June 1 - 2, 2000 -- Wrightsville Beach Bound On June 1 at 1500 GMT (11:00 AM EDT), we left the City Marina in Charleston. It was a beautiful day, with perfect winds for sailing. The seas were comfortable, though on the beam. There was enough wind to provide us good stabilization and a boost from a reduced main. We discussed putting out additional sail, but decided not to. Mike was concerned that we could be faced with an emergency and I could injure myself. I agreed, reluctantly to this. At 1605 GMT, we saw dolphins playing in the inlet. They were swimming back and forth in the inlet diving through the waves. At 1830 GMT, Mike did his flipper call. At 1844 GMT, we saw the sailing vessel San Souci. We hailed them on the radio and chatted for a bit. Ken and Dee are headed up from Key West to Norfolk. They are anticipating stopping in Beaufort. At 2128 GMT, we saw dolphins! A young adult male came charging towards us. We watched as he went shooting past us by several hundred yards. By the time he realized what happened, he decided there were more interesting 'fish' in the sea and swam on out of sight. At 2200 GMT, the water maker cut off. It looks like we need to change the pre filters when we get to Wrightsville Beach. This was not something that needed to be addressed right away as we had about 400 to 500 gallons on fresh water on board. This would last us for over a month if we needed it to last that long. On June 2 at 0800, I came on watch. Mike informed me that the winds had kicked up and he had reduced the main because if we continued at the speed were going, we would get to Wrightsville Beach before daylight. . At this point, we were experiencing some rolly seas. After Mike went below, I checked everything out and discovered that we had very little of the main out. I was ready to wake Mike up and have him come back out and put more sail out! No wonder we were rolling from side to side so much, we had next to no stability! I didn't wake him up though, I figured that if he set the sail, he could deal with the rolly sleeping, which he did disgustingly well. When he woke up, I asked him why he furled the sail so much. He told me that we were going way too fast and he wanted to slow us down. I asked him why he didn't just slow the engines down. He said, "Oops, well, I couldn't see how much I reduced it even using a flash light from the helm it was too dark, and we do not leave the cockpit area without both of us awake." I went to bed. At 1000 GMT, Dave and Dee on Sherrette hailed to say hi. They are on their way to Beaufort. At 1131 GMT, we anchored in Banks channel in Wrightsville Beach, NC. We traveled 170 miles marina to anchorage in 20 hours 30 minutes at an average speed of 8.29 knots

On June 3, knowing that David, my brother, would be arriving from Baltimore today and heading out tomorrow for Petaluma, CA, I decided that I wanted to be there when he arrived home. We puttered around the boat for a bit, then called Yvonne, who came out and picked us up. We spent the day goofing off and talking about how things were going. David arrived home, and after he got changed, we spent some time catching up with each other. Then we suggested going out to dinner. David and Yvonne liked the idea, so we suggested that we head back to the boat and meet them around 7:30 PM EDT at the dinghy dock to head out to dinner. We got back to the boat expecting thunderstorms, that did not hit. We talked to a boat called Phase II about what we had heard and were expecting. They moved their boat a bit, then let out additional chain. We tuned up the radar to see the squall lines, and decided that it would be good to move our reservations to 8:30 PM. I headed out to pick up David and Yvonne because they were already on their way when we decided what we should do. At 8:15 PM, we headed out to dinner since the squall lines were moving south and west of us. We had dinner at the Port City Chop House. It was pretty good, but a little on the expensive side for the quality of food. Since both of us are smokers, we were seated in the bar area. This worked out well since they had a TV that we watched occasionally since they were giving storm alerts. We had just finished dinner when the county just north of us issued a storm alert. We headed back to the boat, and David and Yvonne joined us. We hung out on the boat watching the squall lines for a bit until, during a lull, I took David and Yvonne back to the dock. It was a fun evening!

Around 10:30 AM, we headed into town. Yvonne was doing some running around with David, so we were right on the way. We headed back to their place because they needed our help to drop off the ship's van. David drove the coast guard van, Yvonne drove one of their friend's car, and Mike drove David's truck. When we got in, Mike asked me why he was the one driving. I told him that if we wrecked his truck (he just bought it late last year), I didn't want him mad at me. He groaned and drove, without incident. After dropping off the vehicles, we headed to lunch. We had just enough time to enjoy lunch before we had to get back to the house so David could change and head off to his flight. We went with Yvonne to the airport and saw David off, then headed back to the house for a little while. We headed back to the boat since we had made plans with John and Bonnie of Bonniewinds for cocktails. When we got back, I tried to hail them. Emerald Dragon hailed us, and we invited them over for cocktails as well. Right after we got off the radio with them, Bonnie Winds called and we set cocktail time for 6:00 PM. Once our social plans were set, we went to work changing the filters on our water maker. We started out changing only the 2 prefilters; however, after tracing everything out, we discovered there are 5 prefilters, including 2 dirt filters (25 and 5 micron), 2 charcoal and 1 limestone filter. It was a bit tedious, but well worth it. It was a fun evening. We compared notes on cruising locations, and experiences as well as our plans for the future. The one thing you can say for cruisers is they are a varied collection!

After the net, we called Yvonne to find out what her schedule was. She told us she was shopping, and wouldn't be able to pick us up until 11:00 or so. That worked out for us, since I needed to do some sewing. Mike pulled out my sewing machine and I sewed patches on our dinghy cover where it had ripped. The new dinghy has a couple of connections where the hand strap secure to themselves and these wear on the cover. After we completed that, we called Yvonne, and spent the afternoon there. We stopped by West Marine on the way since we needed some stuff and gave Rob a ride because he was picking up a part he ordered. After returning to the boat and having dinner, we took a dinghy ride around the anchorage. We talked with the folks on 'If' for a bit. They were also in Fernandina Beach during the storm. As we were headed back to the boat, Rob and Janet on Emerald Dragon invited us over for a drink. We begged off since we were both pooped from spending the day with Yvonne and the kids, and it was almost 9:00 at night! When we first started cruising we could not figure out why bed time for everyone seemed to be around 9 or 10pm. We through it was because they did not have TV's on board. Well low and behold we are asleep early and up early (at least Mike is) I like to sleep late, getting up normaly around 7:45 or 8:00am

Mike woke me up early so that we could swap out a capacitor on the generator. We knew that we had one that was bad, and had known this for some time. So we set about changing it. As soon as we pulled the cover off the capacitor box, we easily spotted the problem and swapped out the bad capacitor. Well, it wasn't that easy. Mike wound up reattaching it because he was still concerned about me possibly injuring myself with the twisting that I would have to do to get at it. We had to pull the floor up by the box so we could get to the bottom where the nuts are that hold the capacitors on. Anyway, we got that done, fired up the genset and charged our batteries. At about 7:30 AM, we heard Joye calling the Coast Guard because their dinghy had been stolen during the night. The first thing the Coast Guard asked was if they had a land line available that they could call on. This is something we don't understand. If you are on a boat, with a VHF radio, why do they always ask about a land line? To us, this is just absurd! We broke into the conversation and offered our cell phone. We then headed over to Joye where we met Bob and Shirley. While Bob was on the phone with the Coast Guard, Shirley, Mike and I chatted for a few minutes. She heard several kids out in the water the previous night, and I told her that we had heard Rob and Janet on Emerald Dragon call the Coast Guard because the kids had made some threats about sinking their boat. We found out later that the Coast Guard never came down. There are sometimes when we wonder what is more important the war on drugs in the carribean or protecting the folks on the water. After Bob got off the phone, he and I headed out to see if we might be able to find his dinghy. As a guess, we headed toward the public dinghy dock. As we passed it, we saw a dinghy floating by the rocks just north of the dock and pulled in to investigate. Sure enough, we had found Joye's dinghy! We got it back to Joye, and on closer inspection, someone had definitely tampered with the boat. There was a budwiser bottle label floating in the bottom; the towing strap had been disconnected and several lines had been undone from the dinghy as well. Fortunately, everything ended well, but we took the note and started locking our dinghy at night. After the morning excitement, we called Yvonne and headed out to her place. On the way, we stopped by West Marine, this time with our coupons and purchased what was on our list. We also found a wash and fold place and dropped off some laundry. We had blankets, etc that are just too large for the machine on board to clean that good, that really needed a regular size machine. We headed back to the boat around 2:00 PM. I know we did something, but I can't remember what! Around 4:30, we headed to Vito's for pizza, then arrived back in time for cocktails on Joye. Bob and Shirley have a Hinkley 40. It is a magnificent boat with incredibly cared for wood work inside and out. Meticulous comes to mind, in fact. It is well designed and well laid out. We had a wonderful time with them. Then at the end of the evening, we all headed back to Nightwinds for a quick tour of our boat. When Bob got to the engine room, he had to be pried out by Shirley because he was salivating over our engines! After that, we all said good night

On June 7, when we checked the weather this morning, we thought we might have an opportunity to leave tomorrow. Unfortunately, that did not pan out. We spent most of the day, pretty much like we spent the rest of the week. We headed over to Yvonne's around 10:30 AM, and hung out for the day there. As we headed back to the boat, we saw Mutual Fun. Bob was on deck inflating their dinghy and waived us over. We pulled up along side and chatted for a few minutes. They had just arrived from Green Turtle Key this morning, and after catching 3 hours of sleep at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, they headed to Wrightsville Beach. He told us that it was a bit of a rough trip and Mona had just gone to sleep below. We invited them over for cocktails if we are still here tomorrow. Unfortunately, by the end of the day, our weather window had not materialized. On June 8, we headed over to Yvonne's again, around 10:30 AM or so. However, since we knew we would be leaving soon, we planned to leave around 2:00 PM so we could be back on the boat in time to check forecasts and listen to Herb. I checked the weather from the house (the Internet is one of those things I definitely miss!), and saw that we would almost definitely have a weather window tomorrow. We decided that if we got the weather window, we would take it, even though it meant leaving on a Friday which is supposed to be bad luck. On our way back to the boat, Yvonne dropped us off at Vito's for pizza since it was a short walk from there to the dinghy dock. We ate our late lunch around 3:00 PM or so, and then headed back toward the boat. On the way, we saw Mona, on Mutual Fun, sitting outside enjoying the weather and reading. We pulled up and chatted a bit with her, confirmed cocktails and then headed back to the boat. On the way, we stopped by Joye to invite them as well. Finally, as we neared the boat, we saw Tom and D.L. on La Pappion who were just anchoring. We headed over and invited them as well before getting to the boat. Once we got there, we knew we would have our weather window. We focused on getting the boat in sailing order which took about an hour or so. This was perfect timing; because about 15 minutes later, everyone showed up with food & drink. It was a fun evening catching up on what people had done and where they had been

At 0930 GMT, we weighed anchor. We had extremely light winds heading out; we were measuring approximately 2 knots of wind. This was a good sign! At 1134 GMT, Mike did his customary flipper call. He even did it high tech! He used the loud hailer. At 1200 GMT, Joye hailed us on VHF. They had also decided to head out. We set up a radio check in with them until we were out of VHF range. Shortly after that, we passed through an area of severe radio noise, that took almost an hour to clear up. When it did, we checked in on the Cruisheimer's net. At 1300, we checked in with Joye. They were doing well, but were only going about 3 knots. They are trying to sail. We set the next check in for 1700 or so. At 1715, we could hear Joye calling us, but they couldn't hear us! Arcturus in Beaufort heard us and was able to hear Joye as well, so they did a quick relay for us. That ended our checkin with Joye. At 1733, Greensleeves hailed us. Dillon and Elizabeth are headed out of Beaufort, going to Ocean City, MD. We should be in visual range of each other some time around Cape Lookout. At 1840, we checked in with Greensleeves again. They told us that they do a check in at 2345 GMT and 1200 GMT on 8134 with friends. We decided to listen in, in case we were out of VHF range by then. At 1928, we saw a catamaran that was more or less paralleling our course. We tried to raise them, but received an answer from Skyus instead. They are headed for the Cape Lookout Bight where they will hole up for a while. We looked at this on the chart and it looks, like a great spot to stop saving a lot of time instead of going all the way into Beaufort NC. At 2135, we were talking with Greensleeves again, and our outside helm radio stopped transmitting. We swapped radios with the one in the aft stateroom and once again we had communications. We wonder if that was the reason that Joye couldn't hear us earlier. At 2230, we were getting close to being out of VHF range with Greensleeves. We set up a contact schedule of contact every 2 hours starting at 0000 on the SSB on 4045. On June 10 at 0225, Mike saw a shooting star. At 0616, I was being driven nuts! I had been seeing something for quite a while that wasn't moving, but had a solid white light. There were no buoys on the chart, and I couldn't figure out what it was. The light was to strong to use the night vision and make it out, and the regular binoculars were useless as well. I talked with Dillon who mentioned that his GPS had identified it as a miscellaneous navigation buoy. That was a relief! At 0743, I heard a "grunk" sound. We hit something. After a quick check through the boat, everything appeared to be fine, and no water was coming in. Our prop(s) had make sushi out of some poor fish. At approximately 0900, a sport fish was underway using its spotlight. After being night blinded by the idiot, I hailed him to let him know that we were out here and that he really shouldn't run us over. I also told him that it was illegal to run with your spot on all the time. He then proceeded to jack light the boat, and me for about 5 minutes before apologizing and speeding off. Consequently, I didn't see a smaller sport fish ahead of me, and I got with in two miles of him He hailed us and let us know to expect many more sport fishes and commercial fishing boats to come out of Oregon inlet in the next hour. We kept a close eye out for the next 2 hours! At 1224, we were having a hard time steering a straight course. We were approximately 3 hours past Oregon inlet at the time. Things calmed down a bit later, we figured we were being subjected to some pretty strong tidal flows. At 1245, Mike checked the hydraulic oil on the steering system. It wasn't far enough down to explain the problems we were experiencing, but he added some just in case. At 1712, we sighted dolphins off of Virginia Beach. They saw us and made a bee line for the boat. At 2035 GMT on June 10, we dropped anchor in Willoughby Bay in Norfolk, VA. We covered 280 miles in 35 hours with an average speed of 8 knots

On June 11, we decided we wanted to do as little as possible! The only thing we planned was to lower our dinghy, which we accomplished in the morning, before the heat and wind really picked up. We noticed that our Fischer-Panda generator was acting a little funny, with low voltage and low hertz. Usually, when we see low voltage, a capacitor has blown, but we usually see high hertz at that point. We figured we would check it in the morning. On June 12, we checked the capacitor bank and did not see any problems initially. We pulled out the book to verify our checks of the capacitors. The book recommended a continuity check. We also performed a second check on the microferrit rating. It's a good thing to, because one of the capacitors had continuity, but no microferrit reading, so we replaced it. There are 2 others that are reading approximately 20 microferrits under their rating, we are betting they will go shortly because the problem is persisting! After having breakfast and charging our batteries, we headed off to Hampton in search of a fax machine and West Marine. The search for a dinghy dock was a touch on the long side, but we managed to find it, thanks to the helpful people we met along the way. As we were pulling up to the dinghy dock, we saw Phase II. They anchored next to us for a night in Wrightsville Beach right before one of the thunderstorms that never hit. We got reacquainted, and after a few minutes talking we headed to check in at the Dockmaster's office. The dock office was a zoo! Everyone was frantically working on Ops Sail 2000 and Harbor Fest dock plans, so we left our fax and went in search of West Marine. According to everything we had heard, the West Marine was the first trolley stop. We looked at the trolley map and saw Queen's Way. We thought that that was where the store was. Unfortunately, it is on Queen St., almost 6 miles away. Anyway, we wandered around for a while and never found what we were looking for. We went back to the trolley stop and caught the trolley to West Marine. On our way out from there, we stopped at a little 'roach coach' for a lunch of hot dogs and fries. It was excellent. It took about 2 hours to get to and from West Marine. We stopped in the dock office, picked up our fax and headed to our dinghy. On the way there, we ran into Molly and Dan on Jolly Moon. We caught up with them for a few minutes, since we hadn't seen them since Charleston, then headed back to the boat because the news had said there would be thunderstorms in the afternoon. Once there, we dropped the forward sun awning we had put up, preparing for the winds that would accompany the thunderstorms. They never showed up. That night, after we went to bed, we heard on the VHF radio that Kiptopeake was experiencing 40 knots of wind. A few seconds later, we heard the aft sun awning making noise. This is our early indicator of building winds since it doesn't make noise under 20 knots! We had 20 knots of wind. We headed out and dropped it, and the winds were at 25. Almost since we arrived, we were facing south. With the coming of the front, we spun to face the north. Since we hadn't faced this direction previously, as a precaution against dragging anchor, we fired up the engines and watched the squall lines on radar for about an hour before powering everything down and going to sleep in the main saloon so we could hear the anchor alarm if we dragged anchor

On June 12, we decided to take it easy again. After all, we had a rough night! In the morning, I focused on writing logs. One of these days, I will learn to write them daily, or at least every other day rather than once a week! After napping, we were both hungry, but not inclined to fire up the generator for running the microwave for 30 seconds. We decided to test the microwave with the inverter. After checking the wiring to see if we could just run a line straight to the inverter distribution panel, we pulled the microwave out, and plugged it into the inverter plug in the main saloon. It worked, but wow, what a draw! We need to get a real small one to use with the inverter only and store when not in use! In the afternoon, we watched the Navy dropping and picking up folks in the water about a 1/2 nautical mile from us. This was cool, and we got pictures! On June 14, Mike woke up, looked out the window, and couldn't see anything. It was incredibly foggy. Immediately, he went upstairs and turned on the hailer and set it to the anchored in fog signal. We estimate that visibility was less than ¼ nautical mile. When the fog lifted a little bit, we headed into shore to drop off our trash and find out where we could tie our dinghy up. The first place we checked turned out to be a public boat ramp. This worked out well because we could drop our trash there. Unfortunately, we couldn't leave our dinghy, since there was no place to tie up just launch ramps. We headed back to the boat to make phone calls to the local marinas. After we figured out where we could tie up the dinghy, we called David to let him know where to go. He and Yvonne were in town visiting friends. He picked us up and we went to Al and Annette's house, where Yvonne was watching their kid while Al went to the doctor. We hung out there for most of the afternoon, and finally returned to the boat in time for dinner. After we got back and before dinner, the Coast Guard made an announcement about impending weather! They recommended that if at anchor put down a second anchor or let out additional anchor chain, if you weren't confident in your anchor, head to sea. We let out more anchor chain. We fired up the radar, and watched the squall lines miss us. So, for us, nothing came of the expected weather, thank goodness. That evening, we watched the making of the Kalmar Nickel on PBS. This is a replica of a tall ship that made several transatlantic crossings, and was scheduled to be one of the boats in the parade

In the morning, we took a dinghy ride around the anchorage to see if we knew anyone. After having anchored close to each other, and even talked on the VHF once or twice, we finally met the folks on Rainbow's End. They happened to be out in their cockpit when we went by, so we stopped and talked with them for a bit. After we got back, we were hailed by Second Line on VHF. They invited us to stop by, so we planned to stop by on our way back from the store. Next, we went into town for a few groceries. After we called the cab, the folks on Britican came in to the dinghy dock. We introduced ourselves and chatted until our cab came. I think we spent longer waiting for cabs today than we did anything else! We were in the store for about 5 minutes, but waiting on cabs for almost 30! On the way back to the boat, we stopped and picked up our mail at the dock office. On the way back, we stopped and met the Reed & Mary Jane on Second Line. They told us some of their cruising stories of the Caribbean. It was fun! After we got back and went through mail, we had a snack. It was too late to have lunch. Around 5:30 PM, the breeze was dying, the humidity was climbing and we had had enough. We finally gave up and flipped on the AC. After things cooled off a little bit, we decided to do another tour of the anchorage to see who had shown up. Perhaps there were other boats that we knew here. We hopped in the dinghy, started to go and the key jammed in the start position. Mike acted quickly to remove the wire from the positive battery terminal which saved the dinghy starter, battery and wiring! After cussing for a few minutes, we decided to deal with the problem in the morning since it was getting dark

We got up first thing in the morning to fix the ignition on our dinghy. Actually, we weren't going to fix it at all, but hot wire it. However, when we got the switch box loose from the controls, Mike was able to get it working again. We will fix this when we visit Annapolis. Just as we were finishing putting the dinghy back together, Janet on Britican stopped by to invite us and Second Line over to watch the tall ship's parade from their boat. They were planning to move to just outside the channel to get a good view. We had considered doing the same thing, but felt that it would be an interesting proposition considering our draft. So we accepted their invitation and had front row seats to the parade. We headed out to their boat around 7:45 AM since the parade was supposed to start at 8:00 AM on the Elizabeth River. On the way, we picked up Reed and Mary Jane from Second Line. We spent the morning talking, joking and watching boats. It was a lot of fun. Pictures will be forthcoming. At the end of the parade, we invited everyone over to watch the fireworks from Nightwinds that evening. We also stopped to invite Bill and Cindy on Rainbow's End. Everyone brought food and drink, and we spent the evening chatting about people we knew, people we didn't know, and of course, marine heads. It was great fun putting faces with voices and sharing in the camaraderie of the sea

We planned to start inventorying our storage areas today. However, after breakfast, I looked at Mike and informed him that I didn't feel like doing anything. We spent the morning watching cartoons. Or at least I did. Mike fell asleep. After a little while, I got bored. I didn't want to read, I didn't want to nap and I certainly didn't want to watch TV. Instead, I headed outside and started polishing our stainless steel stanchions and fly bridge stainless. I decided this obviously couldn't be work because I was having fun working on it. Mike woke up midway through and came outside to keep me company. He oohed and ahhed appropriately to keep me interested in continuing to work. I finally called it quits and took a nap. Mike piddled around since it was too hot for him to do anything. That evening, after firing up the generator to charge the batteries, I did laundry. After dinner, we tried to watch the fireworks, but it was too hazy for us to see much of anything, so we watched them on TV. Fireworks on TV just aren't like being there though

We woke up this morning to an announcement that the heat index would be over 100. The actual temperature would be 95. It is definitely much too hot to do anything outside for long. So, knowing that we would probably run Ling-Ling all day, we changed her oil and filter. After breakfast, we watched a Hobey Cat go over on its side. After watching the two people try to get it righted for about 15 minutes, we took our dinghy over to offer our help. They thanked us, but said that they were ok.. We headed back to the boat and continued watching them for another 45 minutes. They finally got it righted and were on their way again. They where righting it by standing on the wrong pontoon. I pulled the computer out to start writing logs, and got sidetracked on redesigning our boat cards. Once we had a design we liked, we pulled the printer out. We printed off 2 test prints so we could decide on what colors to make the text. Then, as we were ready to print our first set of new cards, we promptly ran out of ink! We then spent several hours trying to figure out where we stored our replacement ink cartridges. Finally, locating them exactly where we put them over a year ago, which, of course wasn't where we thought we had put them; we settled down to print cards and write logs. Next we took care of the mail we had been putting off, and then dropped our trash off at the public boat ramp. We had been watching a storm brew since around 6:00 PM. It finally hit around 9:00 PM. We had winds up to 30 knots, but nothing excessive. Norfolk and the tall ships got hit hard. One tall ship broke loose, a temporary floating dock broke loose and several anchored boats broke loose. One boat capsized by the Berkley Bridge south of Norfolk with 4 people onboard. The boat righted itself and they managed to get back aboard. It was all over by about 10:30 or so. Because they were forecasting additional weather, we slept in the main saloon. On June 19, we were planning to leave. However, sleeping in the main saloon takes quite a bit out you, and adds quite a bit of soreness. We decided to stay exactly where we were. Since we weren't going anywhere, I decided to work on cleaning the stainless for a bit before the heat of the day. At 1:30, we couldn't stand it any more and turned on the generator. There was no breeze. We fixed lunch and an afternoon thunderstorm hit just as we finished eating. We stood a storm watch. We saw winds as high as 36 knots. At the end of the storm, facing an adrenaline crash, we napped

At 1100 GMT, we raised the anchor and headed up the Chesapeake Bay. It was a pretty comfortable trip, though the winds would not cooperate and stay in our sail area. At 1330, we saw an enormous sea turtle lounging in the water. He was completely oblivious to us. Throughout the day, we had seen these square blocky things that really moved fast. At 1500, we finally got a good look at one. It happened to be one that was heading straight for us, that turned when it got about 1 nautical mile off. It was a military hovercraft and they are amazingly tough looking. We arrived at 1745 GMT and set the anchor in Fishing Bay. Once we arrived there, we dropped the dinghy. Mike sent me into town to do some provisioning. I went to Ruark's Marina. I called the Deltaville Town and Country Market, they will pick you up and drop you back off as long as you spend at least $25.00 there. While I did that, Mike sat anchor watch. He also took the starboard aft locker apart looking for a reason why our autopilot was acting erratically, or at least more erratically than it has. We are wandering a little more than normal right now. He found a wire had fallen relatively close to the compass. That could be it, maybe. Anyway, we will find out the next time we are underway. We spent a quiet evening aboard the boat enjoying the evening and relaxing after a day underway

We headed into town today. Well, it didn't start out that way. We went in to use the phone since cell coverage isn't great here. It fluctuates between moderate signal and no service, and seems to prefer no service! We headed to Fishing Bay Harbor Marina. They have no landing fee, and they have free loaner bikes. We originally were going to go to the cafe there, but it is only open on the weekends so the dock master suggested we take the bikes into town. So after we made phone calls, we biked into town (about 2 miles or so). Mike doesn't think it was 2 miles. We stopped at West Marine for wire and oil absorb pads, then headed over to Sal's for lunch. I had a fish sub and Mike had a small Pizza (it was 14"!) and we split an order of garlic cheese bread. After we ordered the food, I walked over to the store and picked up taco seasoning. After lunch, we biked back to the Fishing Bay Harbor Marina, dropped the bikes off, bought ice cream and headed for the boat. After recovering, we put the dinghy back on deck since we are planning to head out tomorrow. After that, I decided I wanted to work on stainless, and Mike decided he wanted to help me. We each took one of the chocks on the bow, a furling housing and a stanchion. While I worked on the anchor chain strike plate, Mike did the backing plates for the bow sprit. Mike called it quits, and I came along after finishing what I was doing. We were cooling down when I saw the brass on the inside ship's wheel. I decided to see how the metal polish works on that. It isn't nearly as good as it is on stainless! Mike decided to run the 12 volt antenna power and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing that. We can now watch TV with a powered signal amplifier for our antenna with the generator off. Mike is thrilled. He really likes to watch Judge Judy! On June 22, we hung out since they were forecasting storms just north of us. We stayed put keeping an eye out for anything that might head our way. Nothing ever did materialize so we had a nice quiet relaxing day

We left out of Fishing Bay at 1009 GMT. It was beautiful. The winds were in our sail area enough for us to use our sails, though we had to motor sail. Hey, at least we used them! On the way out, we saw a tall ship anchored by Gwynn Island. As we approached Smith Point we saw Arcturus. We originally met them in West Palm Beach and have been pacing them (sort of) up the coast from there. As we headed north today, we took some photos of their boat under sail. We caught up with them on what's been going on with them and then pulled ahead and left them behind. It was a comfortable trip, though the wind kept bouncing in and out of our sail area. Finally, we put the sails away for the day. We arrived at 2300 GMT in the mouth of the Severn River. We were greeted with a frightening sight. There were 50 + sailboats, all under sail, most of which were participating in a race. Our boat lumbers at no wake speed. Almost the entire channel coming up the Severn is no wake. We successfully negotiated the channel, but became progressively annoyed at the other sail boats. The most annoying moment came, though, when we were anchoring. We had put the anchor down and were waiting for a boat to clear our stern before setting. A boat at our bow had the audacity to ask us to move our boat out of their way. As far as I am aware, boats at anchor have right of way, unless they are anchored in the channel. We weren't in the channel. We were anchored in a designated anchorage. This is one our pet peeves. There seems to be a mentality among "day" sail boaters (and a couple of others as well) that just because they are under sail, everyone must give way to them. This is true, to a point. However, vessels of limited maneuverability, constrained by draft or a few other conditions supersede boats under sail. The worst is a sailboat motor sailing! They are under POWER and therefor are supposed to follow the rules of a boat under power, but don't. Finally, there are a lot of day and weekend boaters that don't know the rules of the road or don't want to. It is certainly poor seamanship, as well as pure idiocy not to consider things such as gross tonnage and other such things when underway. We try to follow the rules of the road and it is irritating when we come across the arrogance and stupidity (a very bad combination) that seems to be so pervasive on the weekends and exhibited by Sport Fishers in general

On June 24, we had a number of things we wanted to accomplish. We called the water taxi in the morning, and headed into Annapolis. Our first stop was to drop film off. Next we headed to Bay Shore Marine. We picked up a new fuel lift pump for Tinky (our Northern Lights generator). We thought that was the problem. Next we made an unplanned stop at Inflatable Experts. We talked with them about the problems we had been having with our dinghy. Of course, these were installed problems done by Inflatable Experts in Ft. Lauderdale! They asked us to bring the boat in Monday so they could make repairs. Next we stopped to visit with Bob and Sherri on Shamaal. They are up on the hard at a boat yard here. After the visit, we headed to Fawcetts, then to get our film. On June 25, we went back in to town to pick up the remainder of our film. We made extra copies for Britican (whose boat we were on) and Second Line who were also with us for the tall ships. When we got back to the boat, we found that the anchor was slowly 'plowing' its way towards the channel. We were slowly dragging at the rate of 60 feet per 24 hours. We decided to reanchor the boat. On June 26, we dropped the dinghy off to get fixed. I also stopped by Bay Shore Marine to discuss the problems with Tink. Mike claims I was also supposed to get some relays, though I don't remember that. When I got back to the boat, we futzed with it for a while, identified the problem and got Tink working again. One of the connections on one of the relay blocks had vibrated loose. It is supposed to "clip in" to the relay box so this doesn't happen. I then called Northern Lights to complain about the problem, since we have been having this problem for the last year! On June 27, Mike wanted to replace the flag halyard that had worn through. He started to go up the mast, then stopped because the wind kicked up. After that, Mike made some phone calls to various suppliers to get information on a couple of nifty things for the boat. In the afternoon, Britican stopped by for a few minutes to drop off home made cookies (they were tasty) and pick up the pictures we wanted to give them. On June 28, Tink again had a wire come loose. In fact, it was the same one as before! After that, we headed in to pick up light bulbs and milk. The dinghy was supposed to be ready today. Unfortunately, there was some corrosion that needed to be dealt with so it took longer than expected. That evening, Bob on Shamaal (Sherri is home visiting family), Frank and Dee on Vagabond Tiger, Bill and Janet on Britican, Eric and Susan on Ellysia, and Pat and Mike on Impulse all came over for cocktails. It was a great evening with all type of food & drink brought by everyone. On June 29, The dingy was supposed to be ready. As of 5:00 PM EDT, it still wasn't. I headed over to check out what was wrong with it. Of course, if they had done what we wanted, it would have been completed since most of the corrosion was in the shift box! Can someone please explain why service places are doing what they want to do to fix things instead of just doing what the owner wants and just replacing the part? We think our Zodiac is a great dink and a hell of a deal compared to the others out there. But Inflatable Experts, at three different stores have done everything in their power to make replacing the dinghy a pain in the ass!

Today, we left Annapolis headed for the Corsica River. It would be a short 4 and a half hour trip. During this trip, we forgot to keep our log of weather, etc. The trip was easy and quite beautiful. The only place on the Eastern Shore we have been is St. Michael's, and that was several years ago on our last boat. It was a real eye opener to head into the Eastern Shore on the Chester River. The only down point on the trip was the fact that we experienced a problem with Tink. After we anchored, we checked his raycor, and changed the filter element. That seemed to take care of everything. Next, we dropped the dinghy and fixed the lights. As it turns out, a fuse had blown! Finally, Mike went up to the first spreader to put a new flag halyard on as the old line chafed through