Hanging out in Annapolis

Day 9 & 10, Thursday, Friday, October 6&7, 2016

You can monitor our trip at the link: Second Winds Progress Live

The start for the day was sort of a tough one.  Neither of us slept well last night.  Today was the day that Janine headed back to Ohio.  That was not an easy thing for both of us.  Janine is above all else my best friend and a great first mate and I will miss her.  This moment in time contained different needs and or desires.  Janine needed to do some quality time with our grandchildren and I wanted to fill a two prong bucket list sort of thing.  I wanted to travel the remaining way down the east coast and also I wanted to do a solo voyage.  Janine offered that 8 weeks on the boat a year was enough for her and she suggested that if I wanted to do more I was welcome to do so.  And so this trip evolved.  The wonderful thing about technology is that we can talk daily (assuming that I have cell service all the way south). 

Jim Philpott at the helm of Little Star

All day Thursday, I hung around the boat with a couple of trips out to pick up some parts needed to complete several projects that needed to be done.  Jim Philpott also was working on his boat so when one of us needed something, we jumped into Jim’s car had headed out.  My two most important projects involved getting my camera back functional and ferreting out a problem with my solar panel.  The camera turned out to be an easy one.  The SD card had gone bad so a trip to the electronics store, CVS, provided the parts to fix that one.  The solar panel had a faulty plug which I replaced.  However, that did not fix the problem.  I traced the wire back from the plug to the panel and found that a wire in one of the in-line connectors

Little Star under sail

had come apart.  It was another easy fix.

The rest of the day, I just hung out, reading and putzing around the boat.  The trip that I will be taking down the Intracoastal Waterway officially begins in Hampton VA on Oct. 17 but we have an all-day seminar at the Annapolis Boat Show on Monday.  So, I am just hanging out waiting for that meeting before I  head south. 

For our evening meal, Jim grilled a couple of the pork chops that he had left over for our excursion around the Bay.  He steamed some fresh green beans and I provided some mashed potatoes.  It was a wonderful meal.

Friday, October 7

Skipjack heading out with its pusher boat

Again today, we just messed around the boats for most of the morning.  Jim needed to replace a light fixture about a third of the way up the mast so I hauled him up the in his boatswain’s chair.  We have had to do that several times on our boat and Janine has always been the willing chair rider. 

Later in the afternoon, we decided to take Little Star out for a leisurely sail.  We had a nice breeze that was blowing at around 14 to 15 knots.  In our boat, that much wind requires a significant amount of work but in Jim’s 39 foot boat, it was a great ride.  Jim offered that I could back the boat out of the slip and handle the helm while he did all of the hard work.  It is really amazing how different it is to sail on a boat of that size compared to our 26 footer.  It was great fun!

Back at the dock, I relinquished the helm to Jim as he skillfully pulled into his

Restored lighthouse at the St. Michaels Museum

assigned slip.  He has landing and tying up down to a science. I picked up a number of tips from this trip.  Most of the sailing that he does is single-handed so he has come up ways to smoothly and safely land his boat. 

We finished off the pork chops and green beans this evening.  I threw in some cheesy grits as a side dish.  We spun yarns until bed time at 9:00.