Winter Onboard in Annapolis

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Monday, January 4

The rain clouds were gone this morning!  The sun was shining brightly as we left the boat for a light breakfast at Starbucks.  (The finger pier and the dock were icy this morning!)  We tried the new breakfast meal at Starbucks--the Impossible sausage-egg-cheese sandwich--it was awful!  (However, we like Burger King's Impossible Whopper, made with the same plant-based meat substitute.)

The contrast of the dark morning sky and the
bright sunshine on downtown Annapolis.

Last night I purchased a Kindle book entitled Keto Cocktails by Tasha Metcalf.  After reading a couple pages, We decided to get the materials to try making a Keto version of a Mojito (sometimes called a "Mo-Keto").

The book cover for Keto Cocktails
by Tasha Metcalf.

We bought a small package of mint leaves at (the Gucci) Giant. We didn't have a cocktail muddler which is used to crush the mint leaves--we found a wooden one at the Liquor Store we usually use.  (So, tonight's happy hour will be a little bit of an adventure!)

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After we returned to the boat after our mission to find the necessary ingredients and utensils to make a "Mo-Keto", I got around to changing the fresh water filter cartridge which I do at the beginning of every quarter.

The lower outer surface of fresh water filter
was covered with a brownish
colored mud.

I'm not sure what the brownish colored mud was on the fresh water filter but it had a metallic smell--the same smell and taste that the water has had lately.  I have  informed the harbor master of this issue--we'll see what happens. (We're going to stop drinking the fresh water from our onboard tanks until this issue gets resolved.)

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Today turned out to be quite a bit warmer than it has been--the outside temperature hit a high of 45 degrees F this afternoon!  (The next predicted precipitation's for a rain/snow mix on Friday night.)

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In a discussion later in the day with the harbor master, it became clear that our fresh water tanks are thoroughly contaminated with some type of marine growth picked up from the dock's water hose.  (We will have to flush our tanks tomorrow.)

Our Keto-friendly mojitos rounded
out our day. They are mostly
(50%) sparkling water.

Tuesday, January 5

First thing in the morning I made a detailed plan to deal with our contaminated fresh water tanks.  Essentially, we will drain the tanks into the bilge and allow the bilge pump to pump the contaminated water overboard.  (While doing the tank draining, we will throughly clean the wire mesh strainer and the housing for the water filter cartridge.)  We will then add water into the tank while we add 1/4-cup of bleach into each tank.  After the bleach-containing water has been sitting for 1/2-hour ,we will pump the bleach-water through the fresh water system, including the hot water tank, the head sink, and the galley sink.  Then we will flush all tanks and all system with clean fresh water to get rid of the bleach.  After all this effort, our tanks should be ready for use again.

The entire day was taken up by filling water
tanks, adding bleach, draining water
tanks, and rinsing water tanks!

We spent the entire day, emptying water tanks, filling them back up with about 1/4-cup bleach in each tank, running bleach-water through the entire fresh water system, emptying them again, and filling them up again with rinse water.  By the end of the day we had drained the rinse water from all three tanks but couldn't fill them because the people in the harbor master's office left at 3 PM and they control the supply hoses. (So, we are ready to fill all three tanks first thing in the morning.  We will pre-filter the water before boarding and use a water treatment.)

We cleaned the bilge today while the tanks were draining. The bilge pump got quite a workout  since we let the tanks drain into the bilge and then let the bilge pump pump the water overboard.  

At the end of the day we were wet, cold, still without onboard fresh water, and beat!

Wednesday, January 6

Today was another overcast day and it felt very cold and damp, even though the outside temperature was in the low 40's.  After driving out to Naval Bagels to buy breakfast, we started filling the water tanks as soon as we returned to the boat.  We used an in-line filter to pre-filter the water into the boat this time around. (By the way, Amazon's price on this same in-line filter is about half that of West Marine!)

We purchased this in-line filter to avoid
contamination from any water
source when filling
our tanks.

We ran some errands after filling our fresh water tanks and came back to the boat for lunch (leftovers).

The remainder of the day I spent planning some future boat projects and putting together lists of materials.  One such project is changing out all our old fresh water hoses. The fresh water hoses are located mostly below the floorboards and the changeout will involve quite a disruption to our life aboard.

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In the late afternoon, Trump loyalists stormed the nation's capital building to what purpose I'm not sure but it was a disgusting display of stupidity and selfishness.

Thursday, January 7

A nice sunny morning awaited us as we began our day today.  The outside temperature was pretty much the same as yesterday but it felt much warmer, perhaps because of the bright sunshine and lower wind velocity.  The water temperature at the Annapolis weather buoy was 40.3 degrees while the outside air temperature was 36 degrees F.

Our main goal for the day was driving to Castle Harbor Marina on Kent Island (again), where we anticipate moving our boat in April--its just across the Bay Bridge from Annapolis.  We want to actually pick out one of the slips that are available and start to finalize all the arrangements.

Castle Harbor Marina on Kent Island

Castle Harbor Marina from the
entrance to J-dock

Slip #J-18

Electric meters for J-dock

We brought back the paperwork so that we can sign up for Slip J-18, our new summer home. It will be an interesting change, living on Kent Island.  The summer beach traffic on Route 50 will keep us home for the weekends but that is not much different than being in Baltimore where we would lose our parking space if we traveled somewhere on a weekend.

I feel a little bit better about our summer home than I did some time ago.  We got a great deal--1/2 normal price!  This means that we're renting a 45 foot x 17 foot slip on an annual basis for

$1,775.  Today's drive was very worthwhile. The latest word we got from a friend who keeps his boat at this marina is that the odd side of A-dock is probably a better location for us.  (We will probably make another trip to check out slip A-15.)

Until next blogpost, thanks for following our blog!