By Rich

For the second weekend in a row we had only light winds, and so relied on the diesel exclusively to get to and from Rock Hall. But we had an absolutely fantastic time nonetheless, and we’re happy to be putting plenty of testing hours on the engine before next season. So far we are right on track with our Fall plan of getting as much experience with the boat as possible to (i) learn how everything works (ii) learn as much as we can about living aboard and (iii) find as many bugs / problems / issues as we can so that we can work over the winter to make the boat as reliable as possible for next season. We currently have a very long list of mostly minor problems, which is terrific news. We continue to be most leery of the diesel but our confidence is growing after putting over 15 hours on it over the last two weekends.

We’re also learning at a very rapid pace about our own habits on board. One big highlight so far: we managed to burn through a an entire tank of fresh water this weekend (!), which included only Thursday night through Sunday afternoon aboard. We already have some ideas on using water more efficiently for next season, and we’re very glad to be learning these sort of things now during local, weekend-only trips. Other highlights from the weekend:

Below, Thursday night: I cooked the first dinner we’ve prepared aboard (spaghetti) while listening to the tail end of a powerful Nor’easter whistle through the rig at our mooring in Lake Ogelton. A key learning for the evening: we need place mats for the table (we brought some on board Saturday). And probably real dishes and glasses! When I texted this photo to my cronies I got the feedback that it looked ‘sad’ but it was actually very cozy.

Below, Friday: Le Saberage as remote office. This setup worked very well, but tethering of the iPhone obviously provides an experience that varies with cell phone signal bars. The internet was slow but workable on the home mooring, and excellent anchored off of the Naval Academy for the afternoon. In fact, I probably enjoyed better bandwidth there than I do at my real office. A key learning during the day: lowering the centerboard at anchor drastically reduces rolling. I put it down the full 35 turns when traffic coming in and out of Annapolis started to be an irritant and Seb was rock solid after that. That was fantastic, but it means being anchored in at least 9 feet of water!

Below: Friday evening’s delightful, impromptu raft up with Chris and Kelly’s Hinkley for cocktails at the yacht club.

Below: A relaxing motor to Rock Hall on Saturday.

Below: We were very pleased with the 4’8″ draft on Saturday evening since it allowed us to anchor in Swan Creek for a raft up. Woohoo for centerboards!

Below: We enjoyed a much, much improved breakfast experience Sunday morning compared to last week with the benefit of larger, non stick pans. We’re starting to figure this out!

As usual the worst part of the weekend was having to put Seb away Sunday afternoon and leave her. We still have a couple of weekends left in 2014, which helped to cheer me up on the row in from her mooring.