Solomons Island, MD

Hello from Solomons Island, on the west bank of the Chesapeake. We left Herrington North today, a day early as the weather for the next couple of days indicates heavy rain and high winds and we figured we would rather be in a town than a marina out in the middle of nowhere.









Herrington North is a nice marina but there is no town around it. It is third on our lists of potential homes for High Spirits after full time cruising is finished. First place right now is Annapolis, second is Baltimore. We are looking for a place to sail out of during the Spring and Fall, while up in New London in the Winter and Summer.



Today's ride took about 6 hours, half under power and half under sail only. After we landed Joy headed over to West Marine to look for parts for our broken outside grill and some caulking compound. After trying to fix the grill for the 5th time, she finally decided that we should buy a new one. It got damaged during one of my famous docking episodes, the one in Buffalo, NY.

That was the lesson of: "if you think should not go there, then don't go there". I however went there and ended up with a broken grill.

I went off to the supermarket and picked up a few items for our boat pantry.

We are staying at the Holiday Inn & Marina. We met the owners, John and Monica Simpson, in Baltimore when we visited Josh and Rachel. They were there for the trawler show. It is a nice marina with clean facilities and use of the hotel.

Today's picture is the place we had dinner at tonight. Joy liked the name. Food was okay, not great, but the price was fair, so overall a good deal.

Joy is under the weather with a bad cold. Thus no blog last night.

Bye for now, until the next odd day.









Joe

Annapolis, Md - Boat Show & the Kids

Well, just got back from the Annapolis Sail boat show. No, we did not buy a new boat. I did look at a 43 ft Tartan, that lists out at $500K, as well as a 56 ft Hylas, that lists at $1.1 million.
They are a little bit past our checkbook balance.

We did buy some new items for the boat including a Honda gasoline generator as a backup power source, a EPIRB distress radio, a single burner butane camping stove,and new maps for Virginia. I found a marina that we probably will stop at that might be able to convert our CNG stove to a Propane stove. The problem is that there is no CNG to purchase to operate our stove. We have one empty cylinder and one that is less than 50% full. With no CNG we have no hot food unless we are at a marina and use our electric hot plate and toaster oven using shore power.

We used the kid's gift certificate at Calaway Bay for lunch today. I had a delicious bowl of lamb stew. Joy had a bleu cheese steak sandwich. Thanks kids for the treat. It was a great break from walking all over the Boat Show.

However, when we got back to the boat today we discovered that one of the hot water tank hoses had broken and leaked water into the engine bilge. We pumped it out, Fortunately we are going to a Marina tomorrow, weather permitting, that has a boat yard and we should be able to get a new hose made up to fix the problem. We can foot pump out cold water.

It is raining now but hopefully will blow out by tomorrow morning.
Matter of fact it is pouring like crazy, good test to see what leaks we have.


One of my oldest friends, Dick Van Os Keuls from 7th grade, came and visited us today and went to the boat show with us. He lives in Silver Springs, about 7 miles from Jennifer. He
is an architect. He was an usher in our wedding party. Google his name and you will see the stories about his house which he is covering with aluminum cans as a siding material.

Joy visited her mother's friend, Shirley Eustis, who went to Colby with Jean in the 40s. Shirley lives in Annapolis and is an artist. She also volunteers once a week at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in the Archives Department.

No pictures today, as we did not take the camera to the boat show.

Tomorrow we are off to Herrington North Marina in Deale, MD. Thank goodness they have a boat yard, as we will need a new hose for our hot water heater. Keeping our fingers crossed that the weather heater was not damaged by the water leak.

While waiting for the shuttle to pick me up and take me back to our marina, I met an older woman who has been living on her boat with her husband full time for the past 4 years. They have been all over the Islands, and now are planning an Atlantic crossing with just the two of them for crew. She is very excited about her dock reservation in London starting in November. They have plans for an 18 month stay in northern Europe.

One good thing about going to the boat show is that you met people who are just like us. Perfectly sane to fellow boaters, but maybe from another person's perspective, a little out there on the edge.


Joe

Annapolis crabbing

We arrived in Annapolis Saturday afternoon after a sail from St Michael's, where we enjoyed the Maritime Museum, road bikes for 14 miles to take a ferry over to Oxford, and enjoyed wonderful warm days and cool nights.

This morning, Sunday, after church, we spent about 2 hours at the Annapolis Sailing Show, before returning to the boat to enjoy Jen, Mark, Erin, and Adam, who came to spend the afternoon with us. One of the activities that Jennifer had read about was catching crabs by tying a chicken neck (we used wings) on a line and putting it on the bottom. So they arrived with chicken and fishing line and set up 3 lines. No sooner were they in the water and the lines started to move across the water. Carefully lifting the lines and using a net to capture them, we temporarily caught 3 crabs and put them in a bucket to examine them. A few more returned immediately to the water. No eating these crabs as the harbor was not the cleanest place in the world!

After our success with catching crabs, we went out for a 2 hour sail, under ideal conditions. Adam spent time sleeping below and Erin enjoyed both the sailing and playing below with Nannie. Jen and Mark are great 2nd mates, steering, handling lines, and docking.

Tomorrow, we spend the whole day at the boat show!

Joy

Chesapeake Maritime Museum

We spent the entire day at the Chesapeake Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, MD. The picture of Joy holding an oyster and a set to tongs, which are used to scoop up oysters.

Well not the entire day, as we did not get there until 10:30 am, and also had to go food shopping at the end of the afternoon.

Today was also "let us find out how difficult it is to have prescriptions renewed after taking them for 10 years or so. Turns out my prescriptions had to be written out on paper and could not be electronically refilled by the Cleveland Clinic Home Delivery System. Hard to believe that there does not exist system to eliminate paper prescriptions within the CCF system. They blame the fact that an outside firm actually handles the transmissions and I am "not" in their system, even though I have been a CCF patient for 15+ years.

On Friday we are going to rent bikes and ride down to the ferry dock to motor over to Oxford, MD. It is about a 14 miles round trip. Should be fun, it is billed as one of the top 25 bicycle rides in the country. Will have pictures of the trip for Friday's blog

Joe

Fortunately, Gayle and Connie were able to drive to Independence, pick up the pieces of paper, and mail them to Garfield Hts through the US Postal System. I am sure there is something elsse I have to fill out, but hopefully they will get filled in the nexg two weeks. Can not wait to see what kind of problems we have to get enough to go to the Bahamas in the wintger for more than 3 months.

At Anchor in St Michael's Harbor

Well, it warmed up to 60 degrees today, but the sun shown part of the day which helped. After a quiet night on a borrowed mooring in Lake Ogleton, we left to sail across the Bay and up the Miles R. to St Michael's, a very popular tourist town, with quaint houses and lots of quality shops, antiques, artisans. We are in a small mooring field and dinghied to shore for a short walk up the Main St. Tomorrow we will go to the Chesapeake Maritime Museum, which we are both looking forward to.

We are getting good at picking up moorings and anchoring. The boat in front of us is from Australia, so we stopped to say hi from our dinghy. They are sailors who had a smaller sailboat in Australia and wanted to buy up. they found the prices in the US much lower, so after hunting, found this boat in Annapolis and will sail it to Australia, traveling as we are south and then through the Panama Canal. And we think we are adventurous!

Some pictures here of our anchorage, the shops, and the lovely sailboat race, just off the harbor, late this afternoon. Also, Joe busy at his computer!

Joy

Mooring in Lake Olegton

Hi

Well today is an odd day so it is my turn to write. We are moored in Lake Olegton, just south of Annapolis. We had a great sail down the Bay from Baltimore, moving about 6 knots. We were
in Baltimore for 12 days. The weather finally cleared out from the rain, and so we took off.

It took about 5 hours to sail down to Lake Olegton. Tomorrow we are going over to St. Michaels and Oxford for three days. Then we are coming back to the west side of the Bay to go to the sailboat show at Annapolis. Jen, Mark, Erin and Adam are coming to Solomon Island for the weekend of Oct 17.

Interest move today at the fueling dock. We had a stiff cross wind and I was hoping to to drift into the fuel dock right into the bumpers at the diesel pump. However I miscalculated the wind and landed at the dock, short of the pump and short of the bumpers. Also had a little forward speed: results: several scratches on the starboard side of the boat. Good news: nobody was injured. That is the first rule of safety. You can have an incident, but as long as nobody gets injured and there is no hole in the boat, well than it is okay. It is kind of link the airplane summary: any intact landing is a good landing.

Joy has gone to bed at 8:17 pm. It gets dark really early now. Our heater on the boat does not heat, it pumps air but not hot air. We have decided to wait until we come back to get it fixed. They have to take it out of the boat and send it to the factory. Take about 2 weeks, and we would have to go back to the dealer who took it out.

Here is a picture of Joy at her happiest, sailing along with a nice breeze with no motor so it is quiet. We think about her grandparents, Gar and Skip, a lot when we are out sailing. They were the grandparents who had the Primrose, the boat that Joy grew up sailing on.

We are trying to get to Virginia by the end of October.

More later

Joe

ps pictures are from the trip today down the Bay and Lake Olegton.

Still in Baltimore

Well, we are still in Baltimore, and it is raining again outside. Looks like rain for the next couple of days. We had hoped to leave Baltimore on Tuesday, but not sure now.

We had originally planned on staying here a week, or at least the boat staying here a week.

On Monday-Wednesday, we went down to DC via the MARC train to visit Jen, Mark, Erin and Adam. The train only cost $6.

Came back Wed. night and on Thursday, the East Coast got hit by Tropical Storm Nicole and it rained all day Thursday, and bad weather on Friday. We were supposed to go to Annapolis but basically cancelled out, and all the kids came to Baltimore for this weekend.

Erin and Adam's first overnights on the boat went fairly well. We do not have super space but everybody adjusted. We all went out for a sail on Saturday afternoon which was the nicest day in the last week. Not too much wind and little Rally on the Mall on Oct 2. Josh did not have to go to work until the afternoon. So we had a nice family get together for a couple of hours. Then everybody had to leave to catch trains, go home, or go back to the boat.

So today Boat Breakdown News: tried to start up our boat heater because the temperature was getting into the 60s. Of course, it does not work. It has not been used for two years, so it could be a variety of things. Called the factory today. They suggest we have it taken out and shipped to them, they do all their own repair/restoration work. Have a call into Butch, a repair guy at a place we are going to next weekend. So spend some more money. We probably do not need the heater fixed now as we are hopefully moving south into warmer weather. May decide to wait until next spring.

Today's photos are from the weekend visit of Erin and Adam.

Joe