So, This Is It!

A week has gone by since we moved the boat down from Gratitude/Rock Hall.  We've been on the boat for a week and I've gotta admit, it has been nothing like I expected.  Actually I don't know what I expected.  For years I've wanted to live on a boat, dreamed about it and now we're doing it.  It feels so natural it already seems like we've been doing it for years.

Monday through Thursday we're on a pretty tight schedule because we both commute.  We tried riding together but Cheri has a longer commute than me and she was getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the Washington beltway so we bailed on that idea.  It takes her 45 minutes to get to her office in Silver Spring so she leaves the boat at 0530.  It takes me about 30 minutes to get to Greenbelt so I hang around until 0600.  I get back later than she does, about 1830 and by the time we clean up from dinner and get lunches made for the next day it's time to go to bed.  This is the sacrifice for working 4 tens.

I gotta admit that the first 3 days were difficult.  We were both trying to adjust to new schedules, a new way of life.  Despite what you might think, the change in living space didn't really seem to affect us.  We went from a house with over 3700 sq. ft. to a boat with what, maybe 300 or 400 sq. ft. of living space and when it's put into numbers it sounds like Yikes! how can you do that?  It's actually very comfortable.  Our aches and pains came more from the problems with the commute.  Once we decided to drive in seperately things settled into a more comfortable routine and all the grrrr disappeared.  At least for now.

One of the coolest parts of the day is what most folks would probably think is the biggest pain in the butt.  We're using the marina facilities for taking showers and this requires quite a hike to and from.  The bathrooms are private, single occupancy, with a shower, sink and toilet and plenty of room and they're kept very clean.  They also have heat and A/C.  Nice!  Our dock extends out from the shore quite a ways and crosses a tidal marsh before getting to the boat slips.  It humps up over the marsh and there's a spot in the middle where you can sit and watch the critters all around you.  This makes that long walk worthwhile.  We've seen a humongous snapping turtle and a very busy muskrat.  Yesterday morning I saw a Great Blue Heron flying along the shore about 12" off the water.  It swooped up over the dock and dropped back down on the other side, coming to a halt about 20' beyond, up to his knees in water.  It just stood there for a while, completely motionless and then jabbed it's long beak into the water and came up with a critter, probably a frog or something.  I watched it for a few more minutes before heading back to the boat.  The marina grounds are manicured, park-like, with brick paths winding through nice old overhanging trees.  The docks are wide and well built with long finger piers, making access to the boat comfortable.  The tops of the pilings aren't just cut off and capped.  They're rounded, giving them a nice worn-down look like they've been there for a hundred years.  Nice detail.  It's a beautiful spot, as nice as any resort we've been to.  I think we can probably do this OK for the next four years.

The reason for doing the 4 day grind is so we can have 3 day weekends.  Woohoooo!  It is defintely worth it. This past Friday we slept in for the first time in about 3 months.  We had intended to go out for a sail but stayed in and worked around the boat.  Cheri spent time organizing the aft cabin, which until now has been the garage.  Her grandson Jack will be coming to stay with us in about 10 days so it was time to get his quarters prepped for his arrival.  While she did that I worked up in the cockpit rebuilding one of the winches.

We have ten winches on board of various sizes, used for raising and adjusting the sails.  On our cruise down from Rock Hall it became apparent that the big ones, Lewmar 54's, self-tailing, two speed types, were in desperate need of attention.  The effort required to sheet in the genoa was enough to make your arms ache.  This sailing stuff is supposed to be fun, not laborious.  The 54's are fairly large and heavy but they're designed to come apart easily.  The top plate unscrews by hand with only a light tap from a large screwdriver to get it started.  Underneath that are two retaining collets holding in the main shaft, all of which are easily removed by hand.  Next the drum comes off, which on a 54 is pretty heavy.  I had to use my trusty oversized screwdriver as a lever under the bottom edge to pry it up, but once it broke loose it only required a few grunts and groans to make it sound like I was doing manly work.  With the drum off, the guts of the winch are exposed and here I discovered the source of my problems.  Actually source-ez.  First, there was sooooo much grease on this thing it was disgusting.  There were huge globs of it on everything.  No wonder I couldn't lift the drum off, it was held on by suction!  The manual says to "lightly lube the bearings".  Nowhere in there does it say to encase them in 20 pounds of grease.  Someone just went nuts here with the old adage about "if some is good then more is better".  I think that might apply to chocolate or sex or maybe to peanut butter to some extent but not grease and winches.  This was rediculous.  The second part of the problem was sawdust.  Before we bought the boat, the previous owners refinished the topsides teak to dress up the boat for potential buyers.  They apparently sanded it all down but did nothing to protect the innards of the winches.  The sawdust got in there and mixed with the 20 pounds of grease to make a heavy paste.  The motion of the gears worked to mix it all up and evenly distribute it.  I spent three hours cleaning the crud from the inner bearings and gears.  What a mess!  On reassembly I "lightly" lubed the bearings and contact areas of the gears and I feel confident the total weight of the winch was reduced by at least 27%.  Egads.  One down, nine to go.  Of course, this is a learning experience and the rest of them should go much quicker now that I'm familiar with what I'm up against.

I'd say at least 45 minutes of the three hour rebuild was spent in conversation with neighbors, which is apparently something you can't avoid if you're sitting in the cockpit while the boat is in the slip.  We are blessed with some really great neighbors, several who have been living aboard for many years.  There is a wealth of knowledge within 100' of my cockpit and I plan to take advantage of it.  While I was tearing into my winch I eavesdropped on the group at the boat straight across from us.  There was a detailed discussion about Amazon parrots going on for over an hour when all of a sudden they realized that I was working on a project and needed some assistance.  The guys came over and we talked about this and that for a bit.  I picked up some really good pointers when the conversation drifted over to what I was doing.  The #1 best idea I heard was to take a turkey basting pan and cut out a hole in the bottom so it fits over the winch and then tape it all around so nothing can fall through.  This gives you a nice sized walled enclosure to work in that'll contain any flying springs and widgets.  Great idea!  They also suggested moving all my parts off the cockpit coaming because there's some universal law about boats in constant motion and small parts being attracted to water.  Or something like that.  That science stuff always goes over my head.

Saturday we slept in again, goofed around for a while and then went out for a sail.  This is the life!  It was a beautiful day, low 70's, nice wind too, between 12 and 15 knots.  I have a habit of heading out and not planning our trip beyond saying "let's go here for the day".  This drives my Project Manager wife nuts.  It also shows it's shortcomings when you get out in the middle of the Bay on a hazy day and then can't find your way back home.  Twice I've sailed up the wrong river, South instead of West, because I didn't look at the charts, or the compass, and just kinda winged it.  It does make for a longer sail which prolongs the whole pleasure thing but we're not gonna focus on that.  This time I sat down and planned out our sail almost the entire way out and back.  I say almost because I wasn't really sure how far into the Choptank River we'd get so I only mapped it out to the entrance.  I wrote down compass readings to take us from one marker to the next, wrote down distances, printed out tide tables, checked the weather.  The whole nine yards.  I was more than ready.  I was knowledgeable.  We motored out past the breakwater and stayed on course for the first two markers.  Perfect.  As we rounded the second channel marker I realized the wind was blowing from a different direction than they had said on weather.com and it would require tacking all the way across the Bay to stay on my planned course.  OK, no problem.  I winged it.  We were only going out for the afternoon anyway so I changed our plans on the spot and we sailed straight across the Bay to the bottom end of Poplar Island.  It was a beautiful sail, close hauled, and we averaged 7kts with a maximum speed of 8.2 kts.  We passed every boat in sight too.  This is not my goal in life, to beat everyone to the finish line, but it sure is cool to have such a kick-ass boat.  By the way.....Bella is a fantastic sailor.  I think she really enjoys it.

Sunday we had some friends come by, our first real company in our new home.  Cheri spent all morning spiffing up the place while I stayed out of the way.  I mean, I was helping of course.  At 1500 Pete + Gina Judd and Kris + Rheba Kelley showed up and we gave them the Grand Tour.  We had planned to take them out for a sail but the weather was nasty, cold and wet and when I looked up the forcast it showed a line of thunderstorms headed our way.  Not the kind of day you want to take friends out for a joy ride.  Ask Gilligan.  So we sat around the cockpit and talked for a while as the clouds swept by and finally around 1700 I decided that things looked OK and we should go out for a quick sail.  Wind was only blowing about 8 or 10 kts and the temperature was about 65 degrees.  We motored out a ways, put up the sails and cruised out towards the middle of the Bay before turning around and coming back in.  Nice sail, everyone got a chance to steer and lay up on the deck for a bit.  There was a really big ugly cloud working it's way across the Bay though and I wanted to beat it back to the marina.  Just as we were getting up to the breakwater it started to rain, wind picked up to 22 kts and everyone got cold and wet.  We got back into the slip in pretty short order and everyone took off for home.  Cold and wet seems to be a real good way to kill a party.  Well, it was also getting pretty late (2000) on a Sunday night and these guys had a 45 minute drive home.  In wet clothes.  Fun.  Sorry about that guys.  Please come back again and play.

So, life on the boat is pretty cool.  We work hard for part of the week and have paradise for the rest.  Of course we have hurricanes and tropical storms and Winter to deal with.  That's what everybody reminds us about when we tell them how much we're enjoying our new life.  We'll deal with it, just like we did when our home was stuck in the dirt.  It's not really that much different now.  Just better.

Maiden Voyage

Thursday night we got out of the airport quickly and made it down to the boat a little after 2300.  This is a new record for us and should be jotted down in some book or something.  The boat was waiting for us in a slip at the end of the dock, air conditioning turned on and clean as a whistle (thanks John).  We got up late on Friday and had breakfast at this little dive in town that only took cash and then doubled our bill when we returned with the money to pay up.  Small town hospitality.  We met up with John Hellwege at the boat and went over all the systems and then took her out for a quick sail and explanation of how things operated.  Mostly we concentrated on how to maneuver under power. That evening we got cleaned up, put on some nice duds and went out to eat a celebration meal.  We tried a place we hadn't been to before, Osprey Point Inn, and managed to time our arrival just as a major thunderstorm blew through.  We had to sit in the car and wait for it to let up a bit and I still managed to get soaked by the time I got to the door.  It was worth getting soaked.  Both our meals were beautifully presented and outragiously delicious.  Total taste sensation.  It was the perfect thing to send us on our way.

Saturday morning we woke up to overcast skies and 25 knot winds blowing out of the North.  After a quick breakfast at the local coffee shop we cast off our lines and immediately ran into trouble.  The wind was at just the right angle to prevent us from bringing the bow around as we pulled out.  Gratitude Marina is pretty compact and the lane between slips is probably only 50' across which doesn't leave much room for a 45' boat.  The wind was blowing a constant 25 knots, gusting to 35, and no matter what I tried I couldn't get the bow around to starboard.  We started getting blown down the lane towards land and all I could picture was the headlines in the local paper about the fool who took out 5 other boats before running up onto the rocks.  Not getting anywhere with traditional methods I let the bow get blown around to port and decided to try backing out.  We had to make a tight turn at the fuel dock and head out directly into the wind but backing out went very nicely even if it did look kinda odd.  There was a yute from Gratitude giving us a hand with the lines and I'm sure he thought I was a complete idiot.  That's OK.  We got out, didn't cause any damage or sink any boats.  Not how I had envisioned starting out though.

We powered out across the mouth of the Chester River before unfurling the mainsail.  After cutting the engine we came up to speed under sail and averaged better than 9.5 knots over land.  This was with only the mainsail up.  Now, "speed over land" includes any help you might get from the tide but let me tell you, we were hauling ass!  When we got a little further out we unfurled the genoa and headed for the Bay Bridge on a beam reach (Points of Sail), sailing comfortably at 10.5 knots.  There were white caps on the bay and the wind continued to blow strong until we got down towards the bridge, where it eased up for a while, dropping as low as 15 knots.  After slipping under the bridge we came to a new course that took us through the mooring field for ships waiting to get into Baltimore Harbor.  We cut in between 5 very large tankers as we headed South to Thomas Point Light.  Here the wind picked up again and we hit our maximum speed for the day at 11.4 knots.  As we headed down the Bay the wind continued to shift to the West so we never had to adjust the sails and maintained sailing on a broad reach.  This is a very comfortable way to sail and involves very little heeling over, the wind is mostly with you so you're not getting your hat blown off all the time and the waves tend to come from behind at a slight angle giving a pleasant roll to the boat as they pass under.

We sailed past our old stomping grounds of the West River and Eastern Bay and as we got down towards the Choptank River we came about and sailed into the wind to line up on the entrance into Herring Bay.  This new course had us sailing close hauled and was definitely Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.  We were heeled over about 15 or 20 degrees and crashing through the waves.  We ran for a short time with reduced sail before finally succumbing to the need for comfort.  We furled the sails, fired up the engine and headed into Herring Bay.

We quietly cruised into Herrington Harbour North and coasted down along "I" dock in neutral until we located slip #5.  I goosed the engine in reverse to bring her to a stop with the stern just outside of our slip.  One of our new neighbors patiently waited on the dock to give us assistance, eyeing our every move.  I punched the bow thruster several times to get the bow swinging out from the dock until we were perpendicular, then brought her in slowly in reverse, never coming in contact with pilings or piers.  Goosed it once more in forward gear to bring her to a stop in just the right spot.  It was perfect.  Our neighbor was duly impressed.  So was I.

La Vida Dulce only has basic wind, depth and speed instruments (as well as a compass), which is enough to get you where you want to go as long as you have charts, which we do.  Sailing in unfamiliar water requires that you keep a lookout for channel markers and things on shore that are noted on the charts, like radio towers and water or oil tanks.  Many people use GPS and chart plotters to let them know where they are with an accuracy of 3 meters.  Dead reckoning is a form of navigation where you start in a known position and calculate where you are based on your previous position using the speed of your vessel and elapsed time.  Accuracy here can be pretty good (see the story of Captain Bligh of HMS Bounty fame) or off by 100's of miles (see Christopher Columbus - he thought he was in India).  The type of navigation I depend on mostly is called dead luck and is based on familiarity with your surroundings, crossed fingers and hunches.  It's usually dead-on accurate but I find we sometimes run aground.  Of course this won't serve us well out in the real world so we plan to add electronics such as GPS, radar and chartplotters for navigation as we get closer to our time of departure.  Cheri and I also plan to take courses together on celestial navigation, diesel engine repair and whatever else looks like it would help us to be better and more independant sailors.

This is a good place to comment on the performance of the boat.  Since I was a kid I've sailed on a wide range of boats from my Dad's 1.5 man dinghy to the 90' schooner Alma.  Each had it's own personality and each required different levels of input to make them go.  The Alma was the worst, required huge amounts of muscle and behaved like a barge.  Of course, she was a barge, but now I'm getting off the story.  My parents had a string of boats, the nicest of which was a 36' Dickerson ketch.  This thing handled nicely, was comfortable and traditional which gave you a huge sense of pride just in being aboard her.  She was a fun boat, good memories.  Cheri and I had a 28' Islander that served as our training platform.  She was a good boat but at 7,000 lbs. displacement was fairly light and with a fin keel behaved like a bucking bronco.  Fun but tiring.  La Vida Dulce weighs in at 30,000 lbs and has a full keel.  She drives like an M1A2-Abrams tank.  She's big and heavy but surprisingly agile and fast.  There are some tricks to handling the sails because of the cutter rig but I think we'll become better at this as time goes on.  She's a real delight to sail.  The kind of wind we had on Saturday would have had our Islander, Delirious, heeled over at 30 degrees, rail in the water and you'd be fighting to keep her on course.  After two hours you'd be exhausted.  The Island Packet heeled over less, required little effort to steer and went where you pointed her.  She sailed with total dignity.  We bought this boat based mostly on her layout down below and her reputation as a cruiser.  I can see now that she's much more than we had hoped for.  This is a quality boat that's designed to handle well and be fun to sail.  She's comfortable both down below and topsides.  Her design is well thought out and timeless and should keep us smiling for years to come.

Crossing the Threshold

La Vida Dulce was launched in Gratitude at 1335 on 05-12-2010.  I think this calls for a celebration!

Just prior to launching the topsides were compounded and waxed and the mast boot, swim ladder and mast stanchions were installed.  Requiring a dude being sent up the mast in a bosun's chair, the wind speed transducer and windex were also installed.  The windex is a simple lightweight instrument that shows wind direction relative to the boat and is mounted at the top of the mast so you can see it easily from the helm.  It's basically a wind vane like you would see on a barn except it doesn't have a rooster on it. 

While the dude in the chair was up the mast he ran a line for the spinnaker halyard which I had forgotten to put on while the mast was down.  Insert sheepish grin.  The spinnaker is a lightweight sail of humongous proportions that is flown in light winds at the forward (pointy) end of the boat.  I've never used one but I've heard they can be kinda finicky.  I've been eyeballing a similar sail that's more of a combination of a spinnaker and a genoa (an over-sized jib), called a gennaker (or maybe itsa spinnoa).  It's supposed to be easier to handle which is appealing to a couple of goofs like us.  We'll see how the boat handles in light winds this Summer before any decisions are made.  I'd like to be able to sail the boat in all conditions and avoid running the engine as much as possible.  The sails we have now are the stock set from the factory; mainsail, staysail and genoa.  It may be that these are too heavy and we need a gennaker to make headway in light air.  Another item for the list.

One thing I forgot to mention in the entry from last weekend was that I painted the prop with an anti-fouling paint called Propspeed.  This is a two step paint that gets brushed on and looks like runny mustard which is pretty disappointing after seeing all that beautiful polished bronze.  The first step is a catalyzed etch primer which is then followed by a silicone based topcoat.  It's rediculously expensive, $230 for a pint, but I wanted to give it a try.  If the prop gets barnacles and crud on it then you get cavitation resulting in loss of speed.  This stuff is supposed to be the only thing out there that really works.  I'm really big on keeping the bottom of the boat clean so we'll see how this does.

Tonight I pick up Cheri at the airport at 2030 which should get us to Rock Hall around 2330.  That's early by our standards but doesn't allow for much sleep.  Tomorrow (Friday) we'll get together with John Hellwege and go over all the systems on the boat and then take her out for a sail.  I've already got that tight feeling in the pit of my stomach and with every hour it just gets stronger.  Part of that is anticipation of Cheri coming home after being gone for over a week but I gotta admit that part of it is also about the boat.  Almost everything during the last 8 months has been about getting the boat ready.  Starting right now it transitions over to living the dream.  Yikes!

Limbo Party

Cheri and I are now kinda in Limbo.  Not the Roman Catholic version where you're barred from Heaven for not being baptized.  I'm talking about the transitional place where we've left one lifestyle and are looking ahead to the next.

We closed on the house and officially became homeless on May 5th.  That night Cheri flew down to Florida to stay with her folks until the boat is ready.  I'm staying local with my job during the week and working on the boat over the weekend.  What few posessions we have left are in a shed down in Deale, Md. about a five minute drive from where we'll be keeping the boat.  That'll be real convenient then but for now we're kinda scattered all over the place.  When I'm not on the boat I'm staying with my sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Ed, up in Reisterstown, just west of Baltimore.  These two have really stepped up to the plate for me and I owe them big-time.  I think I'll treat them to some McNuggets tonight.

So, this past weekend I stayed on the boat again in Rock Hall.  It's still "on the hard" at a gravel lot two blocks from the water, directly across the Bay from Baltimore.  Starting on Friday, and lasting all weekend, the wind blew constantly and I'm not talking mild breeze here either.  It was pretty much a constant gale force wind all 3 days, the kind of wind that you have to lean into just to keep from being blown over.  It made working outside almost impossible so I concentrated on doing stuff down below.  I kept the boat closed up as much as possible but the wind still managed to infiltrate and cover everything in a very fine, black dust.  Marvelous timing!  Now the boat needs a complete cleaning down below right before we move aboard.  I guess we're really gonna hafta earn this.

I did manage to get the propane regulator replaced without being blown overboard.  I went through the whole line again and replaced the white teflon tape I had used before with "special" yellow teflon tape used for gasses.  The yellow tape is heavier and provides a better seal than the white.  I used the 1/2" tape and applied it starting at the second thread down to prevent any tape from getting into the line where it could plug up the jets and small orifices in the burners of the stove.  It should be wound tightly in the direction of the threads.  To prevent myself from having to put too much thought into this I always hold the part up with the beginning of the threads at the top and then wind the tape in a clockwise fashion.  This ensures a good seal every time and is the "correct method", as documented in the May 1985 issue of Hot Rod magazine.

I spent all day Saturday working on the wiring connection at the bottom of the mast.  I wanted to have disconnects in this location for all the lines to prevent having to cut any wires the next time the mast is pulled.  The big clunky VHF radio cable already had a threaded connection.  The cable for the cell phone antenna is a coax wire made by Digital Antenna and turns out to use proprietary connections that are only available from them.  This way they can say they're "special" and charge more for their parts.  They also base their warranty on this, saying that use of anything else voids the warranty.  Of course they don't offer the parts you need to make a connection at the base of the mast.  I decided to forego the warranty and put in my own connection.  First I cut off the DA special connector.  I brought along three different styles of BNC connectors that we use at work and quickly found that none of them would fit either because the insulator was too thick or the center conductor was too large in diameter.  Looking it over I realized that these special DA connectors were very similar to the F connectors used for cable TV connections with the only difference being that the DA ones have a gold pin soldered over the conductor.  I just happened to have my handy dandy F connector parts and tools with me so I gave them a try.  These worked out perfectly and with the use of a female to female F connector I was able to make a proper disconnect at the base of the mast.  I then made a run of cable under the cabin sole up to the Nav Station.  I wanted to mount the amplifier in a location where I could easily see the indicator LED and also have access to the on/off switch.  Next to the Nav Station is a nice teak cabinet with a louvered door.  I drilled through the adjoining wall with a 5/8" hole saw and mounted the amp on the side wall of the cabinet.  I also pulled the wire for the Wi-Fi through and mounted the wireless router here too.  Since everything's mounted on the side wall of the cabinet it provides easy access to the controls and there's still plenty of space for other junk.  I tested the cell phone amp by checking the signal strength on my phone with the amp off.  Two bars, pretty crappy.  When I turned on the amp the signal jumped to 5 bars.  Woohooo!  Success!  This antenna and amp combo is supposed to be good out to five miles so we should have coverage almost anywhere on the Bay.  At least for now we have coverage in Rock Hall.

The Wi-Fi system is put together by a company called "Wi-Fi for Boats".  What they sell is a 4' antenna with a Wi-Fi radio mounted at the base and that attaches to a Cat 5e cable.  There's a unit called a power injector mounted inside the boat that puts 48 volts on the Cat 5e cable to provide power for the radio.  This can then send an amplified Wi-Fi signal to a splitter or router and provide internet access for our computer.  Pretty cool!  The only drawback is the 4' antenna.  I wanted to mount it at the top of the mast for best reception but my mast is 59' off the water and clearance for some bridges on the Intracoastal Waterway is 65'.  This is a rigid antenna and I don't want to take the chance of shattering it as I cruise under a bridge.  I decided to buy another antenna from Digital Antenna that's only 30" tall, which buys me a little more clearance.  The radio mounted to it with no problem and I was able to use the heavy duty antenna mount from DA too.  I connected a 75' length of Cat 5e cable which I ran down inside the mast.  To make a disconnect for this I wanted to use a simple coupler but was unable to locate one so I made my own.  I bought a Cat 5e socket at Home Depot that's supposed to be mounted in a J box in the wall of your home.  The wire from the mast plugs in on one side and a 25' cable is hard wired into the other side.  The wire for this thing is pretty small, maybe 22 or 24 gauge I think and there's 8 connections to be made on the back of the socket.  Everything is color coded and the connection is done with a simple press-fit crimping tool.  The 25' cable then snakes it's way under the cabin sole up through the Nav Station and into the cabinet next to the cell phone amp.  Here it gets connected to the POE (power over ethernet) injector which then gets connected by a short line to the router.  Simple.  I sold my computer to my brother-in-law so I don't have any way to test this set-up until Cheri gets back with her laptop.  If everything goes well then we're all set up for "working at home" on the boat.

The two remaining wires in the mast are for the cool-man LED tri/anchor light and the wind speed transducer.  The original light that was busted when the boat was trucked up from Florida had a four pin connector for a quick disconnect.  This connector was badly corroded from exposure to water running down the mast and I knew I needed a better solution.  The mast extends through the deck into the Salon where it goes into a small boxlike compartment beneath the cabin sole and is bolted to the keel.  Water can run down inside the mast into this box and then make it's way into the bilge where it gets pumped back out where it belongs.  Island Packet designed this boat to make use of every square inch and there's all kinds of storage cubbies.  To prevent corrosion I decided to make all the mast connections in the adjoining compartment under the floor in the forward stateroom.  Here I mounted two screw-type terminal strips and made all the necessary connections.  The next time the mast needs to be pulled it'll be a simple process to disconnect all the wires.

Sunday morning I woke up at 0530 to find that there was no power other than the batteries on the boat.  I made sure everything was turned off to prevent draining the batteries and wandered off to the marina bathroom to take a shower.  It was kinda dark in there, which was OK, but the hot water was provided by an electric "on demand" unit so I was kinda trepidatious about taking a shower.  I finally steeled up my nerve and got in.  Ice cold water made my toes and other extremities shrivel up for the first coupla minutes.  Then I started getting used to it, or so I thought.  Funny how you can fool yourself when your brain turns to ice.  There was actually some warm water starting to trickle through and it became almost bearable.  I guess there must be a hot water heater somewhere and they use the "on demand" stuff to shorten the wait.  Good deal!  The water was finally warming up by the time I finished.  After cleaning up I jumped in the car and drove into town for some breakfast only to find that the yellow flashing light at the only major intersection was not working.  This is not a good indication.  The entire town was without power so nothing was open.  I was getting pretty hungry at this point and seriously considered driving into Chestertown for breakfast when I remembered that we had some peanut butter crackers on the boat.  Mmm mmm mmmm, Breakfast of Champions.

While eating my crackers I hosed off the boat.  Did I mention that the wind had been blowing 90 mph all weekend and the boat was covered with dust?  I wanted to touch up the bottom paint where the yutes had run over the line while compounding but there was so much dust on everything I was concerned that if I didn't rinse it down the paint would just fall off.  The nearest hose connection is two football fields away but luckily Gratitude supplies enough hoses to reach our boat.  Just barely.  I rinsed off the boat, top and bottom, and while doing that I noticed that the generator for the water tower next to us had stopped running.  This could mean one of two things.  Either it ran out of gas or the power had come back on.  I verified that the power had returned and went back into town for some late breakfast while the boat dried off.  After wolfing down some really excellent blueberry pancakes I returned to the boat and completed the paint project.

My next job was to go through the boat and prepare it for it's first sail on the Bay next weekend.  This involved stashing away as much as I could and removing everything that wasn't necessary.  I ended up with a carload of stuff that needed to go into the shed in Deale, 90 minutes away.  The rest of my day was spent on the road between Rock Hall, Deale and, after crossing the Bay Bridge for the second time that day, Dover Deleware where I visited with Steve, Vickie and Brandon Ward.  Steve had bought my chop saw and I had it stored away in the shed.  I thought it would make a nice Mother's Day present for Vickie so I made the delivery.  I finally got back to the boat in time to catch five hours sleep before heading off to work with a bag of donuts and a cup of coffee for the two hour commute from Rock Hall to Greenbelt.  Over the Bay Bridge again.  Four times in three days.  Ugh.  Limbo is Hell.