to another company that we used to deal with when we kept Sans Souci at Herrington. Well, they were too busy to get to us, but they gave us the name of another guy who worked on watermakers. (Does it sound like passing the buck to you as much as it did to me?) Anyway, the name they gave us was the name of the local representative for HRO (the brand name of watermaker that we have). Nate Horton of Horton Marine Services was absolutely GREAT! The first thing he did was diagnose the problem. Are you ready for this? The pump had lost its prime – so basically, we had a big air bubble in the line between the pump and the thru-hull and the pump was sucking air instead of water. He lowered the hose and voila! In fact, so far on this trip we have successfully made water on two separate nights, replacing almost all we have used.



Building an entertainment system -- however small --
is a messy business. It looks better than this now :-)



Ann and I also improved our stereo setup. We had initially intended to buy a new 32” TV, along with new stereo equipment, and new a CD and DVD player. To do so we would have had to have major woodwork done (about $5000 worth – for more information, you can look back to the second section on Deltaville). Well, we decided to save ourselves several boat units and keep the TV small at 22”. Now some of you might be thinking that 22” is too small. But we didn’t buy a boat and travel to the Bahamas, and cruise the ICW and the Chesapeake to watch TV. We watch some, but not enough to justify 5+ BU’s. So, we replaced the various components at a fraction of that price and now have a nice, modern – but small – entertainment center.



Ok, now to our current journey. For those of you who don’t know, St. Michaels, Maryland is a Bay town that we have visited many times before. It is the home of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, hundreds (or at least tens) of little touristy shops, some pretty good restaurants, and quite a bit of history. For example did you know that, according to local lore, St. Michaels is known as "the town that fooled the British.”  During the war of 1812, British barges off the coast of St. Michaels planned an attack on the town and a harbor fort.  The people of St. Michaels got word of the impending attack and hoisted lanterns high up onto the masts of their sailboats and into the tops of trees.  The high lights caused the attacking British to overshoot the town.  The ruse worked and, according to locals, only one house in St. Michaels was hit by cannon fire.  That house still stands today as a private residence and is known as the "Cannonball House." 

Traveling Soul, lying at anchor in San Domingo Creek,
near St. Michaels, Maryland

We were there three night and two full days. On each of the days we covered about half of the town (with my walking boot I couldn’t go as far or as fast as I wanted).. They were both okay (Characters and Marcorittaville – yes, I know, but that’s the way the owner Marco wants to spell it), but were nothing to write home about. We did re-learn, however, that we both like Fat Tire beer. In case you didn’t know (and there is no reason you should), Fat Tire is a Belgian beer made by the New Belgian Brewing Company which is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado – my birthplace. What is really surprising is that at all three bar/restaurants we have visited so far on this trip had Fat Tire.

The first day as we were returning to our boat, we met Jeremy and Janet who travel the Chesapeake aboard their American Tug, Tardis (that is an obscure reference to one of my favorite British television shows – Dr. Who. I could go into great detail on the Doctor, Time Lords, Time Lord technology, etc, but Ann says I should spare you that diatribe – needless to say, she is not a fan.) Anyway, we talked for only a few minutes and exchanged boat cards. About 2 hours later, we got a phone call. It seems that when Jeremy and Janet got to the dinghy dock to head back to their boat, their dinghy wouldn’t start. They rowed about half the way back, but as they turned into the main part of the creek, the wind slowed them way down; one stroke forwards, two boat lengths backwards. Now, if you will recall when we were in Marsh Harbor, Bahamas, we ran out of gas in our dinghy. We had the same trouble struggling against the wind until one nice boater took pity on us, got in his dinghy and gave us a tow to our marina. We now had an opportunity to repay the favor to the boating community – and we did.

We had them over to the boat the following day for drinks. They were a delightful couple, who, it turns out, used to live aboard their boat, had completed “The Loop” and now cruised the Chesapeake during the summer and live in their Florida home during the winter. One thing led to another and Ann ended up getting a free pair of earrings AND a matching bracelet. It turns out that Janet designs and makes jewelry. Ann commented that she had always wanted earrings with a “swirl” (like the “o” in Traveling Soul) but had not been able to find a pair that she liked. So, Janet made her a pair … and since she was making swirly things, she made her a bracelet, too! I am trying to figure a way to take credit for giving Ann the jewelry (like for her birthday, anniversary, or something – but I can’t. L  



Ann with her new long hair, earrings and bracelet.
Thank you, Janet!!



We left St Michaels on a perfectly gorgeous Thursday and arrived in Cambridge about three hours earlier. We had been to Cambridge before, but we had always stayed at the Hyatt Resort and Marina. They have several swimming pools, a few restaurants, etc. It is a true destination resort. However, this time we came to downtown Cambridge where they have a free dock. That’s right; all you have to do is come in the boat basin, swing around, pull in to the cement dock and tie up. You can stay up to 48 hours, then they kind of want you to move on. True, they don’t have electric hook-ups or water, but hey, did I mention that it is free?

When we pulled in there was absolutely no wind and only one boat on this 300-foot dock. If it had been blowing, these concrete docks might have done a job on our hull. But with no wind, I was able to bring the boat to within, maybe, two feet of the dock. Ann then stepped ashore, tied up all the lines, put the fenders in place and secured the boat. Being "walking boot-bound," I wasn’t much help – other than with advice, which, as I am sure you can imagine, I dispensed freely. We then saw that the water where we had docked was a little skinny – 7 feet at high tide (we draw 4 ½ feet and we probably would have been okay, but I just like to have a little more of a fudge factor), so we decided to move forward about a boat length. Of course that meant we had to undo the lines and raise the fenders. We moved forward about 50 feet, then checked the depth again. We had gained about a foot and a half, so we now had plenty of depth. Ann re-secured the b oat in nothing flat. I suggested to Ann that I might have to give the crew a medal for outstanding performance. Her response was something like, “medal-shmedal I want some beer and nachos.” So we headed over to the local waterfront café and imbibed.

Cambridge is kind of an interesting place. Settled by English colonists in 1684, it is one of the oldest colonial cities in Maryland. At the time of English colonization, the Choptank Indians were already living along the – as you might have guessed – Choptank River. Beatrice Arthur, star of the television sitcoms Maude and The Golden Girls grew up in Cambridge, where her family owned and operated a clothing store. Also, the Annie Oakley House is the only surviving residence that was either owned or occupied by Annie Oakley as a primary and permanent residence. She “retired” there for a few years before she decided to “unretire.”

Walking around town – and it is a lot bigger than St. Michaels – you can see that Cambridge used to “be” something.  There are a number of unused and underutilized storefronts and commercial spaces in town, a lot of second-hand and consignment shop along the main street, and even the city’s historic houses need some work. In short, while I think Cambridge is working hard to revitalize its downtown areas, it has a long way to go. Will we come back? Maybe. But so far we haven’t found anything to which we must return.

ANN’S NOTES:   I had to look at the dates that Michael started this blog with. I am going to go back a few days since I celebrated my birthday on 20 September.  The day was fun because my phone kept buzzing with the tune of “Meet the Jetsons”… that is what plays when I have a message from Facebook. I never knew I had so many friends and it was wonderful to get so many birthday wishes. I even got one from my Aunt Dorothee in France.  On Friday, we headed up to Northern Virginia and stayed with Dave and Joan. We went out for dinner and had another couple, Jim and Jane Hawkins, join us. Than it was a family party on Saturday at Dave and Joan, joined our son Tim, daughter-in-law- Carrie, and of course Caylin and Gavin … and Abby their wonderful dog. All my gifts were special, a few more mermaids for my collection and salad bowl, a Nike fuel band to keep me active and moving more, and a Nexus tablet to bring ashore while we are in the Bahamas…no more lugging the lap top.

From L - R: Dave, Joan, Jane, Jim (partially obscured), Ann
and Mike. So, why do you think Jim was obscured? Probably
because of his past -- he doesn't want to be recognized

We also had a chance to visit some friends on their boat in Kent Narrows MD … they are on their way to Trawler Fest in Baltimore … trying to sell their boat after living on board and cruising for five years. We had a fun evening with them and they introduced us to some of their other friends. Boaters have MANY stories to tell so the conversation is always interesting J

I am happy to report that our ‘list’ of repairs is shrinking and that most of the repairs seem to have been done correctly.

I am happy to be on the water again and hear those big engines hum and push us through the water. It makes me smile J

Michael is healing well and has been a very good patient. I have used my nursing skills well this summer and will be glad for him once he is out of ‘the boot’. My morning routine will change for the better once I won’t have to Velcro him into that thing.

I just want you to know that I jumped off the boat not once, but twice and was not offered the traditional 5 dollars dock hand/line handler tip. I guess the beer and crab nachos, and Michael’s praise on a job well done is more than enough payment.

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Traveling Soul…OUT