Month Long Chesapeake Bay Cruise on 480 DB/Four Suns

I was kind of hoping he was too busy cooking and baking for the "dish" he's putting out on Sunday for the BIH get-together... :grin:

The admiral was disappointed that there weren't any new "Cute-sie" pictures today.... :smt043
 
Today's entry is entitled "It's only an addiction when you want to stop and can't"

We ended up staying at Cambridge for an extra day than we had planned. My wife wanted to get some laundry done and the kids wanted another day at the pools. We did, however, eat dinner on the boat. I pulled out one of my "emergency meals" from the freezer and we had shake-and-bake chicken breasts along with the mac and cheese and some corn. Sad thing is that it was much better than the food from the Hyatt. The little convection oven doesn't do a bad job when used as an oven and not a microwave. The stove on the boat puts out a whole whopping 5 BTUs of heat though and it takes longer to boil water than it does to cook 4 chicken breasts (no joke). We also ended up watching about 6 more episodes of 24. I really hate that damn DVD set. I hate it so much I have season 3 being express shipped to St. Michaels tomorrow.

I also took some time to do a little maintenance on the boat as we've been out coming up on about 3 weeks now. The sump box was a mess. I can't tell enough people what a bad idea it is to have a kitchen sink drain into a sump box and then have a stinkin' bilge pump trying to get the stuff out. Bad bad design. I didn't take pictures.

Before I went to bed last night I checked the weather. Going from Cambridge to St. Michaels is not a long run (about 45 nm) so the weather is only so important. Of course, the weather forecast called for "Severe Thunderstorms" with a cold front moving through. Great....

I got up early this morning and checked the weather and the forecast had not changed and there were some storms up over the Appalachians and up in Pennsylvania that were moving this way per the Doppler radar. Well... we left early and... it ended up being a beautiful day on the water. So here is the view of the day on the bay:

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And here's the view of our location and the wind speed at the time of that picture:

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We headed up through Knapps Narrows which takes a few minutes off this leg of the trip. It was good deep water all the way through. Here's a shot coming up on the Knapps Narrows bridge:

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As we went through the Knapps Narrows channel and were exiting on the bay side, we came up on these dudes in a boat that had what looked like Christmas trees in the boat and were just drifting around and splashing their hands in the water. I had to lay on the horn a few times... I didn't get it.

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We had a great ride up to St. Michaels and got in about 10:30. However, the check in time for St. Michaels Marina is 1:00 pm so we dropped anchor just outside the harbor for a few hours and WATCHED MORE "24" SHOWS! AHHHH!!!! Here's a view off the boat while we anchored out:

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Here's a shot of another one of the screw piling lighthouses from the bay that was moved to St. Michaels. I think this is Hooper's lighthouse or something. Actually, I think it's part of the Thomas Point drive-in bakery dynasty of lighthouses:

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And finally about St. Michaels... a real place to eat. No more "Hyatt" craptacular food for us tonight.

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We ended up docking right up next to the pool stern in first. I'll post more on that tomorrow.

So... Now for the other stuff going on. As everyone knows, my cell phone was destroyed a week or so ago and I had Verizon ship my wife and I new phones. Well... the damn dog got my brand new BlackBerry and chewed it up. Note the cracked screen:

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It's dead... I have no phone again. Damn dog....

So here's an interesting shot of all the stuff the dog has chewed up in the last week That is except the butt-squeaking-Elvis-chicken man. He won't touch that toy....

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His infatuation with electronics is costing more than putting his hips and legs back together from his accident.

So that's the story from the last few days. Now off to watch '24' for the night... I hate that damn show... Help me.
 
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A few other notes from today:

We stopped and filled the boat up with fuel. Took on about 410 gallons of diesel fuel. This is the first load of fuel I've put on the boat since Solomon's Island a few weeks ago. As usual, fuel is still the cheapest part of boating and this trip.

The camera, as someone asked, is a Nikon D50 and I have no idea how to use other than automatic. But it does a good job.

I got into St. Michaels today as a yacht club was getting here. I was able to sneak in and just got my slip assignment and docked with a single dockhand just putting the lines on the pilings. Nice....
 
My wife was sound asleep on the bridge u-seating and I didn't want to wake her. I ended up just getting fuel up here. It was about 12 cents higher per gallon than Knapps and well worth the 40 bucks to keep her in a good mood. She's been staying up late with these darn DVD's.

I did pick up a few gallons in Cambridge just to make sure I didn't run out but that place is a rip off with regards to fuel ($2.91/gallon)
 
gredmer said:
Next you'll tell us you made up this whole vacation/cruise thing.
Click to expand...

I just saw this... :smt043

Actually... I don't even own a boat and am a homeless guy sitting in a public library in Detroit messing with you all.
 
You left out the most important thing in the pic that the dog has chewed on... :smt043 :grin:
 
Four Suns said:
Actually... I don't even own a boat and am a homeless guy sitting in a public library in Detroit messing with you all.
Click to expand...

:smt043 :smt043 :smt043 :smt043 :smt043

Thanks for the daily update Gary. We were all starting to go thru Withdrawals but now we have had our fix. :thumbsup:
 
Four Suns said:
We stopped and filled the boat up with fuel. Took on about 410 gallons of diesel fuel. This is the first load of fuel I've put on the boat since Solomon's Island a few weeks ago.
Click to expand...
Gary- seems like you've covered alot of ground since Solomons... have you calculated a GPM or MPG figure? Just curious...
 
prodigalson said:
Gary- seems like you've covered alot of ground since Solomons... have you calculated a GPM or MPG figure? Just curious...
Click to expand...

I have not gone on the GPS or computer to get the actual miles traveled yet but my fuel burn curves that I obtained earlier this year and put in my planning software seem to be within 2% of what I am seeing on the trip. At cruise, the boat gets .61 to .64 mpg (statute miles).

downeast320 said:
Im am so curious about this marine pc you have, if its not too much trouble could you post a picture of your bridge setup?
Click to expand...

If you go here:

http://www.byowneryachts.com/forums...ght=wifi&sid=d9df9e3e50a2a610bd6b7e46d32cf741

You can see some of the technical details behind my system there. I built the CPU from components I got from http://www.mini-box.com/ There is a lot of space under the helm which is where the system is mounted on some special brackets I had made and a starboard panel:

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and with the door open:

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And the helm is a pretty clean setup with the display mounted in the electronics box overhead:

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The PC is then tied to the gaggle of antennas on top of the boat:

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This PC has turned into a real asset on this long cruise. I won't go into much detail here but if you are real interested in it, just PM me. I will try and do a writeup on it this fall after the boating season is over.
 
Man, If I had a boat like yours, I would definitely get a lot of mud for my turtle. :wink:
 
ok, that was one of my more retarded posts. :smt021

that is one mean looking control station is what I ment to say.
 
That certainly is one beautiful boat. Anyone would feel proud and blessed to own it.
 
Today’s write-up is called “Your children will probably treat money like they treat their sparklersâ€

Yesterday was one of my son’s birthdays. He turned 15. Yipee. The kids wanted to put some old flares on the cake since we didn’t have candles.

We went to dinner over at the Crab Claw and got crabs. How original. It’s so nice to be back at real restaurants now. We came back to the boat and watched the remaining episodes of 24 season 2 and I am having Amazon ship season 3 here at St. Michaels via overnight express. I need help.

After dark we went on out and did some sparklers with the kids. We are parked right next to the fuel dock here at St. Michaels and the kids wanted to do sparklers here but I figured that might get us kicked out of the marina or something. We walked on up to a park and did them and, I must say, the way kids handle sparklers is directly related to how they handle money.

Here’s my one of my sons that wanted to do “one sparkler at a time saving them so he could enjoy them for as long as possibleâ€.

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And then there is my oldest son… he takes all his sparklers out of the box and lights them all at once… POOF:

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And

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And then he proceeds to bum sparklers off the other children…. Perfect.

The town of St. Michaels is nice. It is probably the most “touristy†of the towns for the eastern shore but it’s not “touristy†by “touristy standards†if that makes sense. It’s no Nassau or Vegas… they have like 3 souvenir shops here though. It’s a very nice town as they have a butcher shop and grocery story. We also bought a nice painting/print (a Giclee) for the house. And the church bells that ring off the very old Christ Church during the day are incredible. It is very old and probably built about 300 B.C.

The history of the town is such that the British came in with their ships and shot up the place with their cannons but the townspeople outsmarted them by turning off all their lights and hanging lights from the trees and the British overshot the town. Yeah… and you thought my English muffin story was far-fetched.

I took the three older boys up town this morning for breakfast and took a few shots with the camera. Here’s walking to town from the marina and you can see it’s a fairly quant neighborhood:

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We came up to the main street here and there is a Bank of America on the corner. I have never seen anything like this and a drive up bank window before… Priceless… Check out the expression on this guys face:

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Here’s a shot of the town:

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And the place we ate breakfast (lots of locals and very good):

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We got back to the boat and my wife and youngest had cleaned it up… nice… need to go out to breakfast without her more often.

The kids went over to the pool which is about 10 feet from the back of the boat. It’s a small pool. I think my boat is bigger than the pool and it’s really a soaking pool for old farts. I did notice some signs around the pool though. I must say with this next one, especially #4, I have to wonder if I would want to get into this pool:

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I guess with all the older people, discharging bodily waste is a problem. And then they post the rules for kids:

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And here are my boys having a great ole’ time following the rules:

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And here are my boys not following the rules that got them kicked out of the pool:

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And here’s my wife who let them break the rules:

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I guess I’m hoping right now we can stay until Saturday as planned or if they’ll ask us to leave because of improper pool behavior…. Maybe I’ll let the dogs go pee in it tonight and break rule #4.
 
Hmm... time to find a new board to post to....

Here's some nice weather we are having:


* AT 316 PM EDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
LINE OF THUNDERSTORMS...PRODUCING SEVERE WINDS IN EXCESS OF 50
KNOTS FROM 8 MILES NORTHWEST OF PLUM POINT TO 43 MILES SOUTHWEST OF
DARES BEACH...AND MOVING EAST AT 50 MPH. QUANTICO MARINE BASE
REPORTED WINDS GUSTING TO 63 MPH SHORTLY AFTER 3 PM. SEEK SAFE
HARBOR NOW.

and the view from the marine PC:

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