August 26-31, 2000 -- Ruth

The long awaited event finally occurred! Ruth arrived. Ruth is one of the people that helped us bring the boat to Washington, DC on our first trip up from West Palm Beach. After getting Ruth settled on the boat, we headed out to lunch at the Acme Grille with Bob from Shamaal. We headed back to the boat and spent a quiet relaxing day. Also, I equalized one of the 2 older batteries left on our port bank. It reacted exactly like it should at first but stopped equalizing after 7 hours; it should run for 8. Finally, we sat out on the aft deck and had evening cocktails. On August 27, we fired up tinky and got a reverse polarity indicator on our inverter sub panel. We immediately shut tink down and checked the breaker. It's fine. We brought everything up and checked different configurations, and could not cause the reverse polarity light again until we brought up some 240 volt stuff. We shut tink down again, and headed into town to get some ammeters. Mike is convinced it is because we are overloading tink. I don't think so, because we are only pulling down around 70 amps! Ruth stayed on the boat and showered. We were a bit early for Fawcetts, so we stopped at the market house to get donuts for breakfast. Then we ran into Sea Amigo and chatted with them for a few minutes before heading to Fawcetts. We found ammeters, and headed back to the boat. We installed the new ammeters, then brought everything up that we were running before, and low and behold... we are only at 70 amps out of a possible 104. (tinky is a 12.5 kw generator that produces 104 amps at 120 v.) We were also not able to duplicate the reverse polarity problem again. We, again brought tinky back up and started equalizing the other old battery (then we only have 1 more to equalize, but are 88.25% sure that that one will not be a problem). On August 28, We went to Baltimore. On the way in, we saw Honga headed out. We chatted with them on VHF for a few minutes and tentatively agreed to cocktails that evening. As we were about to pull into the fuel dock at the Baltimore Marine Center, Sea Dancer hailed us. We invited them to cocktails that evening before we docked to take on fuel and water. We pulled off the fuel dock and anchored in the "Canadian Anchorage" for the evening. We dropped the dinghy and Mike sent Ruth and me to Safeway. On the way, we found Honga (they had turned off their radio), to pass on to them that Sea Dancer was also coming to cocktails. After we got back to the boat, we stood an anchor watch due to a storm. It wasn't bad, and there were no problems, but you can never be to careful. As soon as the storm passed, Tom and Becky on Honga, and Ron and Karen on Sea Dancer and Steve (don't know the name of his boat) came for cocktails. As always, it was a lot of fun. On August 29, Mike and I headed in to Safeway to pick up a few things as well as doughnuts for breakfast. After breakfast, Mike and I headed to West Marine to check out the dinghy they have on sale. We decided not to get it. However, we took advantage of being there to pick up a bunch of other stuff. We got back to the boat and decided to head to the Magothy since everyone (NOAA weather and TV stations) was reporting that winds would not exceed 10 knots! We headed out and found winds of 15-25 knots of wind, though we had mild seas. About 15 minutes after we passed the Key Bridge, we heard that someone had jumped! Had we been 15 minutes slower, we would not have been able to transit the area. The ride was wet, but fairly comfortable. We arrived at the Magothy, dropped anchor, had lunch and promptly napped for a while (atleast Ruth and I did). We spent a quiet evening with icky weather. On August 30, We decided not to go anywhere today since everyone was forecasting weather similar to yesterday. Instead, we cleaned 2 of our sea strainers for the forward heads, and attempted to move the link panel from the utility room to the electrical panel in the pilot house. Unfortunately, we do not have enough twisted pair cable to complete the run, so we backed out of that. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing cards. On August 31, we left the Magothy and headed to Oxford. Actually, we weren't sure where we were going to stop when we headed out, we were thinking either Oxford or Solomon's. As we left the mouth of the Magothy, a squall hit that sent the winds climbing to around 30 knots. I was down below getting something when this happened, otherwise we would have turned around and headed back into the Magothy. Anyway, we continued along and I suggested that we may think about just going to Annapolis since the winds were strong (between 20 and 25). Well, as soon as we turned toward the Bay Bridge, the winds dropped to between 15 and 20 and we both felt that this would not be a problem, but we would check the anchorage at Annapolis just in case. The wind would not have made the anchorage too uncomfortable, but we decided to press on since the winds had abated further. After we passed Annapolis, and were committed, the wind picked up again and blew between 20 and 25 for the rest of the day. Still this was not a problem since we were running down the Eastern side of the Bay and that was the direction the wind was coming from. Once we passed the Eastern Bay, we did decide to call it a day and made the firm decision to head to Oxford! Believe it or not, it was actually a nice trip. Once we got on the Choptank, the winds dropped down to below 15, and there were no waves to speak of really. We dropped anchor, and spent a peaceful rest of the day