Russ arrived in Baltimore a week earlier than I did (around Apr 6), as I spent that time in Puerto Vallarta with a friend.
PV was a great visit. We mainly stayed at the Vidanta Resort, which is a time-share only place. Her dad owns 4 units or so there, buying a new one every time they opened a new building. The condos were amazing -- as far as I could tell all of them have their own kitchens so you aren't required to go onto the grounds and eat at the 30 or so restaurants available.
Our suite. I had a room on the left, Jennifer had the one on the right. The place was bigger than our condo in SF.
Vidanta has a number of locations throughout Mexico. But the PV location is also trying to become a Disneyland for the area, complete with rides, food, and entertainment like a Cirque Du Soleil show. It's still under construction, but you can take a skytram ride to view it. Part of it should be open in the next year.
We did venture into town for a day, which was walking and shopping along the beach and river walks, all the while nibbling on chips or guac or tacos. The area has a large US expat population. The city is one of the safest in Mexico. With the exception of enthusiastic vendors peddling goods we were never harassed or panhandled.
Jennifer and me at one of many places to dine.
This is the entry way into The Grand Mayan. The pic doesn't do it justice. But there are 8 huge Mayan statues in a darkened entryway that tower over you.
Built in the jungle most of the walkways are wooden paths built above the floor. And illuminated well at night.
Huge frickin' geckos everywhere. That one's about 3 feet long.
Near the beach in the town of PV. In the far distance is Vidanta.
We had dinner at a restaurant in town on a hill. This was the view at sunset.
From PV I flew to BWI and joined Russ on the boat. By that time he had it mostly de-winterized, so we have heat and water. That was crucial for the first 2 weeks, as we had some nippy temps.
Looking across to Highwind, which we usually don't see due to other boats in the slips. Clearly it isn't "the season" yet.
About a week ago we had an appointment to get new props installed. The engines started right up but the left one ran pretty rough. Within minutes it sputtered and died, starved for fuel. We called to cancel the appointment. Within a 30 minutes Russ had unclogged the fuel line and cleaned out the filters. It started right up and ran for 30 minutes without an issue before we shut it off. But by then we'd missed our opportunity.
Fast forward to 2 days ago when we got another shot. It was our first voyage of the season, even though it was only a 20 minute ride to the Clinton Boat Yard. inQuest was hauled, sprayed clean (totally unnecessary since she came out of the water just shiny!) and new props were put on.
Shiny new props!
Russ has done a number of projects already, like installing a new icemaker and a new freezer. Next will be changing out the alternator, which is proving to be a bother. Apparently, while alternators are attached to engines, no mechanic knows diddly about them. And alternators are part of the electrical system, but no electrician wants to deal with them. So this is all falling on Russ. With David's help, of course.
When we left Baltimore we'd secured a 7 month lease in a Tampa condo. We were pretty sure it wasn't a long term thing but it was centrally located in Channelside (the area we were interested in). We would take that time to look for a long term rental that we could call home when we weren't boating. Tampa would be perfect; it's about a hour drive to my folks, it's got good weather, cute little city...
And then the election happened.
Up early to get some coffee and croissants. Our condo building is on the right, and we're looking down California Street.
Upshot, without getting too political, we current own a condo in San Francisco. We'll live there in the winter time and boat in the summer.
This new administration is making boat planning very difficult. We had thought we were going back to Quebec City this year, hoping to stay there for a couple of weeks, then hanging out in Canada and the Great Lakes. Now I'm ashamed of the American flag (which I'm required to display while traveling in international waters), not to mention the growing angst and hostility towards Americans.
I mean, what do you expect from the 51st state. Hawai'i didn't take the news all that well, either.
And if they honestly dissolve NOAA, like Project 2025 promises, we will stop boating altogether.
Farmer's market on Saturday at the Ferry Building. Best chilaquiles anywhere!
Moving to SF was a little like a homecoming, I must admit. We love the transit, we love the walkability, and we love the vast and diverse array of dining options.
Last night, for example, we took some long-time friends to a vegetarian Chinese place, Enjoy Vegetarian, and had a fabulous meal. We followed that up with an escape room, which was their first. I'm happy to say we did escape.
Got to introduce escape rooms to some old friends. Oh yeah. We escaped.
One of the crazier things you can do in SF is WAYMO! Self driving taxis. Kinda of like a Disneyland ride, being escorted by a "happy haunt."
WATCH THE SOUND! Sadly we couldn't turn it down.
Come April we'll make our way to Baltimore to get inQuest ready for the next season. We still have no idea what that is going to be. Or if that will be our last cruise.
Russ and I have a new rule based on this one: If anyone besides Russ is in the engine rooms, we need to sit in the water for 10 minutes with the engines running before we move anywhere.
I had a doctor's appointment made months ago for this day. When we dropped off the boat 12 days ago, we figured it would be splashed within a week and there's be no issue. However, boats.
The holdup came with a small request to lube our seacocks, specifically the ones for the engines. They largely use the outside water to cool them, sucking it in from beneath the boat. Sliding levers allow you to open or close them. Ours have been sticky for a while so Russ wanted them lubed. But once the folks got started the kits used to do that were no longer available. So instead, they were going to replace them. Again, no longer available but they cast a wide net and found 6. Once they came in, however, they weren't threaded right (I'm hand-waving a lot of these terms since I only overheard the conversation between Russ and the tech). The only answer was to change to totally new bronze ones which fit perfectly. All of THAT took several days to sort.
Of course they wanted us to splash on the same day as my doctor's appointment. I remained hopeful it would work, since my doctor's appointment was at 11 am, and the splash was at 1 pm. But it was a 1 hour Uber ride to the yard so time was critical. Our plan B was Russ would go alone and single hand the boat back by himself. I personally thought that was a terrible idea -- after getting work like that done it would be better if I could be driving while he checks (and double checks) things while underway. By the time it was 11:20 am and I still hadn't been called I asked how much longer. They said another person was still ahead of me (my doc takes her time, which is great when you're seeing her, not so much when you're waiting). Russ was about to leave when I offered to cancel the appointment and reschedule for the Spring.
Hoisted, with new paint!
I cancelled, we got our Lyft, and arrived around 12:30 at the boat yard. "You folks are early." "Why do you say that?" "You splash at 3 pm." Nuh-uh! Thankfully, they pushed the other 2 boats scheduled to splash at 1 back and got inQuest the water first. Thank goodness. Of course the whole doctor thing would have worked out better but, given it's a 3 hour ride back to Baltimore, we'd get in after dark. We were lifted, paint was touched up (where the chocks were), and we were in the water by 1:30. The tech and Russ checked all the seacocks and other places were work had been done, and it all looked great. We turned engines on, and all was still good. And Russ started to back out.
Normally I pilot the boat. But Russ had kinda wanted to do this, having thought about single-handing the boat himself. He doesn't do a lot of piloting. He backed out, spun her around, and started down the fairway, nice and slow.
And the port engine died.
I've had a bit more experience piloting with only one engine, which is a pain in the butt to do in fiddley spaces like marina fairways with wind. Which we had. I took over.
Note the red 0 and gauge for the port engine.
We tried the engine a second time. It ran rough for a few seconds, then died again. Then I notice that the port fuel tank reads totally empty. How the heck did that happen? We had about 20% coming in! We called the yard but can't go back -- turning around with one engine is right out with these vessels. Russ knew there was a fuel dock at the end of the marina. It just would take 2 90-degree turns to get there, again, tricky with 1 engine, trickier with the 15 knot wind.
There were moments I was thinking this wasn't going to work. Then I was able to correct enough for the wind to help turn or slow us, then we could bump forward another 50 feet. It took a long time to get out of beyond other boats, beyond the rip-rap wall, and aim for the fuel dock. The yard had called ahead so two guys were there waiting to catch lines and pull us in.
Once we finally got tied off we were told they have no fuel (!) due to some kind of electrical problem. That frustrated me -- now what would we do? Sit here until it's fixed? Russ was sure we did have fuel and that the sensor was bad.
The yard tech joined us, and he and Russ sussed out that our fuel filter had been shut off, which effectively starves the engine of fuel. Also, while they worked on the seacock, they bumped the tank sensor, detaching one of the wires. To be fair, there is not a lot of space in these "engine rooms".
As soon as they reattached the wire the gauge went up -- yep, 20% still in the tank. And once they mucked with the filter the port engines started right up.
I am SO glad I insisted on coming. Russ dealing with that while single-handing the boat would have been miserable, or even resulted in a call to Sea Tow.
Anyway, 3 hour later, Russ got his chance to handle the boat by putting inQuest in her slip. Now all that's left to do is winterize her.
Until next year.
I shot this as they brought inQuest to the basin. A boat had been chocked in the driveway that was "only going to be there for a few minutes", and a pickup-truck and tow was on the other side. I thought that was going to be the big excitement to the day. Ha!
We took inQuest across the Chesapeake Bay to a haul-out facility. There she'd get a new bottom paint job done. While out of the water Russ also wanted all the seacocks (thru-holes on the boat) to be cleaned and lubed. Lastly, we wanted someone to inspect the black tank macerators -- we have not gotten them to work, and while not our first choice of eliminating black tanks, it would be handy to have as a back up.
The plan was to drop her off Monday, and hopefully pick her up on Friday. As fate would have it there have been issues, and parts ordered, and, well, boat stuff. The current splash date is Wednesday. Meanwhile, we're staying in a VRBO until the following Friday.
I've booked our train tickets to Tampa for Sunday, arriving Monday afternoon. I'm looking forward to that.
She is a silly looking thing, ain't she
Once we get her back to her slip in Baltimore we need to winterize her before heading south. That will take a couple of days to comfortably complete. But I don't have a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about splashing on Wednesday, since boats life is notoriously about things going not-as-planned.
I did have the foresight of buying insurance for the trip, which would give us a full refund, just in case.
As soon as inQuest was chocked the lift picked up Highwind, right next to us. They got hauled a week earlier. We did a bit of boat-pooling: Hannah and David came with us to the haul-out, and we rode back to Baltimore with them.
Yesterday we'd moved from the Sunset anchorage to the Canyon Resort Marina, too small a voyage to bother mentioning. But it accomplished 2 things. First, it took 45 minutes off our journey today, which would already be long and, second, got us easy access to shore. That made it much easier to go to Walgreens, for example, to pick up Russ's Paxlovid.
Cuz, yep, we have Covid.
Leaving Cape May in the sunrise
Mine isn't as bad so I'm just trying to get by with cough suppressants and decongestants. Neither of us feel particularly sick, which is why, once we could just see the water, we headed out this morning around 6:30 am.
The plan was to drop a hook on the Sassafras River, leaving an easy 5 hour trip to Baltimore tomorrow. It looked like we'd get in right around 4pm, which made for a long day. But we managed to catch a very favorable tide, which meant we traveled around 10 knots almost all day long -- once while we headed up the Delaware Bay, again crossing through the C 'n' D Canal, then down the Chesapeake. With all that push we got to Sassafras by 2:30, and that seemed way too soon to stop. So, we went all the way home. Thanks to that continued push up the Patapsco River, we got lines on the dock around 6 pm.
After so many windy day delays, the water was like this or better all day long. Worth waiting for.
Not quite 12 hours, but it didn't seem too long to me. Unlike the long trip to Atlantic City where I literally kept asking Russ "Are we there yet?" I'm feeling pretty perky, odd since I have a runny nose.
Our slip, however, is being rented, and won't be vacant for a couple more days. Highwind is off getting some work done, so Hannah and David have offered their slip to us until then.
Given the weather remains a total bother, we continued on the New Jersey ICW southward.
We recalled from last year that this section, from Atlantic City to Cape May, was the worst part, with lots of skinny water and twisty routes. For some reason, this time it just didn't seem that bad. It took us a while to realize why.
First, we thought the trip was about 8 hours. It goes by many neighborhoods filled with slow zones. Turned out it was only 6, getting us here in time for naps!
Second, we had a brandy-new Corp of Engineers scan to go off of. Last time we used the sonar charts on our Navionics. This was so much better. No guess work, totally accurate.
Up and out early in the morning.
Third (and we only realized this in the last couple of miles) they'd dredged the channel. Some sections remain (or quickly became) shoaled. But mostly we had good depths. Also, it wasn't as twisty as I recalled.
To be fair, it's still skinny. This is what we see on the water...
...and this is what the charts read. Throughout the day, tho, we mostly had 10 ft or more. This section was thin, around 5. But with wind and tide we never saw less than 3 feet beneath us.
Needless to say we had a good day, staying off the choppy and miserable Atlantic, and boy does it continue to be.
We finally got to Dock's Oyster House, in AC. Had halibut with their "pommes souffle".
Not sure how long we'll be here, now. We're thinking Thursday or Friday to get up the Delaware, then it's a quick 2nd day ride back to Baltimore. Our slip is rented until Oct 5, so this should be good timing.
Too bad I've relapsed and am now sicker than I'd been since before my trip to NYC.
When people say "curse like a sailor" it's not that the sailor is a particularly bad fellow. It's more that he had a long and miserable day and, *** **** ****** *****, he's just tired. I can relate.
We were up at 5 am for a 6:15 go time, the destination was Atlantic City. After one last weather/wave check that looked really ambitious to us. We decided we'd bag at Manasquan, which was the first inlet off the Atlantic. Then we'd casually bop our way down the Jersey ICW, and anchor somewhere. Since that inlet can spicy, we delayed our departure by 2 hours so it would be near slack tide when we got there. Highwind and One Eye Dog (OED) took off at 6:15 as planned.
They warned us the water was pretty bad across the mouth of the New York Harbor, but got better once off the Jersey shore. Armed with that, he headed out.
It was pretty bad. We had 4 footers on the beam, but in 11 second periods which is the only reason we though going was doable. It did get better once we got near the shore but it in no way was good. Or reasonable. I know the water is bad when I check my watch every 5 minutes wondering how much longer.
While the waters improved once off the ocean the weather just got worse...
...and worse...
...and worse.
That part of the journey took 3.5 hours. Once we got in the inlet, which was perfectly easy, everything was smooth, and stayed that way for the rest of the day.
Right away we started looking for where to anchor. In chatting with OED we thought there might be a chance to get up the Delaware Bay tomorrow if we made it to AC tonight. We did some calculations and realized we could do that, then make a trip up the Delaware part of a long day tomorrow. So we called a marina and made reservations.
But as the day wore on (and on, and on) we realized the bay might not be so inviting after all -- all the weather apps have mixed predictions, which tends to mean "it's going to bite." And the Atlantic was still a mess, so we'd have to take the JICW to Cape May before getting onto the Delaware, and that track will take close to 8 hours alone.
Before we pulled into the marina (around 6:30 pm), we'd decided we'll just stay here a few days and see how the weather shakes out.
It's been a long 3 weeks, and today's been a long day. With Hurricane Helene coming at us, it doesn't appear we're done with this yet, either.
UPDATE: I forget to mention the highlight of the day. Very late, only a few miles from AC, in the very dim light we saw a sailboat. It's location made us assume he was in the channel, but as we neared he appeared anchored. Weird. Through binoculars I didn't see anchor line, but they clearly weren't moving, and (now we could see) they were not in the channel. We slowed way down and Russ got on the bow, asking them if they needed help. They did... they wanted us to wake them. So we put the throttle down, bucked up the water behind us in a huge wave, and went by them. They gave us a big thumbs up as they sailed northward and on their way. That definitely made us feel a little better about the day, being in the right time at the right place -- always happy to help someone.
This is a new marina for us, right next to Coney Island. It's called Miramar. We picked it because it makes a quicker jump off point to start southward, making it about 2 hours shorter than starting at Great Kills on Staten Island.
The weather is looking only marginal for my taste. But with the next hurricane, Helene, already thundering it's way up the gulf, there's an argument to "just get it done." The plan is to head south and get to (at least) Manasquan, which is the first "GET OFF THE WATER" point along the coast. If we're feeling confident, we'll go all the way to Atlantic City for the night. But we won't make that call until we're underway.
NYC in the gloom
Three of us, One Eye Dog, Highwind, and ourselves, made reservations for balls here a couple of days ago. We all immediately got positive responses ball assignments. Because they work Highwind got underway right at the crack of dawn. OED and we started later, largely because we wanted to pick up a little bit of fuel -- just to make sure we had enough to get to AC if we laid the throttles down.
When Highwind got here, tho, there was a vessel on their ball. They got reassigned, no biggie. When we got here we were re-assigned their ball. And a vessel was still on it. The launch didn't seem to believe us so came out to investigate and, lo, ball is occupied. They apologized then (and this was a new one) moved the other vessel. I found that amusing.
Moving a derelict boat from our assigned ball.
Due to rainy weather we aren't going to explore Coney Island. But I suspect we might come back.
Russ working on some bugs while passing the old Pepsi-Cola building.
The ride to Coney Island, just past the Verrazano Bridge.
Between an onslaught of hurricanes and a very stubborn low off the coast the waters off the Jersey shore remain abysmal. It's been a week since I got back from NYC, and we thought we'd need an extra day or 2 before we had a window to travel, but this has been bonkers.
Odd, the weather here's been pretty nice. Didn't even get the rain they predicted. But the winds out there are miserable!
Good news, though, If you have to be somewhere for 3 weeks, Port Washington gets high marks. Between a slew of excellent restaurants, convenient access to groceries and drugs stores, a free launch service, cheap mooring balls, and reasonable trip to get to the city, Port Washington remains a favorite even after an extended stay.
We are among a bunch of boaters all buckin' to get south. There have been texts, chats, and phone calls as everyone compares weather and wave information. General consensus says get to a launching point Thursday and start down the Jersey coast Friday. It won't be fun. Some of us will jump off as soon as we can (this is my tribe) at Manasquan, then take the JICW down to Atlantic City. Others will just put the throttles on the table and book it all the way to Cape May.
Today is Tuesday, and this Friday window has been stable for a while, so we're hopeful that it remains.
