Captain's Log: The Splash Heard Round the World

Our venerable steed, about to have her wetted surface re-wetted after six weeks of TLC.

After somewhere around six weeks of living in our boat on dry land, with almost no fanfare except engines roaring to life, Stinkpot was relaunched on Election Day—November 5—and gracefully made her way into slip 36 at McDaniel Yacht Basin. For the last month or so, we have been scrubbing, painting, scraping, sanding, waxing, varnishing, repairing, maintaining, and attempting to make Stinkpot look like she hasn’t in a long time.

We had intended to do that over the winter in the south, but with my illness speeding our south’ard roll by a month or more, we decided to do it sooner than later, and she looks great. Somewhere in the middle of all the boat work, we were also distracted by the Annapolis Boat Shows as well as boat shopping. I suppose I should fess up that we are looking for the next Stinkpot, and have quietly been doing so for months. I am really hoping to find a boat large enough to have my digital piano aboard. If there is anything I miss from land life, it’s sitting down at the piano. It’s something we have been considering for a couple years, and this period of land time seemed like an opportunity, so we seized upon it. A barrage of emails later had us reunited with our broker, Ryan Miller, and the search has been on.

We actually thought we found a boat. A vessel near Baltimore seemed perfect—a Carver 42, was listed by Jay Porterfield with Knot 10 Brokerage. It appeared very clean, but the mechanical survey and oil samples failed very badly, so we had to pull the plug. I expected the listing to be removed after the broker relayed the findings to his client that the boat needed more work than it was worth, but instead they re-marketed the boat with no disclosure of those findings in the listing, following an all-too-minor price adjustment. This all led me to conclude I will never again look at another Knot 10 listing. Caveat emptor….

Kim, driving me to Union Station in Washington DC.

Being so late in the season to be so far north, we splashed Stinkpot and recommitted to life aboard her for the foreseeable future. Last chores were completed, including washing yard grime off from the rub-rail up, an oil change, and reprovisioning. Friday, I relocated our car to our friend, Kim’s house for safekeeping while we cruise, returning to the marina via MARC train to nearby Perryville Station and a quick ride in my pal, John’s car to connect the final destinations. Early Saturday morning, November 9, with much thanks to Rose, Phil, Tina and crew at McDaniel Yacht Basin—a place we now consider home in so many ways—we dropped lines and began moving south.

In the office at McDaniel Yacht Basin, saying our goodbye to Tina who had been such a great help to us!

​It was a sunny, chilly morning, so we started at the lower helm as we waited for the outside temps to rise a bit with the sun as we made our way down the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay from the North East River, finishing our cruise for the day in Rock Hall on the free bulkhead/dock there. We consumed a late lunch at Harbor Shack. The place was packed, the view was fantastic, and the food was really not good. I had the chicken fajitas while Stacey ordered a seafood-stuffed quesadilla. I’m not sure how you make fajitas taste so “meh,” but they managed to. Stacey’s comment about the quesadilla was something about how, eating out and “leaving it to the professionals,” is supposed to protect one from consuming objectively bad flavor combinations, but “not this time.”

Following our insipid repast, we took to the hoof for a spin through the tiny berg with our eye on the nearby grocery for bananas. Yes, we know there are many who maintain that bananas are bad luck on a boat, but we have been assured by experts in nautical superstition that the bad luck is specific to fishing, not boating. Since we never “wet a line” we see fit to risk it.

After a successful mission, we returned to the boat to find an official-looking gent eyeballing her suspiciously. I cleared my throat and asked if I could help him. He asked when we arrived and how long we were staying, and I told him we’d arrived in the early afternoon and would be leaving out in the morning. He seemed satisfied that we were not intending to overstay our welcome and left us alone after complaining bitterly about the boat, aptly named “Problem Child” tied up just ahead of us that had apparently been there too much, too often to the annoyance of local government officials, of which he was one.

We had a quiet evening aboard, turning in early and getting underway just before dawn. The wind was coming up, so we angled toward the Chester River, down through Kent Narrows, and down the eastern shore and into the western inlet of Knapps Narrows—our immediate objective was to refuel at Fairbank Tackle, where we took on 181.5 gallons of off-road diesel at $2.809 per gallon. From there, we continued through the ditch heading east, hoping that the building wind and waves would permit us to cross to Solomons, but it wasn’t to be. We retreated up the Choptank River, into the Tred Avon and anchored for the night in Oxford, MD, just across the channel from DiMillo’s on the Chesapeake East—owned by the DiMillos in Portland, Maine. We found ourselves wishing they had a restaurant here as well to offer us a taste of home. Oxford seemed very quaint from the water. With the wind and weather, we deigned to keep the dinghy aboard and intend to return another time for a proper exploration of the town. For now, it has been a scenic place to lay our heads for the night, and nothing more. 

As I type this in the late morning, we are still waiting for the winds to lay down as forecast to give us a reasonably (hopefully?) smooth crossing to Solomons. We can see the trailing edge of the front to the west, and when it's overhead shortly, we will be weighing anchor and getting underway.