Author: douganddanaandaboat

After more than four months apart, tonight we got to see Misty Pearl again.   She now hails from Scottsdale, which we acknowledge is a bit odd but we think it looks cool.

The cross-country trip was uneventful as hoped.  Classic country songs provided a great soundtrack, referencing—among other places we passed—Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Abilene, Fort Worth, Dallas, Shreveport, Bossier City, Jackson (where Dana was hotter than a pepper sprout), Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond.  2600 miles with only one low-fuel warning.  Amazing.

A moment to address weather.  It was about 75 degrees with blue skies when we left Arizona.  We enjoyed temperatures between 65 and 75 and those same blue skies the entire way to South Carolina, which of course we took as unequivocal proof that we would have great weather forever.  The plan to meet Misty Pearl and delivery captains Jerry and Wendy Taylor in D.C. tonight was as good as done.

As the Taylors got underway yesterday out of the yard in Mathews, VA, however, they discovered a leaking hatch and a bum heater in the master cabin.  The heater is no big deal because the weather is perfect, right?  Wrong.  Turns out government and traffic are not the only crappy things about Washington.  The weather sucks too.  Tomorrow and Wednesday we face below-freezing temperatures and snow.  SNOW.  Unbelievable.

Given the forecast, the heater became pretty dang critical.  Zimmerman agreed to work on it today—and to rebed the forward hatch and fix a few other things that cropped up—at the yard in Deltaville.  Since nobody wanted to battle the Potomac River upstream in snow and freezing rain, no way we were moving on board in D.C. today.  But we still had a trailer full of stuff that we needed to store.  The soundtrack for this segment was a wailing baby.   Grrrrr.

Oh well, no time like the present to realize the liveaboard need for flexibility and patience.  Up to Washington, rent a car, put the trailer stuff in storage, park Dana’s car at our marina, and drive the rental car three hours to Deltaville.  We’ll do the interior systems during the foul weather and leave the rental car.  If the storms break on Thursday, we’ll take the Taylors about 30 miles up the Potomac to Colonial Beach and drop them off.  Maybe we can reach National Harbor on Friday before the next snow/rain storm hits this weekend.  We have no idea when we might get to The Yards, which still is our final destination until we start looping in earnest towards the end of May.

Tne dogs have been fantastic travelers.

In Phoenix, about the only outdoor condition of interest is the temperature.  As in “How hot will it be this week?”  For us big weenies, the arctic snow and rain hitting Tuesday and Wednesday promised misery but we figured the sunshine predicted for Thursday and Friday would provide a good window for moving up to The Yards from Deltaville.  We cooked in the galley, hung out with the dogs, and slept very well our first night aboard Misty Pearl.

Cold and wet are conditions that suck but generally won’t keep a boat from traveling.  Wind, however, is a deal breaker.  A 7-knot trawler heading into a 25-knot wind won’t get very far.   River current compounds the problem.  The bottom line is that we ain’t moving until the next predicted storms passes and blessed spring arrives.

We’ll fly up to Rhode Island this weekend, likely to find that the Georgetown series with Providence is snowed out.  Hopefully we can spend some time with Mallory.  Shannon has been in Nicaragua on a spring-break service trip but will join us for Easter.

While going through Misty Pearl this week we found a few more service items for ZMI to address before we return on April 1.    If conditions improve we can move to Colonial Beach and then up to our slip in D.C. just in time for baseball season.  We recently learned that our marina is a favorite for Washington Nationals fans since the ballpark is a short nine-iron shot away.  The harbormaster assures us that the hoopla on game days ends at a reasonable hour.  However, we seriously doubt that his idea of bedtime is the same as ours.

Right outside Deltaville, Virginia, sits an historical-site sign that reminds us–every time we pass it–that so far our plans seem foolish.

Although the weather has cleared for us, Poseidon decided to jack with our little boat just a bit more.  We might as well have changed her name.

As a last minute item, we asked ZMI to check the engine aftercooler just to be sure it was okay.  Thinking it’d be easy and quick, we headed up to D.C. to watch some softball and enjoy Easter with the girls and the dogs.  Back Sunday night for an early start Monday morning.  To quote the increasingly-senile Lee Corso, however, “Not so fast my friend.”

The aftercooler uses seawater for cooling.  Seawater enters the engine room via a thru-hull.  A sea-cock valve is supposed to close off that opening so that the aftercooler can be serviced.  The sea-cock is pretty important because if a hose or fitting fails, one would need to stop water from being places it shouldn’t be. We’re green but we still know that water outside the hull is good and water inside the hull is bad.

Unfortunately, the aftercooler sea-cock won’t close.  So (1) nobody can service the aftercooler and (2) if we need to close off the hole in the hull to stop water from rushing in, we can’t.  And since we also can’t decide what to grab in the minutes before sinking, we have to fix the sea-cock.  Now ZMI has to haul the boat again.  That means more delays of God knows how long.  Grrrrr.

This post is just so people don’t think we already sank the boat. Between weather, repairs, and schedules, we now can’t leave until next Thursday at the earliest.

Here’s a photo of the cool rig that hauls boats out for service:

Misty Pearl displaces 28 tons but this contraption lifted her like a toy.

After we learned about the aftercooler delay, we decided to blow Deltaville and rent a cabin along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We envisioned long hikes with the dogs since those may be hard to come by in the Nation’s Capital.  Assuming we ever get there.  We now have good reason, however, to believe that the weather in Virginia almost always sucks:

That’s right, we were hit with what forever will be known to history as The Great Blizzard of ‘18.  Ok maybe it was only three inches, but in April at most we are supposed to get May flower-bringing showers, not snow.

If only to keep us from constant complaining, Mother Nature finally supplied a georgous day that coincided with a break from mechanical bad news.  Today we cast aside the shackles that had held us at the service yard.  Mac Davis was wrong; Happiness actually is Deltaville, Virginia in our rear view mirror.  We left the dock at 0740 heading for Colonial Beach.  (Because the Belknaps now are a seafaring family we morally if not legally are obligated to use military time nomenclature.)

Oscar and Benny proved they really can go 10 hours without a potty break.  We couldn’t be more proud of them.  Oscar also served as co-pilot for a stretch of the trip.

The wind whipped up just as we arrived at our stop for the night but we managed to tie up, wash the salt off Misty Pearl, and get surprisingly good shrimp tacos.

We have to get out by 0630 if we want to get to DC tomorrow.  That’s because we’re 10 NM from a naval installation at Dahlgren and they actually close off the Potomac River at 0800 for some sort of military exercise.  It’d be just our luck to get hit by a Tomahawk missile or some such thing.  If the wind is too much we may stay here.