It's kind of a good news / bad news thing. On the one hand, we finally slipped the lines at Herrington Harbour and got underway again, cutting through the water, putting miles under our keel. On the other hand -- we went north. At least we only backtracked as far as Annapolis.
Britt finally finished the big heater project on Friday, November 17. What joy it was to flip the switch and feel the hot air pouring into the room! (Of course, it's never so simple. The first time we flipped the switch, we felt...nothing. Turned out we'd wired a relay backwards.) Now we are toasty warm. Naturally we'd rather be caressed by the warm breezes of the tropics, but for now (as the radio forecaster tells us there is a 40% chance of snow showers) the warm breezes of our diesel heater will have to do.
As soon as we determined that the heater was working, we started planning. My youngest brother's getting married in northern Virginia the day after Thanksgiving, and I had tickets from Savannah. We'd thought we'd be down there by now, but with six days before my flight, a 4-day offshore run would still get us there in time...provided we started immediately. We tuned our SSB to November Mike November, the NOAA offshore weather forecast, just in time to hear, "...low pressure system in area by Sunday night...developing gale...." Prudence won; we'd stay in the Chesapeake until after the wedding.
But rather than stay out in the wilds of Deale, we figured that if we were going to be stuck in the area for another week, we'd just as soon be in Annapolis. The 20-mile run was easy but boring, as we motored all the way in barely 5 knots (which was, of course, on the nose). It was tolerably comfly behind the dodger, but we could warm up below whenever we got cold -- our heater is set up so that we can turn on the circulation pump and blowers when the engine is on and get free heat (i.e., without running the diesel furnace).
All the cheap off-season slots at the city dock are full up, but we got a not-too-miserable price for a week at a nearby marina. Not nearly as good as we had down at Herrington Harbour, but now we are in downtown Annapolis, which we know and love. We took the bus to the mall and saw Men of Honor, a real treat for us movie-deprived boat people; we socialized with some of our friends here, and we even went out to a bar one night and went dancing.
One nice thing about having our boat in the area is that my other brother and his family, who flew in from their home in California for Thanksgiving and the wedding, could finally see our boat. Their three-year-old daughter, Zoe, was fascinated with the boat. It was sort of like a giant play machine. She ran around on the deck peering in through all the hatches, sat behind the wheel and turned it, and ground on the winches. The biggest hit was the bilge pump, where she gleefully pulled out the impeller to let water in, then plugged it up and watched and listened to the pump suck all the water out. Then she did it again. And again. Sort of an expensive toy for a three-year-old, but apparently anything that keeps them occupied at that age is a real find. (But I don't think my brother and his wife will buy Zoe a boat.)
Over the past several days, it's gotten even colder. Daytime highs have been only a few degrees over freezing, with a wet and chilly wind sweeping in from the bay. Nights are in the twenties. The heater keeps chugging away, keeping us comfortable, but the prospect of sailing south in this icy air is a little daunting. We talked on the SSB with friends on Elysia, down in Beaufort, South Carolina, and they're reporting cold weather too. From our experiences last year, we know it's not going to be shorts weather until we get to southern Florida. I wonder, will we get there before they resolve the presidential election?
In anticipation of being away from cell phone service for a long time, we bought a Pactor IIe HF radio modem. The connect rate is even slower than our cell phone modem, and it will pretty much be strictly for email (which means coming up with a new strategy for web updates), but we'll be able to connect straight from the boat instead of going to town with the laptop as we had to in the Bahamas last winter. To use the Pactor, we have two options: buy a commercial service (or semi-commercial service) such as Sailmail, or upgrade our ham licenses to General so we can use one of the free ham email services set up by volunteer amateurs. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
As it turns out, there will be a ham exam given in Vero Beach, Florida, on December 21. We figure we can make that, both in terms of studying up and in terms of physically getting there. If for some reason that doesn't work out, we'll pony up the $200 for Sailmail.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you still reading...and thanks for sticking with us through these boring parts. We promise exciting updates from warm and interesting places Real Soon Now!