Breeze On

Two of my jobs when we return to the dock are to: 1-close the engine through hull and 2-put the engine battery key away. When we were getting ready to leave the dock yesterday to anchor overnight I turned the engine through hull handle to open it but I couldn’t find the engine battery key. Huh. It was still in its keyhole from our brief daysail the day before. We finished getting ready and left the dock. About 100 feet away from the dock I noticed that the engine didn’t sound right. It occurred to me that instead of opening the through hull I had closed it. I put the throttle in neutral, asked George to take the helm, and rushed down to the cabin to check. Sure enough, the through hull was closed. I opened it, we carried on, and the engine was soon spitting out engine cooling water as it should. Phew. Crisis averted, we hoped. The engine through hull allows seawater to be drawn into the engine to cool it. Without it the engine overheats. As it overheats the impeller, the little rubber ...

The mainsail, bimini and dodger are on. The new anchor chain is marked. We are ready to go for our first sail of the year.  To mark the chain, George laid the chain out on the deck and marked it at 10’ then every 20’ up to 150’. He used strips of red, yellow, and green spinnaker cloth which lasts quite a while and moves easily through the windlass.  Early in the morning on a calm day our friends Jamie and Bob helped muscle the mainsail out of the cabin and onto the deck where they unrolled and flaked (folded it back and forth) the sail. George tied the tack (front corner) and clew (back corner) of the sail onto the boom. Fortunately, he had measured and taken photos of how the sail was tied before he removed it last fall. It is important to get it just right so it rolls properly onto the spindle. I was afraid that it would be hard to get it just right since it was our first time attaching the sail, but it seems he got it exactly right. The sail went up and down perfectly....

Yesterday morning George attached the 150’ of new anchor chain that he had purchased through Generation III. He had dropped the 100’ feet of rusty old chain off the bow the evening before and put the anchor in the passenger seat of his car—also known as the rolling tool box—to keep it safe overnight. He attached the anchor to the new chain and pulled the chain up into the anchor locker using the new gypsy on our windlass. For non-boating readers, a gypsy is the wheel that grabs the links of the chain to pull it into the boat. We didn’t need a new gypsy but had to buy one to fit the new 5/16” chain. Since our boat is made in Germany many of the items—including anchor chain—are made using metric measurements, like our 8 mm chain and corresponding gypsy.  After that was done Breeze On was put into the travel lift slings so that George could paint the few spots that were inaccessible when the boat was on stands. A little while later she was put in the water and we drove her home and in...

George has been spending the past two weeks getting Breeze On ready to go back into the water. First he sanded the bottom in preparation for two new coats of bottom paint. He had quite a bit of trouble finding the paint, though. Last year he ordered the paint from Defender in CT. A can was damaged in transit requiring Defender to send more.  This delayed the entire painting process. Due to that experience in having paint shipped he decided to look locally. No luck. He finally found two gallons—just the amount he needed—at Fawcett’s in Annapolis. George gave the clerk his credit card information over the telephone and asked that the paint be set aside. We hopped in the car and drove the hour and a quarter to Fawcett’s. The clerk to whom George spoke on the phone was not in the store when we arrived. The clerks who were there looked all around and could not find the receipt nor the paint. After about 45 minutes they determined that the first clerk had never set the paint aside and it...

  Bimini 2/22/20 Heeling in the slip, 4/30/20 Hurricane Isaias, 8/4/20 Removing the mast, 9/28/20 Installing the furling boom, 10/13/20

Sharks and rays at Black Point, 2/14/18. The local fishermen clean their fish at the dock. Sharks and rays hang around to catch the leftovers.    Christmas at Lorraine’s Cafe. 12/25/18 Dolphins greeting us at the Ragged Islands, 2/4/19 More dolphins, Atlantic Ocean, 4/7/19.  Cambridge Cay, 12/22/19

  We love dolphins. These dolphins followed us for quite a while on our passage home, 4/16/17 Another video of the same pod of dolphins, 4/16/17.  Navy hovercraft, 11/2/17. We had just left Little Creek, VA on our way to Bald Head Island, NC when we encountered these hovercraft. They were noisy! Sailing in the North Atlantic Ocean, 11/16/17.  Thompson Bay, Long Island, Bahamas, 1/27/18.