Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Oct 29th Wild Ride from Annapolis to Dun Cove

Good Karma at Anchor in Dun Cove

Friday we sailed from Annapolis to Dun Cove on the eastern shore of Maryland. It was pretty wild, with wind varying between 20 and 30 knots from the northwest. We were able to sail most of the way with only a reefed jib, moving at 6 to 7 knots! That is fast through pretty heavy seas, with waves at about 3 to 4 feet. I wasn’t able to catch the worst of it on video, but you can see Shelly at the helm in a short video here! We were getting spray over the cockpit and it was quite brisk, but overall not too bad.

Route from Annapolis to Dun Cove

I found out there are several free web services that track AIS data of ships and guess what, we are there. Above shows a track of how we sailed from Annapolis to Dun Cove and where we currently are anchored. This is pretty cool. You can see where we are at any time by clicking here: Where We Are! I’ll try to put this link in posts, at the bottom, under “this is where we are.” but you can save it in your bookmarks and see where the Good Karma is in real time.

Dun Cove is one of the most peaceful anchorages we have been to yet. We took the dinghy in to a tavern to check things out in the community here. Shelly named the dinghy Namaste. She wanted to name it “Bad Karma” but I exercised my veto on that one…

Shelly Piloting Namaste

The tavern was on a beach and it was actually quite hot, supposed to be record breaking heat again tomorrow, for October 30 that is, so it should be very nice. Next up: Solomon’s Island!

On The Beach at Lowe’s Wharf Tavern

This is where we are!

Oct 26th Finally On Our Way!

Only New Landings Ahead!

Today we transitioned from having a fixed return dock to being transients. We left our home of three months at Haven Harbor in Rock Hall to head south. We have launched the wandering adventure today! Things should become much more interesting now.

Chart Plotter, We Are Under the White Cross in the Center

We headed south, as we have many times before, toward the Bay Bridge. The predicted good wind from the north never really materialized though we did get a couple of hours of sailing done. We decided to go as far south as Annapolis and hang out for a couple of days.

Shelly On The Lookout As We Pass A Luxury Yacht

On the way to the Annapolis mooring field, we passed a huge private luxury yacht being towed out by a a small tugboat. The Annapolis harbor mooring field, just off the Naval Academy, was directly ahead. We grabbed a mooring ball and settled in for a couple of days.

Wednesday Evening Sail Race in Annapolis!

We watched a sailboat race of small racing crafts that happens every Wednesday in the harbor. Pretty cool, like watching the Olympics.

As today begins our next stage, we had a little celebration in Annapolis where, for the first time, we arrived by boat. Living at Haven Harbor for the last three months was good. The people were friendly, the town was small and very homey, and the weather was good overall. Haven Harbor did some excellent work on the Good Karma to get her ready for our trip. However, we were more than ready to shift this adventure into high gear. It’s time to explore!

Goodbye To Haven Harbor and Rock Hall

Oct 22nd Another Windy Day

In Case of Emergency, Break Plastic

Today was cold and windy, similar to when hurricane Matthew came through. We are at the marina dock so no problems. I spent the day doing homework, that is, watching a 90 minute video about how to dock in various conditions. Learned quite a bit. I also mounted our new Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB). This is a transmitter that calls for a rescue automatically when it’s turned on. It works everywhere in the world because it uses satellites to communicate. You turn this on in an extreme emergency, i.e, your boat is sinking in the ocean. I hesitate to call this “safety equipment,” it’s more like last minute desperate call for help equipment. There is a very slim chance, if any, we’ll have to use this but if we do run into a bad situation this is good to have.

I stayed on the boat today to make sure no problems arose in the gale force winds. Shelly took the car to Annapolis and sold it. Our last tie to land is gone, we are free to travel to wherever we want. And we need to, the cold days are piling up here!

An Elemental Goodbye!

Oct 21st Sail to Baltimore

Approaching the Francis Scott Key Bridge

Our latest excursion was a three day trip to Baltimore to visit some friends from our distant past: Geeta and Jim, neuroscience researchers at Johns Hopkins University. We had met about 30 years ago when Shelly worked in a neuroscience lab at CU. It’s actually quite a distance up to Baltimore from Rock Hall, so we anchored overnight at Bodkin Creek. The next day, in what was again record-breaking heat in Baltimore, we motored ten miles up the busy Patapsco river to Baltimore’s inner harbor.

Watch Out!

On the way we got to check out our AIS system, the one that tells us where the big commercial ships are going and how fast. It helped us immensely and also told all these ships who and what we were. We are very conservative and avoided the large shipping channels when possible anyway, so we had no conflicts. This was good practice for Norfolk Virginia, the busiest shipping area in the continent. We have to get through there to enter the ICW in a couple of weeks.

Good Karma in Baltimore, Tested and Commissioned!

We now feel all the prep work to get the Good Karma seaworthy is pretty much finished. There will certainly be ongoing maintenance, probably quite a lot. However, all we can take care of for now is finished. We plan on leaving our three month home in a week, ready to head down the Chesapeake toward Florida!

Oct 19th …And More Boat Work

New Handheld Radio and Mount

Even more work to be done, albeit much smaller, but necessary jobs. In mountain rescue as well as most mountaineering, you should have a backup systems and plans just in case something goes wrong with your equipment. This is directly translatable to sailing. In sailing, your two-way VHF radio is critical, it gives you real-time, direct contact to the world. Most notably, in an emergency you can call for help and in the U.S. and many nearby island nations, channel 16 is monitored. The Coast Guard will come to the rescue in life-and-death situations in coastal waters, as well as other boaters if they can. If you lose your engine, you can call for a sea tow. In everyday operation, you call marinas to reserve a slip or fuel stop. Commercial ships will contact you if there is a navigation conflict, e.g., get out of the way! You want your radio to work.

I bought a handheld just in case the shipboard radio goes out. Plus it’s useful for communication when you aren’t in the cockpit and need a radio. I mounted the charger on the chart table as shown above, secure and easy to grab when necessary.

Air Conditioner Strainer Housing

Another job completed was to give the air conditioner strainer housing a good cleanup. It was pretty messy. The air conditioner uses seawater to help channel heat out. It pumps seawater in, cools the heat exchanger and then back out to the sea. The sea is full of stuff. This stuff will clog the pump or heat exchanger, so you have to filter, or strain, it out. The strainer has to be cleaned periodically, which is very simple. However, over time the housing gets dirty and must be cleaned out well. So I had to remove it and wash out the cylindrical object pictured above. Unfortunately there was also a lot of corrosion so I had to clean it with a wire brush as well. The O-rings needed replacement as well. Finally got it done, took about a half-day total. Works great.

Next, sail to Baltimore!

Oct 16th More Boat Work

Near the Top of the Mast!

Trying to get some last minute outfitting and boat work done before we head out and down toward the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). One BIG item was to measure our mast height. Why? We need to go under some fixed bridges on the ICW. The “control height” is 64 feet, meaning if your mast is higher, you can’t go. The spec mast height of our boat is 62 feet and that’s way to close to not know exactly. The reason is that there are a lot of instruments on the top of the mast, see pic below. If they add significantly to the mast height, they’ll strike those bridges.

To measure the height, I had to go get lifted to the top of the mast to make the measurement. I took the photo above looking down at Shelly belaying me (notice my work boots). “Precise” measurement places our mast height from waterline at 61 feet, give or take probably a half foot. That’s good but doesn’t take into account the instruments at the top, the highest one being our VHF antenna.

Shelly winched me up the mainsail halyard and so I couldn’t get right to the top to measure the antenna height, but I estimated it to be about two feet. That makes our total height 63 feet, which gets us under the lowest fixed bridges with an entire 12 inches to spare!

Masthead of the Good Karma

Oct 16th Shakedown Excursion

Motoring Across the Bay

We went out for a three night shakedown excursion to test out all the maintenance and new instruments, just to make sure everything was OK. Did not have any problems in those departments. The navigation system exceeded expectations. We had to motor a lot due to the lack of wind, and that was a good thing in this case as we tested the motor and old fuel and had no problems. Our starboard tank had about 70 gallons of really old diesel that we had to have polished, which means cleaning through a filter. Algea grows in diesel, and condensation is also a problem. These cause your engine to fail. Well, we used about a quarter of that tank and everything was good, no engine failures.

Shelly at the Helm

We went back to the Magothy river near Gibson Island again for the first night. The next day we motored underneath the bay bridge to Mill Creek near Annapolis this time and visited Cantlers Inn for dinner. This was our first trip off the boat on the dinghy with the new outboard engine, worked great.

Moon Over the Magothy

Tanker at Anchor

The next day we tried to get to Wye Island on the east side of the bay and actually got some sailing done. We got going a little late and it was much further to our planned anchorage than we thought, so we decided instead to head to the West River near Galesville. On the way we passed some big ships at anchor, one is pictured above. We reserved a mooring ball at a marina and had our first experience tying off to one of these on this boat. Pretty easy, once you find the correct one, there were about 50 floating out there with numbers on them. Had dinner on the boat that evening.

The next day we went for a morning walk in Galesville, a tiny little community on the bay. Got back to the boat and decided to head back to Rock Hall to take care of some items that still need to be done before we leave. We need to get out of here soon and head south, it’s getting cold! But hurricane season is in full effect until at least November.

On the way out of the Galesville marina we got stuck in the mud in the middle of the mooring field. Again, the tides are extreme due to a full “supermoon,” and we tried to leave at low tide. We waited an hour and then got enough lift to get off the mud.

We were able to sail in excellent wind part of the way back, a beautiful but brisk day.

Cold Weather Gear Except for Feet

Oct 9th Tropical Cyclone Wind

Clear But Windy This Afternoon

As the northern reaches of Hurricane Matthew moved over us the last couple of days we went from drenching rain to high, steady wind. Starting around midnight it rained, at times torrentially, the rest of the night through mid-morning. Then the wind and waves started. The wind makes an eerie sound whistling through the rigging, while every once in a while you hear a loud “boom,” like running into a drum, which is a wave breaking on the hull. We are probably over a hundred miles from the closest pass of the eye but the wind from the storm is significant. Not leaving the slip today.

We are now experiencing an interesting phenomenon that happens in the Chesapeake. Because it pretty much closed at the north end and open in the south, and because it is relatively shallow, especially where we are, the wind can have a large effect on the tides. Fairly high wind has been blowing steadily from the north all day and this tends to push water out of the bay. This causes the water level to drop a bit, and the low tide ends up being, in this case, a couple of feet lower than normal. That means, in our otherwise shallow slip, we are now grounded out, as are several boats here.

Below is a photo showing a couple of our instruments. Not a great photo because the surfaces of the instrument is highly reflective. The left instrument shows the depth below the boat at 5.5 feet, the right shows the wind direction and speed. It’s kind of hard to read but the wind speed is 21.2 knots. It’s been gusting up to 30 knots. But the important reading is the 5.5 feet of depth.

The reason is that the bottom of our keel is 5.3 feet below the water. I’m not sure the depth meter is accurate to an inch, but I do think we are or will be bottomed out because it’s not low tide yet. Normally it should be 7.5 feet at low tide. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to! And the locals tell me it takes a couple of days for all the water to flow back into the bay this far north. The daily tide bulletin board at the marina that shows times for low and high tides says:

Low Tide: No Kidding!    High Tide: Tuesday (Today is Sunday)…

Bottoming Out

Oct 7th On The Threshold

The Good Karma Finally Ready for Serious Adventure

It’s getting quite cool, dare I say, COLD at night during October here in Maryland. It’s a relief from the oppressive heat just a few weeks ago. Whenever she feels cold, Shelly reminds herself that it is way better than the heat we experienced, and I agree. The Good Karma is not a heated boat, which is ok. We don’t expect that it’ll get unbearably cold before we move south.

I’ve been sick the last few days but my recovery is progressing. In the meantime, we’ve completed the big boat maintenance and upgrade project and nothing major is remaining, so we’re now putting our car up for sale. When that sale completes, we will have cut our “land ties” completely!

Dinghy Davits Completed and Outboard Mounted on Stern

We had one last item to finish today which was the crossbar for our davits. It took a few weeks to complete because you have to raise your dinghy on the davits, sans crossbar, to make some measurements. Kato then makes a custom fitted crossbar for you. It took a few weeks to get this done due to the navigation project and our trip to West Point and D.C.

We are now ready for some serious adventure. Due to hurricane season, and our boat insurance, we can’t really go south until November but we have many plans to explore the Chesapeake before we leave for good. Tomorrow calls for a lot of rain here, from the far outer bands of hurricane Matthew, but good after that.

The image below illustrates why you don’t want to be south of Virginia during hurricane season. We are located at the top end of the coast in this photo.

Hurricane Matthew: This Is Why We are in the Chesapeake in October

Oct 5th Success Installing Navigation Electronics!

Radar Mast with Updated Components

After about a week of full-time work, I finally got all of the new navigation electronics installed and working. I learned a hell of a lot about marine electronics and how to install wiring on a boat. Besides figuring out all the different components and how they work, the other very difficult part was squeezing into the tiny spaces to get the wiring in place. BUT… I was able to do a great job worthy of a professional. Not that I would attempt to do it as a real job…

I had the professionals here mount the radar dome and VHF antenna, shown above, on the radar mast. I would have done it but I don’t have a ladder and they do. I’m glad I did because they found that the mast had to be removed to run the cables, an unusual situation. Saved quite a bit of time and frustration for me.

New Chart Plotter and Navpod on the Pulpit in Front of the Wheel

The main component installed is the chart plotter shown above. It is the “google maps” of sailing. It is a computer display that contains all the navigation charts of your area and plots your boat and direction directly on the screen. The previous chart plotter worked fine but was dated by about 15 years, an eternity in the high tech world. The chart plotter is located just in front of the helm so that you have precise information as to where you are going and what is around you in real time. Really, it’s an excellent tool for sailing. The display required a new mount that needed to be installed as well.

AIS Transceiver Unit

This entire project was driven by our requirement to have an Automatic Identification System (AIS) unit on the boat. This is the system that tells other ships where you are and lets you see what other ships are doing, a safety system to prevent collision. As you see above, the AIS box required four different cables to be installed and connected correctly: A VHF antenna, a GPS antenna, power and a network cable. I’m happy to say it all works. It provides information to the chart plotter display to show you where ships are around you, pretty cool actually.

Radar is Operational!

The final component I got working was the radar, display shown above. The radar electronics on the mast connect to the display through a wireless connection. Pretty cool. I think everything on a boat should work this way, would save a lot of headaches running cables below deck.

However, I can’t complain. Last week we toured a WWII submarine and it was impressive how tight cables, pipes and instruments fit in a small space. It had to be extremely difficult to maintain. The Good Karma has spacious cable running room in comparison.

Ok, almost all the maintenance and upgrade work is done. Soon we will be departing Rock Hall for good!