Captain's Log: Hard to Stomach

As many know, I have had some health challenges of late. It started months ago when we were going north, but seemed to subside until dropping like a ton of bricks while we were in Canada. It was concerning enough that we did an about-face in St. Jean, Quebec and started running south. My health insurance is an HMO, so in order to get care on anything considered chronic (as opposed to emergent), I'd have to go to Florida, where our health insurance is based. To wit, I visited an Emergency Room in Albany, NY, and they checked me for a cardiac situation (none found), and told me to get to Florida. We managed to get as far south as Croton-on-Hudson, NY, where we left the boat at Half Moon Bay Marina (great spot!) and flew to Florida where we stayed for about two weeks with our dear friends, Gary and Liz, while I had several visits with doctors and convalesced. I have since received a diagnosis of "erosive gastritis of the antrum," which was fully responsible for all the odd symptoms I was experiencing, since it was irritating the vagus nerve. It was very uncomfortable and very scary, but we are cautiously optimistic that I'm on the mend with the suggested dietary changes and acid-reducing drugs. 

On Monday, September 9th, Stacey and I returned to Stinkpot, and we got underway on the ebb the Tuesday morning. Our aim is to get closer to our car and vast support system in the Chesapeake Bay region. We had good weather and favoring tidal currents and took full advantage of it, running all the way to Manasquan Inlet and anchoring near the southern end of the Point Pleasant Canal in New Jersey. Wednesday, we went back out the inlet and ran all the way to Cape May where we anchored in front of the Coast Guard Training Center. Thursday, we cruised all the way up Delaware Bay, through the C&D Canal, and onto the northern end of Chesapeake Bay, dropping anchor on the Bohemia River. Friday we cruised down to the Sassafras River where we spent two nights at anchor. We were pleased to be whisked away for a much-needed grocery expedition on Saturday morning by some considerate and wonderful new friends, Phil and Christyne. 

Stinkpot's crew with Phil and Christyne following a successful trip to the grocery store!

This past Sunday, we got underway again and made our way back up the Northeast River, anchoring just outside the familiar McDaniel's Yacht Basin—the very same marina where we spent much of May and all of June. We are now there in the very same slip in the marina that we occupied then. We were going to wait until winter to give Stinkpot some TLC, but this seems like a good time to hit pause and knock some overdue boat work off the list. 

In the meantime, I have a lot of missing blog posts to get up here—adventures we enjoyed over the last couple months, but that have not yet made it to this page. I will get caught up, I promise. There are so many stories to tell, and I will be trickling it all out as my currently limited spare time allows.