Baltimore Update

Dawn in B12. That's our slip number.

Needless to say we haven't boated anywhere. That was planned. 

We bought a slip here at Anchorage Marina, which will be "home base" for the winter. We plan on traveling back to Florida and renting a couple of condos, one in Orlando and one in Key West. We also need to head to California to get one last thing done. Other winter chores include moving the Bradenton storage stuff to the one near my folks, and getting rid of a bunch of boat stuff that's currently within it.

As a result we're winterizing the boat, which we've never done before. Details of this include treating the engines, pickling the water-maker, installing heaters in the hulls, emptying water tanks, emptying the black tank, treating the commodes and the house water system. Even the windshield wiper fluid has got to go! Thankfully we gave ourselves weeks to get it all done. Russ has been busy.

After 4 years we needed new boat cards. This is the front...

...and this is the back.
This is so us.

We sold our slip in Longboat Key a while ago preparing to move to this way of boating. (Warning: Political rant ahead, so skip this paragraph if you don't want to be offended). After the reversal of Roe v. Wade I remain outraged at those states that treat women as second class citizens. Of course, those would be all states south of the Chesapeake Bay. The last couple of times we've boated through them we made a point of anchoring as much as we could to prevent giving money to businesses in these states; my only vote there is with a dollar. We'd have to buy fuel, of course, but we'd take some solace that our money mostly goes to Big Oil. As for Florida, I vote there, so I do have some other "say". All in all, boating is a slow way to get south, and weather can slow that process further, AND we have done that trip a number of times now. So leaving the boat and just getting to FLA seemed like something to try. 

Beside, a slip in Baltimore has another advantage -- it will be vacant during the "high season." So, rentable. The boating season on the Chesapeake is the summer and we'll be out and about somewhere. Compare that to the high season in Florida which is the winter, when we'd be occupying our slip. Occasionally, it got rented in the summer, but now often.

We leave November 14, arriving in Orlando Nov 15. In the meantime, we're enjoying Baltimore. It is one of our favorite cities.