October 15 - 24, 2000 -- Week Five Plus in Oxford

I think we have hit 'the wall' in our time at Oxford. We have been slowing down for a couple of days now. Today, we put a coat of Armada on the rails and did some interior varnish work. On Monday, October 16, the carpet guys arrived bright and early. They cut and laid the carpet in the main saloon and the pilot house. We spent the morning going through boating magazines in the office, then looking through some literature from various lighting companies. The good news is that we think we have found some European light switches that look a lot like ours, and found some decent looking DC florescent lights. On Tuesday, October 17, the carpet guys came back with our bound rug pieces. We laid them out, and they look very good. After they left, we through bolted the loose handrail for the steps from the pilot house to the main saloon. On Wednesday, October 18, we didn't do a whole lot. Reed and Mary Jane on Second Line pulled in to have some work done, so we stopped by to say hey to them. They invited us over for dinner. Unfortunately, we had to decline because Mike got the stomach bug that has been running through the yard. Thursday, October 19, was a repeat of the 18th. Mike still wasn't feeling great, but he was starting to feel restless. This is a good sign! On Friday, October 20, we started focusing on getting ready to leave. We put a lot of stuff away that we had been keeping out since we were doing a lot of work. The yard was hoping to be finished with 're-teaking' the aft stateroom floor, but did not finish the trim work. We also put another coat of varnish around the TV, and on a few scratches. Reed & Mary Jane had us over for Dinner on Second Line. It was an excellent dinner of Stew (we have not had stew that was thick for ages, since stew is something we don't make well) with salad & garlic bread (homemade that was really good) and some type of walnut cake for dessert that was great as well. It's a good thing we don't know how to make the cake otherwise we would eat one in a day. We stayed over talking until 10:30/10:45 PM which was late for us, but we had a great time. On Saturday, since we weren't out gallivanting around the waterways, we focused on sanding and varnishing the trim and mast box. I keep telling myself, "Only one more coat." But that last coat just never fully materializes. I know it will happen one day though! On Sunday, I sanded the TV frame and mast box again and we both put another coat of varnish on what was sanded. I know we have just a few more sandings and coats and it should be smooth. Mary Jane stopped by and dropped off a couple of slices of cake, which we had for lunch and dessert after dinner. On Monday, Jeff finished the trim on the aft stateroom. We paid our bill, and were raring to go! We fired up the engines and started undoing lines. Then the starboard engine cut off. Mike checked it out while I was busy topsides. It turns out that our filter gaskets were not seated correctly after we changed the fuel filters. In attempting to get them fixed, the nut snapped off the filter basket, so we wound up not going anywhere! We spent the evening getting our filter gaskets seated properly. On Tuesday, we headed to the machine shop where they welded the nut on to the basket shaft. We then seated our filters properly, and test fired the engine. It worked! We would be able to leave after all! On our way to the Bay, we auto tuned our new autopilot pump to make sure it was working with the correct parameters and then off we went to Annapolis. When we were about an hour out of Annapolis, we were hailed by Aurora. We met them last year at Rybovich Spencer when they stopped to see Anne and Henri on Sea Flat. We chatted for a bit and agreed to look each other up on the sea wall. After we pulled in to Annapolis, we discovered that the water taxi does not run during the week after the boat show, so we dropped the dinghy instead. I headed into town to West Marine to pick up our hand held water maker and a few other things. Mike stayed on the boat to stand anchor watch. I ran into Steve and Diane on shore, and we caught up with each other. After getting back to the dinghy dock, I ran into Don and Gloria on Zaftra and Bill and Janet on Britican. We chatted for a bit before I realized how late it was and headed back to the boat. It was a fun experience for the evening to not run our generator, all night! I look forward to doing it more often