Well 5 months have passed along with the summer, and we haven’t been very faithful about keeping up with our blog. What’s new about that….we’re having such a good time we don’t always have enough time to sit down and write.
We stayed in Norfolk until the end of June. After travelling home to CA for Taylene’s high school graduation (our oldest granddaughter) and Ciara’s graduat
ion fro
m Jr. high school (our second oldest granddaughter), we got back to the boat with the idea of spending a couple of days provisioning the boat, cleaning and saying goodbye to our friends. The day before departure Bud decided to put all of the boat’s systems through their paces and make sure everything was in working order (it was, before we left for the graduation). Everything worked great except for our 15-year old autopilot. So we called our local electronics expert who came to the boat that day, and he pronounced the “blankety-blank” autopilot DEAD!! So…the decision was made to replace it because we use it extensively. We were delayed about 4 days while we waited until we could have it installed. Bud did most of the installation and the electronics expert came and did the initial startup along with all of the calibration for us, and we were off the next day.We had great weather for the first day of travel. We had flat seas, very little wind, and it was bright and sunny. We anchored for the night and remembered why we love to do what we do so much. We had a beautiful night, warm and calm, anchored in a beautiful creek. The next morning we started our day early. We had decided that we would go up the Bay to Solomon’s Island for a couple of days. The weather was predicted to be a repeat of the previous day, but boy were we surprised. As we left the protection of the creek everything started to deteriorate. About an hour after we left we were getting our butts kicked with big seas and about 20+ knots of wind right on our nose. This lasted for probably 10 or 15 miles. Finally everything started to get better and it became a very nice day once again. After we got in that afternoon we were talking about the day and realized that the bad stuff that we had encountered was as we were crossing the mouth of the Potomac River which is notorious for those conditions. Next time we’ll be on the other side of the Bay when we cross that area.
On our way to Solomon’s our brand new depth sounder that we installed during our stay in Norfolk started to act up by giving us random readings. One of the instruments that is critical to have while cruising back here is a very reliable depth sounder. So when we contacted our electronics wizard in Norfolk, he decided that the transducer must have “taken a dump” or something. We travelled the next day up to Galesville, MD where we knew there was a good boat yard to haul the boat out of the water to replace the transducer. We anchor a lot in water that is only 8’ to 10’ deep so we need a trustworthy depth sounder, and now we have one once again.
For the last 2 years we had been invited to some friends’ home for the 4th of July. They live on one of the most beautiful rivers we have seen. This year we were invited back again. Greg and Susie Kaufman live on the Wye River. We were among 4 other boats (and couples) who were invited for the weekend. We had a blast as usual! Good friends, great food, wonderful fireworks and thunderstorms….who could ask for more.
When we left the Wye River we went over to Annapolis for a few days. We stayed with our old friends, Terry & Nan Terhorst, for a while and then anchored out in Back Creek for a couple of days before heading up to Baltimore to see some cruising friends.
We stayed in Baltimore for a couple of days, then left and went to one of our favorite anchorages at Gibson Island. This is a private island that is a gated community with large homes. It is so heavily forested that you can’t really see many of the homes. But one of the homes is very prominent and sits on a huge plot of land with horses grazing in the back yard.
From there, we went back to Baltimore and into a marina. We had to make an unscheduled trip to California because Elaine’s father passed away on August 3rd. With everything involved in arranging his funeral and cleaning out his home to get it ready to sell, it didn’t leave us any time for socializing. We were in CA for almost a month. But we’ll be there again in December so we’ll definitely see y’all then.
When we returned to Baltimore tropical storm “Hanna” was approaching so we stayed at the marina until it passed. Fortunately, the only effect of it was a lot of rain and some wind. No big deal….thank goodness! We have actually experienced worse thunderstorms than Hanna. But we weren’t complaining.
When we left Baltimore we had a couple of weeks until we were going to attend a rendezvous for a group called MTOA which stands for Marine Trawler Owner’s Association. A rendezvous back here is sort of like a convention. There are several seminars of various topics (obviously all boating related) and a lot of socializing. This year it was held in Cambridge, MD, a very small historic town on the Eastern Shore of the Bay. We had a great time. We saw a lot of people that we have seen cruising, and met a lot of new people. We had a great time and won’t miss the next one in ’09.
Now we are starting to head south for the winter. When we left Cambridge after the rendezvous we made a couple of stops in favorite areas and right now are anchored in another very pretty creek just south of the Potomac River called Antipoison Creek. It is a lovely creek with a small amount of homes and very shallow (we anchored in 9’). One of the ways you find out the shallowness of the water is when you run aground in the dinghy. We just did.
We will continue heading south to Florida for the winter. The trip will take us until the beginning of November, and we are really looking forward to seeing some of the places that we have been before and several new and exciting ones also.
Hopefully, we will see everyone at Christmas time while we are in CA. We will certainly try!
