Tieing A Knot...: In With The New and The Storm

This is the 5th day that we've been on a mooring in Solomons Md. We had expected it to be a 24 hour stop, and Mother Nature just laughed.

The first day we went to California (just a quick trip by bus :-) and picked up our camera. Yea!

The next day we provisioned, but since our outboard parts hadn't arrived yet, that put us into a

3rd day.....

So you know what happens to us when we sit in one spot for longer than 2 days. Yup....we work on something! We went to West Marine to get some varnish to finish the bridge hatch doors and weather stripping for our leaking port lights and hatches and ended up coming back with a new Garmin Radar GPS unit. We have been looking at this discontinued unit since January and this was the moment the universe decided to kick our butts and make us make the decision. (Not to mention they had one in stock ).

I may have mentioned that when we were in Merritt Island we had it our old Furuno radar bench tested and they said it worked fine. Well it didn't work fine, in fact it didn't work at all, no surprise there since boat electronics are in constant need of replacing or upgrading, which is why we don't have many.

Anyway I'm getting off track....

Days 3 & 4...

Gary spent most of Wednesday and part of Thursday trying to get the cable threaded through our arch for the new radar...not happening! He had to disconnect the solar panels, remove the solar cable and all of the additional wiring, and re-thread all of the wires through the small space. Obviously the reason they had wires strung across the bridge top when we bought the boat was the lack of room in the arch. They weren't as doggedly persistent as Gary because that was NOT an option. He did it of course and since I helped I didn't get any great shots of the angst. Let it be know it was not a project we want to repeat anytime soon

Bringing back our purchase

Radar Package Deal...it's also a GPS chartplotter with a screen we will actually be able to see without a magnifying glass
(what we could see two years ago is a. bit of a struggle now)
Our old little 5" GPS chartplotter! In 2 more years it'll probably have to be a 19" screen!

Farm on the Patuxent River with the highway bridge to California in the background.

View from the dinghy dock, you can see Tie A Knot in the background

Zanhizers docks from our boat. Lots of masts here.

We were promised a storm yesterday and midway into our installation boy did she hit! It had been hot and sunny and we thought it was another non event but about 2:30 the sky started getting black and the wind started to pick up a little. Another half hour it started to rain and then WHAM...the wind picked up to 35 kts with gusts to 50 kts. I'm sure we were also doing a lot of crazy moves but the Hunter sailboat behind us looked like it was on the end of a whip!

It really was quite an experience. We stood on the back deck for most of it and I kept telling Gary "don't touch the metal"!! Lightening was everywhere, winds howling, life preservers, buckets, floating by. Then it was over. I'd say it was probably only 20 to 30 minutes at the most. Today we talked to a couple on a boat on the dock in the marina that got struck by lightening. ( Fried all of their equipment.) and another that were out in the bay when it hit. They were on a Nordhaven which is an ocean going trawler so although it was scary they were able to ride it out and get into the marina as soon as it was over. Whew, we were all glad it was over.

So here we are day 5 finishing up the Radar installation and hopefully getting things put back in order for our planned early morning departure tomorrow. Today the winds are about 15 to 20 mph and it started out with quite a few black clouds to the East but it looks better now. Hopefully the winds will die down like they are forecasting and we can head across the bay to an antique boat show in St. Michaels, Md. on the eastern shore tomorrow.