fetchinketch

No, really we are ready to go. Almost. We certainly could have rushed and run out tomorrow morning, but as cruising sailors there is one thing we are not very good at: Rushing. So we postponed the last grocery trip until tomorrow, and took a deep breath. Other than the provisioning, we have to make a stop for diesel fuel, and we’ll be off!

Karen spent all day today, and most of the day yesterday, cleaning and prepping the outside of the boat. In the heat and humidity here, that was a real herculean effort. Not only hot and humid, but interspaced with short intervals of thunderstorms and hail.

While she was working topside in the weather, I was slaving away in the air-conditioned cabin working out the details of our navigation plan for the first couple of days of our voyage. I did feel guilty (a little), but it had to be done.

We will be dropping lines here mid-morning on Monday to catch the tide and ride it up the Chesapeake, and through the C&D Canal to the Delaware where we turn right, and head out to sea. The canal will save us almost 200 miles compared to sailing down the Chesapeake to the ocean. The long range weather forecast looks excellent for our trip north. We plan to land near Halifax as our first stop, about 450 miles from the mouth of the Delaware. That should take us between 3.5 and 5 days. Maybe longer–if we linger and catch some fish!

The route is straightforward, and gives us several options if we feel we need to wait out some unexpected weather. If we need to, we can pause at Cape May, NJ or Nantucket in Massachusetts–which is about the halfway point.

We are looking forward to the cooler weather, the sailing, and fishing the offshore canyons, the shoals around Nantucket, and one of the most famous fishing grounds in the world, Georges Bank.

The part for our jib furler is out being anodized. Hopefully, it will be back early this week, and we can get the boat back together and get sailing again. Our plan continues to be running up to Nova Scotia, more or less directly, exploring there, and then working our way south again.

In other news… we did complete the install of the new timing belt on our main drive engine. It’s an easy job, actually, after you have done it once. My challenge was the very last step: Retiming the fuel injection pump. I set up the new dial gauge (every project needs at least one new tool, it’s a rule!) and saw that I needed to rotate the pump to get it back in spec. Try as I might, it would not turn. Knowing this was an expensive and precision part, I didn’t force it, but slept on the problem instead.

After an overnight brain soak, I thought I had the answer. A look online at a picture of the engine (from the side I could not see) showed me a nut–I could not see–that I had neglected to loosen. Once it was loose, the rest of the process went exactly according to plan. Engine all happy again!

We got out jib-head swivel repaired, and rebuilt, that went without a hitch, it’s ready to install once our furler motor is back together.

And lastly… we have a new internet project–one I’d love comments on. This blog has been a great format for our travels and keeping people who are interested in where we are, and what we do up to date, but there was a lot more I wanted to do around our fishing exploits. Both on the story telling side, and teaching what we have learned. If you’re interested (and remember, it IS a work in progress!) check out http://TheFishingSailor.com and please, let me know what you think!

We sailed up the Severn River this afternoon and have  picked up a mooring off downtown Annapolis in Spa Creek. It is breezy, gray, wet and COLD!  Karen keeps asking me, “Why did we leave the Caribbean?” I haven’t given her a good answer yet!  How cold is it?  Cold enough that we are running the generator to keep the heat on!  I think it is the first time we have ever done that at anchor. In reality it is about 58F outside.  For us tropical migrating birds that is COLD!

The sail up here was better than the forecast had us expecting.  We covered a lot of ground very quickly.  Weather like this leaves us really appreciating Harmonie’s well protected cockpit. We stayed dry right up to the time we had to go out on deck to pick up the mooring line, in the hardest rain of the day.

But all is warm and cozy inside.  We are trying to figure out something for dinner that will require lighting the oven and running it for an extended period!

Our time in DC is now past.  Early this morning we dropped lines, and powered back down the Potomac.  Our destination is Annapolis, in another two or three days.

Highlights in DC were visits with local friends, and the visit to the Natural History Museum.  We were acouple of weeks late for the cherry flowers, but on the bright side the rose gardens were going strong.

Our plan is to put Harmonie on a mooring in Annapolis, and travel by land to visit family, then continue to make our way north ahead of the hottest weather.

Today we set a record for the greatest number of miles we have ever done in Harmonie, nonstop, under engine. About 75 nautical miles from our anchorage near the mouth of the Potomac, up to downtown Washington, DC. There are relatively few places to anchor a boat the size of Harmonie on this river, so we needed to make it all in on day’s run. We got underway at 0630, and tied up in DC at 17:30.

For most of its length, the Potomac is a rural expanse of wooded shorelines, sprinkled with the occasional small town of large homes. It seems every single structure on the river with a scrap of horizontal surface has a nesting pair of ospreys. It wasn’t so very many years ago that these were rare birds, here they are more common than seagulls.

One of the landmarks as you approach DC is the stately plantation house at Mount Vernon, home of George Washington.