Winter Onboard in Annapolis

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Tuesday, January 26

This morning, a thick sheet of ice covered the finger pier, replacing the little bit of snow that had accumulated late last night. The outside temperature was 33 degrees and the water temperature, surprisingly, was still at 40.3 degrees (at the Annapolis weather buoy) and we were still using our reverse-cycle heat (which probably won't work much below a 40-degree water temperature)!

Face masks stored by our 
door: A sign of the times.

Since it was somewhat wet and cold outside, we spent the day inside the boat.  I did some on-line research about driving to San Miguel de Allende in early October.  It appears that I have to get a car permit for Mexico as well as Mexican auto insurance.  It will take about 9 hours of driving to get from Laredo TX to San Miguel--we have to make sure to do the entire drive on toll roads and during daylight.  (We will plan this drive in more detail later and it may involve a stopover at a highly recommended hotel along the way.)

Some people have advised us NOT to drive in Mexico at all but the advantages (particularly for Lola) outweigh the concerns (primarily robbery near the border towns).

I spent some time reading and shopping on-line.  I purchased a (used) 20mm wide angle lens for my camera--this lens is used mainly for indoor shots (or wide open landscape shots).  The new lens will come in handy in San Miguel and I will have enough time for getting familiar with it before leaving.

My new 20mm wide angle
lens--it's a tiny lens.

At this point, moving to Mexico for six months (October thru March) is becoming pretty much a reality.  This will bring our winter cruising to the Bahamas to an end but open up some summer cruising (again) on the Chesapeake Bay.  Of course, the summer cruising probably won't be the highlight of our (transformed) life--it will be our time in Mexico. There's a saying among expats in San Miguel de Allende that people move to Florida to die whereas they move to Mexico to live.

Wednesday, January 27

I have really been catching up on my sleep lately--I got up at 2:30 AM fully rested!  The outside temperature (which I usually check on my iPhone when I first get up) was 37 degrees F.  (You can always estimate the outside temperature by the frequency of the onboard heat coming on.)  I wrote a couple sentences for this blog and went back to sleep a bit longer.

I re-awoke (if that's a word) at about our normal time (7:30 AM) and we got about our day's business.  We started off by having a delicious breakfast sandwich and coffee at Starbuck's--the one at Harbor Center.  While in the area we did some select grocery shopping at Fresh Market and then returned our portable printer to our storage unit.  (In my opinion, Fresh Market has the best meats in Annapolis.  The Amish Market is also a good place to buy quality meats.) 

While at our storage unit, I checked on a new storage unit, half the size of our existing storage unit.  (A 5' x 5' unit was available near our current 5' x 10' unit for $82/month.  Units can be relinquished the day before the end of a calendar month.  So, it pays us to start selling stored things from now through the end of February!  Since we probably can't complete selling our excess stuff by the end of February, we may have two storage units for the month of March.)

 Annapolis ducks on one of the finger piers.

The clouds cleared and the sun came out at mid-morning.  As shown in the above image, some of the ducks that spend the entire year in Annapolis harbor were gathered on one of the nearby finger piers.

My onboard ammo stash in my underwear
drawer: boxes of 45 Auto 230-Grain
Full Metal Jacket, service grade.

I spent a lot of time in afternoon, starting a list of things in our storage area (from my memory) and starting a manifest for our trip to Mexico, all on my iPad.  Both of these things will be further developed over the next 8 months.

Thursday, January 28

Cold and windy is the best description for today--the outside temperature as a mere 30 degrees F with a 17-knot wind out of the north--it felt like 19 degrees F!  We experienced a lot more boat motion than normal because of the wind direction. 

In the morning, I prepared the dish was making for a late lunch--eggplant lasagna the crockpot. I started by sautéing the thin slices of eggplant.  (I bought two eggplants for this dish but one was spoiled when we bought it.) 

Sautéing thin slices of eggplant until
they are practically transparent.

I cut the eggplant into 1/4-inch thick slices (lengthwise) and sautéed them two at a time (that's all that would fit into our frying pan.)  For the sautéing I used avocado oil because it can tolerate a higher temperature without smoke.  After sautéing the eggplant slices and making the sauce with ground beef and tomato sauce (plus diced onions, fresh garlic, and cayenne), I layered the eggplant slices between layers of cheese and sauce.  I used ricotta cheese near the bottom layer, just like normal lasagna. I soon ran out of eggplant slices because one of the eggplants we purchased had spoiled.  I cooked the assembled dish in our crockpot on the "high" setting for 3-1/2 hours.  It was ready to eat at 1 PM for a nice late lunch.  

The dish didn't turn out as I expected--it tasted great but looked like a big mess.  I was going for a nice low-carb lasagne but the layers of eggplant did not hold it together as pasta noodles would have done. I should have used some tomato paste and two large eggplants (instead of just one) and 1-1/2 pounds of ground beef (instead of 1 pound). Oh well, maybe next time...

----------

Lately we've noticed that the daylight is getting longer, being more than a month away from the winter solstice.

----------

I'm closing our this blogpost today (Thursday) so that I can get back on a schedule of Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday schedule and a Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Over 400,000 fellow U.S. citizens have now died from COVID-19--it was just a month ago that we passed 300,000 deaths in the U.S.  Stay safe and get vaccinated as soon as possible.  Thanks for following our blog!