09/26/2008 Sitting out the weather

09/26/2008 I have not been off the boat now for five days. The winds are finally letting down and I feel comfortable with the anchor holding after these last couple days. I am anchored on Weems Creek off of the Severn River near Annapolis. I sailed here to make sure I would be able to pick up my friends that are coming in early Saturday morning. When I arrived on the creek, it was a lot more congested with boats on moorings and anchor than I had seen any other time I have been here. (This picture was taken after boats ahead of me left and most of the boats are behind me.) I found a place to anchor and had concerns as I was close to another boat and if my anchor dragged much, there was the possibility of swinging into them. That is a definite no-no in the boating world. Sort of like driving your car into the neighbors home.

The weather had been calling for building winds of 20-25 knots and gusting to 40. I have anchored in conditions like this before, but never with this boat. I have felt confident most of the time over the years anchoring, except due to a couple of times in the past. The first was anchoring on a lake in Colorado using a danforth type anchor. It is shown in the first picture. The idea is that that when the anchor is set down, the shaft flukes with lay flat on the bottom and then as you drag the anchor, the flukes will dig into the bottom and bury the anchor. An advantage of this anchor is that it can land on either side and work. With this in mind, if the wind shifts, the anchor will either drag around and re-align itself with the boat or if can be pulled out, flip on its other side and dig in. The issue that happened on this one occurrence was that a root fouled in the flukes and the anchor could not dig in as the flukes could not settle and dig in.

The other time was when Sara and I were on our adventure in the Florida Keys. Again at the time I was using the danforth anchor you see above along with a second one. We were anchored on the south side of Boot Key near Marathon. We were exposed to any weather from the east and low and about a storm came in with winds from the east. We slipped boat anchors. I was able to retrieve one of them onto the boat, but the second one wrapped around the keel and fouled the motor. With the wind and having no motor, I did not work through all my options very quickly, but I knew that I had a boat that was easily beachable as the keel fully retracted into the boat. The boat was sailing at 2.5 knots under bare poles. I decided to head for the beach to straighten everything out. About 100 yards from the beach we hit a sandbar and that worked out just as good. I was able to get off of the boat, take care of the anchor and settle down for the night. This all happened as the sun was setting, of course.

Now I have had only those two incidents, but I am sure that there will be number three, four and so on as long as I sail. I have done a few things since the last incident. I bought a new anchor call a plow. Pictured here is one on my boat as a back-up. The primary anchor also is a plow. I also carry two danforth anchors with me. The reason the anchors slipped in FL was two reasons. One was that the bottom was covered in sea grass and that is very tough to anchor in as the grass makes it difficult for the flukes to dig into the bottom. The other was, as a habit of mine, to set the anchor under sail. This did not give enough pressure to the anchor to dig in also. Since then, I have never just dropped the anchor and allow the wind to provide the pressure to set the anchor. I always will use the motor.

Now we come to the present again. I knew about the weather coming in and the bottom of most of the Chesapeake is mud. This is easy to set and anchor in, but also easy to slip an anchor. I have felt confident with the plow anchor on my boat and its holding power. The rode (line used to hold anchor to the boat) is all chain and works well. When I was talking with some catamaran owners Saturday evening, the one man just put down the danforth and plow. I never asked him what he used and should have. I do know that anchors are like politics and religion, everyone has their opinion. Also after I was anchored, the local harbor master stopped by to reinforced the information about the weather and that I should have an anchor watch on for the weather. An anchor watch is someone or different people that rotate through the night to make sure that the anchor is holding properly. The big problem is that there is only one on the boat. It had been one of my concerns, and still is, is that I can easily sleep through a storm while anchored on a boat. As a compromise, I set my watch to alarm every two hours to check how the boat was holding. This worked out very well and did not cause a problem with sleep.

Well we made it through the worst of the weather and it is time to get the bike out and head to shore for a ride and stretch out awhile.

By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I have enabled the comments button located at the bottom of every entry now. You can send me hellos, comments or questions. You will give me something to write about to help you better understand how my life and adventures are going.

09/24/2008 Solomons Island back to Annapolis

09/19/2008 I spent the weekend at Solomons Island, located on the Pautuxent River. It is located about half way down the bay. There is a large boating community here and a popular tourist area. Being after Labor Day, it is pretty laid back. I had a good anchorage close to road in town and did many of my normal chores like laundry, food shopping and making my required stop at West Marine to see if there are any items on sale I will need for my push southward.

I was able to spend the weekend also with my good friends from my days at Motorola, Bill and Deb McDaniel. On Friday we had a late start on motored out after the Tall Ship Kalmar Nyckel, from Delaware. Saturday Bill came out we had a good sail out of the Pax River and towards the Eastern Shore. I don’t believe had sailed since I had my first boat in Colorado.

When we made it back to the anchorage and I had a couple of beers, I was able to do something on the boat I haven’t been able to do until that day. I was able to dive off of the boat. The bay has been full of jelly fish everywhere I have traveled since I have been here or I have been in real shallow water. On Friday the area was full of jelly fish again, but when we returned on Saturday, there none to be seen, and that is all that mattered to me. Now she is a real cruiser.

Sunday morning I woke to no power on the boat. Not a good way to wake in the morning. After some troubleshooting, I learned that there was one of my three batteries was discharged to 8 volts. This appeared to bring down the whole system. Bill and I took the battery to a local auto parts store and had it tested. It all tested out well. We reinstalled the battery, cleaned all of the terminal connections and kept an eye on the batteries. I am not sure what the problem is, except for a bad connection.

09/22/2008 I have been watching the weather and looking for a great weather window to head back north to Annapolis. I have friends flying in for four days starting on Saturday and needed to be there to pick them up. The wind has been consistent over the last week with winds from the northeast. On Friday NOAA indicated there would be an east wind that would be perfect for a nice broad reach up the bay and probably all the way to Annapolis non-stop. By Saturday the east wind changed to Sunday night only and then the wind would be back to a northeast wind. I decided to push on anyways, sail into the wind with tacking back and forth across the bay and do the trip in two to three days. As I was heading into the bay I saw a strange tower on the water. It appeared to be a tower not a boat or ship. After a quick check with the binoculars I saw that it was a large submarine traveling south with escort. I haven’t been on the water near a sub since sailing out in San Diego.

There are not many anchorages heading out of Solomons going north. I found an area to spend the night on the eastern shore up the Little Choptank River. There appeared to be a creek I could anchor on that would provide some protection and I did not need to travel to far from the main bay. I made this in about six and a half hours. The area I anchored in was off of a flat point. It provided protection from any wave action, but little from the building winds all night. There was a good whistle through the rigging. I also learned my water heater was not working. Always something.

09/23/2008 After a night of listening to the wind through the rigging and the small boat warnings on NOAA I needed to make a decision on whether to spend another day to wait for a beeter weather window or not. After listening to the weather reports and forecasts, I decided to push on. They were calling for 15-20 knots with gusting to 25. The reason I decided to push on was because it was only going to get worse with winds building into the thirties as the week went on and also rain coming in as early as Wednesday evening. There is a chance that if I didn’t push on I could be stuck in any anchorage I am in until Saturday or Sunday.

It is interesting that the only news I really care about is the weather. Starting last week all I hear on regular radio news is about the financial issues. Not saying that isn’t important, but it is already done and I will need to rely on our financial experts and government to do whatever they plan to do, but the weather is what is important. This is weather I had not sailed my boat in up this point and it was not taken lightly. I was talking with a catamaran owner in Solomons that had a Dolphin 4600. He was telling me about him and his wife being hit with a microburst of wind while sailing on the open ocean that was between 80-100 knots of speed. I need to know what NoRush can handle and I need to feel comfortable with her in any condition when I start leaving the US.

I sailed off of the anchor with a second reef put in the main sail. I have three reef points in the main sail and these are used to reduce the amount of sail area that is exposed to the wind. I also reefed in the jib. I was still sailing between 6-8 knots of boat speed. With any early start, and if the winds held, I decided I could make it all the way to Annapolis today. I have am trying to keep my sailing to daylight hours. When I started out in the morning, we had 2 foot seas and 15+ knots of wind. NoRush handled very well and I started to feel more comfortable with the sailing conditions. I do not always wear a PFD (life jacket), but under conditions I feel are warranted. This was one of those times. Even when I needed to go to the front deck to remove the spinnaker I keep in a bag up there, I strapped in using my harness. This was a first. I also noted that most boats were sailing south with the wind or motoring north into the wind. I was happy with the way NoRush sailed to the wind.

As the day went on, I either felt more comfortable in the conditions or they decreased, I took the reefing out of the jib and sailed on full jib with the reefed main. She did very well. We covered the 45 miles in about 9 hours and made it safely into Weems Creek. This is an anchorage Greg and I found on our first trip to Annapolis. It is well protected, there is a place to land the dinghy and I have good access via my bike to shopping, laundry, wifi and downtown Annapolis.

09/15/2008 Herring Bay to Solomons Island

09/13/2008 The boat is floating again. One of the activities I tackled while the boat was laid up for the week was studying for my HAM license exam. I felt confident in taking my first level exam which is for the Technician class. There is a second level known as General class. I did some studying for that also. I found a club located in Davidsonville, a town west of Edgewater and about 15 miles from where I was on the boat. Saturday I got on the bike again and set off. I left early enough to make a stop in Edgewater to pick up some meds that weren’t ready the last time I was in town.

I made it to the club in plenty of time and spent some time talking with the club members. I see how people enjoy this hobby. There are many technical aspects of amateur radio and the world-wide community you can connect with. There were about 12 people there to take different exams. They were ages 14 to 70.

I did pass my Technician test and as expected, I was not fully ready for the General license. With the Technician license I am able to start using HAM radio, but in the higher frequency bands of VHF and UHF. For the cruising off-shore boating community, you need the General license so that you are able to use the HF frequency band. The HF signals carry further (as far as around the world) compared to the HHF and UHF band that travel on about 50-60 miles. My HAM license call sign is KDOFEA.

If you are familiar at all with marine communications, there are two specific radios for boating. The first is the most common on coastal waters and lakes, the VHF radio. This radio is tuned to specific radio frequencies and are designated to only be used on the water. The second radio is the Marine SSB. It also has specific radio frequencies that can be transmitted on. It is really a specific HAM type radio that is used on a limit frequency base.

One of the areas of debate on which way to go on this trip is whether to use a Marine radio or HAM radio. The pros of using the Marine radio is there is no testing for a license. All you need to do is send in your $100 for a license, buy and set up your radio system and off you go. You will also be able to communicate with other cruisers using the Marine SSB. The down sides are the radios can be larger, less options for manufacturers, limited to marine transmissions, more expensive to buy and to use email services.

The pros of Ham radio are there are smaller radios (good for a boat my size), lower cost of radios and services. There are actually free email services on the HAM bands. Also you can talk with a world-wide community. If I would need to contact a family member or other, I have a good shot at contacting a HAM operator and having them pass on a message for me. The down side is that I needed to pass a couple of tests to qualify for my license and they do not communicate on the marine frequency bands. I am eliminating the license issue with studying and taking the tests.

After talking with a HAM operating cruiser, he indicated that there are radios that can be used on both the HAM bands and Marine bands. I will look into this also. The one thing about these radios is that you can listen in on all the frequencies, it is only the transmitting that is specific. So with that in mind, I can listen to all of the nets, Marine, Ham, Shortwave, etc., but only transmit on the radio I finally decide to go with. Decisions, Decisions.

After the testing, I needed to finish out the bike trip. The weather has heated up here in the last week. The humidity and temperature are both up. It was a hot ride back to the boat. I still don’t miss having a vehicle.

9/14 After attending church service at the local chapel in the marina, I went sailing again. I am working my way south for the next week or so. I sailed across the bay to Cambridge. I was a great sail (as always). As I was tacking down the bay, I came upon a large contingency of racers heading north. There could have been more than 100 boats flying their spinnakers. They were hugging the eastern coast, so I kept tacking towards the middle of the bay to not interfere in the racing and also avoid all of the fishing boats. It is becoming high season for a lot of the local sport fishing and the bay is full of sport boats.

No, Pisa has not flooded over. This is the Sharps Island Light off of the Choptank River on the eastern shore. More about this light can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharps_Island_Light. Oh the best laid plans of mice and men, and nature will always win.

I was able to sail up the Choptank River all the way to the entrance of Cambridge Creek. I motored up the creek into town and anchored right off of Snapper’s Waterfront Café as indicated in the cruising guide. I went ashore and was able to catch the late football game. There is a lot of boating history in this area as in most of the Chesapeake. After I anchored, a skipjack boat came in a tied up on the wall close to me. I talked with the owner. This is a 1948 boat that he has restored. These boats were used for dredging oysters. He indicated that these boats are the only sailing fleet still used for fishing in the US. There are a couple of the boats that are used for business, but most left are hobbyist and they will be racing in a couple of weeks here in Cambridge. My understanding that sailboat racing was really started but fishing boats that would challenge each other as recreation in the older days.

9/15 Today I jumped on the bike and made another road trip. I wasn’t expecting it to a long ride today, but I need to ask the important questions, like how far is the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge from town. It turned out to be 12 mile ride each way. The down side was it was another warm day, but the good news is that it is flat here. The refuge is also known as the Chesapeake Everglades. They had a nice visitor center there with displays of the birds and local animals. They also have an observation deck and room with another bird display and spotting scopes there to look for and at birds from the comfort of the air conditioned room. I would expect this place to be heaven for bird watchers. I took a bike ride through the car road that is place for viewing animals in that habitat.

On the way back I took a couple of pictures of some of the local history. The first was this home in the town of Church Creek. The wood work around the porch caught my eye. The other is this one room school. It was originally built in 1865 and used continuously until 1966. Talk about growth in an area that can support a one room school for grades 1 thru 7 for over a hundred years. Tomorrow I expect to leave Cambridge and make the short trip over to Oxford for the day.

9/16 Today was one of those great sail days. I left Cambridge around 9:00am with a north wind around 10 knots. The skies were overcast and the air was cool, around 65. It reminded me of my favorite days of sailing in Colorado. Those would be the days that it just wasn’t nice enough to go boating for most people and I would have the whole lake to myself with a good breeze. It took me about two and a half hours to make to Oxford.

Oxford is a quiet little community and that is the way they want it. It has a few noteworthy accomplishments. It was found 325 years ago this weekend. They were the first community in Maryland to be recognized as a seaport. That gave them the ability to collect taxes and imports and they have the oldest running, privately owned ferry. The ferry started in 1683. Service was discontinued during the Revolutionary War and resume and operated since 1836. There are also many old homes in the town. Pictured here is the Robert Morris Inn. The original structure was built in 1710 by Robert Morris, known as “the financier of the Revolution”.

9/17 I am sure it sounds like a broken record, but again I had a great sail. I had a northeast wind blowing around 5 knots when I left Oxford. I set off for Solomons Island on the western shore. The air lightened up for a while, but I am practicing “no rush”. When I came out of the Tred Avon River I had a beam reach and decided to break out the spinnaker again. I might not be racing this boat, but as they say “a sailor is always racing when there are two boats on the water”. I started to chase down the boat ahead of me. I was slowly catching him and then passed underneath of him with no problem. Then there was the next boat and the next boat after that. When I made it out the Chesapeake, the wind started to build slowly. I was able to catch a couple of nice wind shifts and only required five jibes to cover over thirty miles of sailing.

I am still learning how to sail this spinnaker with the boat and have my concerns about bringing it down by myself, along with a little assistance from the auto-pilot to steer the boat while I am on the front deck gathering in all that sail cloth. At one point I look at the speedo and it indicated I was sailing close to ten knots. I looked behind me and saw that the wind had definitely built and so were the seas. The wind was gusting to 20 knots and the seas had built to 2-3 feet. Not a real problem for this boat, but I needed to get the spinnaker down. I was able to blanket the spinnaker, take all of the pressure out of it and down it came with no problems. I plan on moving the halyard rope clutch to the mast for this purpose. The primary issue I have run into in the past is the halyard getting knotted up or jamming somehow in the clutch and then I need to run back to the cockpit and have all kinds of cloth blowing about with no control. This time though, no problem.

I made it into an anchorage in Solomons Island and I am enjoying the relative peace and quiet. It amazes me how it appears most all tourist environments in the area are pretty much shut down after Labor Day.

This weekend there will be three tall ships here on the island. One of them I saw in Cambridge, and met some of the crew, the Maryland Dove. I saw them today sailing on the Pautuxent River. Also tied up a couple yards from me is the Kalmar Nychel from Delaware.

One of my best friends from my days at Motorola will be joining me. I will blame him for giving me some of my first sailing lessons when I bought my first boat, a Merit 22, named Vivace. He sailed with me for a couple of years and we both crewed on the first boat I raced on for a year.

09/12/2008 Boat repairs

09/12/2008 The good news to report is No Rush is back in her element this afternoon. She is back in the water after 4 days of repair. The following photos are day 1, day 2 and day 4. Day 1 they cut out all of the cracked fiberglass, clamped the sides together and glassed the sides together. After the glass set up, they injected compound into the base of the keel to match the manufactured process. Day 2 was building out the sides to create a good surface and match the other keel. Day 3 they applied the bottom paint to the leading edge of the keel and on day 4 they repaired the trailing edge. The keel had split along the bottom of the keel about half way back and on the lower trailing edge. I am not sure how this damage happened, but all is well now.

I am looking forward to getting out and cruising again.

09/06/2008 Preparing for Hanna

09/04/2008 The previous evening I was able to get on-line and submit a work order with the marina to pull my boat and have the yard look at it for repairs. I would like to get it pulled as to the uncertainty about Tropical Storm Hanna that isn’t sure what she wants to do. I have been listening to NOAA weather for the last week around this storm and it keeps changing. I headed to Weems Creek as it appeared to be a good hurricane hole to hang out in. I spent the morning doing laundry and getting ice for my freezer. It took 5 round trips on my bike to do the laundry this morning, two trips to take the clothes and three trips to bring them back.

I am also trying out a theory of mine. The refrig/freezer is the largest user of my battery power. I do not keep much food in there at this time, so I have decided to fill it with bags of ice. The theory is that the ice will stay colder longer than air does and the refrig/freezer will not need to work as much with most of the volume filled. We see how it works.

I also needed to have my blood tested due to the use of blood thinners. I found a clinic in town that seems to be set around cruisers and it is a walk in. I called and was told to just come it at anytime. They were able to test my blood there in the office and provide the results immediately. I had the results faxed to my regular doctor and all is well. I am enjoying this life style more and more as there is adventure in just the normal activities of life. I was thinking about how my day is filled and it might not be the most productive in getting as much down with having the conveniences that I would have at home, but it is still a day and I am enjoying the tasks more due to the adventure in finding different ways of doing them.

When I arrived back at the boat, I call the yard to determine if they would be able to pull my boat the next day on Friday. After awhile of checking with the lift operators, they said if I could get the boat down to the marina, they would pull it.

I left the creek at 3:30. It is a 24 mile trip as the crow flies, but as it appears most of the time so far, I had to claw my way to the windward mark in racing terms, or sail in a direction directly into the wind. It was beautiful air, 12-15 knots, and clear skies. I started out sailing until a little after sunset and thought I would make better time if I motored directly to the marina. The winds and seas had picked up and I am not sure if motoring was any faster than sailing and tacking my way down the bay. I was motoring a little over 4 knots.

I decided I am getting use to this night sailing more and more. I put a route into my chart plotter, fired up the radar and followed the instruments into the marina. This marina is not an easy place to get into as you need to sail to the south end of Herrington Bay, make a hook around a channel mark and then sail north again to get into the marina. The other issue is the water is shallow in the main channel and “stop you in your tracks” shallow just outside the channel. I finally made it her at 10:00pm and tied her up for the night. I was not sure if I made the right decision leaving like I did, but I was here.

9/5/2008 I rose early to clean the boat from all of the salt she has drank over the last week and a half before they pulled her. I was not sure of where I was in the line to have her pulled. Since the storm was up and down, there were not many boats to be pulled. I was pulled around 10:00am, had the bottom power sprayed and Jim from Osprey took a look at her. Here are pictures of the damage. It does look ugly, but it is due to the design of the keel. It appears that Seawind designed a hollow core keel. I will look into it to determine why, but it is what it is. The is about six inches of filler in the bottom of the keel, open space for another r twelve inched and then more filler around the metal blade that is cemented into the hull. It is almost like a break away keel. Not a bad idea if you have easy access to replacements. I better just keep the boat off of the shore.

Jim reviewed the damage, got me an estimate and we scheduled the repairs. The great news is that Jim believes there is only 2-3 days worth of work and they can start as early as Monday if the weather cooperates. I could be back in the water by next weekend.

I also had my outboard for the dinghy looked at by a local marine shop. I have had many issues with it running since I started to use it. It is a 1985 6 hp Evinrude and it was a free motor. I wasn’t too concerned about putting some money into it. The first this was that the starter broke. I was able to get a replacement and Greg and I installed it. Then there was a leak in the cracked fuel line in the motor. Replaced. Then we found arcing from the spark plug wires. Repaired. The motor would then run good in low and medium rpm’s, but would die after running for about 25 seconds in high rpm’s when the dinghy was on plane. I talked with a repair shop and they thought maybe the thermostat. Greg and I pulled it, cleaned it, made a new gasket and reinstalled it. Still not working. I was talking with some guys from the yacht club on Staten Island and they suggested the points and maybe condenser. This would require pulling the fly wheel. I did not have the tools for that and decided that it was time to have a shop look at the engine. After a quick review they determined the cam bearings are shot and due to the age and cost to repair, it is time for a new engine. I will keep this one running as long as possible and keep my eye out for a replacement. I like the two-stroke because it is lighter, but will probably end up switching to a four stroke and more horse power. We will see what happens.

9/6/2008 Sitting through Hanna. I am in the midst of my first tropical storm. These storms are a lot like blizzards in Colorado. They may happen, they may not, they may create havoc, they may not. It did finally start raining this morning and most of the day. I am fairly protected from the wind as I am between three large buildings and have sailboats on both sides of me. I have been hanging out, napping, cleaning up emails, balancing the checkbook, watching movies and such. This storm should blow over this evening and be beautiful on Sunday. I am throwing in a couple of pictures of what the clouds looked like as Hanna approached Saturday. I can see how someone can get lulled into not worrying about the up-coming weather.

While the boat is in the yard, I have a list projects that I can work on so I don’t expect to be too bored.

9/7/2008 The storm turned out, at least for me and I believe the local area, a non-incident. There was a brief power outage and a medium rain on and off, but no big winds. I am not sure what it was like on the bay, but in the protection of the harbor and local buildings it was just a lazy rain day. After one day, I was ready to get out. I went to the local chapel next to the marina for church service this morning. It is an Episcopal Denomination and small chapel. There were probably about 50 people in attendance. It sort of reminded me of a “little house on the prairie” church. The congregation was inviting and the service was very good.

I then decided to jump on the bike and head off towards Edgewater and possibly Annapolis. It was a 12-15 mile ride into Edgewater and I made it there in about one hour. The primary reason, other than just going out for a ride, was I needed to get my prescriptions filled at the local Walgreen’s. I made it in such good time I went towards south Annapolis looking for the Fed-Ex Kinko’s to get some business cards made. After making it to Fedex, I learned that I can use Word to create my card and then have Fedex print them. Another task for on the boat this week. I then picked up my prescriptions just to find out that one of the prescriptions is out of date and I need to call my doctor to have it refilled. Sounds like another bike trip this week. No problem, not much going on anyways.

I haven’t really spent a lot of time exercising in a long time. After my trip to NYC, I missed getting out and moving the muscles. I was looking forward to taking a ride and really enjoyed it. For the first time, in a long time, I feel a little addicted to physical exercise.

I then stopped in the local Kmart, picking up a few small items and then stopped in the local grocery store in Deale to pick up some cereal and something for dinner. I want, and need, to be careful of what I cook as I don’t have a true galley to clean-up in being on the hard. I am looking forward to getting back in the water as soon as possible. It appears Ike will be heading more west and Josephine has blown out.

I expect to hang out in the Chesapeake until the boat show in Annapolis now and cruise the area. I will decide where to go when we get a better idea on launch time.

09/04/2008 Cape May to Annapolis

09/02/2008 I left Tuesday morning after a most brief stay in Cape May. I stayed long enough to take a nap and relax for the evening. I was up the next morning after 42 hours of sailing at 4:45am to catch the flood tide into the Delaware Bay. I had to make a decision on when to leave and the factors I needed to deal with concerning the weather were what time the tides run on both the Delaware Bay and the C&D Canal, what direction the winds are blowing from and the pending weather for this area from the on-coming hurricanes. Tuesday the weather service was calling for a northwest wind, which will be on my nose or wait until Wednesday and have a southwest wind that would blow me up the bay. They are also calling for heavy winds and plenty of rain on Friday and Saturday.

I decided to go with the headwinds and motor for the day. The bay was plenty choppy with the incoming tide and counter wind. I motor-sailed for the first three hours or so and then the wind was right on the bow so I dropped the main sail and just powered. Today was also a little bit more busy on the water way than when we sailed down it a couple of weeks ago. The boat was bounced around, but she did well.

One of the ships I encountered on my trip up the bay was this Navy ship. When I first saw it coming down the bay, my first thought was it was interesting that it did not have any escort of patrol boats. When I have sailed in San Diego, anytime a ship was moving, there were always a couple of small boats providing security around the ship. When the ship was closer, I noticed where she was getting her security from. Each of the large guns on deck were manned with a watch out. I am sure these guns can do as much damage as needed to anyone approaching the ship that would cause it harm.

With the tide and motoring I made the length of the bay to the canal in 7.5 hours then slowly motored through the C&D Canal. It was a pleasant trip as I had a slack and then out-going (in my direction again) tide through the canal. When I came out of the canal, the wind had clocked around to the southwest on the Chesapeake. This was not suppose to happen until Wednesday. I now had to motor into the chop from the southwest wind and current flowing towards the southwest. Another thing that I noticed as soon as I came into the Chesapeake, was the Ospreys. They are everywhere on the Bay and are a pleasure to watch and look at. I decided to anchor in the same little creek that Greg and I stayed in on our way northward, John Cabin’s Creek. I was a great decision. As I pulled into the creek, it provided good shelter from the wind and all was peaceful. I dropped the anchor and just relaxed after the all the wave pounding today.

The relaxing today was working on a project that had been a nuisance with the fuel supply. I have not been able to pump fuel straight into the tanks without undoing the vent lines. With some advice I was given, I went about taking the vent lines apart and made sure all was clear. This included the need to take the dinghy and work my way underside of the deck of the boat between the hulls to remove the vent caps and flush the out. After taking these all apart, cleaning all the parts and reassembling, I was able to at least put fuel into the tanks using the siphon hose and cans of gas I carry. This is better than before. The real test with be when I pull up to the next fuel dock and try to pump straight from the pumps into the tank.

After that task was completed I cooked up some dinner and enjoyed the peace and quiet. Later that night the stars were really crisp. There was only a small crescent of the moon and it was gone early. I started playing with my star guides again trying to find different constellations. I expect to have plenty of time to find and be able to point out the different constellations during this trip. I have a lazy morning for the next planned as the favor tide does not set in until around 11:00am. It will be good to hopefully get some rest in after the last few days of travel. I plan on making back to Annapolis Wednesday.

9/3 Wednesday was another mostly motor kind of day. I covered the last 48 miles into Annapolis on a glass like Chesapeake Bay. I did try sailing for awhile and flew the spinnaker again, but the wind was dying out and taking me away from the expected course. We have Hanna coming this way and I do have apprehension around it. It will be my first tropical storm that I possibly sitting in the middle of. I made it into Annapolis and filled up on fuel and water. (The vent line worked better, but not as good as I would expect. I will need to work on it some more.) From there I went back up to Weems Creek. Greg and I spent a weekend here and it appears to be a good hurricane hole. The Naval Academy keeps their larger racing boats here during hurricanes. I am working on getting my boat in for the repairs on the keel.

I talked with the yard and the good news is they expect to be able to review the damage and probably start work on the boat next week. With that in mind, I expect to sit out the weekend and weather here in Annapolis. Next week should be a busy week working on the boat in the yard, as I have a new list of projects to work on after this first shake-down.

08/31/2008 Staten Island to Cape May

08/31/2008 I left this morning with the tide at 9:00am. I am on my first real journey alone. I plan on heading down the coast. I am not sure where I will end up stopping, but I have decided to sail through the night. I am currently about 6 miles off-shore and the weather has been calm and beautiful. I have been on sail since Sandy Hook at the entrance of the harbor and have tried different sail configurations including wing-on-wing with the jib and main, wing-on-wing with the main and spinnaker, reaching with the spinnaker, the main only and now I have a good west wind that I am on main and jib close-hauled.

Today I have had many visitors. The first that wore out their welcome real fast was a large batch of black house flies. I would think there were between 100 to 200 of them on the boat. I don’t know where they came from but it was nerve racking. I finally remembered I have a can of bug spray on the boat. That eliminated most of that problem, except for the clean up I did later in the evening. The second is a beautiful bird that has adopted me. It is a yellow and orange bird that would hop around the boat to stay away from me. He did help in eating some of the flies. It seems he liked the flies alive. It also appears though that he is hunkering down for night as he has taken the inside corner of the salon to sleep. I assume, and hope, he will fly away when I get closer to land.

I had a good dinner tonight and a wonderful sunset. After the sunset, there was a brilliant orange sky. I feel good at this time about trying the night sail down the coast. The weather is suppose to stay calm and I would not have been able to get into any reasonable inlets during the day, unless I ran the motor.

It does appear though that I will need to run the generator tonight. With the instruments running all day, the voltage is a little low and the charge won’t hurt. For all of my friends at CSYC, tonight was sort of like a Fagewi race with a few major differences. 1) There was no moon vs. a full moon, 2) I was sailing alone and 3) I was able to sail in one direction for the whole sail. As the sun set, the winds picked up. I was reaching along at 8-9 knots for a period of time. When it was consistently hitting above 8.5 knots, I reefed in the jib. It made for a more comfortable ride, but the speeds did not diminish much.

For you others reading that are not familiar with the Fagewi race, it is a race that our local club in Colorado holds once a summer. It is scheduled a weekend that is will be closest to a full moon. The race is run between sunset Saturday evening until sunrise Sunday morning. We usually do laps around three race marks and with the help of a handicapping system come up with a winner. It is a fun race and I usually do my best not to have anything scheduled for Sunday after racing all night.

I cat napped all night. I set a timer to go off every 20 minutes and I would check the radar and do a 360 degree visual check for any possible obstacles. I did get hailed by a research vessel to stand-off a little more than my current path was set for. The stars were beautiful and the bird did stay until later this morning. He did laps around the boat looking for more food. It was interesting watching him as his only concerned appeared to be was finding food. It brought me back to a thought I have had of how grateful I am able to do something like this. There are many people today that their primary concern is finding food and shelter for themselves and their families.