The U.S. Sailboat Show is weeks away, but Annapolis is already jam-packed with boats. The marinas are jacking up their rates to as much as $4/foot/night in anticipation of the demand for slips; we decided to leave Petrini's rather than pay inflated prices. We spent two days at anchor in front of the Naval Academy, then moved to the work dock at Bert Jabin's yard on Back Creek for the week so that KATO Marine could do the measurements and work to make an equipment arch for us.
Even though they weren't finished at the end of the week (more on this below) we opted to leave Bert Jabin's, as the work dock had no water and flaky electricity and still cost $50/day. We had a tough time finding a place to stay. Spa Creek and Back Creek are jammed with anchored boats, and even the unprotected and rolly anchorage in front of the Naval Academy has a goodly number of boats. We managed to snag an Annapolis Harbor mooring on Saturday morning. The boat show takes over half of these moorings, though, and we had gotten an inner one -- prime boat-show territory. But after some checking with the harbormaster for inside info on which moorings that wouldn't be taken by the boat show were occupied only for the weekend, and some quick maneuvering, we worked our way out to an edge mooring where we can stay until October 25th. By then, we hope, we'll be ready to start moving south.
Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth hanging around for the boat show. All it will mean is more opportunity to spend lots of money!
The first thing we are spending money on is a new fuel filtration system, since we have had so many problems with our fuel filters clogging. As if we didn't already know we desperately needed to fix our fuel filtration system, we had problems again (hopefully for the last time!) Monday morning, when we left the anchorage to go over to Bert Jabin's for the equipment arch work. Just past the entrance to Back Creek, boom, the filter clogged and the engine died and wouldn't restart. We crabbed in a while with the main but the wind was totally in our face, and there were so many anchored boats that it was a little nerve-wracking trying to pick out a course in the narrow creek. Fortunately, we hadn't hoisted our outboard from the dinghy for the short trip, so Britt played tugboat captain and used the dinghy to push Windom to the dock while I steered.
Our boat has dual diesel tanks, with a10-micron filter on each fuel line; the engine also has a 5-micron filter at the intake. We replaced the small Dahl filters (which are a pain to change) with Racors, which are larger (therefore, we hope, longer lasting), easier to change, and easier to obtain. Britt has also designed a system which will allow us to circulate and clean the fuel in the tanks, using a third filter and a fuel pump. This pump can also be used to prefill the filters with diesel; this should solve the problem we've had with the engine not priming properly. We added a vacuum gauge so we can watch how hard the engine has to suck to get fuel. When the engine starts having to work harder than usual, it's time to change the filter.
The new system is a wild-looking maze of valves, hoses, and filters, but it seems to be functioning as intended. Unfortunately, there is so much crud in the tanks that the hoses leading from the tanks seem to clog easily, before even reaching the filters. We've been working on cleaning the fuel, and we hope to eventually get all the crud out.
You can pretty much pick out the liveaboard cruisers by the amount of gear they have tacked onto their stern rails. We're probably the only liveaboards in the harbor without dinghy davits, a wind generator, or solar panels. The problem with tacking stuff onto your stern rail is that there's only so much stern rail to go around -- thus the arch. We decided back in July that one big piece of equipment -- a nice stainless steel arch -- would give us lots of places to put the little equipment (and would serve as dinghy davits), so we plunked down a deposit to get on KATO's schedule and arranged to have them build it on our return.
Keith Oliver of KATO came out and measured like a demon for two days, then on Thursday he and his welder came back with a mostly-completed arch to fit to the boat. Problem was, it didn't fit. Keith scratched his head and took the arch back to his workshop. That afternoon he dropped by Windom again and sheepishly told us that he'd transposed some numbers in his measurements, and they'd have to start over. Oh, well -- at least he was willing to rip it up and do it right, rather than try to make it fit. So the following Wednesday we came back to Jabin's for the day (for free, fortunately, as arranged by KATO) and they tested the fit on the new arch -- perfect. Now they are finishing putting on all the equipment mounts and polishing it up.
While KATO were building the arch, we were getting Windom ready for it. Lots of holes to be drilled and hardware to be bought, but it's all ready to go once the arch is ready. Now all we have to do is buy and install all the things that go on the arch. We already have gotten cockpit speakers and a cockpit light, and we're just going to move our stern light, but we need to buy tackle to hoist the dinghy and the motor, a second GPS (its antenna will go on the arch), and a wind generator.
Maybe it's because we're back in boat-mad Annapolis, or maybe it's
because some of Vern and Kathy's
hypersocial talents rubbed off on us, but we've been meeting more
people. On my birthday (September 18th) we were walking along Ego
Alley (technically called "Market Slip" -- the city docking area and
turning basin -- but the local name is definitely appropriate!) and
saw thar be dragons, a pirate-ship-y ketch with a homeport of
Golden, CO. 
Of
course we had to meet the owners, and we ended up going out to dinner
and spending most of the evening with them. Mike and Dawn aren't
fulltime cruisers, but Mike spends a lot of time on their boat, so we
hope to see each other again in the near future. Landlocked western
homeports always catch our eye; that's why we remembered seeing
Sea Amigo, of Arizona (and they remembered our boat) from when
we were moored here in early July. They have been in Annapolis all
summer, and they came up and chatted with us the other day -- turns
out they'd stumbled onto our web pages, too!
Having the same brand of boat is another good excuse to meet other people. Caliber is a fairly small manufacturer, and only about a dozen 40's are made a year, but we've seen quite a few of them. When we left Bert Jabin's work dock for Annapolis Harbor we hit the biggest Caliber jackpot yet: we were followed out of Back Creek by another 40 (Options packed a double whammy, with an Idaho homeport on the transom!), and there were a Caliber 40, a 38 (which is nearly identical to the 40), and a 35, all at moorings. The 40's name was Puffin and the 35's name was Loon. Our guess that they were related was confirmed when we dinghied over to meet them; Mary and Jim liked their boat so much that Mary's brother Bill bought a smaller version. Puffin is being put up for the winter, but Bill is heading south, so maybe we'll see Loon later this year.
We haven't yet gotten to the point where we will shamelessly dinghy up to any other boat on no pretext at all, but we are working on it!
Our mooring is near the Naval Academy, and one day we noticed transport boats like the one that had taken us to see the USS Hayler back in May by the seawall. We dinghied to shore and took the next boat out to the USS Saipan. Hayler is a destroyer; Saipan is a "General Purpose Amphibious Assault Ship". Although that sounds sort of like Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, what it really means is that it's a big cargo ship which can carry helicopters and airplanes, trucks, and amphibious landing craft, in addition to a couple thousand Marines. The way it carries amphibious craft is pretty interesting; they take on water ballast to lower the boat so that the "well deck" and its side entrance are underwater, the boats float in, then they close up and empty out the water, leaving the well deck and all the craft in it high and dry. There is also a large flight deck, where Harrier jets and helicopters can take off and land. On the deck when we visited was one battered Harrier -- really just a shell -- which was being used for emergency firefighting practice.
When we paid our final visit to the Annapolis West Marine before our summer cruise, Rob, the manager, cracked that their sales figures were going to plummet until we returned. It wasn't long after we got back here in Annapolis until we had to go buy things at West Marine, and the staff greeted us like old friends. We brought them a new "big list" so we were able to get our old discount relationship going again (if you buy a lot of stuff, they will give you better prices).
Electronics are not discounted by West Marine, because the margin is so low, and we want a few items which they don't carry, so we have to spend some money elsewhere. Fortunately, Annapolis has no shortage of places for us to do this. There's a big "marine flea market" starting October 1, the Boat Accessory Market, and we will go check it out. Then the next weekend is the US Sailboat Show, and we're hoping that some of the exhibitors will have special "boat show prices" on the gear we want.
We got email from Vern and Kathy a week or so after they got hit by Hurricane Floyd. Their dinghy was gashed beyond repair, but they and their boat Andante came through unscathed, despite having been at Cape Fear, right where Floyd made landfall. They say: "tie up really well to a good dock, take off everything (sails, bimini, dodger)."