Leaving Baltimore

Morning departure

We had a great time in Baltimore at the HarborView Marina. The first part of our stay was quiet and Martin and I enjoyed having the boat to ourselves.  Sean and Louise arrived on Saturday and we had a tasty dinner at the Rusty Scupper. We used the few days of down time to check off several tasks that needed to be done. The biggest task was cleaning!  Blossom is a big girl and there’s always something to tidy up. She’s so squeaky clean right now and it’s motivating me to try to keep her that way. We also figured that we’d be showing her off during Trawler Fest and wanted her to look pretty. I took care of the inside of the boat and outside decks. Martin cleaned the engine room and laz, replaced and reconfigured our router (a full day of work there) and drilled holes in my sewing table to accommodate the plugs and pedal.  A Northern Lights tech came out on Monday and performed our 100 hour service on the two gens. One day there was some down time for me to work on my art quilt project for the master stateroom while Martin worked on the router. 

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get in to DC but we did made use of the bikes and went exploring the Federal Hill neighborhood just up the hill. I’m really pleased with our full sized bikes. (Our previous boat bikes had the little tires and I wasn’t very enthusiastic about their performance). Sean & Louise had bikes arrive at the marina so we all have “wheels” now. They’re great for short distance transportation and grocery shopping.

Pirate Ship filled with many very happy children

The second part of our stay was all about Trawler Fest.  Jeff arrived Tuesday night and we all went out to dinner at Porters Pub which was a nice little restaurant.  It was fun to have Jeff back on the boat. He has such a great energy and it feels like a party as soon as he steps aboard :)

Jim and Rick visiting

Wednesday night was a very special treat. A former work friend of mine, Rick, moved to Baltimore about 7 years ago. I was thrilled to be able to get a hold of him and arrange to meet up. We had a great evening of dinner and drinks aboard Blossom with Rick and his friend Jim.  Rick works for the Pride of Baltimore II so he was coming off a wonderful, exhausting work week with the Star Spangled Spectacular just having wrapped up. I'm so grateful that he was able to come visit. We had a fantastic evening of catching up and reconnecting!

Happy Hour

Trawler Fest began on Thursday. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy. A perfect day to cook chicken soup, so I made Tom Ka Kai, perfect for a rainy day.  Friday was a new day and it was sunny and gorgeous.  Sean & Louise left in the morning, headed out to Yorktown. We’ll be meeting up with them in a few days. We spent the day walking the docks, chatting with folks and giving a few tours of Blossom. 

Baltimore Heliport

Ice Sculpture

Friday night there was a dinner and movie event held by Passage Maker at the Baltimore Heliport. We enjoyed a great dinner, open bar, and watched Northwest Passage Documentary by Sprague Theobald.  It was an interesting documentary and confirmed that I don't plan on doing that passage, ever! We sat with a really lovely couple, Leigh and Wendy, who are early in the process of looking to move aboard.  

Saturday was our last day in Baltimore.  We’ve been going to Trawler Fest for years, in Ft. Lauderdale, Lake Park, San Diego, Anacortes and Baltimore. It was awesome to go once more, this time on our own boat. All those shows paid off and we finally are living the dream!  After so many years, we've come to know several of the vendors at the show. It was a nice day to catch up with people and say hi. We saw Leigh & Wendy again, chatted more about boating and enjoyed some wine in our cockpit. That night there was a dinner and live music show on the dock. We made it an early evening as our plan was to be off the dock when the sun was up.

And so we made it to our northern destination and are now heading back south. Today we were up early and ready for our first solo voyage.  I was a bit nervous (shocker, I know).  But we couldn’t have asked for a better day to head out.  There’s no wind and the bay is rolling glass dotted with fishing boats, sailboats and floating birds.  We have about 140 miles to cover and are planning on two long days to get as far south as we can before the weather turns a bit cold and blowy on Tuesday.  We’ll see how far we can get before sunset and find a place to tuck in and anchor. We’d like to anchor close by on Tuesday night so we can arrange to arrive in Yorktown on Wednesday at slack tide/current.

Boat Business

Our friends had a very interesting comment on their blog with someone asking if they would reach a point where they could just relax and not have things to fix major systems on their boat.  Sean wrote a great reply. The question made me smile because it's something that I'm always grappling with. Acceptance is the only way... We all hope to have periods of time (the longer the better) free from "major" issues but it's not reasonable to expect to have "no" issues at any given time.  (Sorry for the double negative.) Too many systems, too complex, too harsh an environment. Our friend Margie has a reply she always uses when someone starts talking about their boat woes... "yes, it's a boat". Nuff said.

Done:

• Replaced the router so we now have strong wireless internet signal throughout the entire boat. This is router through which we connect to marina wifi so this is very important
• Replaced window cover in master shower (it peeled off and we were left very “exposed” to the dock when showering!
• Put protective film on cockpit console

 Still to tackle:

• Caulk (again) the leaking hatch above the VIP bed.
• Change out the Wavenet panel (the new one arrived this week) for the 9K gen
• A list of maintenance items that our Wheelhouse Technology system is telling us it’s time to do.

New gremlins:

• The follow up panel on the starboard wing station won’t power up.
• The fridge light is out