Forest Landing Cove, Cuckold Creek

We actually left the dock this morning at 0900, just as planned.   LNVT Dave was there to see us off (or kick us out), and we hopefully will be seeing the Howell’s before too long. The weather forecast was accurate for today as we saw less then 10 knots of wind from the North East making the six hour ride here quite pleasant.  After stopping at the Solomons Yachting Center for 21 gallons of fuel at $2.14/gallon and emptying our holding tank we proceeded up the Patuxent River and eventually up to Forest Landing Cove, home of Bill and Judy and their Pilgrim Dreamboat Annie.  We really didn’t need fuel but couldn’t just stop for a pump out.

Another great day on the Chesapeake (if you simply wait long enough).

Since the tide was still low when we arrived we tied up at a neighbors dock until we had enough water to move to Bill and Judy’s pier.

At the dock with Dreamboat Annie. We remarked that the only time we see pictures of multiple Pilgrims, Liberty is in the picture.

The mate and her new friend. You know what time of year it is.

We did the required boat tours, comparing and contrasting details between the boats and then headed off for dinner.  The first two restaurants we went to were closed (must be a Halloween thing as it is Saturday evening), ending up at Cafe des Artistes.  The food was excellent and the prices quite reasonable.

It appears we will be staying here another day as small craft advisories are forecast for late this evening into tomorrow, so we are planning on a late breakfast aboard Liberty in the morning (daylight savings time comes to an end tonight so we gain an hours sleep).

Dave

We had to leave Bicki and Dave Howell’s  this morning (we couldn’t use the weather as a excuse any longer!!!) We are two very lucky people to have met these folks!!!  Thank-you both very much for your wonderful humor, your friendship and of course your dock!!!!!  We love you guys!

We made our way to Judy and Bill Sherman’s this afternoon.  Judy and Bill are fellow “pilgrimers”.  We are looking forward to a fun day tomorrow with them, starting with breakfast on Liberty.  Life certainly cannot get any better!!!!!!

Bobbi

Church Creek, Day 9, Last Day?

The weather guys got it right again today.  15 to 20 knots from the North West all day.  The forecast for tomorrow is North East, 5 to 10 knots.  This would be perfect for us to cross the bay to Solomons to visit our Pilgrim friends Bill and Judy and their Pilgrim Dreamboat Annie.  We thought we would for sure miss them on our trip south this year as they were working out of town this week and we thought we would be passing their location last Monday.  Obviously we didn’t pass them early this week so the visit might work out after all.

We finished up the laundry this morning and the skipper spliced together some Raymarine cables that allowed us to properly mount our data/backbone cables so they weren’t dangling out in space (really dangling loose in the navigation electrical cabinet).   After our “leftover” lunch (soup and hot dogs) we defrosted the refrigerator and then thought we would do the simple task of replacing the zinc anode on the engine’s heat exchanger.

This is an anode. In simple terms the zinc wastes away keeping salt water from eating the inside of the heat exchanger.

When we got the engine we pulled the new zinc and it appeared to be a standard 1/4″ NPT anode.  Since we had a large box of these left over from our old engine we thought we were all set.  Our old ones were too long, but a hack saw took care of that issue.

Changing the anode today turned into a project.  How, you might ask?  Well it is a boat part.  We took the old one out (wasted to less than 50% after one month in salt water), and tried to thread in the new one.  It only went in about two threads before getting tight.  Something just isn’t right here.  We measured the old and new one and found the new one being .010 larger in diameter.  The number of threads lined up but running the engine showed lots of leakage around the threads.  You need metal to metal to metal contact so using any Teflon tape would isolate the metals rendering the anode useless.

We called Beta Marine and found that the thread was actually a British Standard Pipe Thread (BSPT) and not National Pipe Thread (NPT).  Inquiring minds want to know the difference.  The angle between treads on BSPT is 55 degrees, NPT is 60 degrees.  Not much difference, but enough to cause the threads not to seal if mis-matched.

Generally you can un-tread the zinc pencil part from the brass holder and thread in a new zinc.  Beta Marine sells such a part.  However, the one that comes with the engine is a one piece unit, so you can not replace just the zinc part.  Thank you very much.  We ended up putting the original one back in the engine and will order three of the replaceable ones from Beta Marine so we always have a replacement ready to go.

While we were discussing zincs on the phone we mentioned how we switched the alternator output to our house bank from the start bank.  Beta Marine said this was OK but it is important to feed the control panels with that same voltage.  Simply remove the brown/white wire from the + post on the engine and jumper it to the alternator output.  That seemed simple enough until we found two brown/white wires, where the circuit diagram only shows one, going to a singular 40 amp fuse.   Another phone call and we find we have two wires (and fuses) because we have two engine control panels.  We made up some jumpers, re-routed the wires and ran the engine.  Everything is working like it should and now we see house bank voltage on the instrument panel rather than start bank voltage.  There went the entire afternoon, boat projects eat time like it is going out of style.  It is a good thing it is fun.

Tonight’s sunset.

We having been lunch and dinner with LNVT Dave every day since Bicki has been gone (and with Bicki while she was here) and today was no exception.  Dinner was on Liberty and consisted of left over spaghetti, clams, salmon, Caesar salad bread and wine.  Before dinner we sampled cheese, pepperoni, and crackers.  Desert was strawberry shortcake.  This cruising thing is really hard on the waist line.

Tomorrow we cast off the dock lines (actually we take them aboard) and head for Solomons, 34 nm away.  Hopefully.

Dave

Church Creek, Day 8

Again, the forecast was correct.  Winds on the Chesapeake were in the 20 knot range for most of the day.  Even here on the very protected Church Creek we were seeing winds of 16 knots.

One might wonder what a cruiser does when the weather is not the greatest.  You basically have two choices.  The first is to wait the weather out.  Calmer conditions will eventually arrive.  The second is to go out and get beat up.  You generally arrive at your destination but don’t really have a great time in getting there.  That is why the most dangerous thing on a boat is a schedule.  Trying to keep to schedule can get you in trouble as boating in lousy conditions will wear you out.  When you are tired you don’t make the greatest decisions.  Poor decisions usually have expensive consequences be it emotional or monetary.  Needless to say, we are well rested at this point and are just trying to enjoy the moment with out stressing out over the fact that weather has us pinned down.   We are quite thankful we are at such a great place and our “landlord” is so accommodating.

As always, we seem to find some boat related project to keep us busy.  This morning it was calibrating the engine tachometer.  It was reading almost 100 RPM low.  Beta Marine had sent me a momentary button wired to a special connector that allows one to re-program the pulse setting on the tach.  The pulse setting governs how the alternator rotation translates to engine RPM’s.  Now the tach reads within 10 RPM of the actual engine speed.

Rather than eating lunch on Liberty today, LNVT Dave commandeered a neighbors vehicle (Bicki has their car) which allowed us to head into Easton to a Chinese restaurant for a late lunch.  While the mate got her hair trimmed and did some grocery shopping, the Dave’s wandered through an auto parts place and West Marine for a few odd items.  A walking tour of Easton followed until dusk at which time we headed back to Church Creek.

Tomorrow the forecast is for more of the same.  North West, gusts to 25.  Saturday looks promising at this point as the forecast is North West at 5 knots, perfect trawler weather if the forecast holds true.

Dave

Church Creek, Day 7

Still Waiting on Weather.

The weather guy got the forecast for today correct.  They predicted rain and winds south at 25 and that is what it is on the Chesapeake, a perfect day to be tied up at the dock.  The good news is that it is warm, with temperatures near 70.

The skipper spent the entire day working on Liberty’s web page update, detailing “what we did on our summer vacation” (on the boat that is).  Dear reader, if you have nothing better to do you can wade through this document located here (I don’t know if this will appear as an active hyperlink when posted or if you have to copy and paste it into your browser address bar): http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/d/r/drf6/Liberty_Project_1/Engine_Replacement.htm

The mate was asking when we might be shoving off so we gave the mate the option of deciding on going or staying given tomorrows forecast:

THU W WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS TO 25 KT. WAVES 3 FT.

I believe she will decide to stay and enjoy the moment, so to speak.

At high tide today the winds were pushing the water up a little higher, with some minor flooding at our location.

Lunch was aboard Liberty, where we had homemade vegetable soup.  Dinner was at LNVT Daves house this evening, the menu being ribs and baked potato where we solved the rest of the world’s problems.

Dave

Well, day 7 at Church Creek was a good day!  I’ve been trying to get out and walk every day.  Today it was a walk in the warm rain!!!

We have been having a great time with LNVT Dave.  At times he has us laughing so hard we are crying!!!!  It’s been great spending time with Dave, but we still miss our Bicky (LNVT Dave’s wife).  She is off having fun with horses!!!!!

It looks like the weather is going to enable us to spend a few more days with LVNT Dave!!!! Does life get any better!!!!!

Bobbi

 

 

 

 

Church Creek, Day 6

Waiting for Weather

We had thought that we would have been heading down the bay by now but that obviously isn’t the case.  Of course we we couldn’t be in a better place to be “stuck” than here, the only thing missing at the moment is Dave’s wife Bicki and her humor.

It was a laid back type of day, with rain and wind being forecast.  It didn’t really rain as much as weather radar indicated it might.  The only quasi-productive thing we did today was verifying that the thermocouple used to measure temperature on our alternator was kaput.  LNVT Dave has one on his boat that he offered us.  Their boat is currently on the hard in Florida but we can wait until we meet up again on the west coast of Florida to get it as it really isn’t necessary for proper operation.

We also decided that it was high time that we updated Liberty’s web pages detailing our latest projects, since we have entire summers worth of activities to document.  That requires accessing information on PSU’s servers, and having not logged on in a few months always turns out to be re-learning project.  Of course we couldn’t find our notes on the procedures making this to be a more interesting exercise than it needed to be.  I can see that doing that update will keep us busy for quite some time before it is finished, but it is something that needs done before the details slip from our memory.  Actually, it required a half dozen e-mails to the system administrators at Behrend to get our account straightened out as there always seems to be log-in/authentication issues with it.  I am not sure what is going to happen when all the people that I know there move on.  Dave who?

Dinner tonight was aboard Liberty, with the Dave’s enjoying a bottle of Trader Joe’s best along with Bobbi’s shrimp and pasta dinner.  We didn’t solve all the worlds problems this evening as we are leaving a few for dinner tomorrow as this boat isn’t moving for at least another day.

Dave

Bobbi “promised” to put in her $0.02 tomorrow.  We will see……

Church Creek, Day 5

We haven’t moved an inch and probably won’t be moving tomorrow either given the forecast.  This gives us more time to work on the boat :).   We began the morning in Dave’s shop, fabricating another stainless bracket for a second fan for the pilot house and making some supports for our Bimini when it is taken down for low bridge work.  We managed to loose one on Oneida Lake when the boat was getting bounced around.   After lunch, where we fed Dave some Smith hot dogs (that we had squirreled away in the freezer for a special occasion) we went down into the engine room to neaten up our regulator wiring which kept us busy for awhile.

There are only a few wires that need to be properly connected.

With those projects behind us we decided that it was time to install the pressure transducer on the transmission, a project we had been putting off simply because we didn’t want to have to deal with a potential oil leak given all of our other “issues”.  After doing it we wondered why we were avoiding it for so long as it seemed to go with out a hitch.  The thread size is only 6mm (about 1/4″) and it is hollow meaning you don’t want to put a lot of pressure on the fitting when installing it.  Shearing it off would not be good.  Finishing the wiring of the gauge and running the engine we find the pressure to be about 300 psi (normal, as expected) and no oil leaks (yet).

We went for a late afternoon walk, the trees are beginning to change colors so real cool weather can’t be far behind.  We better get a move on.  Like we said, the forecast isn’t looking too good. East winds aren’t exactly great as that puts it right on our beam given our next port of call, and the fact that the wind will be opposing the current coming out of the Potomac River. Patience is a virtue.

Which side of the picture is up?

TUE
E WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS TO 20 KT. WAVES 1 TO 2 FT.

TUE NIGHT
E WINDS 20 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT. WAVES 2 FT...
BUILDING TO 4 FT AFTER MIDNIGHT. RAIN. VSBY 1 TO 3 NM.

WED
SE WINDS 20 TO 25 KT WITH GUSTS TO 30 KT... BECOMING S 15 KT
WITH GUSTS TO 20 KT IN THE AFTERNOON. WAVES 3 FT. RAIN.

WED NIGHT
S WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS TO 25 KT. WAVES 3 FT.
SHOWERS LIKELY.

Dave

Church Creek, Day 4

We had Dave and Bicki aboard for breakfast this morning.  Bicki is leaving for a number of days to hang out with one of her old friends and do some horse related activities.  She will be missed, especially by the mate as she no longer has an accomplice to go “shopping” with.

This morning was the moment of truth on the external regulator installation project.  Dave came down to lend a hand and keep the skipper honest.  After making the final wiring connections and reinstalling fuses (we are really paranoid about making sure no stray live current can cause issues while playing with wires), we fired the engine up and found no voltage being generated by the alternator.  While LNVT Dave read instructions from the manual on what leads to check for voltage, Pilgrim Dave checked the wires for the appropriate voltage.  It was then that the intrepid skipper saw the main power wire to the regulator dangling, unconnected and the connector covered in duct tape to make sure it wouldn’t contact anything and short itself out.  After removing the duct tape and plugging it into the correct location on the regulator we restarted the engine.  Lo and behold, the regulator appeared to be operating normally with no hint of any run away voltage issues.  Evidently the rewiring of the alternator output, directing the output into the house bank weeks ago and rewiring the regulator into this bank did the trick.  Another issue hopefully put to bed.

We also did a roll period test on Liberty and found that period to be three seconds, the “theoretical” time should be four seconds, based on our waterline beam.  This measure is really one of comfort, as the slower the boat rolls, the easier it is on the crew.  On the other hand, a quicker roll time indicates more initial stability.

Our friends Bill and Kathy from Ocean Pines, MD (north east of our location) drove over to visit.  We drove over to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and found that a good portion of the facility was closed and off limits.  We spent a fair amount of time wondering around in the woods (following walking trails).  The refuge was created from land previously logged and farmed in the early 1900’s.

The result of a boiler (pressure vessel) explosion in the 1930. There was a saw mill at this location and men had just taken a break for lunch when the explosion occurred. Only one person was injured.

We found a cute little place in Cambridge for a late lunch before saying goodbye to our old friends (they are the same age as us, but we have known them for a long time).

Liberty at the dock in Church Creek.

The forecast for the coming week is all over the place.  We looked at it this morning at didn’t find it too alarming.  This afternoon it changed for the worse, predicting 20 to 25 knot winds for most of the week.  Now they have downgraded the forecast again to something that we consider more reasonable to travel in.   I guess we will see what happens.

Dave

Church Creek, Day 3

Today started with breakfast at the Howell’s; bacon, pancakes, drunken fruit and scrapple (a mid-Atlantic delicacy) was the menu after which the Dave’s headed off to Salisbury to wander through Harbor Freight and Home Depot.  The skipper managed to purchase $27 worth of items he didn’t know he needed before he walked in.  We did have the obligatory 20% off coupon and received a free $7 (ya, right) LED flashlight.  Actually, the flashlight, while cheap is OK and already had batteries in it.  Since the boat eats flashlights having another cheap one lying around doesn’t hurt.  It can’t compare to the tiny 230 lumen one we bought at the hardware store in Annapolis but the price was right.

After lunch on Liberty, the ladies headed out to visit a few stores while the Dave’s got to work on their respective projects.  The skipper decided it was time to tackle the external regulator for the alternator issue again, the one that so vexed us before leaving Erie.  We have been controlling the alternator with the internal regulator with no issues, but since we spent $400+ on the external programmable regulator which is supposed to be better for our battery bank, we are determined to make it work.  Since two minds are better than one for sorting things out if the over voltage problem resurfaces, and we will be here for a few more days due to weather, it seems like the perfect time to work on this project.  As it took the better part of the afternoon to do the wiring (you need to remove the alternator from the engine to swap out the brush box), the testing and swearing will have to wait until tomorrow.  The mate came back with a Brita water filtration pitcher, another welcome addition as we are never sure how the water might taste when we fill our tanks at different ports.   One of the oddities being here at what most would consider the fairly desolate Eastern Shore is the number of over-the-air TV channels that we receive.  We get 47, far more than we have received in almost every other place we have been.   Maybe it is the low, flat terrain in this neck of the woods that allows us to receive so many channels.

Old Salty’s on Hoopers Island was the restaurant of choice tonight as we wanted to thank our hosts for the use of their dock and we were not disappointed.  We all ordered a crab dish that had lump crab and it was excellent, well worth the 20 mile drive to get there.

Dave

Church Creek, Day 2

There is not much to report today.  We managed to tape off and sand the rail cap before lunch; homemade chili aboard Liberty.

Since we were sanded and ready for varnish we decided to tackle the job in spite of the breezy conditions.  Waiting out the gusts made it possible to get the varnish on the rail with out making a mess out of the boat.

While the skipper was attending to this task, the ladies were out and about, doing some shopping.  It seems varnishing the rail cap has become a tradition for us now at Church Creek as the last time we attended to this task was in the spring when we were here.  It was supposed to have been a job that was to have done just before we left Erie, but we got distracted by other projects.   Tomorrow we need to do the wing doors.

Dinner was at the Howell’s after which we learned to play heaven or hell, a game that uses playing cards to determine movement of playing pieces that has quite a bit of strategy involved when playing as teams.  Tonight was a learning experience, tomorrow night is the “real deal”.

Dave

 

Church Creek

We left the dock at exactly 0859 hours this morning, one minute ahead of schedule.  Mary and Dave came down to see us off (and make sure we didn’t make leave with their fenders).  There has been some discussions of probation and stings lately so you can’t be too careful.  While we tried to coerce them into cruising over to the eastern shore with us, they had to decline as they had some family matters to attend to; maybe in the spring if Gatsby gets launched early.

The ride across and down the bay to the Little Choptank River and then up to Church Creek was uneventful as the winds maxed out at eight knots from the south west.  There was enough of a chop to splash water onto our pilot house windows at times but a very nice ride none the less.

We were able to procure a spot on the Howell’s dock as we arrived with a box of Bicki’s favorite wine, otherwise we might be writing this at anchor instead of being tied to a dock with shore power and water.  Tonight and through tomorrow they have posted small craft warnings, predicting North winds to 20 knots although at the moment the south west breeze has faded away to nothing.

Sunset at Church Creek

Our spot on the dock

After a salmon dinner aboard Liberty we played another mindless game of Pass The Pigs.  The final score was Dave F winning two games, the ladies, Bobbi and Bicki each winning one game and unfortunately Dave H winning none.  I am sure he will get over it by morning.

Today we added 37 nm to the journey in 5.5 engine ours bringing the total to 860 nm.

Dave

Well, here is a Bobbi update:  We spent three wonderful days in Annapolis with fellow “Pilgrimers”, Mary and Dave Kane.  We had the best time talking, laughing and eating!!!!  We really appreciate you guys!!!!

We headed for Church Creek this morning to visit our Lord Nelson Victory Tug friends, Dave and Bicky Howell.  We had dinner with the Howell’s tonight on Liberty then played a rousing game of Pass the Pigs. (You have to wonder whoever came up with such a game)

Tomorrow looks like a little shopping and more fun with the Howell’s.  Can’t wait!!!!

Bobbi