Hop-A-Nose Marina, Catskill, NY

Since we didn’t have far to go today we didn’t leave Kingston until 0840 hours.  If we got to the marina too early they might charge us for two days :).   There was a bit of fog on Rondout Creek when we left and when we turned to go up the Hudson the fog was so thick that visibility was about one boat length.  We were flying on instruments again but within a quarter mile the visibility increased and soon we were able to turn off our radar. Coming into Catskill Creek we purchased 55 gallons of fuel where the creek enters the Hudson for $3.57 a gallon, the second highest price we have paid for fuel this trip.

The light house at Saugerties is now a Bed and Breakfast. Don’t bring your hair dryer (that is what their web site says).

Once we arrived at the marina we settled into today’s task.  We took the mast down and secured everything on the boat deck for the trip through the canal.  Hopefully there won’t be any fog tomorrow as our radar is now pointing skyward with the mast down.   We changed our engine oil at 240 hours, a little early as the manual states 250 hours although our last oil analysis recommendation was to let it go to 300 hours.  Oil is fairly cheap and we won’t be putting lots of hours on the engine once we get back to Erie, relatively speaking.  Since we were doing the engine we also changed the oil in the transmission even though it could go another 750 hours but we like to keep clean oil in it also.  Besides, it only takes 1-5/8 quarts so that isn’t going to break the bank.

While the skipper was busy in the bilge the mate was out cruising the town, checking out the thrift shops but came back empty handed.

Our friends Dave and Linda launched their Pilgrim River Dancer today and brought her home to this marina.  We went out to dinner together at a nice up-scale pizza place and will have left overs from our dinner tomorrow evening.   After dinner they took us to Walmart to stock up on food, coffee and paper towels for the next week.  Our plan was initially to stop in Waterford tomorrow where we could go grocery shopping but the Champlain canal is still closed meaning tying up in Waterford is an impossibility.  Boats are stacked up all the way down here waiting for the canal to open.  Given our normal casting off time at 0600 hours we should make Waterford by 1200 and will continue on past into the flight of five (locks). Depending on how long that takes will make a determination on where we will land for the evening.  A new marina (and casino) has opened between locks 7 and 8 and some of the crew is lobbying for that location as a stop over.

No, this is not Liberty, but River Dancer. She is three years older.

 

Liberty at Hop-A-Nose, ready to cruise the Erie Canal with the low bridges.

Linda nicely brought a home made apple pie with her when they arrived today but we ran out of time to spend together this evening as they still had to retrieve their car and they have early morning commitments so they left us the pie.  We told them they can pick up their pie plate in Florida this winter if they come stay with us.

Today:  23 sm in 2.8 hours but we got a lot of maintenance tasks accomplished.  Total: 1771 sm.

Dave

 

Ole Savannah, Kingston, NY

Even though we knew today would be a relatively short day, we still left the dock at 0600 as is our custom.  We were pleasantly supervised to find that the entire days motor had the tide in our favor, our boat speed never dropping below our cruise speed of seven knots.

It is nice to be going up the river at above average speed. Although we have a few plotter tracks to follow (the red lines) we can probably find our way home from here with out any fancy electronic aids. Go up the Hudson to Waterford, turn left onto the Erie Canal and follow it to the end, another left turn up the Niagara River into Lake Erie and follow the shore line home. 🙂

The six hour and forty five minute trip was totally devoid of any excitement, or the boat rolling around except for a few wakes from passing barges, just the way we like it.  In fact, the mate took to reading (out loud) excerpts from our book “The Hudson from Troy to the Battery” which details information on landmarks on both sides as you pass by.

West Point on a cool, cloudy and hazy day.

 

Meeting a tug pushing a barge under low clouds.

 

The Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. In the early 80’s Newburgh was one of the most distressed cities in the country with the highest violent crime rate in New York state. It has somewhat recovered since.

We found our free dock at the Ole Savannah restaurant open, as we have the five other times we have been into Kingston.  Long time readers of this blog might recall that we were the first customers here and we ate for free that day.  We pulled in and found they weren’t open for business yet but were having a dry run where they test cooked the items on the menu.  The owner invited us to eat what ever we wanted as they were just going to toss it anyway.  Ever since then we have made sure that when we come here we look up the owner and thank him for letting us stay on his dock for free and today was no exception.  We mentioned this is the last time we will be through here with Liberty.  Dinner at the restaurant (a “requirement” if you are staying on the dock overnight) was just as good at it has always been.  One year we sat on the dock for three days; that was a lot of lunches and dinners we ended up eating here.

As we approached the dock we were happy to see that the cover was off one of the three PT boats “stored” here thinking they were finally working on them. Unfortunately the covers had simply rotted away since the last time we were here and now the boat is at the mercy of the elements. More history being lost.

We went for a walk into town and spotted Sumertime at the Wooden Boat Center docks, a Krogen manatee that shared our enclosure when we stored Liberty out of the water in Safe Cove a few summers ago.  Wally and Darcy, the owners, stopped by Liberty to say hello and we got ourselves up to speed on what each other has been doing the last few years.  They mentioned that they were heading up the Champlain Canal and since it is still closed due to high water there isn’t any place to dock in Waterford which is also the entrance to the Erie Canal.  We were hoping to stop there as a grocery store is down the street from the town dock and we wanted to re-provision.  Maybe they will open the canal in the next day or so before we get there and dock space will open up.   A couple out of Annapolis  that have just started doing the Loop docked in front of us and we shared our dinner table with them in the Ole Savannah and had a nice chat.  Their plan is also to go up the Champlain Canal although they might rethink that; going up the Erie to the Oswego Canal and then into Lake Ontario and finally the St. Lawrence if the wait on the Champlain gets excessive.

We always stop by P&T Surplus to check out what they have lying around. They used to get a lot of surplus from IBM but not anymore. Besides electronics they have a wide array of plastic and metal sheeting and rod, strange fasteners, bins of knobs etc.

 

Summertime at the Wooden Boat Center dock. The vessel just in front of her is a solar powered boat, the solar panels being located on the cabin top.

 

Liberty at Ole Savannah. We give the people dining on the outside deck something to look at.

Tomorrow will be a short trip up to Hop O Nose Marina in Catskill NY to visit with our Pilgrim friends Dave and Linda.  There we will down rig Liberty for her trip through the canal.  We can pretty much stop looking at marine weather forecasts multiple times a day until we get to Lake Erie and we don’t have to be studying tide and current tables.  What are we going to do with all of our extra time?

Today:   57 sm in 7.0 engine hours.  Total: 1748 sm

Dave

Half Moon Bay Marina, Croton-on-Hudson, NY

We managed to make up for our late start yesterday by leaving the dock at 0545 hours.   At 0630 on the Atlantic, the winds were offshore from the west at 10 knots, just as predicted.  Winds were supposed to be in that range all day and slowly clocking to the SE.  Well, Mr. Weatherman evidently didn’t know what he was talking about.  At 0810 winds were from the NE at 10 knots, our boat speed hanging at 5 knots, bucking some current up the coast.

When we left this morning it appeared that it as going to be a gorgeous day. We even got lucky leaving Manasquan as the rail road bridge lowered just after we passed under it.  We think that they saw us coming and nicely waited until we passed.

When we were 12 miles from rounding Sandy Hook we were enveloped by pea soup fog with East winds at 15 to 20 knots.  Obvously we were running under instruments: chart plotter, radar and AIS being the order of the day.  Swells with a period of 7 seconds were from the east and after a short time the east winds on top of that made our course (almost due north) relatively painful as the boat was rolling unmercifully in spite of her “steadying sail”.  We finally took to hand steering, heading above course in the flat spots and then turning below course in the worst of the waves to try to minimize the rolling.  Every towel on the boat was stuffed into cabinets in the galley to keep items from moving about.  Again we were too busy to take any pictures of the conditions.

Fortunately this condition only had to be tolerated for an hour at which time we were able to bear off (head further downwind) to put the boat on a course to the  Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge which is the entrance to the harbor at NYC.  As we entered the harbor winds were from the ESE at 13 and the swells still from astern from the East.

We struggled to enter the harbor with the boat speed in the lower four knot range due to the current and the winds from behind at almost 15 knots. Wind against the tide (which we had) generates some nasty seas as the swells were also from behind.

 

Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge outside of NYC.

 

Manhattan on a cool, dismal, overcast day.

We knew it was going to be slow going up the Hudson once we got inside and it was.  Five knots seemed to be the norm but we were patient as we were “only” heading up to the 79th Street Boat Basin.  As they take only transients on a first come, first served basis we thought we would still give them a call early to see if they would reserve us a spot so we could see our friend  Mark and his Pilgrim.  Mark is an ER doctor in NYC and works long hours but would be able to see us in the evening as he lives aboard his boat here.  There was no answer on the phone when we tried to contact the dock master, but that might be expected.  When we got to the marina we called on the phone, still no answer.  We tried Channel 9 on the VHF as indicated on their website by no response.  After scoping the place out and not seeing where we could land and then try to track down the dock master we left heading north.

The problem with the Hudson is that marinas are far and few between and anchorages are sometimes iffy as there is deep water right to the bank of the shore and who knows what the bottom is like, which is relatively important if you don’t want the anchor to drag.  We attempted to call a few marinas, all of them were booked (no surprise) and since we were only making 5 knots knew that the number of miles we could cover in the late afternoon would not be significant.  Weather radar showed thunder storms moving into the area and if you like to actually sleep at night (not maintain an anchor watch) a dock is real nice to have.

Wanting to get someplace by 1700 we found that the Nyack Boat Club had transient moorings available but when you called you got a recording that said to use Dockwa to make a reservation.  That we did but it sometimes takes up to 24 hours to get a conformation, one of the reasons we don’t like the app, especially as we were going to be at their location in less than two hours.   In the meantime Mark contacted us to apologize for the marina he lives at and offered to text the dock master at Half Moon Bay for us as we knew we would be getting in late. Our boat speed was finally up to 7 knots as we approached the Tappan-Zee bridge or what ever it is called now making Half Moon Bay a possibility.

The new Tappan-Zee Bridge.

Arrangements were made with Half Moon Bay and we canceled our tentative “reservation” with Nyack especially after I read the fine print and saw they only had four transient spots.  The predicted rain came an hour or so out and stayed with us until just before we docked and then started up again.

How lucky can you be? We docked the boat in the short “dry” window.

One of the issues with rain and thunder storms is that you generally don’t know if high velocity shifting winds are going to accompany the storms.  Today the rain was pretty much straight down, there wasn’t any of the violent wind gusts that accompanied the rain like when we were in Cape May.  You just never know.  Anyhow we are nicely tied to a dock with power this evening for a total cost of $106 and are not going to complain about the price.  It is worth it, we can sleep.

Today:  84 sm in 12.3 engine hours.  Total: 1692 sm.

Dave

Crystal Point Marina, Manasquan, NJ

Today we got off to a later than normal start, 0608 hours.  The forecast hadn’t changed overnight so the inside route plan remained in effect.  When we left winds were from the south west at 13 knots and our boat speed a meager 5.5 knots as we were bucking an outgoing tide, but that was to be expected.

The latest charts seem to have the navigation aids in pretty much the right spot, but the topography portion leaves a lot to be desired at times. We are not exactly in the channel according to the chart.  Our bread crumb trail from previous trips on our secondary chart plotter makes it somewhat easy to keep on the straight and narrow, or in this case the winding and narrow.

Hours into our snaking path up Barnegat Bay, the wind slowly but steadily increased to a solid 20 to 25 knots.  The highest gust we saw was 28 knots, and this was at the Thomas A. Mathis Bridge (Rt 37 bridge).  In theory we should have been able to get under it with out an opening as it was listed as having a vertical clearance of 30 feet.  What we found due to the high tide and the fact that the wind was blowing water up the bay was that there was 28 feet showing on the air clearance boards next to the bridge.  As we require 28 feet this was a little too close for comfort considering the cost if you are wrong even by a few inches.  We are really fond of our wind instruments at the top of the mast.  The bridge only opens at the top and bottom of the hour and we luckily found ourselves there within a few minutes of the top of the hour.  Calling the bridge tender three times on the radio with no answer complicated things as the channel is real narrow and we are going down wind rapidly in some rather steep waves.  Seeing the tender in his house moving around we swung around into the wind and he called us asking if we needed and opening.  They answer was a definite yes and a few minutes later we were through and on our way.

NOAA weather radio was issuing marine alerts for severe weather, fortunately we missed the worst of it. This is getting to be a fairly common occurrence during the last few days.

The biggest issue of the day was staying in a fairly narrow channel for miles on end that at times brought the wind almost to our beam.  Most of the time we had about 3 feet of water under the keel but there were also times we saw 1-1/2 feet.  Steering was tiring as you could really feel the boat fight you due to the shallow water and effect of the channel sides.  The wind and waves pitching and yawing the boat around were of no help either and we were glad to see this day finally come to an end.  A more prudent sailor would have stayed in Atlantic City and fed the slot machines, but the prudent sailor never gets anywhere.  Besides, it seems we have a good weather window for getting around Sandy Hook and into NYC tomorrow.

A typical scene at the edge of Barnegat Bay.

 

We normally stay here at Bay Head YC but going a few miles further got us a free dock. Besides, we can’t afford to eat in any of their five dining rooms.

Fortunately, the marina is on the weather side of the river here which made docking a bit easier.  Tonight’s dockage and electric was free, compliments of Safe Harbor.  They have recently taken over ownership of this marina and are spending money here to upgrade it.  The heads/showers are new and so nice that the skipper actually took a shower in one rather than the boat.  Tomorrow we are off to NYC with the general plan being to stop at the 79 Street Boat Basin to visit our friend Mark and his Pilgrim 40 Papillon, right after we take out a loan for dockage there.

At the dock at Crystal Point Marina.

Today:  64 sm in 8.8 engine hours.  Total 1607 sm.

Dave

Farley State Marina, Atlantic City, NJ

Yesterday, overnight thunderstorms were predicted and around midnight they rolled it.  Looking at the weather radar the storm was the size of Delaware Bay and it brought lots of wind and torrential downpours.  The skipper closed up the boat while the mate soundly slept.  It was a good night to be tied to a dock.

We left the dock earlier than usual today; 0550 hours :).  The forecast was for North winds 5 to 10 going East.  That’s exactly what happened.  Motoring up the New Jersey coast our speed was just above 7 knots for three hours due to tide and current and then just below 7 knots for the rest of the relatively short trip up to Atlantic CIty.

A serene trip on the Atlantic in the early morning.

 

The New Jersey coast isn’t all that attractive thing from the water.

We had a fleet of seven boats going up the shore with in a few miles of each other, only a few of us slower boats bailed out at Atlantic City.  The next stop for us would either be Barnegat Light which is an entrance to Barnegat Bay or Manasquan which is about 10 hours distant.  As we reached the Absecon Inlet, which is the entrance into  Atlantic City at 1100, another 10 hours is out of the question.  The wind at this point had shifted East at 12 knots.

The tall building on the right is Oceans Casino Resort. It opened in 2012 and last month was the first time it turned a profit. Stanley Morgan lost one billion dollars on it, one of the original developers who pulled out before the building was half built.

It was an uneventful trip up with nothing interesting happening until we got fuel.  The fuel dock here is a floating, combination self serve (like a gas station) and an attendant served location.  A fifty four foot SeaRay was fueling up on one side, a large cruising sailboat on the other side and we were docked at a angle dock in front of the sailboat.  There are two diesel pumps, one of the end and another in the middle with long fuel hoses.  The SeaRay was using the end pump that is controlled by the attendant and Liberty and the sailboat were at the self serve pump.  There was only one problem, the self serve was a no serve.  Even the attendant couldn’t get it to operate so we all had to wait on the one pump controlled by the attendant.  After the sailboat filled their Jerry cans and left we backed up to the pump to commenced fueling.  Bobbi was standing at the pump counting the gallons when the big SeaRay started to make his exit.  He was facing downwind, the wind having picked up a bit since we came and and turned his boat mostly around as he left.  He miscalculated as the wind was sweeping him sideways into the end of the fuel dock and Bobbi, seeing this happening came scampering in the dock as it looked like a disaster in the making.  He gunned his engines and swung his stern just in time to avoid what looked like a lot of fiberglass repair work not to mention what would have happened to this floating fuel dock.

Having finished our fueling and pump out chore I gave the attendant our credit card and had it declined twice before using another card successfully.  Now what is up with that?  We received our dock assignment and in the process of docking got a phone call from the credit card people concerning a possible fraud occurrence on that card.  Basically they wanted to know if it was us who attempted to use the card as they declined the charge on their end.  Evidently there is no problem with the card but we believed it was blocked from use as we charged $150 in fuel on it yesterday and tried to charge another $150 today.   We paid a $.50/gallon premium today over what we paid yesterday but I didn’t want to pull up to a fuel dock just to use their free pump out station so that cost us $20.  Of course we paid $130 for the slip this evening, $3/foot + electric as they charge a premium for holidays so what is another $20?

Since we are in Atlantic City and probably won’t be back by boat for a real long time, if ever, we headed down to the Atlantic City Boardwalk via the Jitney.  You don’t have to go to an amusement park if you ride in one of these things as the bi-lingual drivers only go one speed and that is real fast.  We went to a few casino’s on the Boardwalk before stopping by a Rite Aid for a loaf of bread and then back on the Jitney for another thrill ride back to the boat.

As we have never been here during the high season we weren’t used to seeing actual people on the Boardwalk.

After dinner we thought we would check out the pool on the roof of the casino here but found one pool crowded with young children, the other pool with what appeared to be floating chairs was only five inches deep and the four hot tubs were filled with young adults who had been drinking for hours.  We passed on any sort of water sport activities.  Bobbi was at the pool a few years ago and was the only person there.  Of course it was mid October so that might have had something to do with it.

We passed on getting wet.

All in all we visited three places with random number generators that have pretty flashing lights (slot machines) in attempt to recoup some of our dockage charges but to no avail.  The mate broke even and the skipper netted $2.60.

Looking forward, tomorrow we are off to Manasquan and another Safe Harbor marina which means we stay for free with our “black card”.  We can either go up on the outside (in the ocean) or inside (through Barneget Bay).  The forecast for tomorrow was south at 15 with gusts to 25, seas 3 to 4 feet.  That would dictate the inside route, something we have done three times before and is quite scenic.  Outside, you set the autopilot and sit for the next nine hours.  Normally we don’t mind lots of wind off our stern but we really aren’t familiar with south winds producing a chop on top of easterly ocean swells.  The fact that the forecast can be off by five knots also can make a big difference.  Getting into the inlet at Manasquan might be more interesting than needs be under those circumstances also.  The next days forecast is for West winds at 5 to 10 becoming south, perfect for going around Sandy Hook and into NYC.  The final decision gets made in the morning before we get going.  Mother Nature rules our days.

Liberty, in the middle of the picture at the transient dock.

 

Boardwalk, at 163 feet and $40 million is a little bigger than Liberty. The helicopter is a nice touch.

Today:  44 sm in 5.9 hours.  Total: 1543 sm.

Dave

Miss Chris Marina, Cape May, NJ

As is our new custom, we left the dock at precisely 0555 hours this morning, destination Cape May.  We were going out the canal at 6.2 knots as expected due to the current coming in.  After a bit over an hour we cleared the end of the canal where our speed quickly increased and by 0815 we were doing 9.4 knots with a westerly wind of 5 knots, ideal conditions.

The railroad bridge on the C&D canal in the early morning mist.

The wind was variable, never over 7 knots on our way down the bay and it wasn’t until 1100 that we exited the ship channel to head directly towards Cape May, 15 miles distant.  Our boat speed dropped to 7.9 knots and winds were calm.  by 1120 hours our speed was consistently less than 7 knots as the tide had turned and winds were NW at 5 knots.

A virtually perfect day to be on the Delaware Bay. Father Neptune was kind to us today.

 

These are the boat speeds that we like to see (10 knots). The sharp eyed viewer will note the AIS target displayed just to the left of us. A rather large ship was overtaking us and we are positioned just out of the channel.

 

This is the vessel that was off our stern.

Coming into the channel at Cape May on the Delaware Bay side the car ferry was just getting ready to leave the dock and he nicely waited until we passed before backing out.  As it was around 1300 hours, it appeared that every boat in Cape May was heading out into the bay at full speed down the canal.  It seems that the custom is to pretty much overload the boat with people and run wide open.  Other times that we have been here the canal was pretty quiet, but we have never been here on a Sunday, holiday weekend which probably explains things.  If we were thinking we could have taken a video of the chaos but are usually too busy dealing with the situation to fool around with a camera.

Approaching Cape May we are three plus miles out and our boat speed has dropped considerably.

We normally stay at Utsch’s Marina ($2/foot) but they couldn’t accommodate us.  Another choice would have been the South Jersey Marina but they wanted $3/foot (too pricey for us).  We settled for the Miss Chris Marina, again using the marina term loosely.  It really is a fuel dock that rents kayaks and stand up paddle boards as well as provides a home for four commercial vessels that cater to tourists.  They do fishing trips and whale watching tours from here.  The dock charge is $1.50/ft ($60) and that includes 30 amp power, a pretty good deal if all you want is a dock and power.  We are actually tied up at the fuel dock at it appears that they can only accommodate two transients.  I guess we got lucky :).  We thought we would get fuel and pump out the holding tank only to find that their pump out facility is broken.  They told us there might only be one working one in the entire harbor.  As such we only filled one fuel tank here ($3.29/gallon) and when we get to Atlantic City tomorrow will fill the other fuel tank and get the holding tank pumped out.

At the dock at Miss Chris “Marina”.

 

I am not sure how many whales they see but dolphins abound. There are two identical boats docked here and they seem to do a good business, at least on holiday weekends when the weather is nice.

Late this afternoon we went for a walk and were amazed at the amount of vehicle traffic here.  There are lots of vacation rental properties although we are still trying to figure out the attraction here unless you keep your boat at one of the many marinas or like to go whale watching.

Today:  68 sm in 7.8 engine hours.  Total: 1499 sm.

Dave

Summit North Marina, DE

We cast off at 0555 hours after a slow start, actually a no start.  We turned the key to start the engine and nothing happened.  Quickly checking voltages we found we had voltage to the starter but the start solenoid was not engaging.  Yesterday when I was fooling around with the stop solenoid I was pulling fuses to make sure they were good and noticed one didn’t quite seat correctly.  Looking at that fuse again this morning it was obvious that it was loose in the holder.  A bit of fussing fixed it but that item needs to go on the “fix it permanently” list.

Annapolis Bay Bridge just after sunrise on an overcast day.

Winds had shifted to the East overnight and dropped to 10 knots by the time we exited the dock.  The wind continued to clock and eventually it was out of the South at less than 10.  It wasn’t until we were half way across the C&D canal that the winds shifted back into the South East at 20.  We had been checking the weather buoy at Ship John Shoal on the upper Delaware Bay at times during the day and they were constantly being reported at SE at 22 with gusts to 28, not a day to be cruising down the Delaware.

Some good size barges use the C&D canal.

Our first choice for docking on the C&D is the free dock (of course) at Chesapeake City.  If you want power and water there is a nominal fee of about $15, well worth it as the dock is free.  This is our eighth trip through here, the first time we anchored in the basin at Chesapeake City and all the other times we managed to secure a spot on the dock except for the year they were rebuilding it.  Since it is a holiday weekend we figured the chance of finding a spot open was pretty slim and we were correct.  There is now only room for two good size boats, the rest of the dock is reserved for commercial tour boats.  Second choice was going to be Schaefers Canal House & Marina where we stayed last year when helping deliver our buddies Tripp sailboat from Annapolis to Erie.  That was second choice until I found out that they up their dockage rate to $3/foot on holidays.  $120 + electric is too steep of price to pay to be docked in the current and be right alongside all the party people at the restaurant.  Third choice and ultimately where we ended up was the Summit North Marina, $2/foot + electric or $85 for the evening.  As many times as we have been by here for some reason we have never given this place any thought, probably because we usually ended up on the free dock due to the early or late times in the season we were traveling.

This is a pretty big marina off the canal so there is no current. There are thirteen main docks with full length finger piers on both sides of each slip. The last six or so main docks were completely empty.

For what ever reason they put us on “B” dock, the second from the end of the line.  I am not sure how we got so lucky but we are in a slip right next to a 45′ power boat that was being scrubbed by two young men.  Evidently the owner and wife decided they needed some company so the young guys have been drinking their booze for the last six hours.  Of course they have been getting louder as the day and evening wears on and the owner finally fed them a few minutes ago.  A ton of empty slips and we get slotted here.  Last night at Lake Ogleton was similar, numerous boats in the marina were having parties aboard into the night.  It is a holiday weekend and I believe that a good number of these people have been cooped up too long and this is a good excuse to let loose.

Fortunately there is a boat storage yard at the marina that we can walk around and check out some more failed dreams.

There was actually some effort to save this old girl before reality set in.

 

The current owner of this craft was on deck. He said the previous owner painted the dolphin on the under water portion of the rudder. He is considering painting similar fish and animals along the entire boat. When asked when he though he might relaunch, he was non-committal. The trees and bushes near the bow are slowly taking over that part of the boat.

Today, 63 sm in 7.6 engine hours.  Total: 1431 sm.

Dave

 

Lake Ogleton, Annapolis MD. Day 2

The weather man was correct with his forecast for today.  Winds were supposed to be NW at around 20 and this morning when the mate came upstairs at 0600 it was flat calm.  She wondered why were not getting underway.  An hour later there were white caps on the bay and soon after the weather buoys were reporting a solid 20 knots of wind.  It was a good day to not be going upwind.

Dave and Mary gave us instructions on getting in their garage to access Mary’s car.  We took advantage of that and made an early morning run to Giant Food, West Marine and two wine stores that were in the vicinity.  We are fond of the boxed Vella Cabernet, which is really hard to find.  When we come across it we buy a box whether we need it or not and since we found it today, got another one.  As we know there will be no convenient grocery stores until we are well north of NYC we purchased enough ships stores to take us that far and more.

Back on the boat we “found” some boat chores to do.  We changed the zinc on the heat exchanger on the main engine, replaced our raw water strainer with a new stainless one (took all of two minutes) and delved into the mystery of our engine stop solenoid that has suddenly given us some grief.  When we re-engined the boat a few years ago the stop solenoid slowly died.   Betamarine primarily sells engines that get used on sailboats.  We had a 40 foot cabling run from the engine to our control stations and when you pressed the engine stop button it sent 12 volts back down that cable to the solenoid.  The voltage drop over that run was excessive and it burned out the solenoid.  Sailboats generally have their engine controls mounted close to the engine.   When Betamarine was informed of the issue they recognized the problem and send us a new solenoid as well as some wiring that pulled power from the positive terminal on the engine (shorter power run) and a relay to make it all work.  That solved the problem for quite a while but then the solenoid started sticking at times.  It turns out the mounting angle is quite sensitive and I didn’t have it perfect when I installed the new one.  After some adjustment it has been fine for a year, until lately.

Our not so smooth piston for the stop solenoid.

Removing the piston from the cylinder it is obvious that it is mildly chewed up (not perfectly smooth) and was hanging up.  Cleaning the piston was easy, the galling that was inside the cylinder not so much.  In reality it is just easier to replace the whole thing rather than keep fooling with it.  When Betamarine replaced the solenoid they nicely painted it, obscuring the manufacture and model number on it.  Fortunately, they included the data sheet for it when they sent it, so I know exactly who made it and the model.  Amazon can have a new one to us at some point for about $100 and I won’t have to pay the markup buying from Betamarine.  The current fix is simply a line tied around the engine fuel shut off lever that when pulled shuts down the engine.  This is accessed though a small hatch in the salon.  As we generally only start and stop the engine once a day (at the dock) this is not a real inconvenience.

Some thought was given to doing an oil and filter change while we were here but we have 70 more engine hours to go before the change is due.  Of course we can easily put that amount of hours on in a week and we are carrying the oil and filter on board for when the time comes.  I figure that at some point I will be looking for something quasi-productive to do and that will fit the bill.

Finny’s small cage that sits in the pilot house has been sliding around as of late.  It used to have rubber feet that were leaving marks as the rubber aged and I replaced those feet with felt pads.  While felt won’t mar things it is also slippery.  We had some appropriate wood pieces that we could screw down to use as cleats to lock the cage in place.

The entertainment of the afternoon was watching the antics of a single handed sailor at the channel entrance.  I noticed him aground (obvious when the sails are drawing and the boat is heeled over but not moving) and it was obvious he was outside the marked channel.  Eventually he got off (there were three power boats hovering around him) and he came charging in before spinning the boat around and heading out the same way he came in, running hard aground again.  Eventually one of the power boats dragged him off and he got going again, this time coming into the little cove here before spinning around a few times, obviously out of control as he wrestled his headsail down.  As he had a roller furling headsail he must have had issues with the furler to not wind it up but pull it out of the foil.  He disappeared around the corner from us so we don’t know what happened after that.  If he had a dock here you would think he would know that you need to stay in the channel when you come in.  Even if you weren’t familiar with this area you would think one would stick to the channel.

A J33 sailboat aground but with ample help standing by.

 

Tonight’s dinner: grilled shrimp salad. Some people pay good money for such a meal right on the water. We are fortunate that we can do this virtually every night.

No miles traveled again.

Dave

Lake Ogleton, Annapolis, MD

Arising at 0530 we checked the weather and prepared the boat for departure.  Winds were southerly at 15 to 20 and had been most of the night.  Leaving Solomon you have about a four mile run out past Drum Point before turning north to head up the Chesapeake.  That four miles has the south wind and waves pretty much on the beam, so for about 40 minutes you (we) are being rolled around.  The good news about that is after that mild beating when you finally are able to turn down wind the ride all of a sudden feels comfortable even though the boat wants to yaw around heading down the waves.  Those conditions were driving the autopilot crazy so you end up hand steering until things settle down.

Once out into the ship channel where the water is deeper and away from the influence of land the waves became smaller and more regular.  After an hour or so the wind dropped into the 10 knot range and this allowed use of the autopilot again for the rest of the day.  The boat speed stayed above 7 knots the entire trip, which is rather unusual.  Not one large ocean going ship went by us, either coming or going today whereas the last few days have seen a lot of large ship traffic.

Coming into Annapolis we counted six ocean going ships anchored south of the Bay Bridge, the most we have ever seen.

The neighborhood dock we stay at in Lake Ogleton is by invitation only.  Our good friends Dave and Mary live in the subdivision and keep their Pilgrim Gatsby docked here.  The dock has neither power nor water but the price is right (free).  Unfortunately, Dave and Mary are out of town so we won’t be seeing them but we did have some odd boat items (strainer basket and water pump) shipped to them before hand.  We were able to retrieve these from Gatsby and this afternoon installed our replacement water pump.  FloJet now ships a sticker that says to turn the power off to the pump when traveling, essentially telling you the thing is not the highest quality.

Earlier this afternoon NOAA issued a marine weather warning concerning approaching thunderstorms.  They rolled through around 1600 hours, well after we were tied to the dock.  The good news about that is that the rain washed all the salt off the deck and our bright work.

 

Gatsby, with all her newly finished bright work protected by custom covers.

 

Liberty at the guest dock in Lake Ogleton.

Today:  55 sm in 6.8 engine hours.  Total: 1368 sm.

Dave

Cuckold Creek, MD. Bill and Judy’s Dock

We knew we didn’t want to get into Cuckold Creek much before 1600 hours as we needed the tide to come up to allow us to get into the dock here.  Of course sitting around waiting to leave the dock isn’t much fun either but it allowed us time for a nice breakfast.  At 0815 we decided to get going and let Mother Nature give us a mild thrashing early on as winds wern’t scheduled to drop and shift until early afternoon.

When we left Reedsville and turned the corner to head north on the Chesapeake wind were 12 to 15 from the NE and there was a lot of left over swells from from the overnight north winds.  Then, as the wind was beginning to shift there was a rather confusing wave pattern resulting in the boat cork screwing up wind meaning it was both rolling and pitching.  The boat speed was in the neighborhood of 5.2 knots as we kept hitting some rather big waves that didn’t allow us to maintain our cruising speed of 7 knots.  We needed to move a lot of things to the cabin sole to keep them from being tossed around.  It was one of the fairly breezy days in sailor speak which in reality means who’s stupid idea was it to come out here?  The wipers for the pilot house windows were worthless as they couldn’t keep up with the water coming over the bow.  Fortunately this condition only lasted for over an hour as the wind began to  drop and continue to clock.

We crossed the mouth of the Potomac without incident as this region is notorious for rough seas especially when the wind is against the current.  As the wind had clocked to the East by this time it was intersecting the current diagonally which didn’t have much of an impact.  By 1030 hours the wind was out of the SE at 7 causing the seas to further flatten and by 1230 hours the winds were straight south at 5 knots making the rest of the trip quite enjoyable.

Calm and overcast on the Chesapeake today, after a rather rough start.

 

Two Pilgrims, Dreamboat Annie and Liberty at Bill and Judy’s dock.

 

We got to Bill and Judy’s dock where they keep their Pilgrim Dream Boat Annie in the mid afternoon which enabled us to catch up as we hadn’t seen them in about two years.  After some hors d’oeuvres and some wine on the deck we had a nice dinner and their neighbors Tom and Elaine  stopped by to say hi.  The live just up the creek and we have stayed on their dock in the past when Bill and Judy were out of town.  Dreamboat Annie is headed for St. Augustine this summer where it will be Bill and Judy’s winter residence.

Today: 55 sm in 7.5 hours,    Total: 1313 sm.

Dave