Wye Me Lord?

To see a chart of where we were click here

This past Friday (11-25-11) we got super organized and got underway early in the day, clearing the breakwater into Herring Bay at 1230.  I think that's a record for us.  We had a beautiful day with a light breeze out of the SE, maybe 10 to 15 knots, scattered clouds and temperatures in the high 50's.  Perfect sailing weather.  Our destination was the Wye River in Eastern Bay which put us on a beam reach across the Chesapeake.  Unfortunately we had to motor our way across Herring Bay while Tom put in the new cotter pins for the rigging turnbuckles that he had forgotten to take care of last weekend.  Yikes!  With that taken care of we ran out the sails and had a wonderful sail across the Bay at 4.5 to 5.5 knots.  Around 1430 we were inside Eastern Bay and the wind was dwindling down to nothing.  I calculated we still had 10 miles to go and at our current speed of 2.5 knots we wouldn't get there until after dark.  We fired up the engine and ran the rest of the way at 7 knots, getting to our anchorage just as the sun set.

As you enter the Wye River off the Miles River (which is off Eastern Bay) it branches off to the right into the Wye East River and around the first point is Shaw Bay.  This was our first night's anchorage, mostly because of convenience.  It's a large cove with 20' depth and with that in mind I let out over 100' on the anchor rode for a 5:1 ratio.  There are large McMansions  lining the shore but most were dark, apparently being summer cottages or something.  Our evening here was quiet with absolutely no wind.  I mean, the surface of the water was like a mirror providing for some interesting pictures of the surrounding area.  The first picture at the top is from this anchorage.  For dinner we had some of Cheri's incredible crab soup.  Mmm, mmm good.

In the morning I woke up to the sound of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Canadian Geese.  I went up on deck and couldn't see a single bird but the noise was deafening.  For breakfast we had oatmeal made with cranberries and cinnamon.  We normally do raisins but couldn't find any.  The flavor with the cranberries is incredible.  Never go back to raisins.  After breakfast Cheri threw together an apple pie, made from scratch.  I think I'll keep her.

Around 1100 we raised anchor and headed upstream on the Wye East River.  Leaving Shaw Bay I misread the shoreline and ran into Lloyd Creek, thinking that Gross Creek was the next leg of the river.  Boy was I surprised when we ran aground in what was supposed to be 47' of water!  The river is very twisty-windy and the entrance wasn't obvious to me until we turned around.  We proceeded kinda slowly after that but there's really no trick to this place, just stay in the middle and mind your charts.  Hmm, good advice, huh?

As we went along we saw several really nice spots to anchor, Dividing Creek being one of them.  We continued on though and after passing Pickering Creek the river does another loop-de-loop and we pulled into the next cove on the south shore.  This spot was absolutely beautiful.  No homes, no lights, no nothin'.  The closest house was half a mile further upstream and it was dark later that night.  We had the whole planet to ourselves.  Actually, we shared it with about 40,000,000 Canadian Geese and three Bald Eagles.  One of the Eagles was hanging out in a tree on shore directly in from our boat.  The other two we saw the next morning as we were headed out.  Such a beautiful place.  It's nice to know there's a spot like this so close to our marina, about a 4.5 hour sail.  It's all very natural along the shores on both sides with farmland beyond the trees on the south side.  There were homes built along the shore on the way in but once we got back in there we pretty much had it all to ourselves.  At night there wasn't a single light in sight.  Oh yeah, the sunset that night was pretty spectacular.

Cheri spent all day slaving away in the galley.  For dinner we had a 4 lb. Cornish Hen with stuffing, green beans, dinner rolls, some excellent white wine and that awesome apple pie with vanilla ice cream.  I've got lots to be thankful for, lemme tell ya.

For breakfast the next morning we had apple pie with coffee.  In bed.  Actually it was cappuccino but I'm already sounding pretty spoiled here so we'll just call it coffee.  Anyway, I was feeling so relaxed I felt like jello.  Or maybe that was from eating too much, I don't know.  We had a nice, slow-paced morning and finally headed out around 1100.  We saw the other two Eagles at Pickering Point.  Cheri took the wheel the whole way out to the Miles River, never ran aground once.  Totally put me to shame.  We ran out into the Miles River and put the sails up as we rounded R4 into Eastern Bay.  The wind was blowing out of the SW at maybe 15 knots and we sailed close hauled on course 245 degrees, which took us all the way out past Kent Point and into the Chesapeake.

Once past Poplar Island the wind swung around to the South and picked up force quite a bit.  Our wind speed indicator hadn't been working at all this trip but I'm guessing we saw 30 knots at this point and it built up to more as we got out into the center of the Bay.  We were heeled over about 25 degrees and making 7.5 knots when we decided to reef in the genoa about 30%.  That leveled us out to about 10 degrees and we picked up speed to 8.5 knots.  Woohooo!  Cheri thought the waves were about 4' but I'm guessing some were as much as 5'.  We didn't just have white caps, we had rolling breakers. We were cutting through the waves at an angle, spray flying everywhere.  Seeing anything at all was difficult because the Eisenglass in the dodger was covered with salt water and we were looking straight into the sun.  Nothing but glare.  Luckily, there wasn't much traffic out there.  My biggest concern was running into a channel marker or driving over one of those damned fish traps at the entrance to Herring Bay.

We held our course as best we could to 240 degrees, which should have taken us straight into Herring Bay.  We were running with paper charts and didn't have any markers sighted to verify our position.  As we got in close enough to shore to see anything I realized we had over-shot Herring Bay and we were headed for Chesapeake Beach.  Whoops.  As I glanced down at our depth gauge it went from 35' to 15' to 10'.  Just like that.  Yikes!  I threw the wheel over and turned us downwind so we were running with the waves.  Cheri let the Main out and we just kinda skipped across the shallows of Holland Point and found our way into Herring Bay.  Whew!  Never a dull moment with old Cap'n Tom at the helm.

Just outside of Herrington Harbour South we turned into the wind to drop the sails.  The "Tack" of our Mainsail has been giving me problems when it comes time to furl it and this time it was no different.  The "Tack" is the forward bottom corner of the sail and it's very heavily stitched for strength.  When I tried to roll up the sail into the mast the Tack jammed in the slot and wouldn't budge.  We're dancing around in the waves, the sails are flapping like crazy, lines are whipping around.  I tried three times and finally got the main in.  I was suddenly feeling very exhausted.  Way too much excitement for one day.  When we got back to our slip it took me three cappuccinos and two pieces of apple pie before I was feeling any better.

Driving by the seat of my pants is fun but I think I'm ready for a chartplotter and GPS.  I'm getting too old and too goofy to be doing this without some kinda help.  We've been saving up our pennies and I think we're just about ready to start working on that electronics package I was musing about over the Summer.  After this weekend I'd say this is something long past due.

Pre-Thanksgiving Update

Last Saturday, 11/12, we had our friends Pete and Gina over for the day.  We hadn't seen them for quite a while and it was nice to sit down and catch up with them.  Around noon we decided to take the boat out for a quick cruise across the Bay and back.

After motoring out into Herring Bay we put the sails up and shot out into the Chesapeake.  We had pretty good wind, 20 to 25 knots out of the SW, so we headed kinda SE towards Sharps Island Light at the mouth of the Choptank River.  Pete manned the helm for the better part of the day so I had a chance to play with the sails.  This is really the part I enjoy the most about sailing, trying to get the most out of the boat for the existing conditions.  Way better than any video game.  We really flew across the Bay, averaging 7 to 8 knots, and around 1430 I decided to head back to give us enough time to beat the sunset in case the wind died off.  We came about and sailed close hauled into about 25 to 30 knots winds.  We were heeled over 20 to 22 degrees and just crashing along, really great.  I glanced over at Gina and realized she had this deer-in-the-headlights kinda look and decided wed better calm things down a bit.  We reefed in the genoa about 30% and the boat settled out to 10 degrees.  Much more comfortable and I think the boat handled better too.  We shot back across the Bay and were outside Herring Bay by 1600.  I suggested we could maybe sail back across again but in the end we decided to call it a day and head back in.  We tacked our way back to R2 where we dropped the sails and headed back to our slip.  All in all it was a beautiful day, excellent sailing, and it felt really good to be back out on the Bay again and spend some time with our friends.

It's funny but living aboard doesn't really mean we get to go out sailing all the time.  This was only the second or third time we'd been out since July.  Ya work all week and when the weekend rolls around something always seems to come along to change your plans.   We are planning to spend Thanksgiving weekend, Friday through Sunday, anchored out.  We'll see how that one works out.

In the last installment I mentioned something about getting another boat.  We got all excited about a Moody 54 because it had all the things we were looking for in a boat and had the perfect layout down below.  Plus it was really, really big.  Well, we gave it some serious thought and decided it wasn't a good idea to take on such serious debt when we're so close to retirement.  That 54 woulda been pretty sweet but she woulda put quite a dent in our finances.  Of course, we still wanted to have more room and craved the perfect layout.  We searched the internet for something more affordable and came up with.........a Moody 46.  For about the same price as La Vida Dulce we could get a center cockpit boat with an aft cabin and two guest cabins.  It also has a sea berth (work bench) in the passageway to the aft cabin.  The layout is identical to the Moody 54 except it's been shortened in the Port side guest cabin, the engine room and the aft cabin, each loosing a few feet of floor space.  I think the port cabin might feel tight but the rest still look to have plenty of room.  The main salon is spacious and comfortable and the galley is very similar to the 54 with plenty of cabinets and counter space.  While the 54 is flat-out gorgeous and took our breath away it would really add to our yearly expenses.  The 46 can give us everything the 54 offered and keep us within our budget.  Sometimes ya just gotta be realistic.

So we're moving ahead with selling La Vida Dulce.  We stripped down the exterior teak, re-oiled the toe rail and bowsprit, and varnished the coaming in the cockpit.  Cheri's doing the varnish.  She used "Boat-Brite" soy stripper to clean off the old finish.   This stuff works great, lifts the finish quickly and then you just scrape it off with a putty knife.  Then she cleaned the teak with West Marine "Step 1 Teak Cleaner" which took out the black and gray stains.  After some sanding she applied five coats of natural high gloss Cetol finish.  It looks really beautiful.  Gonna be a bummer to sell the boat now.

I spent this past weekend repacking the chainplates.  This is an annual chore on Island Packets and I'm a little behind schedule.  We've been having problems with rain water getting into some of the storage areas and I'm pretty sure it was coming through the chainplates.  The last time I did this the mast was still down and it was a pretty easy job.  This time I had to remove one piece of the standing rigging at a time, loosening the turnbuckle and keeping track of how many turns it took so I could get it back to the correct tension.  There is a tool for adjusting your rigging that reads the tension on the shroud.  Check out this link to see how it works (click here).  Cool huh?  Gotta get one of those.  Anyway, as I started in on the chainplates I remembered I had sworn to myself two years ago that the next time I would chisel out the space around it to make more room for extra packing (silicone sealer) and to make it easier to clean.  This was the time to get it done right.  There's just three chainplates on each side and they poke up through the teak toe rail.  The factory didn't leave much room around them, just a 1/4" in some spots, which makes digging out the old gunk pretty difficult.  I chiseled out a good 1/2" all around and then filled it with Silpruf silicone sealant.  This is the stuff that's recommended by IP and now I know why.  I had used regular silicone goop on the starboard side and Silpruf on the port side last time.  When I went to dig out the old stuff the Silpruf came out in a solid block while the other junk was just a mess.  I'm told the Silpruf clings to stainless steel way better and provides a better seal.  Better is good.

Of course we're doing all this work to make the boat "pretty" for pictures so we can sell her.  We've been talking to some financial institutions about getting a loan pre-approved which'll take our heads out of the clouds when we're looking at boats to buy.  We got numbers all figured out and put in the paperwork and got turned down for the loan because we live on the boat (?).  We don't have any property that's firmly stuck in the dirt and that makes the banks very unhappy.  Despite the fact that we both have pretty good jobs and make oodles of money, have almost zero debt and pristine credit numbers, we are considered a bad risk because three hundred and fifty years ago some dude skipped out on his boat loan.  The loan officer said we needed to get a family member or friends to set up a lease showing that we rent from them and that would be good enough.  Of course we'd also have to change our driver's licenses too.  Does this sound ridiculous to you?  It does to me and I find it kinda insulting too.  But we're playing the game.  We couldn't get any family members to set up a lease with us because they think we're a bad risk, being live-aboards and all.  My friend at work, Gene, agreed to do it so now we're getting things in order.  I'll keep you informed.

So, not much more to report.  Work, eat and sleep for the most part.  Maybe we'll have something exciting to report the next time around.  Like how I gained fifteen pounds over the holiday.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

In Our "Spare" Time

 Over the month of October we didn't manage to get out at all and we certainly missed some of the best sailing of the entire season.  Bummer!  We have two excuses for not getting out but looking back, only the first carries any weight.

During our last excursion we spent three days on Broad Creek, the whole time at anchor.  I was disappointed to see how quickly our batteries were depleted but even more so to find that running the engine didn't charge them back up.  Houston we have a problem.

On La Vida Dulce we have two sets (banks) of batteries. The first bank, with one 100 a/hr AGM battery is reserved for the engine.  The second bank, with four 100a/hr AGM batteries, is for "the house", for things like lights and instruments and making coffee.  We have two 85w solar panels, a 400w wind turbine and a 110a alternator on the engine.  Normally all these combined are enough to keep things charged up.  Running the engine for a few hours while cruising to another anchorage should have been enough by itself but this last time it didn't seem to have any effect at all.  There's two obvious places to look first.  The batteries could be at the end of their life and need to be replaced.  They were new in 2007 so they should still have a few years in them and with the cost I'm not gonna rush it.  Let's look elsewhere first.  The second option is the alternator.

The following weekend I removed the alternator, thinking I could take it to a shop and have them check it.  While I was disconnecting the wires I found a general mess with loose studs and rust, most likely caused from the water leak on the heat exchanger (click here).  I took it into a local marina to have it serviced thinking even if it had to be rebuilt we'd be back in action for half the price.  This alternator is not your run-of-the-mill automobile alternator.  Of course not!  It's a special "marine" alternator made by Balmar.  That word "marine" means they can charge twice as much for it.  Cha-ching!  The shop told me the unit was a basket case, looked like it had been hit by lightning.  They could rebuild it but it would cost the same to get a new one and then I'd have a warranty.  It'll take a week to get the new one in.  OK, there goes one weekend of perfect sailing but we should have it in time to get out by next weekend.

I picked up the new alternator on Thursday evening and installed it Friday morning.  As I was putting it in I found that the dude who did the original installation did a Mickey Mouse job and the wiring harness was a rat's nest and the controller was mounted at the bottom of the door to the engine room.  To read the code on the controller I had to lay on my side on the floor.  What are people thinking when they do this kind of work?  Am I alone in questioning this?  Grrrr.  I decided to replace the wiring harness and move the controller to a better position.  Do I need to say "snowball"?  By the time I got it all installed and checked out it was Saturday evening and another beautiful sailing weekend had gone by.  On the upside I am now an expert on our 12 volt charging system.

OK, so that's one excuse for not getting out sailing and that's the good one.  The other excuse was that we started looking at boats for "sale", not "sail".  The word "snowball" doesn't even come close to covering this one.

When we went to the Boat Show this year we made the mistake of going aboard a Hylas 49.  The layout down below is just what we're looking for, would really suit us well.  The new Hylas 49's are ridiculously expensive but we found that the used ones, prior to 2005, are more within our price range.  So we called our friends/boat brokers, Jack and Sharon Malatich, to see if this was something we could really do.  They asked us what it was we liked about the Hylas and we gave them a list that was two pages long.  After going through it they suggested we take a look at some other boats too such as a Taswell, Moody and a few others.  OK.

The following Friday they came down to Herrington to take a look at our boat to get an idea what we could sell her for.  They also had arranged for us to check out some other makes of boats.  One of them was a Taswell 49 that was located right there at our marina.  I wasn't familiar with this boat but when we climbed out of the car we walked up to a boat that Cheri and I had been admiring just last week.  That's a good sign!  When we climbed aboard  (she was up on the hard) we found a boat that was very similar to the Hylas, maybe even better.  She had been sailed around the Atlantic and was set up for it, had all the safety gear, electronics, sails, everything we could want.  In the end we decided against her because she was built in 1996 and was showing her age through wear and tear down below.  A newer Taswell might just fit the bill though.

The next boat they took us to was a Moody, sitting on the hard up in Annapolis Harbor.  We pulled into the marina and parked next to this humongous boat.  Jack grabbed a ladder and put it up against this thing and we realized that we were looking at a Moody 54.  Yikes!  This thing is gigantic!  I checked with Jack and the price on this thing was in the same range as a used Hylas.  OK, let's take a look.  Once on deck it was all over for me.  This boat has recently been set up for sailing the Atlantic and cruising the Caribbean.  They just completed outfitting her with all new rigging and serviced everything.  Everything!  The boat is a 2001 but is basically brand new.  And she is truly beautiful.  We're looking at center cockpit boats because they have more room down below but I've always felt that the aft cockpit boats, such as our Island Packet, are much easier on the eye.  The center cockpit usually looks kinda dumpy to me.  Not this one.  The cabin sits low on the deck with easy access to the cockpit.  The lines on this thing are gorgeous.  Down below the layout provides an owners stateroom aft with a queen size bunk and tons of storage.  All the way forward is a guest cabin with another queen bunk and another guest cabin to starboard with two single bunks, over/under.  This second guest cabin is where we would set up an office for Cheri.  The salon has a nice table with "U" shaped settee to starboard and another settee to port.  The feeling here is comfortable, not too big (on the Island Packet 485 the salon is similar but it feels like a ballroom, too big).  The port side galley is "U" shaped with lotsa counter space done in Corian.  The fridge is front loading with a top loading freezer.  The nav station is starboard just aft of the salon.  Going aft from the nav station is a passageway to the rear stateroom.  In this passageway is a sea berth and storage to starboard and the engine room is to port.  The engine is a 110hp Yanmar diesel.  There's also a 11.5kw diesel generator in there.  Sweet.

 There are a few drawbacks to this boat.  I'd hafta install a diesel heater, maybe two.  I feel like I just finished doing that.  With the size of the engine room it wouldn't be as difficult as on the Island Packet though so I could get that done fairly quickly.  The other drawback is that the boat is set up for Euro power, 220v/50hz.  We'd need a converter to be able to hook up to shore power here in the States.  On the upside of that, almost the entire rest of the world is set up for 220v/50hz and pretty soon we plan to visit the rest of the world.  Perfect!

So, we decided this is the perfect boat for us, exactly what we need.  Cheri would have plenty of space for her sewing/quilting and office work.  The galley would get her back into cooking again.  Woohooo!  The sea berth by the engine room would make a great workbench and give me the space I need for projects around the boat.  I'd probably even have room for my hobbies; building cars and Japanese gardens.  OK, well maybe not.  We would have enough room to have guests stay aboard without having to rearrange the whole boat.  Plus, this boat has everything we'd need to do our circumnavigation, to go anywhere.  We wouldn't have to add anything (other than the heater).  I'm sold.  The perfect boat is out there and it's a center cockpit of all things.  Whodathunkit?

We both got really wound up about this and didn't even notice that another weekend of great sailing had passed us by.  We need to put on the brakes and give this some serious thought.  Money is the major issue here.  Retirement is just around the corner, less than three years away now.  We have to make intelligent decisions.  Is this really a good time to pawn Cheri's wedding ring?  We probably need to look into creative financing.  I'm thinking ski masks and automatic weapons.