Winter Onboard in Annapolis

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Tuesday, November  10

Today was another very beautiful fall day with a high temperature near 70 degrees.  We decided to drive to Baltimore and retrieve some of our mail and packages that arrived there by mistake.  (We also brought back a lot of paint that I had stored in our dock box--I didn't want it to freeze when it gets cold.)

My scrap fire hose had arrived in Baltimore--the fire hose I ordered to make chafe protectors for our dock lines.  The fire hose was 1-inch in diameter and 10 feet long and I cut it into 2-1/2 foot lengths, making four chafe protectors.  Using a soldering gun, I melted the ends of the fabric cover so that they wouldn't come apart.

Melting the ends of the fabric cover
with a soldering gun.

We installed the chafe protectors on our forward dock lines and two of the three spring lines, using short lengths of red shock cord to prevent the chafe protectors from moving on the lines.

The new fire hose chafe protectors
installed on our bow lines.

The new fire hose chafe protectors
installed on our spring lines.

This little project took most of the afternoon.  (I ordered more scrap fire hose for chafe protectors on the stern lines.)

Wednesday, November 11

It was raining from the get go this morning--not hard at first, but steady.  The weather forecast was for nearly 1-1/2 inches of rain today.

Schooner Lynx refuels at the fuel dock, 
representing a contrast in times.

We drove to Fallston in the morning to pick up Maggie’s completed quilt—this one made for her second daughter.  The drive was through continuous rainfall and some foggy areas—it was miserable.  (Fallston is about 30 minutes north of Baltimore just off I-95.)  Most of the colorful leaves had fallen off the trees as a result of the rainfall.  It was beginning to look like winter.

We got back to Annapolis in time to have lunch at Italian Market.  While at lunch I had the idea of making a Beef Bourgogne type dish but using chicken and white wine instead of beef chunks and red wine.  After lunch, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up the ingredients and a few other necessities.  (We had difficulty finding pearl onions in a jar or can and settled for cocktail onions.  After our return to the boat we found out that the cocktail onions were packed in vinegar which would not work well in the chicken-white wine dish I had imagined.)

We tried to rinse the vinegar off the cocktail
onions but it didn't work so well.

After returning to the boat, we spent the afternoon in the cockpit enclosure with the oil-filled radiator on the medium setting.  The cockpit was dry and warm, a nice cozy atmosphere to update our blogs before retiring for the day.

Thursday, November 12

It rained all through the night and into the morning.  I was thankful that it was still relatively warm outside.  I don’t think that the reverse-cycle heat even came on once during the night—if it did, I slept through it.  We had the cabin fan in the v-berth running throughout the night for air circulation.  It was very comfortable—we didn’t even need the heavy blanket we recently purchased.

At 5 AM I was awoken by the street cleaning machine that cleans the dockside city parking lot every day.  Annapolis is in the flight path for jets landing at Baltimore-Washington International Airport—fortunately during the pandemic flights flights have been greatly curtailed and we don’t experience the drone of jets preparing to land early in the morning.  The street cleaning machine was our only consistent sleep disturbance, contrary to the noise from helicopters in Baltimore which was like sleeping within a war zone!

After a light breakfast at Starbucks on Main Street, we drove to the hardware store for a couple items we needed and then to the Giant on Bay Ridge (known as the "singles" Giant) to look for pearl onions.  The jarred pearl onions were sold out but we found fresh ones in a net bag--these are for the chicken-white wine dish I will be making in the crock pot. 

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At 3 PM I had an appointment with my urologist to discuss the possible treatments for my prostate cancer diagnosis.  The cancer was deemed only moderately aggressive.  We discussed many possible treatment options and decided on the external radiation bombardment--it is a 5 day per week treatment for a total of 8 weeks (or 40 treatments).  (The radiation will be targeted on the prostate gland with very little overlap to other organs.)  At this point in time, the expectation is that the treatments will begin about January 1 and end at the beginning of March.  On our way home from my urologists office we purchased a bottle of good bourbon--Angel's Envy.

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Before turning in for the night, I browned the large chunks of chicken for the crockpot dish I planned--I decided to call the chicken-white wine dish Chicken Sauvignon.  I loaded everything into the crockpot and plan to start it early in the morning so that it is done at shortly after noon tomorrow.  Let's hope it all works out well and tastes great.

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As I complete this blogpost, U.S. cases and deaths from COVID-19 are increasing to an all-time high.  Still there is no national plan in place to deal with this health crisis...

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