Early Fall in Baltimore

October 5 thru October 8

—Blogpost written by Bob

Saturday, October 5

The outside temperature got down to 47 degrees early this morning—it was 66 degrees inside our boat when I got up to turn on the heat at about 6:30 AM.  It seems like, all of a sudden, Fall arrived and it's time to head south for the Winter.

A scruffy old sailor who needs
a shave very badly.

Actually, today was the last of the marina's free (Saturday-morning) breakfasts of the season.  After breakfast I spent some time with our cats outside in the cockpit.  Like a cat, I enjoyed spending some time in the warm morning sun.


In the afternoon, I listened to the Penn State-Purdue football game on Sirius.  Penn State won by a score of 35-7.  The game was never close.  The next three games will involve tougher opponents: Iowa, Michigan, and Michigan State.

I got a few little tasks completed today: glued a pair of Maggie's sandals back together, glued the seal on the toilet seat back in place, and added some shock cords with hooks to hold the dinghy's boarding ladder in place under the dinghy seat.  All in all, it was an easy day.

Sunday, October 6

The sky was overcast as I woke up this morning.  It was cool (mid 60's to low 70's) but certainly not as cool as yesterday.  The entire day was overcast.

Today was completely uneventful.  We went out for lunch at Bo Brooks' Tiki Hut and there was almost nobody there (because it looked like rain was coming?).  We got involved in watching the Ravens beat the Steelers in the afternoon but other than that, we didn't do much of anything.

Monday, October 7

Again, the sky was overcast all day with rain in the forecast but not until late in the day.  Our folding bikes are in the cockpit but they are not folded up--consequently they are taking up a lot of space unnecessarily.

On the top of our agenda for the day was looking for our dinghy anchor which seems to have disappeared.  The last time we used it was probably two years ago in the Bahamas.  First, I looked beneath the platform in the trunk of our car--it wasn't there but I found a bunch of Maggie's stuff (an old purse and some clothing in a plastic bag) that needs to be sorted and properly disposed. The next place I searched was under the quarter berth in the middle compartment--there was where we found it! 

Our dinghy anchor was found in the middle
compartment of the under-quarter berth
storage area.  It was pretty rusty!

After finding our old anchor, we evaluated whether to use the old anchor in its heavily rusted condition, wire brushing it clean and painting it, or buying a new one. I found a stainless steel grapnel anchor on Amazon for $36–this seemed like a perfect solution. It should arrive just before we leave.

Our new grapnel-style dinghy anchor is
constructed from stainless steel.

One of the things I've been struggling with lately is that the computer program (Aperture) that I have been using to adjust my photo's was discontinued and will be unable to be used after the next Apple software update (it's out now).  I keep putting off the update and I've been searching for replacement software.  I have Adobe Lightroom (which I don't like) and I've looked at Capture One (which appears to be much more than I need).  Another option is using Apple Photos (which is somewhat of a downgrade from Aperture).  I am trying to justify using Apple Photos to myself.  I don't particularly like downgrades of anything but I might give it a try.  I have to propagate my photo library from Aperture to Photos before I upgrade my software.

I had an unbelievable 33,377 photos in my Aperture library. It took about twenty minutes to accomplish one of the early steps in the process of migrating all these photos from the Aperture library to the Apple Photos library. 

After several hours, the migration
was only 35% complete!

Then, it took many hours for Apple Photos to prepare the new library. Needless to say, this little project consumed the entire afternoon and into the late evening. It’s a good thing that I didn’t have to sit around and watch it.  (The bad thing was that I couldn't find all my photos.  The next day I found them but all the organization structure was lost.  &%$#*&!)

Tuesday, October 8

The sky was overcast this morning and it looked like rain was on its way but it never rained.

The sky looking east looked like rain
was imminent but it never rained.

We drove to Annapolis, primarily to drop things off in our storage unit in preparation for leaving.  After stopping by our storage unit, we picked up Maggie's new contact lenses (a one-year supply), stopped at the Liquor store for some rum (and wine), and went out for lunch at Italian Market.

When we got back to the boat, we put up the rest of our cockpit enclosure in preparation for upcoming cooler temperatures.

Stay tuned as time becomes more of a factor...


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