It’s been a stressful couple of weeks, especially the last two days, but we have finally left the dock and headed north. It didn’t help the stress that we were racing what was forecast as extremely violent thunderstorms this afternoon. We debated between just anchoring in our “regular” hurricane hole, which didn’t give us any forward progress, or heading up the bay and making sure we got to a safe anchorage before the storm hit. Of course we chose the second choice. It wasn’t hard to decide that when the sun was shining and the winds weren’t too strong. We did get some heavy winds as we were heading into the anchorage but we were able to anchor while it was still calm. The picture above shows us approaching Mill Creek off of Whitehall Bay just north of Annapolis. You can see the sky doesn’t look very threatening. The storm did come through about an hour or so later. It was strong with the maximum wind speed hitting 42.7 knots but only lasted about 15 minutes.

We finally got our tanks completely finished this past Monday. We were waiting for some covers for the water tank to be returned from the fabricator. We had sent them back to get some gaskets added to them and when they finally came back they were exactly the way we had sent them. Oh well, we had to make do. We are glad we went to New England to pick the tanks up but the trip was the last big one we made in our trusty Nissan Pathfinder. Our hope was that the car would make it at least another year. When we leave Annapolis to go cruising we park the car in front of our friend Jean’s house. When we picked it up this Spring we took it right to buy “pre-owned” tires and then to the transmission shop to have it checked out. We already knew we weren’t able to pass the Maryland emissions test because our catalytic converter was shot. The car was struggling more and more each day but we knew it’s time was up when Bill accidentally hit a boat trailer at the inflatable shop and ripped a tear in the bumper. It was going to cost more to fix all of that then the car was worth to us. At the last minute we decided we might as well sell the car now and deal with if and how to replace it when we come back through Annapolis in September. Lucky for us CarMax likes to overpay people for their used cars. We spent two hours there and came out with a check for more than we expected to get for it. We are also lucky that our friend Jean’s daughter lent us her car to take care of that and all the many errands we had to run before we could leave the dock this afternoon.

The wind is supposed to be very strong and from the north for the next day so we will stay at anchor and get the boat straightened up to the point where it should have been before we left. We both need a little relaxation time right now too. Our next stop will probably be on the other side of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal on Saturday night. Then off to Cape May to wait for the right weather to head out to sea once again. Hopefully the blog will start being very regular again. I’ve enjoyed the month or so off but am happy to finally have something to write about again!