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Living on your boat while on “the hard” has its challenges. “On the hard” means your boat is on land either in a cradle or on jack stands. Getting on and off the boat involves a ladder. With rj, we have a small, sturdy fold-up ladder we bring from home. The ladder sits next to the one coming off our swim platform and you climb up, grabbing the built in grab bar on the way up. Much easier than the Sailboat, but I haven’t had to do that in years! Joe takes care of getting Moonlight in and out of the water while I tend to the gardens at home! It works–plus a little time away from each other never hurts…..right dear??

We are out of the water while we install window blinds, curtains, the windlass and check out the water pump for our cabin water (the pump is not shutting off all the time).  All of you who are projects types know, they always take longer than expected and you always need to find parts. Then, you run into other problems like a loose swim ladder!!! The boat needs to be cleaned and all the canvas reinstalled. So, we are plugging away.  Thankfully, we have had beautiful, warm, sunny days. Yesterday, it hit 74!   Although, we are watching a storm which will affect our launch date.

The other issues living on the hard involve things that are available on the dock–power and water. Fortunately, we have electricty! Yeah! however, it is only 15 amp, which will not run our refrigerator or electric stove. We being the experienced boaters we are (ha ha) have a plug in cooler and a small portable propane stove we use to heat water to do dishes. When we begin anchoring out, this stove, along with our grill will be our cooking aparatus. For now, we mostly eat out. We do have water, but cannot use the water heater.

We can use the head (bathroom) but prefer to walk to the marina bathrooms. They aren’t close but that way We easily get our 10,000 steps. : o  We have an electric heater so the boat stays pretty warm at night.  All in all, not too bad.  Did I mention it’s 70 degrees 😃

Fishing Bay boatyard is attached to the marina we stayed in last Spring. We are guessing there are 100 or more boats here on the hard. Some are fabulous. A big, red sailboat named Seamogs (old English “to move or cause to move”) is exceptionally magnificent.  There is also a very, very long racing boat stored here where they actually dug holes for the keel and rudder!  Joe is posting a utube video on just how long this boat looks when you drive by it.

The guy a few boats down from us was here last Spring. He has a fixer upper and is living on it.  Some people are getting boats ready to store, some are doing huge rebuild projects and others well, who knows! It’s kind of a community. Everyone is exceptionally friendly. There was even a Jackolantern for Halloween carved like a cat.  Coconut growled at it!  Then there are the sad boats who appear abondended. Someone’s dreams left to moulder.  They all are a story.

So back to projects and watching the weather–a small craft warning has been issued so I think we will not be launching tomorrow.

Living the dream : )

After an early Saturday night and an early Sunday morning, we left Waldorf, MD at 7:30 AM. Coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts to rev up and off we go to see the boat. After 3 near misses by hurricanes and a summer in Virginia, we had no idea what shape r j would be in. Fortunately, except for the collapse of the PVC frame that was supposed to hold the cover up off the deck, everything looked good. We left a very small fan running to circulate the air inside the boat, not knowing how long it would run. Surprise, it was still running! I could feel some slight humidity inside but not enough to ruin anything. Mona wiped everything down with 409 to freshen up the place and we moved a whole Tahoe load of equipment onto the boat.

First project (we are cruising and that means working on the boat…) is to repack the stuffing boxes. For those non-boat owners or those owners with mechanical shaft seals, this means crawling under the deck, behind the motors to disassemble the bronze fittings on the propeller shafts that keep the ocean / lake water out of the boat. After disassembly, the waxed rope that is wrapped and fitted around the shaft has to be forcibly removed from the fitting using an ice pick, pliers, cork screw, dental pick, etc. I ended up using a 3 inch long stainless steel screw to skewer the rope pieces and pull them out. Long story short… I think I have everything cleaned out and will be ready for assembly and adjustment tomorrow. Bad part, I spent $60 on special carbon, wax treated rope for this. It’s suppose to be the best.  Not bad except that’s 4 feet of rope at $15 per foot.  Are you still thinking you want to go cruising?

In between climbing in an out of the engine compartment and putting the interior of the boat together, (Mona worked all day on the inside) we removed the storage cover and got it folded into a small roll and stowed the the Tahoe. It can stay there until we haul out somewhere further south. We don’t know where that will be yet. Maybe Charlelston.

Next project: Install the Lewmar anchor windlass.  That should be a hoot!

 

 

We left Illinois Friday morning and drove the next 1.5 days through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland — in the rain!  Having done almost this same drive last May, we know it’s beautiful, just not so much in the rain.  We were heading to Washington DC to see the National Mall.  Joe has been there a few times but not for over 30 years.  I have never been.  We were worried the trip would be a bust because of the effects of Willa mixing with or turning into a Nor’easter.  Amazingly, it was not raining when we arrived.  Thank goodness!

We came in from the West and kept seeing signs for the C & O Canal.  We got peeks of the canal along the freeway but then saw it up close when we were within a few miles of DC.  It ran alongside the Potomac River.  There was a path running parallel as well, with walkers, runners and cyclists.  It was pretty cool.  It was similar to the canals we saw in England!

In doing a bit of research, we found the Cheasepeake and Ohio Canal is now a National Park.  It was also called the “Grand Old Ditch”.  This canal operated from 1831 to 1924 along the Potomac from Washington DC to Cumberland, Maryland.  It was principally used to haul coal from the Allegheny Mountains.  It really is quite amazing at almost 185 miles long and containing 74 locks!  Who knew?

Once we got to Washinton DC, Joe recalled a parking area right across from the Jefferson Memorial.  Miss Coconut was so happy to get out of the car!!! Having never been to The Mall, I was a surprised to see that the reflection pool did not go from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial!  Who knew?  I swear, every picture I have seen made me think the water was between the two monuments.  In actuality, the Washington Monument sits by itself surrounded by flags and is up a small incline (the monument is closed at the time for renovation).  It’s about 2 football fields from the water.  There are great photo ops from the Lincoln memorial which is built higher and allow the perfect reflection pic of the Washington Monument.  Great planning by those designers.

In between the two monuments, at the end of the reflection pool  is the stunning WWII Memorial.  I am happy to know my dad, a WWII Veteran, saw this Memorial honoring him.

 

 

 

We continued to the Lincoln Memorial which was the most popular that day.  I loved seeing the statue of Abe and Joe noticed a spot on the floor where Martin Luther King Jr., gave his famous “I have a dream” speech!!

We continuued to the Vietnam Memorial.  This was the most emotional place for me.  Having grown up in that era and having more than a few friends serve there, it was hard to view the 58,000 names on the long, black wall.  Joe found the name of a Scandia boy, Barton Johnson, who lost his life at 21.  We all knew someone who served there, including my own brother, Terry.  Their stories stay with you.   There were many, many people wearing Vietnam Vet hats or shirts.   Gut wrenching and touching.

We also saw some WWII Vets touring with volunteers from Freedom Flight.  It was all very emotional.  Americans need to remember we still have soldiers over seas.

We only saw a small part of this National Park.  We walked the entire Mall seeing the monuments and a brief glimpse of the White House.  We did not tour the Capital or see any of the museums, gallerys or gardens.  We were happy to see what we did considering the weather.  A wonderful tour.

Washington DC  is named after our first President.  Oddly, George Washington never lived in DC.  The White House was completed a year after he died.  Who knew?

 

 

We left at 7:30 a.m. today (October 25).  While getting ready to leave this morning, we watched/listened to the news and weather on tv.   We noted two things;  one good and one not so much. We are extremely relieved to get a break from the political ads– what a barrage of garbage!  We are watching the weather closely. We left home just in front of rain which we hope to outrun. Willa may be affecting our arrival on the East Coast.

Our poor workhorse Tahoe is again packed to her full capacity, including a roof rack. Two large cushions for our Sky Lounge and the boxes with window blinds took a lot of space. Many tools are necessary for installing the windlas, new window coverings and a few other projects. Them there’s shoes…….  Plenty of room!

Joe has been planning this trip since we got back in June. He is reviewing countless webpages, blogs, government agencies’ sites, forums, etc, to make our route safe and interesting. Hurricanes Michael and Flora put a whole new twist on everything.

We also joined the America’s Great Loop Cruisers Association. With AGLCA, we get current info from cruisers, blogs, the identity of a host at each stop and a flag to identify us as members.   We are hoping for  greater communication with our fellow boaters. We also hear there are impromptu parties. We may never actually do the entire Loop but the wealth of information seems worth the yearly fee.  We actually got a phone call today welcoming us to the group.

I spent a lot of my time this summer making stuff to make RJ more comfortable.  Ordering new blinds and sewing some window coverings were number one on my list. We lived with half broken blinds and paper window shades last Spring.  I actually made the giant, curved seat backs for the fly bridge. They were missing when we bought the boat and a search online couldn’t locate any.  It was quite a project making them but it will be so worth it. we will for sure post pictures once installed. The area is behind the two captains chairs–kind of a chaise lounge or couch.

We also needed a light colored exterior window cover for the huge windshield. Dark Green makes the boat heat up fast! I made an ingenuous (if it works) screen for the front hatch, a sun shield for the cockpit and customized all of our bedding to actually fit a Vberth. Sew, doing all this work myself should save enough $$ for a few tanks of gas for RJ!

This trip involves a lot more than our previous experience on the ICW in Florida. We will be able to anchor out and hopefully enjoy the various anchorages we learned about from Active Captain, Skipper Bob, AGLCA and other resources. We are not on a schedule other than to try to get as Far South as Charleston.  Where we Hope to have the boat pulled for storage at the end of November.  We really need RJ to be sitting someplace where it is warm enough to commence our travels in February. Thanks for coming along!

When we arrived at Fishing Bay Marina, we were handed maps of the area. One of the marina facility and one of the town of Deltaville. About the town, we were told “and that’s all there is”.    Correct 😏 .  Not a lot to do there but we did have the nice big swimming pool to help alleviate the heat.  We were staying in Deltaville one week.  We took the dinghy around Fishing Bay one afternoon, explored nearby towns and did our remaining boat projects.   This marina was pretty quiet during the week.

RJ is in the lower right with the green flybridge enclosure.

We pulled out the refrigerator as it was sweating inside pretty badly.  We thought it needed more insulation but no, we found it was not sealing properly.  A little Longtin “imagineering” and magically, it doesn’t drip anymore. Just another fun filled day living on a boat. 😏

We also needed to build the frame for our new cover. Gathering the PVC parts necessary took a few trips to different towns but it all turned out well and we found an excellent lunch stop at Willabees on the Rappohanock. A real nice outdoor setting on a beautiful River.

On our last day, we got up at dawn. Our plan had been to clean off the boat, pull it, cover it and spend the night in a hotel but rooms were not available anywhere! So we got up early, finished cleaning off the boat, pulled it, covered it and headed home, closing our first chapter on rj!  We didn’t get to see some of the areas we had planned due to weather issues but where rj is resting gives us an opportunity to see a bit more this fall before the push to get her further South.

Thanks for sharing our journey.

Joe, Mona and Coconut

A few notes:

Best dog name: Scallywag

Best boat names: Sloop du Jour or Wet Spot 😳

Best meal: CD Cafe Salomons Island

Best cocktails: French Martini and Rum Runner type concoctions (every bartender has ‘the best’ recipe)

All the marinas give you a brochure with marina information, maps of the town and tips. Very useful…

I’ve never seen so many high, narrow, old and downright scary bridges than those on Maryland and Virginia’s rivers!!!

Pools at Marinas are a wonderful thing!!

We both missed beaches and the clean, clear water of Lake Superior!

It was fun to see all the different types and brands of boats.  Lots and lots of older, well-maintained boats.  People here are proud of their boats.

The Cheseapeake is very dog friendly.

The Cheseapeake is very humid.

We saw 2 dolphins on the Cheasepeake. Apparently a lucky sighting.

We liked Annapolis but rush hour…. holy cow. People plan their day around traffic. That’s what happens in Cities mapped 369 years ago!!

Maryland has great trees.

For you boaters, imagine watching your boat being loaded onto and moved on a travel lift all by only one person. It’s a good story.

The East coast has 300 year head start on any of our “old, quaint, towns”.    We know, obviously!!!!!

We figure everyone on the Cheasepeake waters owns 4 boats–there are so many.

It would take a lifetime to explore the Chesapeake with all its bays, creeks, backwaters and rivers. So far, we really liked what we’ve seen.

After a week in Spring Cove Marina, it was time to get further south. We did a number of boat projects while at Solomons Island and took two different road trips, both to move the Tahoe to be near the boat. In preparation for moving the boat to Deltaville, VA, we rented a car on Thursday and drove down through Maryland and Virginia to Deltaville. We drove across three more bridges that Mona hated. We wondered why George Washington had to row across the Potomac, when we are certain that the 301 bridge pre-dates him and the Federation.

On Friday morning, according to plan, we got up early and picked up the boat to get ready to head down to Deltaville. First we headed over to the fuel dock to top off. Not only did we have a long 70 mile trip ahead of us, we wanted to know what our fuel consumption was for the trip down from St. Michaels. We put in 18 gallons in the starboard tank and 16 in the port tank. Out trip down was about 60 miles so we got around 1.5 miles per gallon. This is the absolute best mileage that I estimated for the boat and the conditions that day were perfect so now we know that we can get the magic 1.5 mpg on a perfect day and every other trip will be under that. If only we had known at that point how far from a perfect day we had ahead of us, we would have gone back to bed.

A few sights at the beginning of our trip.

 

 

 

The trip to Deltaville started out fine with about 5 knots of wind but the wind speed kept sneaking up during the trip until we were motoring into 15 – 18 knots. Anyone who boats on big water knows the drill. If you look upwind and see white caps on the waves, you have over 15 knots of wind. If you look downwind and see whitecaps going away , you are looking at over 18 knots. Might as well round that up to 20 knots because it’s going to get there eventually. Well, looking behind the boat we saw the whitecaps and knew we were in for a very tedious trek. This all kicked up around noon and we still had at least 4 hours to go at 10 miles an hour. The waves were right on the nose and were actually 2 different patterns that were kicking up a few fairly deep holes in the water. Again, anyone familiar with this knows that rarely do you see 3-4 foot waves actually rise up from the surface, it’s more like 3-4 foot holes the water. And when you go bow down into one of those, it gets your attention.

We tried a lot of different boat speeds to counteract the wave action but nothing was any more comfortable than 10-11 mph. On our boat, this is not a very efficient speed for fuel consumption, in fact it is the worst. So, needless to say, this leg cost a lot more that the last.  We are looking at it that we are two for two on this trip = Two good travel days and two bad.  The weather forecast was for 5 mph wind.

We’ve talked about the number of boats we see along out trip but we are continually amazed by the number of boats we see in new places. If you study the coastline of the Chesapeake, you will see all the creeks and rivers that empty into the Bay. If you zoom in with Google Maps, you will see that number of boats here is crazy. We drove around Deltaville today and literally saw at least 2000 boats, both docked and in storage yards. And we didn’t even visit half of the creeks in the area.

We have hit another spell of very hot weather but have a fabulous, huge pool to use.  There is also a very nice covered patio area that gave us an afternoon of relief from the heat and interesting conversations from some of the local slip holders and transients.  People here are very concerned about the health of the bay and one thing we hear over and over is that the loss of oysters really adversely affected the bay.  The oysters filtering cleaned the waters and offered food and habitat to other animals but over harvesting, disease and habitat loss have have led to a severe drop in their populations.  Science is helping restore the reefs with hatchery raised oysters.  Another main conversation is the loss of local restaurants due to “tourist prices”.   We also were told about the unpredictability of the Cheasepeake waters.  It’s very shallow and very big; the wind usually blows north to south or south to north and it causes unpredictable wave patterns.   We found those!   And of course, everyone talks about boats boats boats…

 

 

 

Even though we were in Annapolis for 10 days, our time exploring was much too short due to weather and boat projects.  However, the last two days were spent learning a bit more about this historic area.  Di and Chet (Cyn and Toms’ friends and now ours too ; ) filled us in a lot.  We had a wonderful time with them and will meet up with them again when we go back to Annapolis to pick up our truck.  We also learned a few of Cyn’s secrets from her younger days 😘

The restaurant where we met Chet & Di was the Chart House.  It was a huge boat warehouse-type building, on the water, that used to contain the Trumphy Motor Yacht Company.  They built beautiful boats at this site, which “appeal like a Frank Lloyd Wright house or Rolls Royce.”  They were handcrafted and stunning!  The yachts were built from the 1920’s to the 70’s. There was one in our Marina in Annapolis that we drooled over every time we walked by.  It appeared to be owned by a golden retriever!    We also ran into one that was available for charter last fall when we stayed in Palm Shores.

 

Another boat I admired at Bert  Jabin Yacht Yard called Island Girl. Possibly an older Sabre.

We spent a day walking around the Historic District. One fabulous colonial building after another.  These 18th century buildings were placed on the National Register of historic places in 1965.   We toured the Maryland State house, the oldest U.S. State Capital in continuous use.  This building was actually used as the Nation’s Capital for a short time in 1783-1784.  We probably knew that in 4th grade.   It is spectacular!

 

We dined outdoors at Harry Brown’s, which was right across the street from the State House.  We had a beautiful view of the State House and grounds.  There was a group next to us in town for the naval commissioning who were quite entertaining–in a snobby, rich people manner.  They summoned a gentlemen walking by dressed in period clothing.  Lo and behold, he was the official town crier–or so he said.  Now, his stories were good.  Because of our table’s proximity we met the Town Crier and the Maryland Secretary of State who just happened to be leaving after having lunch inside.  A very entertaining lunch.  Miss Coconut received a lot of attention and loved the Doggie retail right next door!

Next, after admiring more of the towns shops and buildings, we walked Ego Alley, a  dock on the waterfront where you show off your boat.  You also need to show off your boat handling skills as it is quite narrow to navigate.

We spied an establishment named Pussers so we had a nice cocktail on the waterfront before our allotted 4 hour parking was up.

We then drove around St. John’s College (founded 1696) and the U.S. Naval Academy to see the beautiful buildings and landscapes.  The neighborhoods with the original homes were wonderful.  No place for a giant SUV!!!  We thoroughly enjoyed our time touring Annapolis.  It does make me thing of the many buildings, not nearly as old, but architecturally important and beautiful which were torn down in the 60’s and 70’s in St. Paul and Minneapolis.  What a tragic loss.  Watch  Larry Millett’s “The Lost Cities” on Public tv or check out his books!

We left Annapolis yesterday, by boat.  We crossed the Cheasepeake and are now at Rock Hall Landing Marina.  The marina is small, neat and clean And, there is a pool.  I think we will be using it.  Our crossing was a bit more harrowing than I would have liked but it’s a new boat to us.  The first thing we saw was 5 huge freighters!  It was very windy and the waves were a bit wild but we made it safe and sound.  We will stay here through Memorial weekend.  There is much to explore by foot, bike and a $1 trolley!