Last Week in Baltimore?

October 13 thru Oct 18

—Blogpost written by Bob

Saturday, October 13

Considering everything that still has to be done before we leave, it now looks like we will be leaving on Friday morning (10/19). I realize that it is bad luck to leave on a Friday but we’ll take our chances.

At the end of my last blogpost I promised an update on the insurance claim on our car. As you may recall, our car was hit in the rear end while stopped at a traffic light on Maggie’s way home from the beach on Labor Day. It was the other driver’s fault and he was insured by Allstate.

Every day this settlement drags on
I feel the screw tightening.

It has now been 40 days since the accident and we have not received any type of settlement yet.  

This morning one of the house boats moved to a slip on C Dock--I helped since the house boat had no steering.  Most of the remainder of the day was spent reading and relaxing until the Penn State-Michigan State game in the late afternoon.  Unfortunately, Penn State lost 21 to 17 all within the last 2 minutes.

In the evening, we attended a pot luck dinner in the boater's lounge--it turned out to be a nice get together.

Sunday, October 14

Sunday was unseasonably cool again.  I finished reading the book i've been reading for the past several days, The Desert and the Sea: 977 days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast by Michael Scott Moore.

The author spent more than 2-1/2 years
in captivity by Somali pirates.

This book is a very good read!  The author is a journalist who went to Somalia to study the pirate industry but ended up being taken captive and held for ransom ($20 million).  This book is available on Amazon at this link.  I first heard about this book when the author was interviewed on NPR.

Monday, October 15

When we woke this morning is was raining and a little warmer than it has been--the outside temperature was in the low-70's.  Maggie did some laundry this morning and we did some computer updates in the boater’s lounge during the rain. We then went out for lunch at Five Guys, a hamburger joint further down Boston Street.

Today we talked to a diver who was in the parking lot when we returned from lunch. We made an appointment for him to inspect and clean our boat’s bottom on Wednesday afternoon. I am concerned about colonies of small barnacles that may be growing on our propeller and the possible deterioration of our shaft zinc, even though all was well at the end of our haulout in July.

It continued to rain lightly all day as the temperature rose into the mid-70’s. This is the kind of rain that I like—farmers like it too. The cats came out in the cockpit with me during the rain in the early afternoon. 

This was a special moment with our cats in
the cockpit with me during the rain.
Lola, shown above, loves being
outside, even in the rain!

We had about half of our cockpit enclosure in place so that the cockpit was nice and dry—we will keep it this way for our trip south unless the outside temperature gets much colder and we have to install the rear half for warmth.

In this photo, we have the forward half of
our cockpit enclosure in place.  We
will keep it this way most of
our trip southward.

We removed our long white 3/4-inch nylon spring line (and placed it in a mesh bag) so that we can wash it in the marina’s clothes washer. This line gets real slimy when it lays in the harbor’s dirty water—I have to remember to keep it tighter so that it’s not laying in the water.

It is rather difficult to describe our feelings at the moment.  Being in one spot for five months of the summer (Baltimore) we have "put down roots."  Right now, we are just about ready to "pull up our roots" and be a water-based nomad again.  I'm sure in Charleston, we will "put down roots" again for a short period (4 months of the winter).  The time we are stationary is usually good and the time we are in transit is usually good too--the short time we are "putting down roots" and again when we are "pulling up roots" is somewhat unsettling (or out of focus) for us.  I have given a lot of thought to accomplishing a couple objectives in Charleston: (1) getting my General Class ham license or taking Spanish classes, and (2) working on my photography.

Tuesday, October 16

The weather is predicted to be good the remainder of the week with high temperatures in the 60's (rather cool), mostly sunny, and very little chance of rain.  

We got our mail today (from Green Cove Springs) which included our ballots for voting the upcoming mid-terms and a letter from Allstate telling us that effective September 21 there were no longer paying the $50 per day storage costs on our wrecked vehicle and that we would be responsible for the cost.  The lapse in their coverage of the storage costs is 25 days at $50/day or $1,250!  This was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I immediately responded to Allstate by email that I did not intend to pay for any storage costs.

Wednesday, October 17

It was very cool (in the 50’s) when we got up this morning.  After the notice about the old car's storage costs and the lack of any kind of settlement was on my mind most of last night and into the early morning hours.  After all the hassles we’ve experienced with Allstate, we decided to hire an attorney to help us--we should have done this sooner!

I talked to our dock master first thing this morning about staying in our slip until the morning of Thursday, October 25 (the day that the water and power is turned off on our dock for the upcoming dock rebuild). He said he can work around our delay—so, we are delaying our departure until next Thursday morning. I will be re-working our travel plan over the next couple days but we will be traveling directly from Baltimore to Annapolis for the C&C Rendezvous starting next Friday.

We met with our attorney this afternoon for our initial consultation and we will be proceeding with the legal action against Allstate.

When we returned from the meeting with our attorney, I applied the first coat of bottom paint on the dinghy.  It was so windy that the paint would blow off the roller as I was painting.  I also had to hold the paint tray so that it wouldn't blow away.

The first coat of bottom paint was applied to
our inflatable dinghy late this afternoon.

I have to wait at least 3 hours for the second coat and then 48 hours for launch.  So the second coat will be applied tomorrow morning and we will launch the dinghy on Saturday just before noon.

Thursday, October 18

The weather was unseasonably cool this morning—in the 40’s! The sun was shining brightly and the humidity was very low (35%). I had to wait until 11 AM when it was warm enough to apply the second coat of bottom paint on our inflatable dinghy—it has to be above 50 degrees F. I set the can of paint in the sun to warm it up as much as possible. I got the second coat on and it looks great. Having the paint mixed on a motorized paint mixer when I purchased it really made a huge difference!

Lola is quite a character—she’s done this before
but this is the first time I’ve been able
to capture an image.  This would
be a good ad for AirHead!

We spent some time in the morning collecting documents for our attorney. Then, we went out for lunch at a little Indian restaurant called Jasa Kabob in the square in Canton—it was a nice change of pace.

Jasa Kabob is a small Indian restaurant
on the square in Canton.

Well, as it turns out this will not be our last week in Baltimore--we will be leaving next Thursday morning.  Our next blogpost will be published on our last day in Baltimore for the season...

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