We've been shivering and watching with envy as one boat after another has left Annapolis for points south. Britt's dental work was finished on October 25th; on the 26th, our last boat-show goodies arrived by UPS at the Harbormaster's office. We dinghied in to pick them up at 11:30, and were underway by noon.
With our typical cruiser's luck, the wind was right out of the
south, so we motored into it, reasoning that we needed to charge the
batteries anyway. (While in Annapolis, we had filtered all the fuel
in tank#1 into tank#2, then cleaned and refilled #1. We had no fuel
line blockages or clogged filters during our almost six hours of
motoring (using tank #2), so we are hopeful that those problems are
behind us.) When we turned to enter the Little Choptank River, we
hoisted the main along with the iron sail, which gave us a few extra
tenths of a knot. We anchored in the glassiest water we've seen in
over a month. We love Annapolis, but it's great to be finally on the
move again.
Our last week in Annapolis was hectic indeed. We had our first overnight guest, which meant that we needed to clear the the "garage" (a.k.a. the aft stateroom) of the unfinished projects, the fishing rod, the bicycles, and the random stuff we put there because we didn't have anywhere else to put it. Worse yet, we had to find places to put it all. The bikes got tied onto the deck, the projects were tucked into the lazaret, the rod went into the cockpit rod holder, and the stuff got stuffed anywhere we could think of to stuff it.
It was fun having Jerry, who used to work with Britt (and inherited his job), aboard. His presence gave us an excuse to quit working and to have fun, although we made him drive us around Annapolis for errands, since we no longer have a car.
On the Saturday morning that Jerry was with us, we noticed the Navy transport boats going back and forth to the Academy seawall. We immediately figured that a Navy ship must be anchored out in the Bay and giving tours, which would be great fun to do with our guest. (We'd visited a destroyer in May and an amphibious transport in September. We have quite become connoisseurs of naval vessels!) We dinghied over, but the officers in charge told us that we'd need tickets, since there was only limited space aboard the Pittsburgh -- it was a submarine!
Britt dashed over to the Academy visitors' center to get tickets, and they gave him the third degree: How did you find out that there was a boat here? Why should we let you aboard? It turned out that the tours were intended only for special guests, alumni and other people connected to the Navy, but Britt got their attention by telling them that we were sailors staying at a boat in the harbor, and they were apparently impressed that he was an ex-NOAA (and thus government) employee, and of course Jerry was still a government employee, so after much cajoling we ended up with three tickets to the 11:30 tour.
The tour was fascinating, especially since Britt and I had seen Becuna, a WWII submarine, in Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh, a modern nuclear submarine, was far bigger, but no more spacious. We got to see the weapons systems (I hollered down a torpedo tube and got a super echo), the systems which keep the air breathable (they make oxygen from water, and burn CO2), the bridge (we all looked through the periscope), the medical room (which doubles as the countermeasures station, where they shoot off streamers to confuse enemy torpedos), and the lounges for the enlisted men and the officers. The lounges featured multiple VCRs and screens, and cabinets full of movies on tape, clearly the entertainment of choice. Our tour guide told us that whenever they watched a movie that featured a submarine, such as Hunt For Red October, they'd laugh and laugh at the unrealistic spaciousness of the sets. "Oh yeah, like Denzel Washington could run down the corridor in a real sub! Give me a break!"
We finally got the dinghy beached and overturned for a good bottom scraping. And boy, did it need it. A carpet of slime and barnacles covered the entire rigid bottom and extended partway up the side tubes. Barnacle glue is the most tenacious stuff in the universe, and it did not give way willingly. We stabbed and dug at the barnacles with a windshield ice scraper until the top layer was off, then rubbed at the residue with a hunk of granite until it was mostly sanded down. It doesn't look great, but it looks a lot better, and it moves a lot better, too. Now that we can lift the dinghy out of the water, to hang from the lift loops on the arch, we will be able to keep the bottom nice and clean.
The dinghy -- or rather, the outboard -- gave us a surprise the other day. We'd come back from town, and just as I was about to shift into neutral to coast up to Windom, the motor died, and we coasted right past. Oops. I started it up again, but it immediately died again. Fortunately, we were only a few yards from the boat, so we pulled out an oar and easily paddled home. The next day, testing the new arch motor hoist, we lifted the outboard up to the rail. The source of the problem was revealed as the motor came out of the water: a length of frayed cotton rope had wrapped around the prop, and we needed a knife to cut it off. It's a good thing we always carry oars in the dinghy.
After seeing how bad the dinghy bottom was, Britt braved the 60 degree water (with a wetsuit) to clean our boat's propeller as well. We'll be doing a lot of motoring on the ICW, particularly south of Cape Fear, and it will be nice to have a clean prop.