A Little Wind and Rain

On Thursday (9-30-10) we had Tropical Storm Nicole blow through.  It was already raining hard when I headed out for work at 0615 and I only got a few miles down the road before I turned back due to flooding and high winds.  I knew the worst was yet to come and if the roads were already that bad then I was better off staying home and taking care of the boat.

Cheri was working from home that day so we weathered the storm together.  The rain was really coming down and later reports showed 5" to 7" had dropped in our area.  Around 1000 the wind began to really howl and I saw one gust as high as 52 knots.  That's blowin' pretty good, especially back in Tracey's Creek where it's very protected.  Normally when we come in from sailing the wind could be blowin' 25 knots out on the Bay but when we get into our slip we'll only see about 5 or 6 knots.  To see a 52 knot gust in our slip means it must be really screaming out on the Bay.  We saw one boat break loose on the next dock over from us and three slips up from ours a boat's genoa got shredded.  The only thing we had on our boat was some water running down the mast into the cabin.

The wind and rain continued throughout the day.  The level of the creek rose steadily throughout the day too.  By 1930 that evening the water was about 2" below the  decking on the dock and high tide was still 3 hours away.  After losing power and being closed up in the boat all day we decided this was a good time to drive into Annapolis for a movie and some ice cream.  Uhm, probably not the wisest move I've ever made.  The deck of the boat was riding about 45" above the dock at this point and once we jumped down we realized it was gonna be a task to get back aboard.  Of course we were already off so we decided to deal with it when we got back.  What the heck, right?  Driving into Annapolis we had second thoughts about the movie after I calculated that high tide could conceivably raise the water level another 9".  To prevent this from being a total loss we stopped at Baskin Robbins for a quart of mint chocolate chip ice cream before heading home.

When we got back to the dock we found the water was now just a fraction of an inch below the walkway of the dock.  It was really weird walking out there, felt like we were walking on water.  When we got out to the boat I decided the best thing to do was grab onto the railing, put my feet on the rub rail and hoist myself up.  The rub rail is about 8" below the deck and sticks out about 1.5" with a rubber cap to prevent damage to the hull when you bump into things like the dock.  I quickly found out that in the rain it doesn't really make a very good foot hold.  My feet slipped off and I went into the creek.  I was still holding onto the railing so I only went in up to my knees.  Cheri grabbed my belt and pulled me up onto the dock and we gave this situation a little more thought.  I took off one of the stern lines going to the dock and pulled the boat right up against the finger pier.  Cheri is much more agile than me and hoisted herself aboard with no problem.  She handed me a bucket which I used as a step and I was quickly back aboard.  The next morning everything was back to normal.  I talked to the guy 2 slips down from us and he said the water was over the dock at 2330 and sure enough, we found a fish stranded on the dock further down.  I grabbed this picture off the net just to give you an idea of what we were dealing with, very similar situation.


On Saturday we had some friends, Gene and Yelena Gerashchenko,  join us for a day sail.  I work with Gene and this was the first time we've gotten together away from the job.  We had a beautiful, crisp (65 degrees), clear day with about 15 knots of wind out of the NNE.  We motored out to Herring Bay, put up the sails and shot over to the Choptank River, averaging about 6.5 knots through the water.  Gene was at the helm for most of the day, which he seemed to enjoy, and it gave me a chance to just sit back and relax.  Yelena brought some smoked salmon which we had for lunch and some really tasty Russian dessert kinda things that were like a Mallow Pie without the cookie.  Mmm, mmm, mmmmm.  Gene brought along some beer and we managed to make that disappear before we got back to the slip.  We had a great time together and toasted the day with some amaretto after we got back.

On Sunday we had another outing planned, this time with Kris and Rheba Kelly.  Because Cheri and I were going to church that morning we arranged for them to show up at 1400 and planned for a short afternoon sail across the Bay.  The weather report said it was going to be clear with light winds so we were disappointed to see it cloud over late in the morning.  By the time Kris and Rheba got there it had started to rain.  We had an enthusiastic group though so we headed out across Herring Bay to red #2 before turning east and raising the sails.  The wind was blowing smartly, about 20 knots out of the NNE, and pretty good sized waves were rolling in across the Bay.  We kept the main reefed to 60% and ran with only the staysail, no genoa.  As we passed green #1 into the Chesapeake Bay the wind had increased to a steady 35 knots and the waves were quite large.  At this point Cheri noticed that Rheba was looking kinda green and suggested that it might be a good idea to turn back.  I felt this was probably a good idea anyway since conditions were only bound to get worse as we got further out into the Bay.  We headed up into the wind, running close hauled, to find some deeper water and turned back into Herring Bay at green #1.  We were running on a broad reach at about 7.5 knots all the way to red #2 before we turned N., dropped the sails and motored back to our slip.  Much to our relief, Rheba was feeling better by the time we got back in and she didn't even barf once.  She was disappointed about getting sick but she handled it like a real old salt. On the way back we acted as a wind break for some poor pop-sickle on a jet ski.

The following Tuesday Cheri invited her team from work for an afternoon sail.  The team included Dennis Atkinson, Jim Childers and Debra Braun so there was a crew of 5 aboard since I took the afternoon off to help out.  We left the dock around 1430 and sailed NNE to take advantage of a 15 to 25 knot wind out of the West.  We ran under full sail under partly cloudy skies and had near perfect conditions.  Dennis manned the helm expertly, especially considering this was his first time at it.  Dude's a natural sailor.  I'm thinking he'd make an excellent addition to the crew next time we sail competitively.  I think we all had a great time.  On the way back we averaged about 7.5 kts and got as fast as 8.4.  Fun sail but a little chilly.

On La Vida Dulce we have two reverse cycle heating and air conditioning systems.  For the forward stateroom we have an 8,000 btu system and for the main salon, aft stateroom and galley we have a 16,000 btu system.  For several days the larger system has been giving error codes, "HP 5".  I hadn't taken the time to drag out the book to figure out what this error code means but I had apparently been going over it in my subconscious thoughts.  One night at 0145 I woke up with a thought.  This unit is located under the port side settee.  I pulled up the cushion and access panel, then removed a box of shoes and a shopping bag full of who knows what.  Under that was the vacuum cleaner and it's associated gear.  Finally I was down to the A/C unit.  What occurred to me in my sleep was that the strainer for the cooling water was probably clogged.  I pulled out the strainer, flushed out the barnacles and slime and put it back in.  I fired up the system and it ran fine for the rest of the night.  One thing that occurred to me while I was doing this.  The storage compartment that this is contained in has no drainage.  There's a through-hull fitting right there, an opening to the big, wide, wet world that could let the entire ocean in to this little compartment.  Where any other through-hull is located in the boat it can drain into the bilge and an alarm will go off if there's a significant leak.  The way this is set up, this compartment will fill up with water and I won't know there's a problem until water comes pouring out of the air return vent into the salon.  To me this didn't seem like such a good thing.  I talked to John Hellwege about it and he said not to worry.  OK.  When water starts pouring out of the air return vent I'll have him come over to help me get the boat off the bottom of the creek.  I think on this one I'll go against the established wisdom.  I'll hafta do some research on this before I start drilling drainage holes but I'd feel better knowing that water won't be trapped in there.

I finally got around to reading the manual.  The error code means head pressure is above 425 psi.  After I cleaned the strainer we continued to have error codes so the problem still wasn't solved.  After reading through the book I discovered that there's 2 air filters on this thing.  When I checked them out they were both seriously clogged with fiberglass dust from when the holding tank was replaced.  Got out our trusty Dirt Devil mini vac and cleaned 'em up.  System's been working great ever since.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I need to set up some kind of spreadsheet for periodic maintenance around here.  Maybe I should also start reading some of those manuals.