So Much Stuff!!!

When we sold our house and moved on board we were able to sell pretty much everything we had in a short time.  Nevertheless, we still had a pile of stuff we just couldn't let go of.  There were the expected things, stuff we wanted to hand down to our kids, family heirlooms.  But there were also quite a few "things" that we just couldn't let go of yet.  A large portion of this was Cheri's kitchen stuff.  She had assembled a copious collection of tools and gadgets for her gourmet kitchen.  Breadmakers (2), pizzelle maker, waffle maker, rice steamer, slow cooker, pots and pans of all sizes, apple peeler, hand held and countertop mixers and just a ton of utensils, bowls, dishes, etc.  She also had several sets of really nice dishes and a beautiful collection of antique tea cups and tea pots.  And plenty more.

Cheri is also an artist and has quite a collection of oil and water color paints, easels, paper and canvasses, brushes and books.  Oh, did I mention she also like to sew and make quilts.  For this she has three sewing machines, hundreds of spools of thread and a collection of material that had been organized by color and stored on floor-to-ceiling shelves on an 18' long wall.  Oh yeah, she's also a musician and was playing piano when we bought the boat.  She down-sized that to an 88 key electric keyboard and we tried having that on board for the first year or so.

We're both into photography and have a pretty good collection of cameras, lenses, filters, tripods, bags and flashes.  At least we're doing digital now.  That's a big savings in storage space.  I'm also into model railroading and have a collection of kits that I plan to build after I retire.  With that goes paints, brushes, tools, modeling vise, chalks for weathering and more.  I'm planning to build one kit at a time as small dioramas and ship them back home to storage.  Once we've sailed around until we can't stand it anymore I hope to build a model railroad and incorporate all my dioramas into it.  This plan is probably not very realistic but I'll give it a try for a while and see how it goes.  Another hobby I had until recently was working on cars and motorcycles.  This hobby is kinda tough to do while living on a boat so I've given that up.  Not exactly a hobby but I do most of the work on the boat myself so I also have a pretty good collection of hand and power tools.  Oh, yeah, I'm also learning to play the guitar.  Besides all that we also have extra clothes for work and off-season.

All this is to show that we still have a pretty good pile of junk that either needs to be reduced or find it's way onto the boat.  The heirlooms and hand-me-downs were in storage in Florida but had to be relocated back up here recently so now we have two temperature controlled storage compartments in Annapolis and a small shed at the marina for boat stuff.  We've decided to give now those things that would have been left to family in our wills later on.  That kinda kills the party when we pass away but so it goes.  After being on the boat for three years we are beginning to see what gets used and what doesn't, what we really need.  There's a lot of stuff in storage that could realistically just go away and we'd never miss it.

The past two weekends we've been sorting through our storage units and reducing the stuff.  We've now got it down to just one unit and with a little more work we could actually get a smaller one.  Last weekend we finished up early on Saturday afternoon and decided to sail somewhere and anchor out.

We didn't get away from the dock until 1600 so our options were kinda limited.  With the wind coming out of the SE at 15 knots they were reduced even more and our only realistic choice was going to the Rhode River, about 2 or 3 hours away to the North.  We'd never been to the Rhode before but had heard it was very nice and fairly secluded.  We ran before the wind on a broad reach and made about 6 knots before finally turning into the West River.  It was getting on to 1900 at this point so we packed the sails away, rolled 'em up, and motored the rest of the way into the Rhode River.  This is indeed a pretty spot.  The shore is lined with tall trees and heavy vegetation.  There are houses but they seemed more set back into the trees and were less obtrusive here.  Our chart showed two islands toward the end of the deep water and I planned to find a protected anchorage behind one of them.  As we made the last turn in the river we found a large community of boats already anchored.  I quickly spotted one of the islands but the other, the bigger of the two, was not where it showed on the chart plotter.  I began to doubt my GPS as we slowly motored in and as the display showed us driving up on it's shore I quickly turned around.  We still showed 10' of water under us but I could not make sense of what I saw.  Or didn't see.  We passed a small marker that had the word "shoal" printed on it and I spotted another further back.  Cheri called up a GPS app on her iPad and said the island, High Island, was marked as "submerged".  Woulda been nice if my chart software had mentioned that.  We motored over by a large group of anchored boats, dropped our anchor in an open area and let out 60' of chain.  The anchor held and we settled down in the cockpit with our Bloody Mary's to enjoy the evening.  After sitting there for about 20 minutes I realized we had anchored and drifted back very close to that "shoal" line.  I also noticed lapping waves about 10' off our stern.  We still showed 10' of water but we were very close to the top of that submerged island and the waves were breaking over the top of it.  Ten feet away.  We put down our Bloody Mary's and relocated the boat to another spot, further away from the crowd and also further away from the submerged island.  We enjoyed a quiet night after that.

The next morning we slept in late and finally rolled out around 0930.  The first thing we found was that it was raining.  Yesterday's prediction had said 20% chance of rain.  Nice job guys.  We had all our hatches open and things were soaked.  After drying and cleaning up the mess we looked around the anchorage and realized the crowd was gone and we were one of two boats left.  This is more like it!  We had coffee and scones and sat around and enjoyed the rest of the morning.  We finally took off around 1430 and headed home in between 20% thunderstorms.

All in all I'd say the Rhode River is an OK spot for an over-nighter.  It's close to HHN so it works especially nice if we're making last minute plans.  It is a pretty popular spot though, fairly crowded, and not exactly my number one choice for a good get-away kinda spot.  It also has this huge underwater island that's not properly marked on the charts.  Local or previous knowledge pays off here.  And I guess sometimes ya just gotta really pay attention to where you're going.  This boating stuff is not as easy as it looks!