Guest Prep

After almost a week on the hook or a mooring ball, we moved into a marina Friday so we could fully re-charge the batteries and hook up to electricity and water.  Our daughter Mackenzie and her husband Matt come aboard tomorrow (Sunday), so we wanted to get the boat washed outside, cleaned inside, catch up on laundry, and stock the pantry and refrigerator.

We had to call 8 marinas to find one with an available slip due to the long weekend coinciding with Commissioning Week and Graduation at the Annapolis Naval Academy.  This town is full!  Though the marina we ended up in, Chesapeake Harbor Marina, is not as close to town as others we first tried, we’re really happy with the setting.  It’s fairly large, full, and surrounded by attractive 3-story condos, so the wind is broken, meaning the boat doesn’t rock hardly at all.  There’s a laundry room, two swimming pools, a dockside restaurant which has live music on weekends, and lots of activity – a lively place! We sat on the sundeck Friday night with our books and a glass of wine listening to the pleasant live music at the nearby dock.

Mid-day Saturday there was a knock on the hull, and on emerging from the helm door to see who was there, we met Roy and Sandy who’d noticed our Great Loop burghee and wanted to meet us.  They’ve done about 1/2 of the Great Loop in their Mainship 34, live in one of the condos adjacent to this marina, and offered to give us a ride to the car rental place this afternoon.  Talk about nice!  They told us stories about their many trips up and down the east coast, including one in which a prop FELL OFF their shaft in the middle of Lake Okeechobee. Hard to imagine how that happened, and we don’t know whether they thought it was funny at the time (probably not), but they sure enjoyed telling it now, and we all had a good laugh.

So Roy gave us a ride to get our rental car, and off we went to Target, Home Depot, a hair cut for Bob, and the grocery store, stocking up for having guests on board for a week.

Mackenzie and Matt flew into Washington D.C. last night and spent today seeing the city for the first time.  We’ll drive to D.C. tomorrow morning (about 35 miles) to spend a few hours in the city with them, then bring them back to the boat for 6 nights.  We’re excited to have our first “long-term and underway” guests on board!