Winter Onboard in Annapolis

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Friday, February 5

The rain during the night seemed to have fully cleansed the sky—the sky was a beautiful blue color with very few clouds.  The sun was bright and unabated.  The tide was unusually high—from the boat’s cockpit, I looked down onto the main dock and the adjoining parking area.  Most of the snow had by now now disappeared—the only remaining snow was in melting piles previously created by snow plows and even they would be completely gone by the afternoon.

We got a later-than-usual start to our day today (8:30 or so).  Our main objective of the day was to do the laundry but we may also do some light grocery shopping this afternoon.  While Maggie was out on her morning walk I decided to feed the seagulls and maybe get some pictures as I was doing it.  I broke two slices of old bread and began to throw pieces in the air.  It wasn’t long before I attracted about two dozen or more gulls and I ran out of bread.

There is just something very satisfying
about feeding seagulls.

Whenever someone came by walking their dog, the mass of seagulls would take to the air and wait for the dog to be gone before returning for more morsels of bread.

Even seagulls have bullies.

By noon the outside temperature was a balmy 50 degrees!  One could almost hear the snow melting nearby.

A pretty blues singer with her portable
amplifier at the head of Ego Alley.

A different perspective of Ego Alley. The
blues singer was on far in the right
side background of this photo.

In the late afternoon, we drove across town to Annapolis Seafood and picked up 1-1/2 pounds of fresh sea scallops for tomorrow's main meal.  (Here is the recipe I will be roughly following.  Of course, I will modify it slightly to make it my own--maybe by adding cayenne, if nothing else.)

Saturday, February 6

The sunrise was beautiful this morning!  (Why no pics then?  Good question.)  The outside temperature was clearly warmer last night (high 30's) than it has been lately.  We had both oil-filled radiators on their "low" setting and we were still too warm.  At 10 AM it was already 44 degrees F outside and it was expected to reach 48 degrees!  Another beautiful day was in the making.  (The water temperature was still 40.3 degrees F and our reverse-cycle heater was still functioning fine, though it seldom came on during the night.)

Since this is a weekend and a lot of tourists will be in town, we probably won't drive anywhere or move our car today.  We have been accustomed to this routine after our time in Baltimore--in that case it was not due to tourists but rather limited parking in the marina on weekends.

One of my goals for the day was to organize my camera bag, making sure that all three of my lenses (and a host of filters and extra batteries) fit inside along with my camera.  I think I got it all to fit adequately.

Three of the couple dozen gulls from yesterday
returned today for more bread crumbs.

We made the citrusy scallop dish for lunch.  I was disappointed--the citrusy sauce was flat (probably because of the 1/2 cup of white wine) and the scallops wouldn't brown on the ends (next time I will use butter).  The dish wasn't worth all the effort.  The outside temperature was 50 degrees after lunch, so, it was time to get some ice cream!

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During the day I did a lot more research on spending next winter in Mexico.  Because of COVID-19, many of the landlords are reluctant to make plans so far in advance--so, actually signing a lease for a place to stay will have to wait until this summer.  (Right now landlords are advertising for leases starting in April.)  Craigslist seems like one of the more reliable sources for rentals in San Miguel de Allende.  Incidentally, one of the attractions of living in the central highlands of Mexico is the climate--it is like Spring all year round with very low humidity.  The temperature sometimes gets down into the 40's at night during the winter (which is only 1 or 2 months long) but it is warm during the day (in the 70's).  Most of the lodging rentals have no air conditioning or central heat.

San Miguel de Allende is in the central highlands
of Mexico, just north of Mexico City.

It is hard to believe that 2 inches of snow is expected tomorrow!

Sunday, February 7 (Super Bowl Sunday)

Last night when we retired for the day, the air conditioner had come on several times because the boat was so warm inside, despite drastically reducing the level on both oil-filled radiators.  This morning, the heat came on.  When we got up it was snowing pretty heavily but it didn't last long--it was all over by 10 AM.

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One of the things I have been thinking about lately is giving up most of our possessions that we currently have in our storage locker.  Some of them, like my drill press and most of our artwork, will be relatively easy and others will be much more difficult to part with.  When we got rid of most of our household possessions when we sold our house in Annapolis, it was actually liberating in the end.  We have held onto our artwork and some other things thinking that we would live on land conventionally again sometime in the future or on a house boat (which was recently ruled out completely with the sale of our condo slip).  Our current plan is to reduce the contents of our storage unit by half during this year.  (Postponing the complete disposition for at least another year is probably a good idea for now.)

One of two oil-filled radiators
we we have been
using for heat. 

The remainder of the day was rather uneventful.  The precipitation stopped and the sun came out in the late afternoon.  I ordered some accessories for my camera and a new collar for Lola.  Rainy/snowy days tend to be expensive!

Lola in the enclosed cockpit
on this snowy/rainy day.

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