Northern Phoenix blog

We like to go ashore and see what we can find.

We anchored off the small town Oxford.  Most of the house in the small town are historic 1700 and 1800 houses.  Except for this house, with all the locals just hate.  

September 23rd.

Growing up, I used to visit a small town off Plum Point.  The beaches there are large sandy beaches and great for finding sharks teeth.  So we beached under a small cliff and went searching.  In an hour and a half we found a nice haul of teeth.  This place is north from famous Calvert Cliffs.  The sharks teeth are a few million years old.

We got the outboard up and running.  Bought it used from a friend almost a year ago and have never had the chance to run it.  It ran GREAT!.  Honda 4 stroke, 9.9 hp.  It gets up on plane with all four of us in the boat.  As you can see in the pictures, the boat is not made to be pretty.  The edge is covered with fire hose.  The aluminum vs inflatable argument ended with fish hooks and crab claws.  The kids are strong enough that any 2 of us can carry the boat up on land.


We have 3 sit on top kayaks with us.  2 are Pescador are 10 feet and about 45 lbs.  The other is a Hobbie mirage Peddle kayak.  It is about 55lbs and 11 feet long.  But so worth it.  It can go almost twice as fast with the peddle power.  Great leg work outs.  We can launch all the kayaks and dingy in 10 minutes.  The are easy to launch with the spinnaker halyard  off the front of the boat.  Each kayak has a spectra lead line with a clip that is spliced on.  Everything from towing to lifting, the lines have breaking strengths of 19,000lbs.
 

We are anchored in the Little Choptank Creek, on the western side of the chesapeak.  Nice sucluded spot.  We have had some strong winds and are sitting tight till they pass.  We had 30 knot - 35 knot winds last night with lots of rain.  We put up the sides of the dodger and bimini and it was nice and dry.  The boat is very comfortable, even in the high winds, rough waves and rain.  Sink is working great, as it the stove, electric system, etc....  Everything is going well.

For our first night/day of staying on the boat, away from a dock for 24 hours, we celebrated with pizza and ice cream.
The pizza was fantastic with a nice crust and taste great.  Dough was made form scratch by Tara and we proofed it in the engine room, which is just the right temp for proofing bread and making yogurt.
 

the freezer is staying between 12.5 and 14.5, with a cycle of going on only 1/3 of the time.  All the extra insulation was worth it!!!!!!  The fridge stays at a nice 40 degrees.  It has a fan to pull cold air from the freezer when needed, but it rarely runs.  It takes about  1 hour for the freezer to go up 1 degree F.  So even if we turned off all electricity, the freezer could stay below freezing for 20 hours!  With the compressor going on 1/3 of the time, at 5 amp draw, that is only 40 amp hours per 24 hours. Not a bad electrical consumption.  Assuming the 85 W solar panel is working at full blast (never really is....and never for long), we are getting almost all of that back (sort of).  I am not really sure how much the solar panel is doing.  It is hard to measure.  But it is theoretically possible, that it is giving us about 40 amp hours in perfect conditions, if I did my math right. (Grade 9 Canadian science right there!!!)

What I am trying to say, is that we can leave the boat for a few days and not have to run the engine to keep the battery charged.....and if it is sunny, we can last a few more days than that.  Our battery bank is 660 amp hours (3 sets of 6 volt batteries, which are 220 amp hours each).

It did take almost 48 hours to get all the food from the grocery store down to the correct temp.  That included some water jugs, raw meat that went in the freezer, and all the other food we could stuff in.

We have been cleaning up the boat, organizing lines,etc...  

We now have the fridge fixed.  An expensive bill, but a must.  

We filled up the boat with $400 worth of food.  Only 200 was not chocolate!!!

We are now full of food, Fuel, water, and an empty holding tank (that is connected to the toilets for the non sailors).


We anchored a short distance away on a peaceful river, with no plans yet for tomorrow.  But we are ready to go anywhere.

We will probably do a little fishing and then find a nice remote spot to anchor and explore.

We finally cut our ties to land and sailed away.  We had a beautiful sunset our first night.  A short trip out into the river, nice, safe, protected location.  The next morning, we went to Obersons to fuel up.  90 gallons later we were off.  We learned a few things on this trip.  One, the boat can't back up in a straight line to save our lives.  I went down the wrong dock way to get to the fuel dock and had to back up.  Not a very pretty sight, but nothing was hit, and we did not go aground.
We tackled 4-5 foot seas after rounding Point Lookout and headed North.  The winds were out of the North at 15-20 knots, (Apparent was 20-25).  We had some big splashes over the large waves. 

total Trip was 45 miles, about 7 hours of travel, including fueling up.
Fun to see 2 inches of water come over the bow as we plowed through some large waves. (I can only say that after I am now on dry land).

But the boat came through the adventure very well.  We learned about things that need to be tied down, a few leaks to fix, and that the dodger and bimini are fantastic!  We were nice and dry from the spray, and there was A LOT of spray.  The boat goes through the big waves very nicely. 

We all slept well after a good dinner out.  No body wanted to cook.  Now to get the fridge fixed.