Day 261: Thursday, May 23, 2013

Port to Port: Chesapeake City, Maryland

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Free Dock

Mile 0 to Mile 0: It was supposed to rain and storm today plus be windy – so far, only the wind part has come true. It is definitely the calm before the storm though. It was almost 90˚ and humid today. Tomorrow, the high is supposed to be in the 50˚’s and rainy. We have to keep reminding ourselves that patience is a virtue.

We are planning to leave tomorrow for the relatively short trip to Delaware City for a couple of days before heading down Delaware Bay for Cape May – a 50 mile trip on big water. Sunday looks like a good travel day. We’ll wait and see.

We spent 4 hours at the library working on computer projects, charging electronics and reading. We are ready for the next leg of our trip as soon as mother-nature lets us go. There are several other boats hanging out here waiting for good weather too, so at least we have company.

Our new solar panel is working out pretty good so far. It was partly sunny yesterday and our batteries were full by the end of the day. It is really nice to have an alternative energy source to augment the alternator on Boris. Redundancy is a good thing on a boat.

We got to talk with Dave on Motley Crew a lot more – he knows this area well so we enjoyed chatting numerous times throughout the day. He plans to head out early tomorrow and head straight for Cape May. We will probably follow him up the canal but turn north towards Delaware City to spend a couple days until better weather arrives.

Boaters are interesting people. We have always been surprised at how helpful everyone is (even though we understand the desire to help others out whenever possible). Our tiller has a small wiggle in it that is annoying and I figured if I could pinch the aluminum bracket holding it a little it would tighten it. A C-clamp would work perfect but we don’t have one with. So I asked Dave. He didn’t have one. So I walked over to a powerboat down the dock and asked if they (sorry, I forgot to write down your names) had one. They didn’t have one either. Well, I put that project on the back burner and forgot about it. Well, a couple hours later they stopped by the boat and he had a big 10” C-clamp in his hand just perfect for my 3-minute project. He had gone home and returned to the boat and brought it back with him. What a wonderful and helpful surprise. I clamped that on the bracket and less than 2 minutes later our tiller was wiggle-free (I like those kind of projects). Thank you for your help.

And the day wasn’t done yet. We were heating up some left over mashed potatoes and roast beef and got to talking to some new neighbors, Mike and Vikki on Toy Yot (can you guess their last name?), a small powerboat. They noticed we were from Minnesota and learned we were doing the Loop on a small boat and 2 hours later, we finally finished heating up and eating our dinner. Vikki is from Wisconsin and they are planning to do the Loop on their boat in 5 years or so. They were very excited to hear about our experiences and we shared some laughs about people from Minnesota and Wisconsin. (Good luck on your future adventures). Who knows what tomorrow will bring.