The Great Escape

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 10 Jun 2012 21:23

38:19.89N 76:27.56W

 

Friday, Saturday & Sunday – 8th. 9th & 10th June

 

Friday was a busy day with a shopping trip (Safeway) in the morning and then I went up the backstay to refit the SSB aerial, which is a tedious and uncomfortable job.   It would be a lot easier if undoing/doing up screws came naturally to me - even at the grand old age of 53 I can still undo all the good work I have just done.....!    Each block holding the aerial away from the backstay had to be undone and therefore Rob had to manoeuvre me up and down accordingly and I then had to re-tie myself to the stay so that I didn't swing away from the job.   Even so I still find it difficult not to cling on like some demented monkey so by the time I am on terra firma my legs are achy and wobbly.

 

Rob then completed the wiring and had a test run with the SSB.   With everything else switched off it is definitely sounding better.   Unfortunately Najad in their great wisdom have fitted a fuse that deals with a multitude of devices - and, of course, these are not easily identified (nor is the wiring diagram accurate.....) so the next job will be discovering every item attached to this switch and then working out which one (or several) is creating the interference on each frequency by individually disabling them via fuses etc which will be a very long job.

 

Rob then fitted our new, ‘time-able’ fan in the aft cabin, and one of the new fittings to the main sheet traveller which will  add in a further purchase in our quest for a more user-friendly operation.

 

And I made fish soup, but managed to fill in the rest of the day somehow?

 

David and Candy then very kindly invited us for a drink on their steel boat, Endeavour - a 1962 yawl of 45ft LOA.   I have been itching to see around this boat and wasn't disappointed:  she is beautiful (and extremely well kept.   David and Candy bought her expecting to go sailing within a couple of years;  15 years later they were ready!):  big comfortable cockpit, well laid out below, extremely sensible rig layout - I am in love.   They have sailed her down to and round Cape Horn and all the way back up the coast of Chile, where they also met up with our friends on ‘Flying Penguin’!   And we had a lovely evening seeing off a full bottle of gin.   We were also persuaded to join the capital yacht Club for Saturday breakfast as David and Candy were sous chef-ing for Scott in the morning.

 

So we went ashore for the lovely breakfast with, among other things, pancakes, hash-browns, and grits (something I have been wanting to find out about - they are seriously boring, similar to wallpaper paste, and won't be repeated!) and then said all our goodbyes.   This was followed by a hasty return to the boat, lift the dinghy and anchor (and attendant extremely unpleasant goo) and back off down the Potomac for a long and very boring motor of 10 hours. Both very sad to be leaving both Washington and the club and its very friendly members and visitors. Cannot recommend this stop highly enough and we very much hope to meet up with a David and Candy as well as Scott and Freddi at a Severn Seas Sailing Association rally near Baltimore at the end of September when we come back south.

 

The only things of note that we spotted along the Potomac were:  fewer sitting pairs of Ospreys (presumably the eggs haven't been successful  for many pairs, perhaps to do with their predilection for nesting on buoys which heave perilously when the ridiculous number of motor boats plough past them at vast speeds/wakes);  a goods train that was so long that we could see both ends of it either side of a mile-wide island;  endless groups of said motor boats apparently racing around random buoys and back again –but as the only yacht bouncing over these wakes we tried to be friendly!    And, very sadly, a huge house fire which had all but destroyed one of the very grand houses near to Washington - the family were stood on the lawn watching some rather inactive firemen.

 

We managed to slide into the same bay in the Wicomico River just as the sun was setting but unfortunately I made the wrong executive decision to save a couple of miles and not go back to where we were last time but stay nearer to the channel but in a more exposed situation, for a quick getaway in the morning.   During the night there was enough wind to create a slight chop with wind against tide which heartily slapped Serafina's stern and kept us awake until the tide turned again.

 

This morning we were back to motoring through a glassy calm (plus lots of irritating mini flies - hopefully making the many spiders and webs that we now have on board very happy!) out of the Potomac and then north, up the Chesapeake Bay to Solomon's Island.

 

Arrived at Back Creek, Solomon's Island mid-afternoon.   It is an absolutely delightful series of creeks (albeit very shallow and with a rising tide sweeping us in at 1.5 knots) full of yachts and motor boats.   We snuck into the anchorage near the Marine Museum and could see the local enthusiasts racing sailing boat models in the inner harbour there.   It seems we arrived at about the right time as now boats are dropping anchors all around us!   We are going to explore on foot tomorrow, but tonight we will just try and survive the steamy conditions....