I don’t know what to do with myself

10/4/14
Nabb’s Creek, Chesapeake Bay
Posted by Bill

We didn’t get much rain, but the wind blew up to 30 knots overnight and most of the day today. We got the flooding as expected and the water rose to a foot over the dock. We did a good job of securing the boats so we had no drama…yay!

Today was the first day in probably 6 months that we were able to just chill out, watch football, and just do nothing. It was weird. I had a hard time just relaxing. Having secure wifi, I attended to administrative work on the computer. One of those things was to order a mail shipment. We use St Brendan’s Isle in Florida to collect our mail and ship it to us on request. We have only had one shipment so far, and they did a fine job. The people who started the company are ex-cruisers so they know what is important to their customers. I also figured out how to add a map to the blog site with markers of where we have been. Look at the top of the page and there is a new menu item. When you click to that page you will see a overview map and if you want to zoom and explore, click on the link. I am interested to see if people like it, so let me know.

Our friend Mike took this picture of us sailing in to the Patapsco River:
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See the soot on the transom of the boat that I was talking about in the last post?

Below is a pic of the dock we are on from today:
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Notice that Mike’s sailboat is on the other side of us. You will remember from the last post that he and I moved it over after the diver cleaned the bottom. I didn’t post it yesterday, but we had a bit of a “Captain Ron” moment when we moved the boat. It is a typical boating situation. Mike hadn’t used that boat much this year, but just a couple of days ago he tested the engine and transmission and everything was good. We motor away from the dock, me at the bow and him at the helm. The boat moved really well and Mike was having fun tooling around Nabb’s Creek. He made the turn to take it into the slip on the other side of us and because of the wind he had to come in a little “hot” to keep control of the boat. When it came time to slow the boat down Mike says “ok…reverse….reverse…REVERSE….REVERSE”. No reverse! My first thought was to hook one of the pilings with the dock line I was holding but they were too far away and moving too fast. My next thought was: we are going to hit the wall in front of me and I am going to get catapulted over the bow rail and be killed! Fortunately, the bottom tapers up as you get closer to shore and boat slid to a nice easy stop in the mud, about 12 feet from the wall. Of course, Mike says, “of all the things have have gone wrong with that boat, it has never failed in reverse”. There is always a first time! With some help from Tricia aboard Island Bound, we warped the boat out of the mud and got her secured.

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