More Looping with “kids” on Board

Days on Cruise: 69

Distance traveled today:  20.1 miles

Travel Time today:  2 hours 45 mins

Total odometer:  1,422 statute miles

After 10 hours “at the office” yesterday, Mackenzie and Matt took off to explore our Fairlee Creek anchorage in the dinghy while Bob and Cathryn got dinner started, steaks cooked on the barbecue on the transom.

After eating another dinner outside on the Sundeck, Bob wanted to do all the pre-trip fluid checks for tomorrow’s journey, and Matt expressed interest in knowing what that entails. Matt’s Dad (also a Bob) is currently a diesel mechanic, and Matt seems to share some of his Dad’s interest in and affinity for mechanical matters. The two of them descended together into the still-very-hot engine room (we’d been running the generator and air conditioning some to keep the boat cooler).

Our twin diesels are Caterpillar 3126s, with 385 hp each, more power than we generally need for this trip in which we’re mostly traveling about 8-9 mph (though we’ve had several occasions on which the higher  power was very useful).  The generator is an 8kw Westerbeke. All are raw water cooled.

Matt seemed to enjoy his time below decks despite the heat, and Bob showed him the whole 15 minute routine he goes through daily.

As the sun was setting late in the evening, we each took a glass of wine to sit on the bow and talk until bedtime. There was a cool breeze, 3 sailboats had come in to anchor nearby, and it was quiet and beautiful.

Mackenzie is an awful lot cuter than Cathryn, but they often get told they look alike (Bob did not, and would not, have written that statement).

This morning Bob and Cathryn were up at 5:30, so pulled up the anchor at 7:15 and took off for the next destination to get the engine-growling hours behind us before Mackenzie and Matt needed to be in meetings by telephone.

We entered the Sassafras River, still on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and continued into Taylor Creek.

The entry was another weird one with dog-leg routing that took us almost onshore, between the green floating buoy and hillside in the photo below, most improbable looking for a 42-foot boat!

Ha ha! The red bucket on the stick in the photo below actually serves as the red marker to indicate the right side of the channel in this tiny creek. In the end we decided this creek was too shallow and narrow, and we weren’t comfortable with the idea of anchoring there, so we back-tracked and found a more wide open, slightly deeper location back on the Sassafras.

Almost immediately after we anchored, Mackenzie and Matt, who had already been working on their computers for more than 2 hours, began taking phone calls. Believe it or not, Mackenzie actually worked on the bow of the boat or the flybridge for most of the day, while Matt stayed inside at the dinette.

During his lunch break, Cathryn took Matt to shore in the dinghy so he could go for a quick 5-mile run, then jump off the boat to cool off afterward before returning to work.

We should all have such unusual offices in which to conduct our work, eh?