Monday, November 17, 2014
As you know if you
read our last blog entry, we were delighted to get back to the
Chesapeake. We could finally do some sailing without worrying about
going aground or clearing bridges. We looked forward to visiting the
little Eastern Shore towns and anchorages where we had been before
and exploring new ones. We stopped first at one our favorite
anchorages, Mill Creek in the Wicomico River in Virginia, then
crossed the river to visit Reedville, up Cockrell Creek. Reedville is
a tiny village with not much to offer except a fish processing plant
and a marine museum. But it is an attractive anchorage and we had
some a great crabcake lunch at a little waterfront seafood shack. And
fortunately for us, we were upwind of the fish processing plant. Our
next stop, one of convenience more than anything else, was in
Solomons Island, a favorite destination for Annapolis area sailors.
We were not particularly enthralled with Solomons, but they do have a
Tiki bar that serves some of the most powerful rum drinks you will
find north of the islands.
From Solomons, it
was an easy day's run up to La Trappe Creek on the Choptank River,
where we enjoyed our first (and only) swim of the year, and from
there to Oxford, one of our favorite Eastern Shore towns. In La
Trappe creek we got our first sighting of stingrays swimming in
formation. With their fin tips out of the water they looked like
schools of miniature sharks. We decided to get some boat maintenance
done in Oxford before heading across the Bay to Galesville, where we
had reserved a mooring. That included getting our fuel “polished,”
a process we felt was necessary because we had been going through
fuel filters every fifty or sixty hours. To polish the fuel, they
pumped it from our tanks into two fifty gallon drums, then ran it
through filters back into our tanks. This supposedly removed any
debris and water that had made it into the tanks. We also foolishly
believed that they would clean the tanks while they were empty.
We arrived in
Galesville toward the end of June. The renters who had occupied our
house for the past year were moving out, and we wanted to go home and
take care of some house updating. We had decided we would become part
time boaters, and since we remembered how we had suffered from the
heat the summer before while getting Bel Canto
refitted, and that the Chesapeake is notorious for its lack of wind
in August, we thought this would be a great time to enjoy Ann Arbor
and do some painting and wood floor restoration on our house. (Of
course, this summer was the exception and the weather in the
Chesapeake was ideal.)
Reedville, Virginia |
Back in Ann Arbor
we relearned why we like the town so much. We heard lots of great
music at the Kerrytown Concert House and the Zal Gaz Grotto, topped
off with the Detroit Jazz Festival over Labor Day weekend. Angie got
to play Upwards with her friend Ruth, Jim got in some chess with his
friend Dan and with the “old folks” at the Turner Senior Center,
and we got to spend time with all of our Michigan friends and family.
We also took advantage of having removed all of our personal stuff
from the living area for our renters to get a start on having some of
our wood floors refinished and interior walls and cupboards painted.
We returned to Bel
Canto in September (on the hottest day of the year) for what
we expected to be another two months of sailing before we put Bel
Canto to bed for the winter. The boat was in good shape after being
on the mooring for two months, except that the bottom had become
pretty foul from the growth in the brackish water of the upper
Chesapeake. We also discovered that some water had leaked in around
the compression post—another problem that we would have to solve.
We made an appointment to have the boat hauled for bottom cleaning,
and in the meantime we began to think about what she needed and what
we wanted from her. We knew that we didn't want to take her down the
waterway again, and that short handed ocean sailing wasn't our cup of
tea either. We loved the anchorages and the little seaside towns we
had visited, and enjoyed the friends that we made along the way. But
Bel Canto was made for ocean voyaging, and that wasn't
for us. A smaller boat, with a shallower draft and a shorter mast
would have been a better choice. Bel Canto needed a few
more things if we were to sail her up to Maine—radar, a life raft,
a new whisker/spinnaker pole, and perhaps a new main sail. These
would cost a fraction of what we had put into her, but would still
amount to quite a few boat units. Winter storage and maintenance
could easily amount to four or five thousand dollars. We both came to
the conclusion that it was time to sell Bel Canto. We
contacted a broker in Annapolis who was delighted when he saw her. He
thought that even though the average time a sailboat was on the
market before selling was 304 days, we had a good chance of selling
her during the October Annapolis boat show. We gave him a slide show
that we had put together showing the boat and a list of its features,
including all of the improvements we had made in her.
Cockrell Creek Crab Shack, Reedville |
In the meantime,
we decided to sail back down to Virginia to avoid overstaying our
welcome (that is, the three month limit Maryland places on
non-resident boaters) in Maryland. We had a great sail, one of the
best of the year, sailing from Oxford down to Solomons Island. Bel
Canto loves a beam reach, and at times we were hitting over
eight knots (with a little help from the current). From there it was
a couple of short hops down to Fishing Bay and Deltaville, Virginia.
Coming into
Fishing Bay the engine started to flag and surge and we knew we were
in trouble. After only thirty hours our fuel filters were clogging
up. Since we were so close to port, Jim decided to put in a call to
TowBoat US rather than try to change the filters and bleed the air
out of the fuel lines at sea. TowBoat US didn't answer our call, but
a good Samaritan on a nearby sailboat did. Skip Wylie, out for a sail
with his family, came up alongside and said “I'm a mechanic. Can I
help? Skip tied up alongside and together we changed the primary fuel
filter and bled the fuel lines.
We made it into
the harbor without incident, the engine running smoothly once again.
The next morning turned out to be a beautiful sailing day. The wind
was steady out of the east, which meant that we would have a beam
reach all the way up to Solomons. Bel Canto would be in
her glory! But we were barely a half hour out of the harbor when the
engine began to flag again. We made it back into the harbor and put
in a call to Skip. Once again we changed filters and bled the
injectors, all four of which were full of air. Since the filters were
obviously clean, we decided that the culprit was an air leak caused
by a piece of grit on the filter gasket that Jim had missed when
cleaning the filter cup.
While testing the
engine, Jim discovered something sparking in the engine compartment.
He found that a wire pinned against the engine block by a hose had
worn through and was creating a fire hazard. We didn't have the
equipment (spare wire, connectors—we should have had them) to make
the repair, so Skip came to the rescue again. In the process we
discovered that even with all of the battery switches off the wires
were “hot.” Skip thought that the problem might be a fault in the
new inverter we had had installed in Southport. Since Zimmerman's
Marine, the outfit that had installed the inverter, has an office in
Deltaville, we thought we would get it checked out. To do so, we had
to take the boat around Stingray Point into Broad Creek in the mouth
of the Potomac River.
The weather turned
against us. We sat at the dock in Broad Creek for two days, pounded
by the North wind that barreled right into the harbor. It was the most
uncomfortable two days that we had experienced as the waves
continually pounded Bel Canto against the dock. Finally
the winds moderated enough, though still out of the north, that we
thought we could make it up to Reedville, which would put us within
striking distance of Solomons Island. Jim had used our last fuel
filters in our battle with apparently contaminated fuel. None had
been available in Deltaville, and we would have had to wait two more
days for a special order to arrive, so instead we called ahead to
West Marine in Solomons and bought all they had on hand on the spot,
to be picked up when we arrived. We hated to travel without spare
filters, but we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. It was an
uncomfortable motor boat ride to Reedville, bashing into two and
three foot waves for four hours, but we finally made it into the very
quiet and protected anchorage.
Our plan had been
to make it up to the Seven Seas Cruising Club Gam being held in the
Rhode River, just south of Annapolis, at the end of September. The
gam is an annual event where cruisers from all over the world meet up
to attend seminars, share experiences and eat, drink and be merry
together. But the wind stayed strong out of the north, with constant
small craft and gale warnings, and we gave up all hope of making it
in time. After four days, the winds calmed, but were still out of the
north. We decided to make the best of it and motor up to Solomons. By
late afternoon on a Sunday afternoon we were anchored in Back Creek.
We raced to get the boat anchored and the dinghy launched, trying to
make it to the West Marine store before it closed. When we arrived,
somewhat breathlessly, Angie opened the bag that the clerk had handed
to Jim—and discovered that they had given us the wrong filters!
The next day was
calm and we headed north again under power. Now we just wanted to
make it back to Galesville in time to make a quick trip to Ann Arbor
to help celebrate our friend Lou's 100th birthday. What's
more our broker called tell us he already had a an offer on the boat,
and we had to get her back for a sea trial and survey. Incredibly, a
couple that had already sold their home and were living out of their
car while they looked for a boat had made an offer, sight unseen,
based just on our slide show and description of the boat.
Angie: I was
nervous about making the trip without spare fuel filters. Fortunately
we have TowBoat US insurance. They will tow you to a harbor if you
have problems. We had never had to use that service, although they
did help us get off a sand bar in the intracoastal. It was 42
nautical miles from Solomons to Galesville, about a seven or eight
hour trip for us under power. We were moving merrily along, about half way there when Jim went below, leaving me at the wheel. As he
came back up into the cockpit, I heard a change in the engine rpm's.
The engine slowed without me doing anything—not a good sign! We
still had over 20 miles to go. I mentioned what I had heard to Jim,
and he began listening too. The engine seemed to be running OK, then
it began to slow again, and Jim shut the engine off. We were now
adrift out in the middle of the Chesapeake, watching the big ships
come by and hoping that they would see that we couldn't move out of
their way.
We put in a call
to TowBoat US, and in about an hour Captain Rob came to our rescue
with the towboat Reliance. He towed us right up to the
dock at Bert Jabin's, with me at the wheel and Jim handling the
lines, ready to jump onto the dock and brake the boat with a spring
line. We didn't have to worry, it was a soft landing and soon we were
secured to the dock at Jabin's Yacht Yard. We had picked Jabin's
because we knew Ted could help solve our problems. We had come full
circle. A year earlier Ted had worked on Bel Canto for four months
getting ready to sail, and now he would be helping us get her ready
for her new owners.
Ted checked out
the fuel tanks and we discovered that they had never been cleaned. He
cleaned them and polished the fuel again. He also repacked the
stuffing box, where the prop shaft goes through the hull. We had had
that job done by the same people that supposedly cleaned our fuel,
and that job hadn't been done properly either. With the help of Dave,
our rigger, we learned about the drain hole at the base of the mast.
With every heavy rain, water had been running down the compression
post that supports the mast into the cabin. I cleaned the drain hole
and water poured out of the mast, solving that problem. When we left
for Ann Arbor, the boat was ready for inspection.
Back in Ann Arbor,
we waited nervously for the results of the survey and sea trial. We
had to wait for the banks to reopen after Columbus day for the
closing, and we were on pins and needles, but all went well, and Bel
Canto went to her new owners.
Do I feel bad? Yes
and no. It wasn't the adventure I had expected, nothing like our year
aboard Escapade 29 years ago. Jim and I both got tired of the
maintenance and expense of repairs. Bel Canto is a great boat, but
she is thirty years old, and that means she will always need
something. And the stress of going up and down the waterway had taken
its toll. We might have been happier with a different boat, one more
fitted to what we were actually doing rather than what we thought we would
be doing (that is poking around on the coast and hanging out in
harbor towns, rather than ocean sailing). But on the other hand, we
learned a lot, had some great times and made some great friends along
the way. I will miss the boating life and when we visit harbors I
will think about going to sea again. Then I will do a reality check
and be happy with where I am. Now, if I want to, I can go to New
Orleans and buy a custom made hat at Fleur de Paris rather than radar
or a new anchor for Bel Canto.
Liquid Energy #3 |