Back to Baltimore, end of the season

Boats. Always a frickin' adventure.

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!

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.