September 18, 1999 -- Time to Go!
We left Capital Yacht Club at 2035 this evening bound for Smoots Cove. Smoot's Cove is just past the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Washington, DC. The reason for going such a short distance, approximately 5 miles, was to ensure that we could see any debris that was washed out from the edges of a hurricane that hit 4 days previously.
At 2202, we passed under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and proceeded to our chosen anchorage just outside of Smoot's Cove off of red 90. The bridge, again, had a problem closing but was finally closed by the time we dropped anchor.
We dropped anchor at 2228, and performed our first 'official cruising act' by putting up our St. Brendan's Isle burgee below our Capital Yacht Club burgee.
September 19, 1999 -- Breton Bay Here We Come
We left Smoot's Cove bound for Breton Bay at 1050. Around noon, Liz, our guest for our first week of cruising, earned her keep by swabbing the decks. What can I say, it was a boring trip!
On our trip to Breton, things were slow so we had the opportunity to play with our charting program and figured out how to upload waypoints at 1830. Thus, we dubbed our computer Hal.
We entered Breton Bay at 2000, and dropped anchor at 2024. All in all, it was a peaceful trip.
September 20, 1999 -- Mill Creek or Bust
We weighed anchor at 1010 heading for Mill Creek on the Great Wycomico after performing our regular checks on the engines and transmissions. The port and starboard engines required a quart of oil, the port transmission required a quart of oil and the starboard transmission required a gallon of oil. I don't think our replacement heat exchanger bundle did the trick.
At 1500 we reached the mouth of the Potomac and decided to try to sail. We altered course just slightly so that we would be on a starboard tack rounding Smith Point and out came the sails. We rode the wind for a while and watched big ships running in the shipping lanes. At that point, we decided that it was time to tack (a little to early), and wound up loosing ground. Instead of going through that again, the sails were put back in at 1531, and we resumed our course with the wind on the nose, as usual.
At 2208 we decided to stop trying to anchor. We had tried Mill Creek and several spots on Cockrel Creek. Everyone was becoming fussy so we tied up at the Crazy Crab Restuarant.
September 21, 1999 -- Reedville
After waking up and listening to the weather forcast for the day, we decided that it would be the better part of descretion to stay tied up at the dock. We spent the day doing a little clean up, and wandering around Reedville. There are some beautiful homes there.
On our way back to the boat, we stopped at Peppermints, a small ice cream, sandwich and soup place. There we met Patsy Self, proprieter and real estate broker. She has been in the Reedville area for 45 years.
September 22, 1999 -- Yet another Mill Creek
At 1226, we set out for Mill Creek on the Patuxent river. We decided to go ahead despite the small craft advisory that ran to Smith Point, the point that we would reach just after leaving the Great Wycomico.
There were stormy seas, with gusts of wind to 40 knots with seas a consistent 5 feet, sometimes as high as 8 feet. We moved to the inside pilot station where we could be warm and dry. Mike made rounds on the boat to make sure that everything was ship shape. While in the V-berth, he discovered that the windlass cover that we had used to block lights shining into the stateroom through the hatch was allowing water to drip in. He opened the hatch and pulled it in, then proceded to become sea sick from going airborn while on his back several times. He quickly threw his harness and tether on and went outside. Unfortunately, we didn't have our jack lines down and his tether was to short and he hurled on the deck. The next wave that came by rinsed the deck down, so once again he was saved from having to clean the boat.
Liz was the next to go down. She went to the main saloon to get some Rolaids for me, and came back up slightly green. She too donned a harness and jack line and went outside to ride out the rest of the trip.
At that point, we decided to head in the Potomac and up the St. Mary's river instead of beating into it. Just as we entered the Potomac, Liz who had been holding back, ralphed over the side of the boat.
At 1809, we dropped anchor at Horse Shoe bend on the St. Mary's river. We were still having problems with Tinky, so we investigated and found that the 500FG Raycor filter desperately needed to be cleaned and changed. This was the true source of the fuel supply problems we had been experiencing with Tinky.
September 23, 1999 -- Patuxent? Nah, lets go to Selby Bay!
After finding out that Point Lookout Marina had the filter cartridges we needed, the only one we forgot bring extra of, we dropped the dingy and headed there to pick up some. We returned to the boat to clean and install the new filter.
At 1530 we weighed anchor, it still ways 140 lbs, to head to the Patuxent River.
As we headed out of the St. Mary's, we discussed our plans for the next several days. After reviewing the fact that we would need to be at Selby Bay by 1300 to pick up Sarge, we decided to cruise the afternoon and evening there instead of stopping at the Patuxent River. We laid in our course, creating a route on Hal to be sent to the autopilot.
We expeirenced a miracle, when we turned to run up the Bay, the wind was in an appropriate direction for us to sail without really tacking. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough wind for us to sail without engines.
During the trip up, Tinky was having some fuel problems. We realized that when we changed the Raycor filter, we had forgotten to change Tinky's primary fuel filter as well. Mike made the offer to change it, but I figured we could make it to Selby Bay before having to change it.
Two miles from the entrance to the South River, Tinky's load had to be dropped again because of fuel. At that point, Mike went to replace Tinky's fuel filter. Liz and I navigated that last two miles the old way, plotting our longitude and latitude, and looking for buoys.
Just as we passed the first buoy in the South River, Tinky came back up. Unfortunately, there was to much air in the fuel filter and Tinky very quickly went back down again. He restarted relatively quickly, and stayed up long enough for us to get to the mouth of Selby Bay where we dropped anchor at 0130.
September 24, 1999 -- Where to go, where to go?
We picked up Sarge at approximately 1300 and tried to figure out where to go. We finally decided to go to the Magothy river so we could arrive during daylight and have dinner at a 'normal' time.
We motored out of the South River and put our sails up. There was enough wind for us to sail again! This time, we even cut our engines. We tacked across the bay 3 times, each time, making good forward progress. Unfortunately if we had continued this, we would not have made the Magothy until late that evening. We turned the engines back on and headed for the Magothy directly.
We dropped anchor at 1730 and settled in for the evening.
September 25, 1999 -- Dragging anchor
At 0800 Mike woke me up saying that he needed my help. When I asked him what for he told me that we had dragged anchor. I was up like a shot. We checked out where we were and found that had we drifted another 100 or so feet, we would have been in roughly 2 feet of water.
We fired the engines up, raised the anchor and moved to anchor again, where we held for the rest of the time on the Magothy.
We went for lunch at Deep Creek Marina on Dividing Creek. It must have been a sight seeing all four of us in our tinky dink!
We spent the rest of the day lounging, and touring in the dingy.
September 26, 1999 -- Our Triumphant Return?
At 1300 we weighed anchor to head back to Selby Bay to drop Liz and Sarge off. This was when we discovered that our starboard transmission was not engaging. Well, it was, sort of, but something wasn't engaging right and the engine RPMs would drop down to almost nothing. We called our mechanic who told us that it sounded like it was our forward clutch that had gone bad. He told us to find a place to tie up at and he would be out the next morning.
After calling around to all of the marinas in Selby Bay, I found one that had 10 feet of water. I spoke with them and verified where we were supposed to go and then called our mechanic to let him know that we would be at Selby Bay Yacht Basin.
We motored out to discover no wind, or atleast not enough to do us any good, so we motored with only one engine. We still made a respectable 6.7 knots!
We started heading in to Selby Bay and through a series of errors, wound up running aground by the Selby Bay Yacht Club about an hour after high tide at 1850. The manager of Selby Bay Yacht Basin tried to tow us off, but could not. Tow Boat Annapolis tried to tow us off, but could not. Finally at 2200 or so, everyone gave up and waited for next high tide.
September 27, 1999 -- Floating off
At 0445, we found that we had drifted further into the channel. We started up the engines and managed to power our way off. We immediately headed out, dropped anchor and waited for day light to go in to the Yacht Basin.
As soon as daylight came, we motored in were starting to make our turn when we ran aground again, in an area that was supposed to have 10 feet of water. We lowered the dingy in record time, and Mike used it to drag the boat off. He then went to the dock to help get the boat in from there. I powered the boat over to the dock on one engine, and at the same time ran getting lines moved from the starboard side of the boat to the port side as Mike wanted to come in on the starboard side.
We got the boat docked at approximately 0730. We immediately broke the booze out and had cocktails, we figured it was 5:00 pm somewhere in the world!
At 0830, we started wandering toward the marina office to register and took a tour of the Basin and the boats in it. We saw several Pacemakers and a gorgeous Roamer, as well as a really cute little boat.
Because we figured that we had a transmission problem we scheduled Fischer-Panda service to come out on Wednesday to fix our generator and Clean Fuel to come out on Friday to clean our fuel tanks, as long as we were layed up anyway.
Our mechanic showed up at 0930 to investigate the problem with the starboard engine. They set immediately to work, disengaged the starboard shaft and checked the transmission. It appeared that the transmission was working correctly. I also taught our mechanic something! We had read in the owners manual that the forward and reverse clutches could be replaced without removing the transmission from the boat. He called Twin Disc and verified that it could be done and found that I was absolutely correct! Once again, we thanked the first owner for selecting the transmission model he did. Our mechanic called a diver who said that he would try to come out today. As a bonus to all of this, our mechanic did find the leak that has been haunting us, atleast we hope. Stay tuned!
At 1700, the diver came out to check the starboard shaft. He found a line had indeed wrapped around the shaft and was binding it. He removed the line, and inspected the rest of the bottom and found only minor scratches in the keel. Unfortunately, one of the anodes on the port shaft had come loose. That is fine, there is a spare one on the shaft.
So, now we have both engines again; unfortunately we are here through Friday when the tanks are cleaned as there is quite a bit of muck in the tanks that only gets stirred up when we are moving.