Last Two Days of Summer

—Blogpost written by Bob 

Monday, September 20

The sound of our American flag fluttering in the mild northeasterly breeze was accompanied the occasional squawk from a nearby marina duck as we sat in the cockpit with our cats.  The decks and cabintop were wet from a heavy overnight dew as the outside temperature was a mere 64 degrees at 8 AM.  Lola doesn’t like to walk on wet surfaces—she’s funny that way—today she mostly stayed in the cockpit with us.  Kali was very content being in the cockpit as always. (She slept with us most of last night.)

Kali under the helm seat.  (Bunky, my
first Maine Coon, used to love
this little hiding place too.)

We both wonder about missing the water while we are in Mexico’s central highlands but we realize we’re coming back to our liveaboard lifestyle after six months. (I guess only time will tell.  I'm sure that we will look forward to coming home on the water in the Spring.  Neither of us particularly like the cold weather.)

Maggie made delicious fried egg
quesadillas this morning, getting
us in the mood for Mexico.

As preparation for Winter haulout and as my major task of the day, I planned to pickle the water maker and then remove it from the boat.  (Tomorrow, I plan to store our water maker in our (climate controlled) storage unit for the Winter.)

As things turned out I couldn't find our supply of Sodium Metabisulfate onboard (needed to pickle the water maker)--I had to order one pound through Amazon--so, this task would be delayed by a couple days.

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We took both cats for a car ride to the post office and back to get them more used to riding in the car.  Lola still had a tough time of it while it was relatively easy for Kali.  

However, with both cats in the back seat we realized that we may need more space for everything we need to take with us to Mexico--all of it has to fit in the trunk (along with our cooler).  We brought the cats back to the boat.  When we extracted both cats from the car, they were cuddled together under a blue IKEA bag on the floor behind the driver's seat.  (Kali, our youngest, seemed to be comforting Lola, our oldest.)

Afterward, we went out for lunch at Fisherman's Crab Deck and talked about things we still need for our trip to Mexico.  (I had a pretty long list already underway.)  We came up with the idea to get roof rack and a rooftop cargo carrier to increase our carrying capacity.  When I got back to the boat I researched roof racks and the best ones (according to product reviews anyway) were on a national backlog and the earliest I could get one was the middle of November which was simply way too late to consider.  (My calls to our local Toyota dealer to find one were fruitless.)

I found one on eBay that was of a similar design to the best ones (at a much cheaper price) and I am awaiting answers to a couple questions.  The rooftop cargo carrier is another issue--the best ones are on backorder as well.  By the end of the day I had ordered a roof rack on eBay and a cargo carrier on Amazon--they will be delivered around the end of this week or early next week.

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I don't feel like I accomplished much today and in some ways I ended up with more questions than answers.  Some days are like that...

Tuesday, September 21

Another cool morning (68 degrees F) with a 10 to 12 knot northeasterly breeze!  The tide was unusually high due to the harvest moon (the full mon nearest the autumnal equinox) which occurred last night—we had to step down onto the dock in the morning.  

Sleeping with the hatches open was a real treat as it was much cooler outside.  We slept so much better than with the A/C coming on and off all night long.

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We drove to Annapolis this morning to gather some things for our trip to Mexico.  While I remained focused on clothes for Mexico, Maggie took lots of things out of containers and put them in other containers (it seemed like over and over), all in the name of organization.  Since nothing was labeled, I wouldn’t call it organization at all but … (I’ll stop there for sake of my personal safety.)  I came outside to our car at that point to do some work on my iPad and with my iPhone.  I was still trying to resolve an acceptable delivery of a roof rack for our Prius.  (The cargo carrier is arriving on Friday morning.)  I finally purchased a roof rack on Amazon that can be delivered on Thursday!

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Late in the afternoon, I signed up for a VPN (ExpressVPN) primarily for use in Mexico and installed it on all our devices.

The status screen for
Express VPN on
my laptop

The completes our Summer on Kent Island--our next blogpost will be the First Three Days of Autumn (on Kent Island).  Stay tuned for our roof top car carrier coming together...

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