July 4, 2009.

First off, Happy Fourth of July. We hope everyone had clear skies and an unimpeded view this evening.

Jerry Lewis used to do a huge telethon every year to raise money for finding the cure for Muscular Dystrophy. I’m not really even sure what Muscular Dystrophy is but Jerry seemed pretty sincere and worked very hard to help in its eradication.

The whole pink ribbon thing has really taken off. Everywhere you look there’s a walk or a cycling event or some other well attended function looking to raise money for the fight against breast cancer. It seems that great strides forward have been made in survivability and a cure is surely in the near future.

But, what about stupid? There are no telethons or marches to raise money in an effort to fight the plague of “stupid” that ravages our nation. Do you know why? I do. You can’t cure stupid. Try as you might…dress em’ up , send em’ to school…they can earn diplomas, degrees and honors of all types and still be stupid as a stone. (a quick apology to all the stones that I’ve lumped together with that unfortunate bit of stereotyping)

Through exhaustive research into “stupid” I’ve uncovered a chink in the DNA of stupid people. They seem to completely lack or at least have an undeveloped “common sense” gene. The lack of common sense seems to be at the root of the epidemic of stupidity running unchecked today.

Yesterday we met stupid head on, or should I say bow on. We’ve been anchored in Spa Creek in Annapolis for 2 weeks now. With the advent of the holiday weekend the river has been getting increasingly more crowded with both anchored boats and boat traffic.

There’s a constant parade of powerboats taking a slow river cruise. Most boats have several people on board as the local boat owner takes his “out of town” company for a quick “Gilligan”. (A 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour) We’ve had no less than a half dozen boats sporting “Annapolis” as their home port try to anchor near us here in the river.

It seems that being from Annapolis and having a boat does not actually make you a mariner. I guess living here with your boat at a dock, going out for a sail and coming back to the dock doesn”t get you a lot of anchoring practice. I know I’m a bit of an anchoring snob but I gotta say, most of these people couldn’t drop and set a hook to save their lives. I mean its truly pathetic although quite entertaining. This has nothing to do with stupid, it was just an observation, the stupid part is coming up……

I had yesterday off because of the holiday. We spent an hour during the afternoon jerry jugging water out to the boat. It takes me about a minute to drive the dink to the water dock. Once there it takes about 5 minutes to fill the 2 jugs and then it’s another minute back to the boat.

I was on my sixth trip when I arrived back at the boat and I could tell Christy was pretty pissed. (It’s an awareness I’ve developed) It seems that the 40 foot powerboat that’s floating 60 feet off our starboard side had just hit us. Christy had just poked her head up from below figuring that it was time for me to be back with the water. Instead of me heading her way she was shocked to see a forty foot piece of shit powerboat 3 feet away and broadside to our bow. There were 4 adults and an older teenager on board and none of them had any idea that they were even near us.

Christy screamed out “hey!” and they all jumped an turned just as our second anchor sitting in its bow roller started to dig a very satisfying gouge into their port side. The “captain” started to yell at Christy to fend him off as his “crew” sat there dumbstruck. Christy was already on her way forward, grabbed the boat pole and was able to clear him from us as he drifted down our starboard side. She was also able to give him a good reaming and to point out his shortcomings as a mariner.

He was screaming that he had one engine out and was unable to maneuver. Oh my God, only one engine, how will they ever survive? He almost hit the boat behind us before he decided to use his remaining engine and move off into the clear. Once clear of the anchored boats, his boat was facing down river so he took off. The f*#ker just hit and ran us.

At about this time I got back to the boat with our jugs of water. Christy filled me in on what had just happened. I pulled the dink around to the front of the boat and checked for damage. Fortunately we were unmarked. Christy assured me that he has a ten foot long reminder of our encounter along his port side. The 45 pound CQR is a decent anchor and makes a hell of a ball point pen.

I know that I promised to leave out the names of some boats in an effort to protect someone from embarrassment but in this case I think that it’s warranted. So if you are ever anchored anywhere in the Chesapeake and return to find that your boat has been damaged by another boat that did not stick around to make amends…….. It was probably the Pussy Cat, a 40 foot older powerboat with a 10 inch tall faded pink cove stripe out of Severna Park, Maryland.

The fun didn’t end yesterday. This morning we woke to find a small powerboat anchored in front of the sailboat ahead of us. After a getting our shit together we were headed to shore in the dink when I realized that the powerboat had moved dramatically closer to the boat in front of us.

We swung by the sailboat and asked if that was their perception as well. The woman on board replied “ Oh Christ, yeah, he already dragged between all of us earlier this morning and it looks like he’s moving again”. This is like a 19 foot cuddy cabin, tiny assed powerboat. There’s literally 5 knots of breeze…...if that and he’s dragging. We moved alongside him and rapped on the hull. He popped up and said “Oh no, not again” and went about fixing the situation.

I wonder if I could start a grass roots movement, maybe even a telethon in an effort to do some stupidity research. There’s gotta be a cure. Hmmm, maybe I can get a government grant.

June 30, 2009.

There’s been nothing of note to report as of late, unless you want to read about work. Works been pretty good. There’s been something different every day, which is good.

It’s especially fun being here in Annapolis because so many cruising boats are coming through. I had to cure a starting problem for a cruising boat just yesterday. The cool thing about it was that since they were on a mooring down in the basin I got to take the bosses Boston Whaler down to the mooring field to do the repair. It was the furthest I’ve ever driven a powerboat.

Before noon today I had to go about 20 miles out of town and fix a fuel delivery problem and then take the boat out for a test drive. It was a little disconcerting to be taking someone else’s boat out without them being on board. The guy didn’t have a GPS and his depth sounder wasn’t working. So I’m on an unfamiliar boat, with no depth sounder, no chart, in waters I’m unfamiliar with and hey look, is that a storm cell headed my way.

Fortunately the boat was a smaller Beneteau and handled like a dream. I backed it out of the slip and smartly down the fairway. She spun around nicely and I made several passes up and down the vaguely marked channel. I had no idea if I had 6 inches or 6 feet under me, it kinda sucked and my ass was sore from being puckered until I once again approached the sanctuary of the slip. I just got the boat tied up, closed up and was unloading my tools when the small front hit. It only poured for a few minutes and it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

In the afternoon I installed a FRESH water anchor wash down on a large powerboat. I can’t even begin to imagine having enough fresh water that I could afford to rinse the mud from my anchor in fresh water. It’s funny to me just how much my definition of “decadence” has changed since we’ve been cruising. Oooh, unlimited fresh water, how decadent.

June 27, 2009.

It suddenly came rushing back to me just why I always looked forward to the weekends. No work. Anyway…..

On Thursday evening we were pleased to be able to host the youngest girlchild and 3 of her friends from school. It was brutally hot but the girls were good sports about the heat. After dinner and a few drinks they even got into the nautical spirit. It was good to have them aboard and we look forward to seeing them again later in the year.


Today we decided to try a different bus line and a trip to a different grocery store. We walked into town and found ourselves in the midst of a cross country bicycle race finish line. I can’t imagine riding a damn bike all the way across the entire country.




So we got up to town just in time to miss the bus we wanted to take. The next one was due to arrive in an hour. We decided to take an alternate bus so we tried to chat the driver up as we boarded in an effort to make sure we would end up where we wanted to. Evidently actually having to interact with the public wasn’t in this guy’s job description. Talk about a nasty little power tripping piece of shit. In our 12 second interaction I started to understand the “other side” of those “deranged man kills bus driver” headlines.

We got where we wanted to go and after shopping we waited over an hour for the next bus back to town. This driver was a woman who was courteous to people’s faces but had nothing but snide remarks to make about the patrons after they exited the bus. Oh yeah, these buses don’t have air conditioning and are hotter than hell. We left the boat at around 11am, dinghied, walked, stood around waiting for buses, shopped for about 45minutes, and reversed the trip and got back to the boat at 3pm. Next time we will walk.

I really don’t understand how something as simple as a bus ride can be such an ordeal. We’ve ridden the bus in Miami, Vero Beach, Charleston, the Florida Keys and Washington, DC. We’ve been on buses in the poorest parts of huge cities. We’ve ridden buses where we’ve been the only English speaking people. We’ve ridden buses where we had a difficult time communicating with the driver because of a language barrier. But until today every bus driver we’ve met has gone out of their way to help us learn the ropes of their bus route. Every other bus line that we’ve ridden has always been a positive experience. Cleanliness, promptness, courteous drivers and a schedule that seems to make sense all have been common, except here in Annapolis. Don’t get me started about the traffic……

June 25, 2009.

I’ve completed my first 3 days on the new job. The first day was interesting to say the least.

I headed out with one of the bosses to knock out a few repairs. The first boat of the day was at first glance, an easy one. The boat was having starting issues and needed their hot water heater replaced. The boss, who I’ll call “Bob” went below to start troubleshooting the engine while I slipped into a cockpit locker to replace the hot water heater.

Unfortunately the holding tank, the completely full holding tank, was in the way. A plan was formulated where I was to put some straps around the tank and winch it to the side about 4 inches enabling me to get at the hot water heater. It worked like a charm and the new hot water heater was soon in place. That is until things all went to hell.

I had the engine water side and the electrical connections completed and was just starting the fresh water side when I noticed a slow drip from one of the bottom fittings of the holding tank. I though “ut oh, that’s not good”. I was only looking at it. I never touched it, I didn’t poke it, fondle it or encourage it but all of a sudden the entire fitting fractured and popped apart. I guess the 25 year old hard plastic fitting didn’t have the elasticity to flex at all when I pulled the tank aside. Shit. Literally, everywhere. A 2 inch gusher of the unimaginable, flooding the locker, going down the limber hole and filling the bilge. Crap. Again, literally.

Of course, the owner was there but fortunately she was pretty cool about the situation. “Bob” finished the engine repair and he and I methodically cleaned the locker and all of the several contaminated bilges. After the bilges were clean the owner continued to flush the nether regions of the boat with fresh water while I finished up the hot water tank and “Bob” took the holding tank down to have a new fitting plastic welded in.

The holding tank was promised for later that day so we headed off for the next job. It turned out to be a straightforward remove and replace job. A 50 foot powerboat needed new trim tab actuators. Simple, quick and not involving fecal matter of any type……perfect.

The third boat of the day was a work in progress. We got there and had enough time to install a new flywheel, damper plate and bell housing. We got the starter in and mounted the transmission and it was time to go. On the way back we picked up the repaired holding tank and stopped in and reinstalled it.

It ended up being a 10 hour day but in spite of the shitty start, things went pretty darn well.

Day 2 was another 10 hour day, the last 3 of which I spent installing a pair of solar panels on a cruising boat. Of all the things I’ve done so far this was definitely my favorite.

The highlight of day 3 was fixing an overheating powerboat and getting to take it out for a test spin. I monitored engine temps at the heat exchanger until we got out to the Severn River where we got to open her up. The thing did 33 knots and left a wake about the size of a dinghy. I even got to drive the thing back to its slip…… Yeah, it was a glimpse into the dark side and I gotta say "I just don't see the allure".

June 23, 2009.

While we were headed to Annapolis our friend Bess (who should be a Headhunter) was already here doing some legwork for us. She works at a local chandlery and had her antenna up for a job opening for me.

She told me of a friend who was the service manager at one of the local marinas. I went down and applied and had a pretty good interview. I left with the promise of a phone call in a day or two. On Wednesday the service manager called with a half dozen more questions. He told me he had to discuss me with the 2 guys he works for. By Friday I was done waiting for the phone to ring so I headed down there in the dink.

As luck would have it, I walked in while both of the bosses were in the office. While we were discussing my possible employment an employee walked in and started to discuss a problem he was having while attempting to paint a boot stripe on a boat. They both threw some possible solutions at him and he assured them that he’d tried them all. They told him they’d be right down as soon as they were finished with me. I interviewed with each of the guys separately and aced both interviews. They told me that they had a few fires to put out and after they talked to each other they would call me in an hour or so.

I walked out psyched. I aced the interviews, the phone call was just a formality…or so I thought. The phone call did not come that day. The next morning I called the service manager who told me that the employee that couldn’t handle the painting has been with them awhile and they’re going to give him the job that I was applying for and then use the opening to hire a professional painter. Shit. Talk about crappy timing.

On Saturday we were boatbound by the weather so job hunting was a no go. This enabled me to stew in the juices of my recent employment failure. On Sunday, nobody in charge is at the local marinas so I spent some time embellishing, er, updating my resume.

Monday morning I got a call from Bess. It seemed that some guy with a marine repair service was in to buy some supplies and she chatted him up. Turned out he was looking for somebody, Bess thought of me because I am somebody. She excused herself from the conversation and called the boat and told me to call him in 20 minutes.

We looked his business up on the internet and emailed him my resume. I waited a half hour and rang him up. He said he’d look at my resume when he got home and give me a call later.

5 o’clock came and went, 6 o’clock as well. Shit, another dead end, or so I thought. At 7 o’clock the phone rang and Christy went below to answer it. The look on her face was a little confused at first as she ascended the companionway steps.

The caller said to her “Is your boat white with blue canvas?”
She warily said “yes”
Then he asked “Did you have to go below to answer the phone?”
Now she’s a little freaked out but answers “yes”

It turned out that he’d just gotten home and was out on his deck, having a beer and was reading my resume when he decided to call. By a stroke of dumb luck, we’re anchored directly behind his house. He invited me up to the house to interview right then and there.

I hopped in the dink and headed right over. I had another good interview and was hired and told I could start the following day. I was having conflicting emotions. I was glad to get a good opportunity but after 3 years of not having to get up first thing in the morning for work I was a little frightened by the prospect of waking at dawn. That was when he told me that they usually start at 0900. He thought I was smiling at the thought of a new job, yeah that’s good, but starting at 0900 is awesome.

June 22, 2009.

We’re still here in Annapolis and the weather has finally broken. We were pretty much stuck on the boat for several days. It was either blowing like stink or it was pouring buckets.

On Sunday we finally got off the boat to do a little walking around. We also decided that we better get out and do a little food shopping while we had the chance. We definitely needed some fresh veggies before the onset of scurvy. There’s no grocery store in downtown Annapolis so the trip to the store involved a bus ride.

Instead of walking to the nearest bus stop we did a little walkabout in an effort to loosen up the old legs. It was fortunate that we did because we walked right into an Irish Festival. It was a couple of blocks long and had food, shopping and loads of entertainment. There were Irish step dancers, a kilt wearing Irish rock band and of course the obligatory fife and drum corp, oh, and beer.

The Irish were out in numbers and I even saw my first Irish Wolf Hounds. I had never seen one before and was pretty surprised at just how freaking big they were. Back in the day, before the Irish invented binge drinking, they were a pretty violent people. They often used these huge dogs in battle. Now I understand the whole "kilt thing". You see those bigass dogs headed your way you could probably run a hell of a lot faster unencumbered by pants.

After walking through the festival we were on the bus and off to the grocery store. I’ll spare you the details of the food shopping but it was pretty standard. Lotta isles, lotta stuff, as always, that stuff turns out to be pretty darn heavy, lotta lugging, bus ride, dinghy ride and back to the boat to put it all away.

While putting the groceries away we saw something completely new to us. Mexicans fishing in the wild. Actually, they were crabbing. It’s just that the technique was something that we had never seen before. They would wade out into the water and press a stick firmly into the bottom. They’d tie a string to the top of the stick and a piece of chicken to the other end and throw it into the water.

Then they would walk a short distance away to watch and wait. When a crab would come along and grab the chicken they would try to walk away with it. The string would go taught and the crabbermen would be happy.
They would take their dip net and sneak up to the stick and try to slowly draw the crab in until they could thrust the net upon them. This technique was new to us and very exciting. I watched them crabbing for an hour and then I realized that this new technique was also pretty stupid. They didn’t catch shit. When a crab is in the water, he’s in his element, what are the chances of actually sneaking up on a crab. Every time they’d pull that crab close they would thrust the net into the water and only come up with a piece of chicken tied to a string.

Of course the next day 2 women showed up and tried the very same technique. They also didn’t catch shit. Although, I think they just wanted to spend the day in thigh deep, murky river water chatting about whatever mindless crap, unsuccessful crabberwomen talk about.

June 16, 2009.

After an oil change we decided to get out of Solomon’s and head for Annapolis. The forecast was for 5 to 10 knots out of the southeast, so of course, we got pretty much the opposite. So we sailed close hauled into 5 to 10 knots out of the northwest. By noon the wind died and we had to crank up the engine.

As the day went on the wind did finally swing around and start to come out of the southeast. The wind was light enough that I was getting pretty jealous of the boats that were flying spinnakers. Unfortunately, the wind was so light that they weren’t really going anywhere either. By 1500 hours the breeze did start to fill a bit and we shut down the engine and slowly sailed north.

We did see a bit of big
boat traffic on the bay but we didn’t really have to avoid anyone. Later in the day we had a pretty violent storm blow across our bow. So we got the benefit of some 15 knot breeze that we were able to put to good use for the last 10 miles of the day.

We arrived in Annapolis at 1730 and decided to take a mooring ball for the night. The area where we usually anchor along the naval academy was just too rough. The next morning we slipped the mooring and headed up Spa Creek.

There’s a small lift bridge at the mouth of the creek. Once through the bridge we were disappointed to find that Spa Creek was literally paved with mooring balls. We took our time heading up the creek and considered dropping the hook here and there. It’s just so tight here in the creek that it seemed that no matter where we dropped the hook we would at some point be encroaching on the channel or sitting too close to someone's dock.

Finally after about 3/4’s of a mile we found a little room just past the last mooring in the creek. We’re next to some kind of state park so we snuggled up close to that bank of the creek since there were no docks sticking out into the river.

Last night we met some friends in town for a couple of hours of catching up before heading home for dinner. On the way home we received a call from the Alibi II's who were on a friends boat, anchored near ours. So we swung home and dressed a little warmer and headed over to Krasna to see Bill & Bess and meet Krasna's owner Lee. It turned out that we had briefly met Lee down in Elizabeth City. We happened to be walking by when he arrived and we caught his bow lines as he pulled into the slip. Small world, had a great time, laughed for hours, went home way too late.

The weather is kinda crappy so we’re probably going to be spending a good bit of time sitting here on the boat.

June 13, 2009.

The other day I wrote what I thought was a fair, impartial, fact based account about the ineptitude of another mariner. Even though every word was true Christy decided that by naming names I had gone a bit too far. I thought by naming names I was actually performing a public service. I mean let’s say you had a serial killer living on your block, would you prefer to know exactly who it was or would the fact that you know there’s a maniac in the neighborhood be enough? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

As luck would have it, today we crossed wakes with the aforementioned unnamed mariners. We were on our way into the dinghy dock when I mentioned to Christy that the dink approaching from our left hadn’t notice us yet. They were at least 200 feet away and I was sure they’d turn around and see us any moment.

There are established rules of the road for boaters and in this situation we were what is referred to as the “stand on vessel”. That means we’re supposed to maintain course and speed so that there’s no confusion resulting in both boats altering course and making matters worse. Simply stated, in this situation, they’re supposed to avoid us. There is another rule that over rules all the other rules and that is that every boat, regardless of right of way will do everything possible to avoid a collision. Thank God there are no rules pertaining to how many times you can actually use the word rule in a sentence. Anyway…..

They obviously didn’t see us; it was no big deal, so we came to a stop to let them pass across our bow. It was pretty amusing when they were about 3 feet from us and they finally turned to face where they were going and we were sitting practically right next to them. They weren’t surprised or startled. It just seemed to be something that happens all the time. They just kinda waved and said “Hi” as they motored by. We said “Hi” back and as they passed, I looked down and there on the side of their dink was their big boats name. They were the same people from the other day that were so intent on watching their chartplotter in the Alligator River that they kept running aground. Christy and I kind of exchanged looks, shook our heads and went on our way.

So let’s talk about other hazards on the water…………………………

I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to spicy food I’m a wimp. I’m the guy that they make mild salsa for. Christy has a hard time taking that seriously so as a result we have a lot of medium salsa onboard as she attempts to change my preferences.

The other night when she served dinner I started to eat and had to stop and ask “Are you mad at me?”. She said “Why, what’s wrong?” I thought I was gonna die. She had made a Spanish dish for the evening’s meal. It consisted of Chorizo, rice, diced tomatoes and black beans and various spices. I know it sounds pretty good but evidently Chorizo is the Spanish word for magma.

Christy had been food shopping with Nancy from Solitaire and was unfamiliar with Chorizo. Nancy said it was “really good”. So if I actually had died, Nancy would be sitting there in court as a codefendant.

It was so hot that I couldn’t even pick around the small chunks of sausage. Its juices had permeated the entire dish. Christy was laughing at me so hard she couldn’t breathe and had tears in her eyes. That was until she realized just how hot her meal was. Now all of a sudden it was more like “Yeah, this is pretty hot”. She likes her food as spicy as she can get it, and this was even too much for her palate.

So we both picked the chunks of Chorizo out and threw them overboard. I’m surprised that there wasn’t a fish kill. Anyway….the swelling has finally gone down in my lips so we’ll be getting underway tomorrow for Annapolis.