Docked - Atlantic Yacht Basin

Weather, It’s all about weather. We are trying to time a good weather window for crossing the Albemarle Sound. Wednesday looks likely right now. Of course weather changes. But for now we are sitting tight in Chesapeake today and headed to Coinjock tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain most of the day tomorrow. I don’t mind running Liquid Therapy in the rain with calm winds. We have to open two bridges heading south tomorrow. Other than those it’s a pretty easy run to Coinjock.

We have been enjoying watching the parade of yachts headed north from their wintering in Florida and other warm regions. There are very few boats heading south like we are. Lots of Newport, RI and NY boats. The boats congregate right next to us to wait for the Great Bridge lift bridge to open on the hour. We even saw a 38 Lagoon sailing catamaran that looked really familiar. It was renamed but it was the boat of some friends that we had stayed with in St. Thomas and St. Johns, USVI before they sold. What was the chance of that happening?

Barely Not Homeless People Living On Boats - Well, if rent is too high you can find a free boat someone is just giving away and live on that. Yep just anchor out for free. Most of these boats are in desperate need of maintenance. We believe we see the sailboat mentioned in yesterday’s blog across from us at the Chesapeake free dock. This dock has no power and is restricted to 48 hours dockage. The DockMaster at this marina said that sailboat had been at the marina several days and could not pay the transient fee and were made to leave. The sailboat went to the free dock and stayed until authorities made them leave. After being denied entrance to the lock while trying to move by being towed by a dinghy the sailboat went back to the free dock. I cannot imagine how hot it must be inside that sailboat when it’s 93º outside.

Maintenance - I have an odd thing happening with our water. The cold water has a sulphur smell but the hot water does not. I believe it may be the pressure tank on the cold water side. I bypassed that and it seems better. Of course now the pressure pump runs every time you cut on water. This will wear the pressure switch out. But until we get back to home port to install another pressure tank this is how we will operate the water. I also added Clorox to the tanks. We really have not cycled much water since un-winterizing.

Today’s picture are the geese hanging around the marina.