Floaters and Sinkers

Travis:

This morning has marked the end of Baltimore's epic blizzard of 2010. The record has now been set at 79.5inches of total snowfall this year. Last year we had only five inches total. Last night we had sustained winds at 30kts out of the north west, occasionally gusting over 50kts. The good thing is, the ice has broken up significantly around our boats despite the temperatures staying in the low teens. The bad news is, the wind has also blown much of the water out of the Chesapeake bay and now we have extremely low water. Quite a contrast from the flood just a couple of horrific weeks ago. I went to work, first thing this morning, freeing frozen dock lines on Me Voy to loosen the strain on the dock lines which had become tight as banjo strings at this new water level. It took a lot of kicking and picking to get the frozen knots loose.

All in all we are fairing well, however, sick of Winter and looking foreword to Spring.

Some are not so fortunate. Three sinkers so far. Only one is a wooden boat. "Freedom" pictured above, is a boat we considered buying before we found Me Voy.

One sailboat went down late last night.

Another victim is this Bayliner. I am told this boat sinks annually. The insurance pays to repair it and it is left to sink again. Sounds like a good scam to me.

The water is a good 5' below the dock. This makes getting on and off the boat even more dangerous than before. We are being extra careful. So far there have been no accidents at our marina this season. We are thankful for that.

We are also thankful that we weren't added to the list of over 30,000 MD residents who lost power due to the high winds last night. As a precaution, I had tried to get the generator going, but it wouldn't stay running. It seems the prolonged extreme cold has caused the diesel fuel to congeal in the lines clogging them and dashing any hope of a back up plan.

But for now we are still hunkered down by the electric heater trying to enjoy the remainder of our "vacation". I am actually starting to look forward to going back to work. Not that much though. I did manage to complete an item off of our to do list yesterday. I re-wired all of our bilge pumps and ran new 12volt wiring. We are now ready to fully convert from 32volt to 12volt. Today I think I will read a book while sipping hot cocoa.