June 16th... Solomons, MD

After coffee we hiked down to Boaters World and Food Lion which is a good walk and picked up some boat wax and another length of shock cord. We made a few purchases at the grocery and then hiked back.

There were more thunderstorms forecast for this evening as another front moves through the area so we moved Sapphire about 200 yards and anchored in the lea of a three story condo. The anchor held well when Kathy backed down...so we were set.

Kathy spent the day finishing the stainless and then began working on the gunnels, first using rubbing compound and then a coat of wax. It is a difficult area of the boat to address. I tore apart the toilet and found a part that had been mounted upside-down. I really think that it is made that way, but in our application the tolerances are skewed a little. Anyway, when I flipped the valve and reassembled, it worked.

The next task was to replace the shock cord on our "Lazy Jack" system which only took about an hour.

By then the day was about finished and the sky was beginning to darken so we quit and watched the storms approach. When the front hit we had wind gusts to about 40 knots but the thunderstorms missed us. We had a little lightening but were spared the worst of things. The most noticeable was the temperature change. We lost about 20 degrees in 2 minutes. Since most of the wind was deflected by the condo we didn't worry much about the second line of storms and went to bed.


June 17th... Solomons, MD

We started work early. First I used the stain remover on the forepeak to get rid of a year's worth of mud while Kathy continued her waxing. We mixed up a batch of "West Systems" and filled a few holes where some chain locks had been moved and also glued together one of our grab rails that has been cracked since we owned the boat.

The next area that needed attention was the blue stripe on our topsides which I scrubbed and then applied three coats of Poli-Glo, which seems to do a better job of keeping it shiny than anything else we've tried.

After lunch I sanded a few areas that needed attention and applied some gelcoat patch.

By about 4:30, after a two days working on her knees, Kathy finished the waxing of everything on deck.

We grilled some chicken and called it a day.

June 18... Solomons

With thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon and lots more jobs to do, we decided to stay another day. Kathy started applying a second coat of wax while I resealed one of our forward hatches. I also worked on a second hatch cleaning up a rusted hinge. With those jobs out of the way I shifted to waxing and by about 11 we had a second coat on everything.

I need to go up both masts at some point but put that job off for sometime when there are more people around.

We got cleaned up, packed up all our waxing rags for the laundry and our garbage and went to shore. Our first stop was a Bar B Que place for lunch. After we got the rags in the wash Kathy got a hair cut while I checked out the seafood market and the grocery store. We hiked down to West Marine to look for a clip to mount our solar lantern at night but failed. We did however find a replacement blade for one of our fans.

After folding the clothes we picked up a few items at the store and headed back to the boat.

We read for a couple of hours before steaming a nice filet of cod on the grill for supper.

We finally did get a thunderstorm later in the evening but it was of no consequence.