Summer Life in Baltimore

Sep 15 thru Sep 18

—Blogpost written by Bob

Saturday, September 15

Today began with an overcast sky but the sun made its appearance by 10 AM. I almost forgot the beauty of sunshine.  Hurricane Florence is about to make a long sweeping turn completely around our current location, without getting anywhere near us!  We will have rain from the hurricane on Monday and Tuesday.

This morning, I taped off the C&C stars on the starboard side of the boat and repainted them using flag blue paint.  

The C&C star is the symbol at
the end of the blue line.

While I had the boat positioned closely along the dock, I also touched up worn areas on the teak toe rail with Cetol—this is in lieu of re-coating the entire toe rail this season.

About 4 PM (just after the Penn State football game—Penn State won 63 to 10) the clouds rolled in and it looked like rain again. During the late morning and early afternoon I managed to get two coats of blue paint on the C&C stars on the starboard side and another coat of Cetol on the worn areas of the starboard toe rail. It looks great!

Sunday, September 16

We woke to an overcast sky again but the sun soon came out as the sky cleared. Being a Sunday, we decided to take it easy today. This morning I browned some pork cubes to cook in sauerkraut in the crock pot. We happened to be watching a cooking show on TV and they were making sauerkraut. So, I used some of their methods—I added apple cubes and some potato cubes (even though these are in violation of our low carb diet) and cooked everything in white wine (instead of water). It smells great!

We’ve been thinking about our car situation and decided to buy a newer 2015 Prius just like our current (wrecked) one but in white (actually the color is called blizzard pearl).  We found one nearby at a sister dealership to the one where we bought our current one (and where it is being repaired). 

A 2015 Prius Persona Edition
that we are considering.

We have also been thinking about our winter destination. Since It may take some time to repair all the flood damage in New Bern N.C. we’ve been thinking about staying in Charleston SC. It will be more expensive (about double in cost) but we definitely won’t need 

our car there. It will also be warmer in Charleston.

Looking onto our boat's cockpit at sunset.

Monday, September 17

We awoke to an overcast sky (yet again) today and we experienced the remnants of Hurricane Florence as it moved north but stayed well to the west of us. It rained off and on throughout the day.

We drove to Westminster this morning and purchased our new 2015 Prius—the one we mentioned earlier in this blogpost. We left it at the dealer to have a minor scratch repaired. We will be waiting for the final resolution of our old Prius before taking our new car home but we made our decision and we now own the newer car. 

The only think I didn’t like about the new car was the fact that it didn’t have alloy wheels. However, it had normal profile tires unlike our old Prius which had low profile (run flat) tires. So, when the tires wear out on our new car, I’m going to purchase alloy wheels with the new tires.

I still don’t understand why it takes so long to buy a newer (used) car with cash—it took about 2-1/2 hours and we knew exactly what we wanted. I think we signed more forms than we did selling our house.

During the recent years we have made many big decisions (like selling our house and moving aboard) that involved making the most of our lives. Today’s decision on buying another Prius was rather conservative. We could have purchased something like a Jaguar and pushed the envelope a little. I guess old (conservative buying) habits are hard to break.

This afternoon I sent an email inquiring about 4-month winter dockage space in Charleston.

By the time we got back to the boat it was happy hour. Today’s special drink was a vodka gimlet, made with vodka (instead of gin), lime juice, and a low-carb simple syrup made with Splenda. It tastes something like a margarita but without the tequila taste. Maggie is becoming a pretty good bartender.

This is an image of a Gimlet from an online
source.  Our concoction looks very
similar but it made differently.

A Gimlet is a Gin Sour made with lime juice.  Our concoction used vodka instead of gin.  It's history has a connection to the sea and sailors.  While it is strictly legend, it was supposedly created in the mid-19th century for Royal Navy sailors and the prevention of scurvy.

Tuesday, September 18

We have exactly one month remaining here in Baltimore.  We leave to head south again on October 18.  This morning we were informed by email that Charleston City Marina has winter slip availability for us!  I spent most of the rainy morning, getting the application completed and sent back.  So, our winter plans have officially changed--we will be in Charleston SC between December 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019.  On April 1, 2019 we will begin our trip back to Baltimore on the ICW.

It rained off and on all day today.  We may have to start happy hour a little early today...


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