38:19.9N 76:27.5W

Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs & Fri – 27^th, 28^th, 29^th 30^th & 31^st May

On Friday we finally slipped our lines and headed out into the bay, although this was a little fraught as a first sail with barely a foot under the keel all the way out into Herring Bay.

But the week had been very fruitful and positive with lots of important things done and arranged, but nevertheless it is always rather frustrating being tied to a dock.

David Masters has been an absolute hero ever since we arrived and has been able to help with so many jobs and arrangements (and teaching us lots). His wife Candy has been absent all this time as she was helping bring a yacht up from Florida to Washington, but she finally arrived back on Wednesday and it was great to see her again.

Also we have managed to stay sane thanks to the friendly banter with our marina neighbours, in particular Trey and Bonnie (Hi Bonnie) who both seem to know far too much about us just from scouring a website!  I suspect that they do not need to read our blog to know exactly where we are and what we are up to!

On Tuesday we hired a car to get out and run a few important errands. Firstly we had to go to Baltimore to renew our Cruising Licence. This was something we have been very nervous about all winter since the correct procedure (every 12 months) is for the yacht to leave the country for a minimum of 15 days and this would have meant sailing to either Bermuda or Canada (Brrrrr). But here in Maryland they have their own views about people like us who leave their boat ashore and fly home and so the very good news is that thanks to the lovely Bettye we have got our new licence, valid for 12 months and it was free as well.  [As it happens there was a big train crash just outside Baltimore that day, but it happened about an hour after we had left.] We then went to various places in Annapolis to obtain bits and pieces including the obligatory visit to Bacon’s which is a very large second-hand marine store where we picked up an unused Walder Boom brake for less than half price.

On Wednesday morning our new anchor chain arrived which was a wonderful testament to the good folk at West Marine who achieved the impossible. We had decided that here was the best opportunity to correct what I had always felt had been a mistake when buying the boat, which was that we ordered only 55 metres of chain to which Sarah spliced 100 metres of rope (which historically has made Rob nervous). But the very sensible option for what we are doing is to have 100m of chain (for all sorts of reasons that I will not bore you with here, but mainly depths in the Pacific). But it seems that chain to fit our windlass would take three weeks to order and this was Monday and we were off on Friday, so we called West Marine’s head office and asked what was possible. David Masters runs a business here with a special ‘Port Supply’ card that means you get very big discounts at West Marine. What I did not know as I talked to the nice chap at the head office, was that he clearly was very much more important than we had realised and he pulled all sorts of strings nationally and so at 0800 hours on Wednesday our chain was delivered to us, to the complete surprise of everyone. Gold Star to West Marine.

On Monday, David did a very thorough rigging check for us and found several things needing attention. Some fairly minor at this stage, but there were two major items which will need resolving very soon. But at least we can get on with these and so the plan now is to return to Herrington North Boatyard in a weeks’ time to do some more of these things (ie send Sarah up the mast for a week) before we head north to Maine. Also Magus Kullberg in Sweden kindly sourced the taps we needed and has posted them to us here in the USA.

So finally on Friday morning we set off. Firstly we found that the newly repaired Raymarine Speed log was not giving any readings, nor was the true wind display, so after some frustrating reading of the manuals, I removed the ‘dashboard’ to access these instruments from behind and found that there were some small wires unattached still from the speed log – Mea culpa. This was soon rectified and all was well. The wind got up as we made the turn into the Patuxent River and so headed for the Solomons which is where we are joining the Ocean Cruising Club Spring Rally on Sunday, under sail at last. But as we approached the entrance to this very quintessential Chesapeake yachting haven and started the engine, we found that the gear linkage had broken and so we had no way of operating the gearbox. So out came the sails again and Sarah pottered around in the dying breeze whilst I worked out a way to jerry rig a system to allow us to make our way into this series of creeks and find a spot to anchor. This was finally achieved and we made our way gingerly into the entrance and crept up the incredibly shallow creeks –- (only inches under the keel here) and apart from Sarah misreading our track and driving us up a cul de sac, we finally dropped the anchor without further mishap.