July 1-4, 2000 -- Our First Raft Up On July 1, since we were expecting some friends to show up today, we didn't want to get involved in a long project. As a consequence, we didn't really do anything today. As is usual when at anchor, we maintained a radio watch. At one point, heard the vessel Hydrotherapy calling Skiboze, one of the boats we were semi-expecting. We hailed them and chatted for a few minutes. They were headed to a marina in Chestertown instead of to the raft up. Just as we gave up expecting anyone, a parade of boats arrived with everyone we were expecting. We wound up being the anchor boat for the raft up, and had 4 boats on one side and 5 boats on the other side of us. It was a fun evening. On July 2, most of the boats from the raft up decided to head up to the Sassafras river. Since there was only 1 T head dock, we opted to stay put since there wasn't a close by anchorage to where everyone was going. One other boat decided to go out for a sail, then return to raft with us for a second evening. It was a quiet evening but enjoyable. On July 3, we departed the Corsica River headed for the Magothy. There was some discussion about heading there to avoid the fireworks, so we figured that if people showed up, that would be great, if they headed elsewhere, that would be fine as well. We left around 1400 GMT. It was a very tight sail, but at 1628, just after we cleared the edge of the Chester river, we went under sail completely. We had the engines shut off! We continued that way for most of the trip to the Magothy. However, as we came close to a set of anchored boats fishing, we decided to douse the sails and go under motor. We dropped anchor in the Magothy at 1831 GMT. As evening came on, we tried to fire up Tink. He had developed a new problem. An injector appears to have died. On July 4, we did nothing. Well, we did almost nothing. It was a nice quiet day with some good fireworks launched from Sandy Point, we think. We were not expecting to be able to see any fireworks, and that was fine. It seems to us that we had watched fireworks up and down the east coast for one reason or the other. We were a little too far away to see either Annapolis' or Baltimore's fireworks though

July 5, 2000 -- Oxford Bound Today, we made the trip from the Magothy River to Oxford, on Town Creek, just off the Tred Avon River. Actually, we didn't start out with Oxford as our destination. Since Tink is having problems with an injector and we did not have a spare on board (we had been meaning to do this but kept forgetting), we called around to see who was an authorized repair center for Northern Lights so we could get the part. As it turns out, one of the yards we have been considering for work is one, and it is located in Oxford. So, we headed there. After we left the anchorage, while still in the Magothy, we swung our compass. We have a fluxgate compass on our boat. We were informed by Simrad, that in order for our compass to act properly, we would need to swing it anytime we went more than 200 miles north or south! This is required for all compasses, to deal with magnetic differences as you move up and down the coast. This helped some with our autopilot woes, but the boat still wanders an unacceptable amount. The trip was uneventful, without enough wind to even put our main out, so we motored (big surprise there huh?). Once we arrived, we talked with Braxton, the yard manager. We ordered new injectors for tink and got the estimate process underway. After talking with our insurance adjuster, she gave the OK to split the work between 2 yards. Oxford Boat Yard's haul out slip is located at the end of a very long, very narrow fairway. We did not feel comfortable moving the boat that far down and the insurance adjuster agreed. So, when we head south again, we will get the repair work below the water line completed. Anyway, Braxton came down and checked out the damage as well as the other work we wanted done and told us that she would be sending down a couple of people to check the damage more closely and put together an estimate for us and the insurance company. At the end of the day, we received a call from our insurance adjuster to let us know that there would be no surveyor available, but that she would authorize the work to be completed provided that we submitted photos, and filled out the ship owner/masters protest, which she would fax us. All in all, a very productive day

July 6-8, 2000 -- Days at Dock On July 6, since we were near a post office, we decided to take care of mailing off the pictures that we had promised to various people. In addition, we would be able to wander around the town and pick up a few of the things we were running low on. So, after sending off the pictures of the damage and dropping off the contact information for our insurance adjuster, we started our walk into town. The first place we stopped was the post office. We mailed off the tall ship pictures to Reed and Mary Jane, who were with us on Britican. We also sent the duplicate New Years pictures off to Henri and Anne from the Bahamas that we just got developed. We then wandered towards downtown. We checked out a couple of shops, and managed to purchase a couple of things that were on our list. We then hit the little general store so we could pick up some perishables. I found frozen sword fish steaks, which would help keep the milk chilled on the walk back from town. It worked out well, and we headed back to the boat with enough stuff to keep us underway for another week. After we got back to the boat, one of the workers stopped by to look at everything. He let us know that he should be able to formulate an estimate for everything except the stainless steel fabrication. That would have to wait until Kato Marine received the stanchions. July 7 saw us completing the estimate process as closely as it could be, pending the stainless estimate. After reviewing it, we oked the fax to the insurance adjuster. We waited patiently for our new injectors which never came. Braxton immediately jumped into action and found out what happened. Alaska Deisel fell behind in their order fulfillment, so the injectors went out a day late. There is no Saturday delivery on Blue label shipments. Alaska Deisel agreed to ship out a second set "red label" (overnight with Saturday delivery), and we stayed the night for free. On July 8, we had just finished breakfast when we received a knock on the boat. Mary, the dockmaster let us know that a boat with reservations was waiting on the T-Head. She let us know that we didn't need to vacate until noon since that is official check out time. We decided to head out even though we were still waiting on our injectors because the delivery could happen anytime during the day on Saturday. Wouldn't you know it, we weren't at anchor 10 minutes when Oxford Boat Yard hailed us on the radio to let us know that our injectors arrived. We dropped the dinghy and I went in to pick them up. As soon as I got back, we installed the new injector and fired tink up. He worked perfectly! We put him under load for about an hour with absolutely no problem. We shut him down, and enjoyed the rest of the day. That evening, we tried to fire tink up again, but he wouldn't stay running. We figured that there was still some air in the system somewhere. We tried bleeding him again, but found that we weren't able to get fuel to the injectors any longer. Hmmm. Something else appears to have gone wrong. We fired up Ling-Ling. We did a few more checks on Tink to no avail. We are almost certain that it is now the injector pump, but we want a second opinion before spending the money on this. We will hand tink over to an expert to verify our finding

July 9-13, 2000 -- At Anchor Then At Dock On July 9, since we had dropped the dinghy, Mike decided to buff out the "Road Harbour, BVI" shadow that was showing up in the exhaust film on the stern of the boat. We've been talking about doing this for a long time. We just never seemed to get around to doing it! After breakfast, I sat down to try to catch up on writing logs. I was certainly behind! While I continued working on logs, Mike started fixing the door on the fly bridge radio cabinet. He finally reached the point where he had to wait for the glue to dry before he could put the last connector on. On July 10, we took the dinghy in to the dock to find out if there was room at the dock again since Tink still wasn't working properly. We returned to the boat and brought it back in. In the process of running the shore power cables, we finally were able to get 2 50 amp power cords hooked up and running! We spent the rest of the day faxing things to various people. Near the end of the day, the weather report indicated that we should expect high winds and bad thunderstorms, so we put extra lines on the boat. On July 11, we decided that since we were at dock, we should completely remove the last of the Inmarsat A cable about 50 pounds of it was remaining, which I am happy to report we did successfully. Mike then had the great idea to move our games from the V Berth to the aft companionway locker. The workers came out to take measurements for our new steering tank and to remove our railing, lifelines and stanchions. Later, the boat yard loaned us the yard car so we could head to a real grocery store for reprovisioning and to 'experience' the night life of Easton and Oxford. We compromised, and only had dinner before heading to the grocery store. On July 12, based on our success in the aft stateroom, Mike stripped the wallpaper on the forward bulkhead in the main saloon while I polished the brass clock and barometer. It looks like a different boat now! The generator guy came out and confirmed that the injection pump is bad. He removed it and the 3 injectors. 2 of them were not seated correctly, lacking a copper washer at the bottom, missing since sometime before be got the boat. One was so clogged with carbon build up that it was difficult to get out! Everything was sent off to be rebuilt. On July 13, since we knew how much of our teak caprail would be replaced, we set about sanding our last section of teak for the caprail! I sanded then Mike came behind and put the Armada on. Later on it rained; Mike was upset, but the rain didn't affect the teak. We got mail! Finally, we pulled down our staysail for repair. We discovered that the repairs from chafing were a little to much for me to repair so we sent it to a sail maker

This morning, we contacted Fisher-Panda about the problems we are currently experiencing with that generator. Aside from the problems that we already know about, I also asked them about a strange problem with the generator not being able to sustain 120 volts over long periods of time. One of the chief questions they asked was about the load on the generator at the time. This got us thinking, and we decided to work on the gauges when we went back to the boat. In the mean time, we also had Fisher-Panda send us 3 new ground solenoids and 6 new 80 Microferrit capacitors. Next we headed into the Yard store and found out that we would have to vacate the dock this morning. After talking with Mary (who is an AWESOME dockmaster) about it, she maneuvered things around so that we could stay. As it turns out, it wasn't difficult to arrange. We also asked if the store sold 5 gallon buckets of oil. Since it was time to change the oil in the main engines, twice up from Florida and once back down there between oil changes not bad. Unfortunately, they don't; however, they offered to pick them up for us in Easton. We headed back to the boat and started working on the AC ammeter gauges. Both of us then had significant brain farts and couldn't remember how to hook up an AC ammeter. I walked up to the office in search of an electrician. I wound up helping the staff shift 3 boats around to make room for a 45' Defever. We continued investigating the AC ammeter issue, and found these doughnut looking things that the gauge wires hooked to. At about that time, the electrician came down so we picked his brains for a few minutes which really cleared things up for us! So, we headed back to the yard store to get some new screws and washers. We replaced the old ones, and we suddenly had a working ammeter! Mike sent me back up to get additional screws and washers so we could replace the rest of the "doughnut connections. While I was at the store, I also received a shirt for stepping in to help shift the boats around; that was a pleasant surprise. Later that afternoon, the store delivered our oil so we can change the oil in our mains this weekend. Storms struck in the evening. We saw winds as high as 40 knots. We checked the lines periodically throughout the night and slept in the main saloon since it looked like the dock would be flooded out

On July 15, I didn't want to do anything. Infact, I said to Mike that I didn't want to do anything. Mike patted me on the head and told me that was fine, but he was going to change the oil. Exactly 17 minutes later, Mike called me to help him in the engine room. So much for me not working today. We spent the next several hours changing the oil and filters on the engines. We also had planned to change the air filters on the engines. Unfortunately, when we reviewed our filters, we discovered that we didn't have any air filters! By the time we were done, we had only 1 gallon of oil left on the boat! On July 16, we did nothing. We didn't have the parts to fix Ling-Ling, and the dock hand person didn't know where we could dispose the oil. So we decided to just take the day and relax. On July 17, Ling Lings parts came in. Mike went behind her and changed out the ground solenoid. While he was back there, he discovered a second wire that we had failed to move when the ground solenoid died. We hope that is the reason that she wouldn't charge her battery. After he crawled out from behind her, we tested her out; she fired up! We will find out if she will run properly after about 4-5 hours of run time after we leave the dock. We paid a visit to Braxton to find out what kind of progress payment we would need to make on the insurance work, as well as to talk with her about when we should bring the boat back. We set a yard date of August 28. She also said that she would have to let us know about the progress payment because they were still waiting on KATO Marine to get a quote back for remanufacturing our stainless. On July 18, Tink's parts did not show up. On the flip side, we put a second coat of armada on. We spent part of the day cleaning the boat up since we swapped tours with Carol and Gary on Yellow Rose. They have a cute Lord Nelson tug, complete with three steaming lights in case they tow something. It is a very nicely laid out boat. While they were touring our boat, Bill and Janet from Britican showed up on their dinghy. They came aboard and we chatted for a little while. It was good seeing them again

On July 19, we plotted our course to Annapolis, using some of the new functions in the latest release of the Capn. We discovered a bug and reported it to the developer. Since we had some time, we hauled out the salt blocks so we could place salt in the salt tanks for our Lectrasans. While we were filling the salt tank in the aft stateroom, we discovered that the float switch on our aft stateroom bilge had gone bad. Unfortunately, we did not have a spare float switch on board but they did have one at the chandlery. After we completed that, we found that the starboard head salt injection pump is having a problem with injecting salt. Since we will be in DC in a bit, we will have Will check it out since it is still under warranty. Finally, our injector pump still had not arrived so we couldn't leave. On July 20, we took advantage of the time to put another coat of armada on our rails and I polished some stainless. In the afternoon, our injector pump got hooked up, the generator test fired and we left the dock to anchor out for the evening. We tried to fire up Tink for the evening, and he wouldn't stay running. On July 21, we made the run to Annapolis from Oxford. We made it in well before the races. I headed in to Bay Shore Marine to get some spare relays. After checking things out, we discovered that one of the wires had pulled out from the shut down relay. We fixed it and had a fully operational generator again! That evening, we watched the set up for the sailboat races, it was quite amusing. On July 22, we corrected the ground solenoid problem on Ling-Ling. After Mike showered, we discovered that the starboard shower sump was no longer working. So, we headed in to Fawcetts to get a replacement. Mike told me that since he fixed Ling-Ling, I would get to replace the pump. On July 23, right after we woke up, we heard a horn blowing. We came up on deck and discovered that a boat had dragged between us and the boat that was blowing its horn. Mike went on deck to find out how much scope he had out. His response was that he had "enough" out. Mike pushed him on it, and he said that he had about 40 feet out. Mike advised him that we had out 65 feet, and that our boat was 68 feet and that he was in our swing circle and we were both in danger if he didn't move his boat. He said he would move it, then went back inside. After a few minutes, it was obvious he had no plans to move his boat, so we broke out the rap CD we keep for this type of situation. We cranked up the outside speakers, the pilot house and V-berth speakers. That wasn't loud enough, so we also taped open the mike to our hailer and placed that near one of the speakers. The idiot left about 10 minutes later. Around 11:00 or so, we called the boats that we knew and suggested we meet in town for lunch. We rendezvoused with Don and Gloria on Zaftra, Bob and Mona on Mutual Fun, and Eric and Susan on Ellysia. After lunch, we wandered over to check out Shamaal since it is on the hard, then wandered back to the ego alley dinghy dock. It was fun!

On July 24, we set about consolidating the stuff we had spread out between the port and starboard staterooms, into only one stateroom. We decided to put everything in the port stateroom. After that, we reviewed the contents of the storage area under the starboard berth. We found lots of paper towels. At the same time, we also decided to check out our storm sails and other stuff stored there. On July 25, we started out the day removing the wallpaper from the starboard stateroom. After working on that for most of the day, we headed over to Ellysia to help with their radio problem. We had forgotten several crucial steps and it took most of the afternoon to remember them! However, we had a lot of fun hanging out with Eric and Susan. On July 26, we focused on correcting a wiring issue with the bunk light in the starboard stateroom. We decided to splice the light over the bunk with the wire to the overhead lights in the cabin. The bottom line is, now the light works! It rained all day! We decided to put out a tarp and funnel to catch rain water to fill our tanks. They filled completely, so we took advantage of the excess water to do a load of laundry, a load of dishes and take a shower. At 5:30 PM or so, we started receiving cancellations for the cocktail party that was scheduled for tonight. The only folks that were able to make it were Lex and Linda from Lexel. We spent a great evening with them. On July 27, we called Oxford Boat Yard to find out the amp draw on the new autopilot pump that they are installing for us. They needed some additional information, so Mike crawled into the lazzerette to get it. While he was down there, we discovered that a cotter pin had broken and needed to be replaced, but we were able to get all of the information that they needed. We also called Heart to find out exactly how to wire up our alternator so the link panel was aware of the charge coming into it. We got the information and rewired our link panel shunt, then hooked up the alternator feed wire. It worked! That evening, we had a rescheduled cocktail party. It was a lot of fun. We had Vagabond Tiger, Shamaal, Elyssia, Mutual Fun, Goody Two Shoes, and Zaftra all came out. It was a tad bit on the crowded side, but everyone was comfortable and the cocktail party ran until almost midnight! On July 28, we pulled out wires from the electrical panels that are no longer used. This freed up some space to run new wires when we are ready to do that. We need to finish removing this wiring, since we only half removed it. Our inverter still isn't acting quite right, so I placed a second call to Heart, and found out that we had to make a second modification to the shunt wiring. We did that; we will see how it goes tonight!

On July 29, we woke up to the inverter not working. It had shut down on a low voltage error. It had also only used 100 amp hours. Mind you, our battery bank is currently 880 amp hours strong! Previously, we had a discharge floor set on the batteries of 50%. I have updated this to a discharge floor of 100% so that we can last through the night. On July 30, we went over to Shamaal to borrow their scanner. We had a drawing of our storm sail layout and sizes that we wanted to scan for the operations manual. While we were there, we chatted about several subjects, including the problems we are experiencing with our batteries. I decided to attempt to equalize our batteries at that point. On the way to visit Shamaal, we stopped by Mutual fun to find out about why they are now calling their boat "mutual front and other assorted disasters." They had a rough time getting underway for the sea trial of their new autopilot. It started with their windlass not working, and went on to fouled anchors and other assorted problems. Their autopilot performed flawlessly though. After completing our scanning task, (Thanks again Sherrie!) we headed back to the boat. On the way, we discovered that Elyssia had moved their boat out to the anchorage in between us and Mutual Fun. They needed to clean their bottom before testing their new autopilot. We returned to the boat and pulled out the old hydraulic generator wiring. Once we completed that, we tried to equalize all 4 batteries on our port bank. The equalize refused to work! Once we disconnected the temperature compensation, it at least would stay in equalize, but did not seem to be working correctly. Since I had never attempted equalization before, I sought the wisdom of someone experienced. I called Bob on Shamaal. He recommended that we only attempt to equalize 1 battery at a time. I tried this, and wound up killing a battery! So, being the ever brave and intrepid soul that I am, I moved on to another battery. We were able to partially equalize it before it was time for bed. On July 31, we had success! The inverter not only stayed functional all night, but discharged 140 amp hours! Whether this was because we removed the failing/dead battery and replaced it with a good one, or because of the partial equalization on one of the other batteries, I don't know. Since we had such success with our batteries, we decided to run the wires for the raw water wash down pump, the fuel moving & polishing system and the wire for the forward lighter outlet. After much futzing, swearing and sweating, we decided to call it a day after connecting the wires for the wash down pump and fuel moving system. That evening, we headed over to Ellysia for cupcakes. It was an enjoyable evening