We are sitting here in Yorktown waiting for a cold front to go through.  The marina is so nice.  Clean heads and showers, nice laundry room and a courtesy car.  Gotta love a car with the keys in in, 200+k miles and gets 7-8 mpg.  It carried groceries just fine.

Have seen many cruisers heading south.  It seems there are more foreign flaged boats heading south that American flagged vessels.  We have seen boats from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Switzerland.  We asked the gas dock worker in Solomons if she had noticed that trend.  She said yes and that some of the Canadians bought two gallons of diesel and then asked to use their water.  They proceeded to wash their boat for 45 minutes and then fill their tanks.  She was less than pleased.

The weather is rainy and cold.  Wind comes in tomorrow with more cold rain.  At least it won't snow here like it will in Northern VA.  Making barley soup and 10 grain bread.  

Waxing and cleaning

One of the reasons we chose to buy our boat was the fact that there was only three pieces of outside teak.  When we owned the Westsail 32, we removed the teak decks and fixed the decks.  we got a bit soured on cleaning and treating wood.  Mostly because we weren't expert woodworkers.  We have had the boat for five years, so it was time to wax.

Matt cleaned and waxed the deck and all the stainless steel.  Yes, cleaning the stainless was as hard as cleaning the wood.  But the stainless is shinny!  We have been walking in and out and bringing the wax in on the bottom of our shoes.  Now the cabin sole is waxed too!  Have brought in rugs from the storage room, otherwise it would be slippity slide on bare feet.  Love learning all these new things.

We love our new cockpit enclosure.  It is like having a sunroom/back porch.  With all the rain we have had it is nice to be able to keep things dry, but not take up space in the boat. 

We filled up our new propane tank.  Now both propane lockers actually have propane tanks stowed away. 

Today is sewing project day.  I need to finish our tethers, and make 'weather cloths' for the inside cabins.  Time to get to work.  Looking forward to being creative. 

Post Irene- getting ready to go

The boat was put on the hard for the storm.  All is well.  We have started to provision the boat for the trip.  All the books/forums tell you not to over provision.   I know that everyone has to buy food, but I hate going to the store and carting the stuff back and putting it away.   I have the staples on board, all I need is the perishables.  Bought lots of Cliff Bars, fruit and cereal, flour/bread mix, and freeze dried veggies. 

The dingy motor has been fixed.  The ethanol in the fuel gums up the carburetor.  The mechanic said to run airplane fuel, non-ethanol fuel in the outboard engine.  Since it is hard to get both, we decided to just let the fuel completely run dry before we put the engine away each time.  Hopefully, that will solve the fuel problem.

I'm finishing my inboard sewing projects.  Will post pictures when I'm done.