Let me first talk about the opportunities we've had while here to catch up with friends. We've had the opportunity to get together with our friends Skipp Maiden and Maryanne Ulrich on 3 occasions. Almost the first night here we dinghied across the West River to their slip in the Chesapeake Yacht Club at Shadyside, MD to share a grill and meet Maryanne's son Dave. They also came over for Happy Hour on Saturday night the 9th and then again for a team prepared dinner on Monday night. In addition to swapping sailing stories Skipp shared his adventure in Spain which sounded just fascinating.
On Friday night the 8th we had the chance to spend the evening with our friend Jeff Schumack. We hadn't seen Jeff in several years. It was great catching up with him. We had planned to dinghy over to his boat in CYC but with our dinghy challenge (explained later) he was good enough to come by to see the boat and drive us. We were excited to hear about Jeff's first offshore adventure and maybe he'll come crew with us someplace.
Backing up a bit we were lucky enough to catch Marty and Susie Diamond for dinner in Annapolis at Carroll Creek. It's been awhile since we saw them after being regulars for many years.
On Sunday evening our friends Matt Schramm and Sahalia came by and after happy hour went to Chevy's for dinner out. Matt was the previous owner of the Beneteau 50 we saw on the mooring next to us in Block Island after having had a slip just down the dock from us several years ago. Ironically the people who bought his boat and the people who bought our 380 both changed the name of the boats to Papagayo. What a small world.
Saturday night the 16th we had happy hour on the boat and dinner at the Thai Kitchen in Edgewater with Gary and Toby Schwartz who Linda formerly worked with before her retirement.
Dinner at the Thai Kitchen with Gary and Toby Schwartz.
But like our time in Oxford we continue to make improvements on the boat. I have used the time to accomplish many boat tasks I've had on my list for months like rebedding the chainplates and replacing the head pumps and rebuilding them. I now have new pumps on both heads and 2 newly rebuilt ones as spares. These are tasks that should not have to be repeated for years.
The reason we are in Galesville is to have a contractor, Eastport Spar & Rigging do some custom metal fabrication needed to complete several projects. The first and most straight forward is installing 2 new solar panels to replace the 1 that we've had on the hard top. We've always thought it was a 130 watt panel but we'e not sure since it was on the boat when we bought it. While doing all the re-engineering of the hard top we were able to solve other annoying challenges as well.
Our hatch bar installation.
By adding the extra solar we are expanding our solar capacity to 650 watts which will be capable of producing a maximum of about 40 amp hours of solar energy. But given our experience we will be lucky to get anything close to that because of interference from clouds. But when we are closer to the sun we should be able increase our solar output of course augmented by our wind energy. Hopefully with this addition we'll become more self-sufficient without running an engine.
Our new solar panels.
The next improvements are security enhancements. We have installed bars in the hatches to keep intruders from climbing in through them and a new companionway insert that we can use to lock the boat and still allow air passage or lock ourselves inside at night to prevent intrusion. While these won't stop a determined criminal it will hopefully slow them down enough to make them want to go elsewhere or wake us up so we can chase them away. Hearing them trying to get in at night we can turn on lights and call for help on the radio that will hopefully scare the off avoiding the need for lethal force.
Finally, we've added an external antenna for our Iridium Go so we can keep the router down below while we use our phones and devices from the cockpit. This permanent installation will enhance our worldwide communications capability with weather, email, phone and data access. We still need to get everything setup so we can use all our devices on the satellite network.
We always enjoy getting together with our friends. It's really what makes our time in these ports fun. Hopefully many will come visit us in the islands so we can have fun together in the land of no Mondays. As we work through our task list we hopefully avoid issues as we move forward by resolving them on our terms.
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