Monthly Archives: October 2012

Marce and I are sitting at the huge paned windows of the Chart House bar, watching the show boats getting out of Dodge. It’s barely 5pm. This will, in all probability, be our last Annapolis boat show.

No complaints. We’ve made good progress towards patching up our chart plotter, instrument suite, and autopilot. Not to mention a new outboard making going ashore a pleasure. I can’t think of another town where the confluence of all the disparate disciplines in yacht maintenance come together like Annapolis. The next few weeks should tell the tale.

The power boaters are up next!

It’s a dreary, rainy day with temperatures in the 50s, a real test of whether we like the boat life or not. We do. The only problem is that while we were in Florida I packed up most of Jack’s warm clothing and all of mine and sent it to my sister in NJ. Now I’m sorry about that. Jack has a couple of turtlenecks and some long sleeved shirts, but I have nothing but t-shirts and a fleece hoodie. Luckily we have blankets, so we’re nice and toasty in bed.

This morning was very chilly and I lit the oven right away and decided to make baked French toast to warm up the saloon. It worked great and we had a good breakfast to boot. We tossed around the possibility of doing a little shopping but thought better of it when we realized we’d have to dinghy everything back to the boat in the rain. Another day.

Monday we’re going back to the boat show with the express purpose of exploring our future chartplotter and radar possibilities. As with any technology, things change and improve all the time. We want to wait as long as possible before we jump into a new system, and we can’t replace everything at once so we want to make sure some elements are backwards compatible and at the same time don’t keep us from upgrading to the next best thing. It will be a challenge.

This past week has been a whirlwind. Our previous boat show visits were generally one-day surgical strikes. We mostly looked at boats, weighing the pros and cons of this feature and that. We always visited the tents full of vendors, too, but only as information gathering and to keep up with where various technology systems were headed.

This time around we are boat owners. We’ve been on the boat five months and have some ideas of what would improve life aboard. First, of course, was the dinghy outboard and we took care of that right away. We’re delighted with the results, even if it put a serious unexpected crimp in our budget.

Everything else was little stuff. Specific cleaners for stainless steel and aluminum; fender hangers/adjusters to make docking easier. We hoped for a good price on replacement dock lines because ours are a mess but there weren’t any vendors at the show. We took advantage of having a friend who lives here to order online and have them sent to his address. Likewise the repair parts for our broken cockpit table mount. We were lost without that table and happy to have it back.

Outside the show we’re enjoying an actual social life, something that comes and goes when you’re cruising fulltime. As soon as we got to Back Creek we had the crew of What If as neighbors and it was great to get to know them. Our resident friend Jim lent us his dinghy, of course, but we’re also enjoying having an old friend nearby to drop in on. We had a potluck birthday party for Craig on Anything Goes and we ran into people we met there several times around town and at the show.

On Friday we were walking back to Eastport for our new outboard delivery when we heard, “Hey! Are you Marce and Jack from Escape Velocity?” It was Clark, a fellow Manta owner and blog reader who recognized us from the photos we post. Not only was it great to meet him and Michelle, but Clark was the organizer for a dinner gathering of Manta owners that evening.

With only 128 Mantas made, it’s a small community and many are east coast based. There were three Mantas in Spa Creek and three in Back Creek during the show. What If was the first to leave, and Anything Goes is headed out Monday. The girls on Anything Goes wanted to see Izzy so we took her on a field trip to Truxton Park, a 30-minute dinghy ride from where we’re anchored. Izzy rode in her carrier in the bow.

Once we got there she was set upon by Olivia, who patiently walked with her all over the park, even into poison ivy. I hope disaster was averted by some quick handi-wipe action.

Izzy had so many kids wanting to pet her that for the first time she voluntarily got back into her carrier, but that didn’t quell the attention.

Because our outboard is new and we’re not supposed to run it full out during the break-in period, the trip back to Escape Velocity is a slow one, so we left the park early in order to return home by dark. It was a beautiful magic hour ride through Spa Creek.

We decided to buy 2-day tickets to the show for the first time which made for a much more relaxed experience. We visited the Fatty Knees display to admire the new models.

Jack tried the mast climber system that Alan used to climb our mast and fix our wind speed indicator. He found it easy to use, but pricey.

We also made frequent trips on the water taxi to the Charthouse, our favorite waterfront view of the show.

Izzy likes to keep her white toes together while she sleeps.

We bought a new outboard for our dinghy today. We went back and forth a among the vendors yesterday at the boat show and ended up buying from the guy who gave us the good price to begin with. This morning we offered our old outboard to a place that sells used dinghies and motors and they agreed to take it off our hands which gave us enough money to pay for our Annapolis dining out. That’s good enough for us!

This afternoon we went through orientation with the vendor, then we took our loaner dinghy back to the boat, launched our dinghy and returned to the dock. The vendor loaded up our new motor and delivered it to the dock. They took the old one off, put the new one on, loaded up the old one and drove me and it to the used dinghy guy where I collected my cash. The new outboard is quiet and powerful and will make life aboard Escape Velocity so much better!

All in all, a very good day.

We eschewed the popular Spa Creek in favor of Back Creek, which we have a particular fondness for but we were surprised at how many boats were already anchored this way and that on the middle of the channel. We saw another Manta, What If, whom we had met at Port Washington, NY, last month. We did a little reconnaissance around the creek, picked a spot and dropped the hook. No good. A nearby tour boat dock said we were too close. Up came the anchor again. We moved over next to What If and dropped the hook, but as we paid out the chain we dropped back too close to a fuel dock and had to pick up the anchor once again.

We motored a little way up the creek to a wider part where we’d have more room, but once again when we dropped the hook we swung back too far into the channel. At about that time our friend Jim dinghied over, and what a sight for sore eyes he was! We hadn’t seen him in years and his boat is docked not a quarter mile from where we were attempting to anchor. After our hugs and greetings, Jim assessed the situation and suggested a second anchor to hold us off the channel and restrict our swinging radius. We set to work rigging another anchor and Jim dinghied it out at an angle from our primary anchor and dropped it. While this was all happening, Kris and Dean and Derek from What If came over to say hello. It was a little hectic for a while, but when things calmed down, we thought we looked pretty good and went ashore with Jim for a celebratory brunch.

Since Jim’s boat is docked he doesn’t need his dinghy at the moment and he graciously offered it to us so we’d have reliable transportation until we get a new outboard at the boat show. What a pleasure to not worry if we’d have to row back to the boat!

After brunch and a quick trip to the grocery store Jack and I headed back to Escape Velocity. Oops! We were back in the channel, too close to boats on either side. This is not where we anchored. We were so frustrated that I called What If on the radio and asked if they would help. They were here within minutes, looked at the situation and agreed we should raise the second anchor, move the boat upstream about 50 feet and drop the primary again. Kris and Dean dinghied out to the second anchor and pulled it out, then brought it back to the boat. Then we raised anchor and Kris was appalled at what we go through to get the anchor up, and then even more when she saw how hard it is to get the anchor down. And that’s when we learned that the chain markers we thought we understood were verkakte. In our attempt to put out just the right amount of rode in this tight space, we had put out too little and dragged too close to the docks on either side. Kris suggested we measure it ourselves and make our own marking system that we could remember. Doh! Of course we should.

Meanwhile, with Dean sighting from shore, Kris at the bow, me at the helm and Jack, as usual, on his knees doing penance to the windlass, we dropped the hook in the perfect spot. Now no matter which way we swing we’re not in danger of either hitting anything or restricting traffic in the creek. Whew!

Monday we slept in and got a very late start. It was the first day in a while that we hadn’t been on the move so we enjoyed a lazy morning watching the boats all around us and making lists. Just as we were heading to shore we got an email from Anything Goes inviting us to a pot luck birthday party for Craig. We passed the word to What If, and went downtown to pick up a few things, eat some ice cream and bemoan the changes in our adopted home like the two old farts we are. Then it was back to the boat for a flurry of cooking and packing up.

This was our first cruiser pot luck and we had a great time. There were three kid boats and the kids played happily together while the adults talked boats and storms and plans and just generally got to know each other. There was cake and ice cream, plus cupcakes and brownies and I don’t think we need to eat again for a week!