It feels like I haven't dropped an update here in a long time! It's funny what a few weeks of being tied to docks will do to you. We have found ourselves staying up later and waking later in the morning. A lot more lazy time…time at the pool at the marina. Since our last post here, so much has happened. During that heatwave under which the entire continental US seemed to suffer for weeks, our main air conditioning unit died a tragic death. Given some time, patience, and a few hundred dollars in parts, it was probably repairable, but it was also 35 years old, and the technology has progressed with the years, so we decided to "bite the bullet" and ordered a new unit. It took about 3 yea—I mean days—to arrive at the local West Marine in Solomons, Maryland, and I had it installed and running within a few hours of toting it aboard. It was an amazing relief to get cool. We only survived the three days without it by taking advantage of the marina's saltwater swimming pool, but even it was starting to approach "hot tub temperatures" as the heat wave wore on. Suffice it to say, the new A/C unit works great! On August 10, our slip agreement with Safe Harbor Zahnisers expired, so we moved Stinkpot to the t-head dock at Southern Maryland Sailing Association where I played music in July and again a few days before we cast off to leave Solomons—one of the perks! After we got Stinkpot tied up and secured, we piled into our car and drove away. I had music to play: two pub shows in Massachusetts, an evening at the Towne Crier in Beacon, NY, an afternoon performance at the Middleburgh, NY Library at the behest of Sonny Ochs. The comings and goings of that music tour were well-documented in Chapter 38 of Folk on the Water, so I'll restrain from rehashing it here. We returned to Stinkpot Monday, August 15, did groceries, and got ready for our final week in Solomons, which seemed to rush by. Laundry was done. Boat maintenance checks were done. On Friday night I played for the club members in the SMSA clubhouse. Saturday we drove to Rockville, Maryland, where I played a house concert at my friends, Scott and Paula Moore's house. Sunday we returned to the boat and restocked the larder at the local grocery emporia for our Monday morning departure. Monday, we rose and made ready for a 10-11 AM departure to take advantage of a favoring tide to ride the Chesapeake northard. At the appointed hour, we dropped lines, moved briefly over to the town pump-out dock to lighten our blackwater tank, and headed out of Solomons for the bay. We tucked ourselves into what we thought should be the current and realized we were not making speed. I turned the boat around to see what would happen and our speed reduced even more, so we were indeed riding the tide. Turned back north, we decided our bottom must be fouled from a month-and-a-half of sitting mostly still on the dock. We decided to take our time and not "burn fuel for nothing," tucking into an anchorage behind St. Michaels, MD for the evening. Tuesday, we rose again and again delayed our departure to ride the tide, which we did all the way to the Bulkhead (free dock) in Rock Hall, Maryland, from where I'm writing right now, a morning later. We will remain here until we can get a diver to take a look around and knock off whatever detritus may be slowing our progress. From here, we have no idea where we'll go, but we may head up to the MTOA (Marine Trawler Owners Association) get-together on the Sassafras River this weekend. We'll see. We out here to explore and enjoy, so we'll wet a finger and stick it in the air when we good and ready.
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It's very hot here in Solomons, Maryland right now. 100°F in the boat's cockpit when I snapped this photo. The lower two temperatures are INSIDE the boat with the air conditioning cranked (it's slowly losing the battle, but by the time is might get too hot inside, the sun goes down and it recovers). I bet you're wondering about what is 2°F. That's inside our deep freeze, which is out on deck with the sun beating on it. I keep wondering if there is a way to fit myself inside there for a little while, but I have my doubts. My contortionist days are mostly behind me.
Two familiar and perfectly wonderful anchorages in a row, and neither was part of the plan. We find ourselves in the second of them, swinging at anchor in Solomons, Maryland. Our eight-day odyssey of anchorages, docks, friends new and not-so-new, frightening stormy skies, and not-quite-angry-but-at-least-slightly-miffed seas over the last four days has brought us here, but I get ahead of myself. Allow me to back up four days. As you might recall from our last blog, we were docked in Deltaville, Virginia at a very nice yacht club that had given us three days on their very comfy T-head dock in exchange for a performance after a cookout on July 3rd. Stacey and I ate well and were very glad of their hospitality, and not wanting to overstay our welcome, we attempted to leave the very placid harbor on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 5th. We knew the wind had come up, and we could see waves breaking over the shallow bits of the creek entrance, but we were sure we'd be able to get out and around Stingray Point before the winds and waves got the better of us. All the wind and wave apps were saying that it was 1 to 2 footers coming from the south, and surely we've been through worse. Furthermore, once we make the final turn north, the seas would be behind us—you know, following seas. That's supposed to be a good thing. On top of that, we were unwisely "timing the tides," which means we were waiting for the flood to carry us north and save us fuel. If you run north up the bay on the ebb, you burn more fuel and it takes longer to get anywhere. If we left at 3pm, we'd have the flood carrying us north and saving fuel. How foolish we were! You can't time the Chesapeake. You take the flat calm when you can get it, which is in the morning. We had dinner cranking in the Crock-Pot, and we expertly wedged it in so rough seas would not cause it to seek a low point in the cabin while underway, disconnected the shore power and water, cast off lines, and headed into the wild blue. We cleared the channel and it got a little rougher, and a little rougher. We were seeing waves of about 1 to 2 feet, as the forecast stated—until we saw something more like 5 feet, and it broke over the bow and brought Stinkpot to a standstill whilst she bounced on the next three consecutive waves. A rogue. These things happen. Press on. Two minutes later it happened again. Stacey was below making sure nothing was becoming airborne in the salon—like our dinner. I assured her via our ship-board communications system that if it happened again, we'd turn tail and…no sooner had the words left my mouth…it happened again. I turned the boat around, the sea became a following sea as it beckoned us back to the same dock we'd just left not 15 minutes before. We tied up, connected the shore power and water, and, when it was ready, ate our dinner that never spilled a drop. It wasn't long after dinner a storm cloud moved by to the north and "convinced us" to go ashore, just in case it did something dastardly on its way by (it didn't). That's when we remembered something about Chesapeake Bay. The early boat gets the calm. The winds always kick up the afternoon seas. Message received and hopefully remembered for next time. The next morning, we woke early. Wait, that should be all-caps: EARLY! We started the engines, brought in the shore connections, cast off the lines, and we were gone. Our destination, as earlier stated, was to be Tangier Island. We had been doing some research and it had come to our attention that there was a marina with comparatively inexpensive fuel not far from there, and we intended to spend a night at the island and then run up for the cheap fuel. We got out, made the turns to the north past the point, and the wind was coming off the western shore—on the beam—at about 14 MPH. After the previous day's events in a similar wind, and realizing that a good breeze needs fetch (read: distance) to turn little waves into big waves, we decided to just run straight up the western shore and stay on our friends' dock in Reedville. Walt and Mary have a gorgeous spot there and had extended an invitation, so we quickly emailed them and told them we were coming. Tangier could wait a day. We arrived in Reedville in late morning, and with the mercury creeping toward 90°, we immediately set to work plugging into shore power and getting the air conditioning working! We enjoyed the day looking out the window at the beautiful scenery around us and chilling INSIDE the boat. While enjoying the cool, we came to the realization that a couple marinas near us would be dropping their fuel price 30 cents overnight. That meant crossing the bay to get our fuel no longer needed to happen. Our reason to venture over to Tangier Island was now solely "because we want to." That kind of reasoning made it easy to push off the visit until later this summer when we'll be looking for places to visit and running south on the bay. We decided that our next day on the bay would see us in Solomons. The forecast was for sun, light breezes, and nice temperatures on the water. So, decisions made, we had a lovely visit with Walt and Mary on their porch, took a nice walk around town, and retired for the night. The next morning, we shoved off and ran about 4 miles south to Ingram Bay Marina where we fueled (180 gallons at $5.39/gallon) and pumped out our black water tank. We then began running north toward Solomons, which required crossing the massive, 10-mile mouth of the Potomac River. It was beautiful and sunny, just as predicted, but for some reason I referred to my weather app to see a small craft advisory was in effect for the very water we were cruising on. It made NO SENSE. It was beautiful out there, and there had been nothing in the forecast last time I looked, but there is was, all scary-looking, in big red letters with exclamation points and everything. It was obviously Chesapeake Bay being fickle and changeable, and there was nothing we could do about it. We were committed. Another ten minutes went by and the sky started to get dark around us. We still had about 5 miles of river mouth to cross, and we were running against the ebb current, which was running about a full knot against us, so we were only making about 6 knots SOG (speed over ground). The north wind came up and waves started to break under our bow, depositing salt spray all over the foredeck. I started considering our "bail out" options. Where could we go? We could take the building sea on the beam run behind Point Lookout and anchor in Lake Conoy by the state park which would add about 8 miles of off-course distance to our trip to Solomons, or we could continue running another 4 miles north and duck into St. Jerome Creek where we've anchored before. It's skinny water, but if we just stay inside the marked channel, it's just enough for Stinkpot. We opted for the latter and got off the bay. We'd continue our way to Solomons Friday morning. After we cleared Point Lookout and got north of the Potomac River mouth, the sea started to lay down a bit, and we ran the rest of the way into St. Jerome Creek without incident. It took two tries to get the hook set in 4 feet of water, but after putting the hook down further up into the cove off the channel, we felt confident we'd have a peaceful evening, which we did—winds be damned. Friday morning, we rose with the dawn, weighed anchor and continued our northard push to Solomons, riding the flood the whole way. We arrived in the harbor by 10:30am and had the anchor down in our favorite spot before our morning coffee buzz had even worn off. We did go ashore in the dinghy, reclaimed the keys to our car, and ran a couple of errands (including a much needed haircut for yours truly), and picked up our Amazon packages (including our new Breeze Booster), returning later to the boat for supper and a very pleasant, if hot and sticky night on the hook. The Saturday forecast was for all-day rain/showers, which we ultimately chose to weather aboard (and during which I finished writing this post). Tomorrow we shall move to our allotted slip at Safe Harbor Zahnisers, where we shall be for the next month. UPDATE: As scheduled, we moved into our new boat slip around noon Sunday. They originally had us on "G" dock, but I balked after pulling within sight of it, and said I didn't think Stinkpot would fit between the pilings. They called up to the office and confirmed that I was right and moved us to the much nicer "F" dock. We are in the catbird seat now and have already had an evening visit with our friends, Cristin and Aaron on Sunday night, and Monday we ran up to Harpers Ferry, West Virigina in our car to visit with good friends, Cherie and Chris of Technomadia, and walk around the national park—which is gorgeous and worth the trip!
Thursday…four days ago. It feels like a couple weeks ago, but it has only been four days. We spent the days in the run-up to Thursday preparing the boat to leave our slip (well, actually, our friend, Robert's slip) in Hopewell, Virginia, where we spent the last two months working on the boat, installing Robert's gifted generator into Stinkpot, and waiting for the right time to get underway. We determined a week earlier that the right time would be July 1st after consulting tide calculators. Doing so would allow us to ride the outflowing tide almost all the way down the James River to Hampton in one day—it would peter out around Jamestown around 1PM, but then the tide would change there and give us another push all the way to Hampton before petering out again when we arrived at the mouth of the river. We did a last grocery store run and then moved our car to our next destination with the help of Robert's Jeep. We got the boat ready and scrubbed a month's worth of spider poop off and ejected the eight-legged web-artists responsible for it. We put all the tools away, and stowed all the spare parts. Still planning on a Friday departure, Wednesday we decided to move up our departure to Thursday. We were ready, and the plan was to anchor out at a nearby swimming hole where I'd dive on the hull and see what kind of condition our sacrificial anodes were in before we ran down into the saltwater of Chesapeake Bay. By Wednesday evening, I looked at the tides again and realized we'd have our "good run" all the way to Hampton a day earlier than the models had said a week before. We changed our plans. Thursday morning rolled around and Robert showed up early at the marina to see us off. Hugs and handshakes all around and we cast off with Robert telling us to look for him waving when we come onto the James River. We pulled out of the slip and made our way to the marina's black water pump-out dock to take care of a little business first. We started the process and the nozzle dripped this viscous mess all over our clean deck and on Stacey's pant leg. This is not an uncommon occurrence when using this kind of equipment, but usually the drips are human waste which rinses right off with a water hose. Spoiler Alert: this stuff didn't. We started pumping (the machine still worked fine), and started to clean the mess while it we offloaded our "cargo." This was when we realized that the "mess" was oily. Someone had used the pump-out machine to clean the sludge out of a fuel tank—at least that is the only hypothesis I can come up with to explain the mess it made. Whatever it was, it was pumped into Hopewell's sewage system, which can't possibly be a good thing. Pumped out and cleaned up, we started our way out to the James River to pick up our predicted current. We came around City Point and took our last looks at Hopewell, and there was Robert as promised, standing on top of an oil tank and waving at us. Stacey took his picture while Robert took ours. You can barely make him out on the oil tank, but Stinkpot looked great underway in his shot. It felt great to be underway again! As predicted, we had the current pushing us for about 4 hours. About the time it petered out, we were just south of Jamestown and we dropped anchor in Cobham Bay to wait for the tide to turn about 2 hours later. While we were there, I pulled on my swim trunks, strapped on a diving mask and proceeded to give Stinkpot a quick once-over to make sure she was in good shape below the waterline. The last time I looked, was right before we launched in Maine for the summer of 2021. The water was not very clear. To wit, I could not see my hand in front of my face, so "copped a feel," and the year-old Navalloy anodes right in front of me were crumbling under my touch. They were, spent. Anodes protect the metal parts of the boat underwater from galvanic corrosion, and without them electrical currents in the water will "eat" propellers, rudders, and such, via a process called galvanic corrosion. Without turning a blog post into a chemistry class, anodes are made of a metal that will corrode before the bronze and stainless steel that our underwater bits are made from, so keeping them fresh is very important—especially in saltwater, which is an electrolytic solution. Not such a big deal way up the James River where the water has no salinity—I'm sure our nearly-spent anodes were just enough up there, but the closer we got to the ocean, the more important it became to change them out. I immediately began contacting divers in the Hampton Roads/Portsmouth/Norfolk, VA area. Only one got back to me, and only to say that he didn't work in that area (though Google disagreed with him, apparently). Again, Robert to the rescue, when I told him about our anodes, he gave me the number for Justin, the diver he uses. I called and Justin Friday morning he said he'd try to get a colleague out to us ASAP, and if all else failed, he'd come himself on Monday. Having anchored Thursday evening in Hampton at a favorite anchorage, while we were ashore enjoying dinner at a local tavern, Justin texted me and said he had someone coming to help us first thing in the morning. We finished our dinner and returned to the boat for the evening and started scheming how we'd find a dock for him to do the work. We decided to just take our chances and use the Hampton City Docks. 8AM the next morning, my phone buzz with a text, and it was our diver, Christian, telling me he was on his way and would be meeting us in 30 minutes. I told him to meet us at the City Docks and we quickly raised anchor and started chugging in that direction, about 1/4 mile away. While I drove, Stacey called the dockmaster, and after a little phone tag, he gave us permission to dock. It all came together. Diver arrived and changed our anodes. We sent payment via Venmo—very reasonable too. By 10:30AM we were underway, to where we did not know. After a bunch of indecision, and given that we had a good following flood tide, breeze, and 2-foot chop pushing us up the bay, we decided to run until we wore out the push, which we estimated to be about Deltaville, VA, and which proved to be correct. About the time we started to get near the mouth of the Piankatank River, we noticed our speed starting to slow. We pulled into Jackson Creek and dropped anchor. We launched the dinghy and did a little exploring of the creek as the day waned and spent a very peaceful night in this familiar anchorage—we anchored here before in spring of 2020, while we were cruising home to Maine after finishing the Great Loop. At the time, we did not go ashore because it was early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sunday morning, I woke, made coffee, and emailed the nearby yacht club, Fishing Bay Yacht Club to ask about spending the night of the 4th on a dock instead of leaving ourselves out in the open on the hook where revelers surely would be careening around us on jetskis and pulling screaming children on floating, inflatable toys behind power boats. I happened to mention in the email that I'd gladly play a show in exchange for such a courtesy. At about 1:30PM, our boat phone rang (What? You don't have a "boat phone?"). It was Brian, the General Manager of the yacht club, inviting us to dock for as long as we'd like to stay, enjoy the club's evening cookout, and entertain the waiting masses. I accepted his offer to both dock and perform, and said we'd be over right after we dinghied over to the local maritime museum and park for a walk around the grounds, which is exactly what we did. As I am writing, it is Monday, July 4, and we are still enjoying this beautiful spot on the club's t-head pier. Tomorrow we plan to drop lines and head to Tangier Island, which we have been told is a must-visit place. We'll let you know….
say it is an engineering marvel that it happened at all. The generator weighs 505 lbs. and needed to be lifted into the boat, laid on its side, moved over two feet, and then stood up into position by rolling it 90°. Robert owns a welding shop and made a makeshift, Stinkpot-sized gantry crane out of scrap steel that performed flawlessly. Everyone should have a friend like Robert!
2. I'm the father of a college graduate. My son completed a bachelor's degree with a major in film making from Lesley University, which I traveled north to witness. No sooner had the wheels of the plane hit touched down, my phone rang with the news that he had just tested positive for COVID-19 and would not be taking part in his own graduation ceremonies. I visited with friends in Maine and Massachusetts, as planned, and drove my own car from Maine back to Virginia to give Stacey and me wheels for the summer. 3. Stinkpot continues to show her age, and we continue to stay on top of systems failures as they happen. What have I fixed recently (other than installing our new-to-us generator)? Well, air conditioners. Both of them. We have managed to keep cool and comfortable during the warm weather, but it required that I add HVAC technician to my list of skills. In this case, it was a failed start/run capacitor on our salon A/C unit and a corroded connector on our stateroom A/C unit. 4. We have become adept at ordering from Amazon without an address, using "Amazon Lockers" and "Amazon Hub Counters." We've been using a counter at a RiteAid Pharmacy nearby. Strangely, there are some items on Amazon that we simply cannot order here, which we've found enormously odd. We had no idea that geography was an issue when ordering from Amazon, but apparently it is. 5. Stinkpot is DIRTY. We are in a covered slip, which keeps the sun from baking us, but I have never in all my days seen so many spiders and other insects in one place. Fortunately, there do not seem to be a lot of biting insects, but I have been pressure washing weekly, and within a day of doing so, she's covered in webs again. It's a nearly pointless, perpetual pursuit. The worst part is the spider poop. It's harder to remove than gull crap, leaving the captain to frequently utter, "This is bull****!" Other than that, we are status normal and just waiting for a few upgrades to be complete—the generator is functioning, but we still haven't connected the remote start and gauges. Once everything is done, we'll be scheduling our departure and figuring out how to relocate our car to wherever we'll end up next. If you happen to be somewhere in southeastern Virginia and want to help us move our car, drop us a line…. Our next post will come after we've arrived at our next stop. Stay tuned!
Both of our alternators had failed, so we were very dependent on our little Honda EU2000 generator to keep batteries charged, as daylight (we also charge batteries with solar panels) was getting scarce for the approaching winter. I knew I'd need to upgrade and rewire while I was replacing the alternators, which would take a lot of back and forth to auto parts stores and chandleries (marine stores), so I put it off until we had ready access to wheels, and as it turned out, that was here.
from Westerbeke generators (original equipment on Stinkpot) to Onan generators, and that difference means modifications. So here we are, buying and borrowing tools, ordering parts, and making the most of Robert's genuine and generous hospitality.
after which I will be flying back to New England in a couple of weeks to watch my son, Kieran, graduate from Lesley University.
To wit, the plan is that I will leave Stacey here at the boat, fly one-way, into Portland, Maine, where my good buddy, Steve, will pick me up at the airport. I'll spend a day or two with he and his wife, Leah, while I get my car, which has been parked in their garage all winter, ready for a trip south. I will then drive to Medford, Massachusetts to impose upon some other dear friends, Jeanne and Charlie, for a few days whilst the graduation and other related (and unrelated) festivities happen. Finally, I will put myself behind the wheel for the long trip from Beantown to Stinkpot back here in Hopewell, at which point we'll decide what's next for Stinkpot. As of this writing, we plan to be cruising Chesapeake Bay for the summer. I might play some gigs here and there, and there will also be some online concerts from the boat as we go. Where around the Chesapeake Bay region would you like to see Stinkpot drop anchor? Let us know in the comments.
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AuthorsStacey and Dave are nomadic explorers who travel the waters of the eastern United States aboard their Bayliner 3870, m/y Stinkpot. Archives
January 2024
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