Needed new paint

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.

Cape May to Baltimore, slip, just not ours

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.

Nevertheless, we're back in Charm City.

Gonna be heartbreaking for a long time.

Happy to be back.