On the Move Again

Thursday, Oct. 11

Wednesday afternoon our absentee ballots finally arrived at the Annapolis post office
and we were free to continue our trip. After a windy night on the anchor we pulled up
the anchor at 7:00 and headed out into the Chesapeake Bay. The wind was still blowing
pretty good but the trip was fine. The washdown pump we had installed before the trip
was a big help in removing the mud from the chain and anchor as we hauled it after a
week and a half in one spot.
Our destination for the day was Solomons, MD and we decided to stay at Calvert Marina.
We fueled up here first (great price), went over to the public pumpout (free) and then
back to our slip at Calvert on their floating dock (very nice). They had a nice discount
for Boat US members (only $1/ foot) and the staff was very pleasant and helpful. There
is a courtesy car available to use for West Marine and grocery shopping, laundry ($1.50/
load) and the owner loaned me his tester for checking out an electrical issue we had. We
had been wrestling with using our new generator for charging our batteries because our
reverse polarity light had lit when we connected it to our system. After much research
the issue had to do with "no ground" on the generator which turns out to be universally
true with generators and can be just ignored.
Having a chance to catch up on laundry was a huge plus.

50 miles


Friday, October 12

We stayed at Solomons another day due to Small Craft Advisory on the bay and a desire
to see more of this town. It was good to be plugged into shore power and put a good charge
into the new batteries finally.
It was time for another barbershop day so we both got haircuts today with Carol's being
the most severe, getting an easy care cut for the cruising lifestyle. I have not been cutting
her hair for a while so it required dusting off some old skills that hadn't been used for
some time.
We visited the Calvert Marine Museum here in town and were very impressed with it. It
was very interesting and we spent a couple of hours there getting educated. Then we headed
off to The Ruddy Duck to sample some of the local beer here and mingle with the locals
who were avidly following the baseball playoff game between their beloved Baltimore
Orioles and the wicked New York Yankees. We had a nice conversation with Don, who
retired after selling his business of making flight simulators for the military.
I may have a better handle on including pictures on the blog - we'll see. I'm posting a couple
of New York City pictures to that past blog.