Its been 10 days since we departed Annapolis and have to say we are feeling good about our accomplishments thus far. We spent July 4th evening, a wet and rainy night in Annapolis with friends Dudely and Cheryl (SV Belle Bateau). It was a lovely evening and a great way to kick off our journey…relaxed.
First thing on the 5th we picked up a baby UHaul, dropped off our rental car and headed to Alexandria where our storage stall is/was located. We were blessed to have the assistance of Annette’s Sister Rochelle and my cousins Dan & Lori come help load the truck. It was a well oiled machine and we were off to Hampton VA. Our first stop where we were offloading half the truck into a much less expensive storage location than DC!
A long day but we we got that “back half” offloaded. All because of the help we got on the front end! Thank you Dan, Lori and Rochelle. So much appreciated.
We had a leisurely 2 day drive down to Stuart FL (listened to a great book ). We offloaded the truck, dumped the truck for a Ford Focus Rental (so happy to be out of a truck) and of course first stop was a visit to Magnolia-M. The Admiral looked right at home in her new Pilothouse.
We spent the remainder of the weekend getting “old stuff” off the boat. We ended up completely filling the dumpster on day 3. It was pretty amazing how much stuff we were able to get rid of.
All cruising boats, sail and power are equipped with tanks for restroom waste (Black Water), Magnolia-M captures all waste water (Grey Water) from all the sinks and shower. First order of business was to get a handle on how that system is all connected and configured. This is going to be our life for the forseable future. How is system x configured and how does it work…
Tuesday was Hydraulics day. Magnolia-M makes extensive use of hydraulic systems aboard. The anchor windlass, bow thruster, stabilizers, get-home motor, aft anchor windlass and a hydraulic bilge but that in an emergency can pump water like a big city fire truck. We had JT from Industrial Hose visit and gave our Hydraulic System a thorough inspection. Each and every stainless fitting and hose connection was inspected. This is was one of those moments where the cash register could have run a real long tape. Luckily for us we came through the inspection un-scathed. Note: This inspection was about the “plumbing” it did not tell us about the conditioon of the “faucets, drains, washer and dishwasher,” that work is yet to come! In addition Magnolia-M received some pretty hardy comments for the good and solid design that was done on her at construction. All very good news!
Similar in nature as Tuesday, Wednesday was electrical day. Steve our electrical surveyor went through and looked over the topography of the electrical system. One issue I want addressed is the start battery. We have 7 HUGE 8D size batteries (1575ah) one of which is the start battery for the 145hp Lugger/John Deere and the 16Kw Northern Lights Generator. I want those separated with their own battery. We did get great news in that our Trace Inverter/Charger and the Newmar Charger were both fully functional. Going into the event I had serious concerns about both which we able to exonerate both devices. Great news and we have 200a charger available! All really great news. We also found a few things but all minor in nature, great news!!
Below is looking into the engine room from the salon sole hatch. Battery boxes off the port and starboard.
Main engine, Lugger 145
Admirals Bridge – Sunscreen on the outside ports
A never ending stack on manuals and schematics to study.
In addition to all the other things going on, the bench seat on the bow repair was started. The Teak seating had severely deteriorated. I was hoping to postpone this job till we got back to the Chesapeake but it could not be delayed.
Of course the teak was secured with 5200…the most overly used adhesive in the world.
In addition to everything else, opened up the equipment console above the helm station. Just investigation at this point…
Another ongoing job was flushing ALL the raw water loops with Barnacle Buster. As can be seen by this sea-strainer, maintenance has not been what it should have been for a while!
Over this weekend I did get the bilge pump and switch removed, bilge cleaned and a first coat of paint down in the fwd bilge.
It has been an amazing 10 days, can’t believe only 10, but we knew what we were signing up for. This is going to be the norm for the next couple of months but we are really excited that we will be getting Magnolia-M restored to the vessel she should be. Much yet to come..and BTW, Magnolia-S is still looking to be adopted.
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We returned to Galesville with a lot of questions in front of us. Would we be buying a new boat? How would we say good-bye to Magnolia. How would we…. and now tomorrow we leave our home of the last 4 years…that’s a heavier thought than expected as I type this so I am just going to ignore those thoughts for now….
In the mean time, life has been full of sharing time with family and friend. Below you see a SMALL number of the “GenIVs.” I promise at some point there will be a consolidated list but there MUST be a 100 of us by now. We were invited to the McAndrews Family reunion which was a wonderful afternoon of catching up and playing corn-hole!
McAndrews kids with once brother missing….
Hanging with cousin Jim and avoiding the water balloon fight!
Meeting up with Mandala (Ron & Nancy) for Taco Tuesday….okay, there was Ice Cream too! (Eyeglasses not removed quick enough)
Kind of a hard day when “she” got the sign….
One of the few pieces of equipment we are taking with us is the HAM Radio. It took me days to get the radio and equipment installed. Yet I was able to remove everything without a trace in just a few hours.
Then our friend Kathy calls from New Jersey and suggests they come down for lunch because she wanted to say bye to Magnolia. I think we are all trying to figure out what all these changes are meaning…(see http://a2baker.com/magnoliablog/?p=7615 ) It was just the intermission we needed to take. A great pause in the packing and thinking. Its really about those moments when we are just together. In that way Annette I are blessed in spades!
With all the changes coming..it was time to embrace it. With Magnolia-M in FL and us here the only thing I could really do was and well work on PR materials. First we needed a logo. With some input from my friend Tim I give you the new Magnolia logo.
Well if you have a logo, well you have to have to have a Boat Card…we were finally able to incorporate the original Magnolia image that Annette’s niece drew for us.
We had to keep the back the same, our friend Michelle caught this picture of us and its a favorite.
So I guess we are back at the beginning….we remember vividly the excitement and trepidation when we started on Magnolia-S. She taught us so very much and along the way we brought her back to the fine cruising vessel she was intended to be. We will be heading off her tomorrow so for the rest of tonight we are just going to try and get a good nights sleep. Things are going to get exciting real quick so hang in there. Be Safe A**2
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Magnolia had a relaxed trip along the coast and up Adams Creek to New Bern NC.
Along Adams Creek I saw what I thought was unusual…a personal helicopter next to a “normal” house….kind cool!
We have been to New Bern once before but this trip we were on a mission..more later.
I am not sure how, but the bear is the mascot of New Bern. There are decorated ones all over town.
We able to arrive in time to make Easter Sunday services…..an no the church did fall down with my presence.
Annette and I are both licensed HAM radio operators and check into various radio nets most days when we are underway. This is particularly true when we are making offshore hops where we are often out of VHF radio and cellular range. A number of retired cruisers operate shore based radio and maintain a database of boats locations. Out friend and net controller Dick Giddings needed help installing a new directional beam antenna so that is why we are in New Bern!
The first step in is to tune the transmitting elements portion of the antenna. This is done by physically adjusting the length of the transmitting arrays. In this case we needed to shorten the elements until we obtained the appropriate frequency .
Once the array was tuned it was time to attach to the tower. Now this is certainly not an OSHA safe environment…
But the job got done and no radio operator were lost during this operation. The tower was eventually erected and Dick is live and on the air with directional beam for better communications.
Next stop was Oriental NC.
Our friends from Pentagon Sailing Club Roger and Leslie Hammer have made their home there. We try never to miss the stop. When we arrived we found a number of our cruising friends in port as well. It was a great meet up and evidenced by the full table.
The local Piggly Wiggly grocery store now runs a shuttle to and from the docks that makes grocery shopping a breeze.
A few miles up Goose Creek brings us to Campbell Creek where two friends call home.
We were welcomed at Mike and Kathy’s dock for a wonderful visit. We always have a ball catching up and swapping sea stories.
Beautiful morning departure with our hosts seeing us off. Thank you for the kind hospitality and wonderful memories.
Departing Goose Creek we made the two day trip up to Great Bridge Lock where docked for a relaxing couple of days.
We did spot our friends aboard Lali pass by!
My artistic contribution to this post.
After our short visit at Great Bridge it was a short passage to Portsmouth, VA.
Within the hour of us dropping the hook, the French version of the Blue Angels did several fly overs right overhead. Very fun!
Portsmouth always gives a beautiful skyline view of Norfolk. Out favorite part of this port though is our visits with my niece and her husband. As often, more catching up than pictures…I really need to work on pictures.
Next up was a short passage from Portsmouth to Hampton.
Along the way I got to “check-in” with the Aegis Cruisers.
Right behind us Ted & Sally aboard Amici arrived. Always a good time to hang with these two!
Drinks and deserts….our favorites…
Now Ted is a real foodie and somewhere along the line he picked up that Popeyes Spicy Chicken was the best…as a service to Sally, I took on getting Ted his chicken!!
From Hampton it is a short hop up the Chesapeake Bay to home. On the way though we are going to meet up with the Pentagon Sailing Club (http://www.pentagonsailing.org/ ) for the Memorial Day Raft Up.