Ship’s Log
No Boundaries
Starting now, all posts will have an internal date that represents the date I would have posted it if I had internet access. That gives you a better idea of the flow of things. When we are in a port with wifi, I will post them in order and set them to publish on successive days. That way you don’t have to read a whole group at once. I hope this makes sense.
Friday, May 29, 2009
We felt almost ready to go, but there were a few remaining tasks that we considered to be essential.
• Shop for food – I doubt anyone would question the rudimentary necessity of this task
• Turn in our rented car – It wasn’t going to fit on the aft deck anyway.
• Pay our marina bill – Well, duh.
• Polish the hatch covers and wash the cockpit curtains, inside and out – this is the one that sounded sooooo simple.
• Top off the water tank currently in use – doesn’t that make sense to everyone?
• Shower
• Say good-bye to a few marina friends.
• Get a pumpout
• Go
We shopped and filled every nook and cranny with food.
We turned in the car. It is very simple to turn in the car if you happen to arrive when someone is on duty. However, we arrived when someone was at lunch, so we waited and waited. Eventually she came back. We got in line, and both of the people ahead of us had weird problems. Eventually it was our turn. We had no complications and were quickly on our way back to the marina.
Larry stopped in the office to pay our bill while I went on to the boat to make lunch. We thought the other tasks would be easily accomplished after lunch.
However, as always with boating, the weather had its own say in the matter, and then there was the water problem. After lunch, as I polished the hatch covers, clouds built up, thickened, and began to rain on us. We’re not afraid of rain, but it was coming down pretty hard, so we thought we would wait to wash the cockpit curtains until the rain stopped.
The shower lasted about 30 minutes. I went outside and turned on the water. I opened the hose nozzle, and nothing happened. I thought I had failed to turn the handle far enough, so I went back and opened it completely. Still no water at the business end. AAAaaaaggghhh! We learned from our neighbor boat that there had been no water on our dock all day. Then we learned that there was no water in the marina at all. AAAaaaggghhh!
We were able to shower in the office, because the water problem started at the point of entry into the system that serves the marina docks. We were on a roll to leave, and we decided that we could wash the cockpit curtains another day. We would make do with the water we had. Only one of four tanks was used, in part, and we would simply have to be wise in our water use. We said our good-byes and buttoned down for departure.
This departure was a first for me. Until this day, I had never driven the boat to or from the dock, but this day, I took the helm for our departure. Our position on a T rather than in a slip made it easier, but still I had to get away without hitting the next boat on the T! The wind made it easy, because it was blowing in the direction we wanted to go. We let go the bow line and bow springline. The wind blew the bow gently away from the dock. Larry threw the stern line in and climbed aboard with the stern spring just barely in time. I was sure we had drifted too far, but he has long legs. And away we went. Penny Good and our neighbor waved farewell, and we hustled around to the pumpout. Larry asked if I wanted to do the landing there, but I felt I had pushed my luck far enough.
We were just finishing the pumpout when another downpour commenced. By the time we finished and the dock hand threw us all our lines, we were drenched. We knew the forecast was simply more of the same until about midnight, and we knew it looked really silly to be leaving in a storm when we could wait till morning and the weather should be better. Nevertheless, we also knew that it was time to go, and go we did.
As we passed Domino Sugar, the landmark we have seen from our deck for eight years, we dried off and changed into dry shirts. The cockpit was dry and comfortable. As we passed Fort McHenry, the rain became less torrential, settling into a soft patter on the deck. In the mist and fog, the Francis Scott Key Bridge looked unreal and mysterious. In fact, the first time I ever saw it, when we brought the boat into Baltimore from Toronto was a similar day, and the bridge loomed up vague and dreamlike to us in the mist on that day, too. It was a fitting departure. When will we see this bridge again? Is it a rule that when we arrive and depart Baltimore it must rain?
We have traveled in fog before, so the fog on this journey was not frightening. Our new Raymarine navigation display is a little different from Nobeltec, and I made numerous trips below to view the display on Larry’s laptop where we have Nobeltec loaded. I was more comfortable viewing that image and maneuvering around the screen. I will learn the Raymarine version, but at this moment, I needed the comfort of an old friend.
We stayed out of the channel the commercial ships use, which meant we were unlikely to run up against a behemoth container ship in our course. By the way, this was definitely fog. Not fogger, and not foggett, which we experienced in Maine. We could see the silhouette of both shores as we moved. We could have seen a boat of any size in plenty of time to avoid collision. In Maine, it was sometimes a challenge to see the bow of the boat!
As we approached Rock Creek, the fog thinned out and faded away. There were a lot of clouds in every direction, but they didn’t scare us. The sun glowed golden against the clouds. We anchored and took a deep breath. We had done it! We weren’t in Baltimore any more. We didn’t have a slip reserved at Harborview. We didn’t have a slip reserved anywhere! We were officially hobos on the water.
For dinner, we finished some leftover lasagna with a salad. I was really glad to have something left over that would make a meal in a hurry, because it was after 8PM by the time I started dinner. We shared some happy conversation and then went to bed. I hate leaving dirty dishes, but this time I just didn’t care. There will always be tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow on the water.
The boat moves differently in the water at anchor than in the water tied up to a dock. I could feel it gently moving as I lay in bed, but not for long. I fell asleep quickly. We were exhausted, but we were very happy to be on our way. We first had this dream on Labor Day, 1995, almost fourteen years ago. God gave us the dream, he gave us the will to persist, and he gave us the means to get here. He made us work really hard! That is good. We learned a lot along the way that will make our travels easier. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
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