OK, ok, I’ve needed to write. Going back to gather the pics, I realize how much has happened since I last wrote… when we arrived. So much going on, but in slow motion. I’ve been planned to write but have been waiting for tasks to finish, and so few do. We’ve been working on installing the new batteries in the boat, be biggie. But, so many sub-tasks to do to install them. I’m going to save that biggie for a single post. However, while we’ve been working on the batteries, we’ve had so much waiting for parts and waiting for paint to dry. Really. So…. what has been happening… I’ll present it in topics.

The Kittens:

Amazingly, the are adjusting. It is not a perfect adjustment, but we are all finding a rhythm. Chicha has jumped to the roof of the covered boat houses twice and went on one dock walkabout, but in general, she is being pretty good.

Nikki spends the day under our bed covers, still. But, at dinner, I bring her out and we close the door to our stateroom. She then, splits her time between the pilot house, the guest stateroom and the salon watching TV with us. Then, she comes to bed with us some and roams the boat while we sleep. After breakfast, she is back under the covers. It works…

Working on Other Projects:

While we’ve been waiting for paint to dry and for parts to arrive, we’ve been doing other smaller projects such as adding some supports to the air conditioner under the pilot house console. The pilot house AC, for reasons not completely understood, did not drain the condensate well. When we brought the boat up from Florida, we had several instances where one of the closets in the master stateroom would be wet. The AC drained from the port (left side) of the the boat, through a chase into the ceiling of our closet (on the starboard side), getting our entire hamper of dirty clothes wet. Not pretty. The condensate is supposed to drain down a tube into one of the bilges where it is pumped out of the boat. (Boats are complex) So, Jim built a canted shelf so that the condensate would drain from the pan under the ac, down the tube (which goes from port to starboard), down to the bulge (two levels down) and then gets pumped out a through hull (hole) in the side of the boat. All installed now. Still to test it… after we reinstall the AC pump in the engine room which we took out while working on the batteries. See, the domino effect. Tomorrow, we put the pump back!

Oh, many marinas, and this boat yard have courtesy cars. Need to get groceries or parts? Check the car out and go to town. They really don’t want you to take it far, and they are not fancy and terribly clean, but they do provide transportation. Otherwise, it would be bicycles which would slow down some of the local parts shopping.

Our Digs:

I have intended for quite some time to do a walkthrough of the boat. It is hard for folks to understand where we are living. But, you will have to wait a bit longer. I did some friends specifically ask about the galley. So, Jim in the galley,

Do We Have ANY Fun???

We are working on that…. Both of us REALLY want to get these major projects done, installing the new batteries which requires and is better with some rewiring, doing some work on the crane for the dinghy, some engine cooling fluishes and a bit other electrical work, etc. However, we are learning that owning a boat is just boat maintenance in paradise. I’m not sure that I see the Chesapeake in Fall as paradise, so we’ll call it pseudo-paradise.

We have taken a couple of dinghy rides around the harbor, checking out the surroundings and the boats. One evening we dinghied across the tiny bay for fresh oysters and seafood on an outside deck.

Apparently the algae growth and barnacles can be quick growing around here, so we took the dinghy out for a high speed cruse on the Rappahannock (the big river out of our little bay). We were gone for about an hour and managed to get it up to 18 knots. Interestingly, we averaged 7.3 knots for our little cruise… the same as the slow boat, Rincon Feliz. Funny. The water seemed fairly smooth, but it was not really so. We did manage to get the dinghy completely out of the water once. We’re hoping the bottom is cleaner.

Weather:

The weather here has been pretty mild. 70’s with 90% humidity. Pretty bearable. We’ve had a bit of heavy rain and a tad more clouds than I like. Pretty fog in the mornings which is pretty. The last couple of days it was 17 degrees and snowy in Santa Fe. It was raining and 60 degrees here. It is hard to think of this cold weather and not be worried about the house. But, we have monitoring we can do from our phone and good friends helping out to make sure everything is fine.

And, we await the remnants of Hurricane Zeta with potential gale force winds tomorrow (which is only 30ish to 50ish MPH) with 3 – 6 foot waves. If we were on the water, bad, and not something I want to be in. At the dock in a protected harbor, we should be fine. But, it will be our first experience on the boat, so it will be interesting.

I WILL endeavor to write more frequently, and maybe a bit shorter!