Surely the most un-fun time in a boaters life is writing the check for maintenance. It is not that you don't want the boat maintained and ready at your whim. It is that good maintenance is either expensive or time consuming (or both).
Today I collected my FL runabout from the servicing dealer. My wallet is about $1200 lighter. But, I had a nice morning driving her back to her lift.
Our little FL runabout needed annual service (oil, all filters, lower end gear oil and water pump) to make her ready for the coming winter season. In many way this is not unlike spring commissioning on the Bay.
In what turned out to be driving rain ar one point, I drove the boat an hour and a half south to a boat ramp where the service folks loaded me on one of their trailers to take it to the shop.
With cooler weather by the end of October cruising is usually over for us and winterization is underway. This last weekend in October we joined friends for a pandemic delayed long weekend in the VA mountains. While there we missed the highest water in Annapolis since Isabel in 2003.
Neighbors covered for us and the bats were ok on the dock. However, we did have a couple pieces of dock furniture float away as the water came close to two feet over the dock.
Whe we got back from the mountains I took the Key West runabout out looking for the errant dock furniture and found at least some of it.
The last cruise of the Club's season has become known at the "Plan A/B Cruise". It has been a staple of the cruising calendar since 2012. It was designed to be one last easy overnight, to a close location, before folks put their boats up for the winter.
In this inaugural year, the cruise was dutifully planned for the last weekend in October. As fate would have it, Hurricane Sandy formed in the Carribean in late October and advanced north to become Superstorm Sandy, devastating the New York and New England coasts. On the way north the storm brushed by Annapolis and caused the cruise organizers to reconsider the planned anchorage nearby.
So, Plan B was born. Boats stayed at home. In lieu of the short overnight trip the cruise leaders hosted the would be cruisers at their home for a happy hour. In the years since the cruise has been planned with both boat cruise and land travel options, depending on the weather. In practice, except in the worst weather, cruisers have come both by land and by sea.
The 2021 installment offered very good weather. Ten boats and crews anchored in Rideout Creek, just north of Annapolis. A larger contingent arrive by car and 50+ spend a wonderful fall evening outside a members waterfront home.
Friends from Annapolis bought a new to them boat, a Back Cove 34. The boat was located in Palm Coast Fl. Their choice was to take the boat back to Annapolis and winterize or keep the boat in FL for the winter, use it and join the spring migration up the ICW. They wisely chose the latter.
So, we joined them for a few days travel down the ICW from Palm coast to Jupiter. Along the way we stopped in Cocoa, Melbourne and Stuart.
One of the many pleasures of boating is going out to a meal by boat. We are in Fl for a couple weeks and so took the little runabout to lunch at the Dive Bar. This is one of a half a dozen nearby restaurants reachable by boat.
When you leave your boat in FL over the summer you "summerize" it. This process has similarities to winterizing starting now on the Bay.
Today I had the opportunity to de-summerize our little runabout down here in FL and get her ready for the season. It all brings new meaning to "endless summer." Many boating days ahead of us in sunny south FL.
Visited with ex Annapolitians, Hank and Elly Libby. Went out on their "little" boat, a Boston Whaler 280 Outrage.
For the record, I am not a big camper. However, at least one of my brothers is into "bike packing" and two are Marine officers with, shall we say, some experience sleeping in tents. The bike packer brother suggested a bike packing trip to False Cape State Park in extreme SE Virginia and the rest us six brothers in all, said sure.
There were zoom calls to plan and lists, spreadsheets as well to track yet more logistics than a single overnight would seem to merit. As we advanced the planning it was clear that more goods, like a fully loaded cooler, would need to come into the campground than could be bike packed. Enter the idea of a boat.
And so it was that a 10' Jon boat with a cranky outboard was overloaded with gear to make a seven mile trip down Virginia's Back Bay to the state park campsite. Five went by bike and I piloted the little Jon boat to and from the campsite.
Back in college (the 70s) our Boys Sails were on a friends Cape Dory 25 or another borrowed boat, in the southern Bay. They were mostly day sails with maybe an overnight for adventure. By the late 80s the four of us were finding long weekends once a year to "recreate" our college fun. Every year since, 30+ years, we have had some sort of a Boys Sail.
The years have included three week long charters in the BVI and several long legs on the ICW. We have a fourth trip to the BVI scheduled for early 2022.
This year we got a long ICW trip in May bringing the boat home from Florida. We also enjoyed a storm interrupted long weekend on the Bay in late August. Becasue one of us missed those trips in 2021 and because of the weather shortened August trip, we decided to do a long weekend in late September to cap the season.
What we got for our troubles was a beautiful weather window, after Thursdays storms, and a visit to a new port for us. The trip included Annalpolis, Harve De Grace and Baltimore. While in Baltimore we managed to catch the last Saturday evening game of the Orioles season. $12 tickets got us almost any seat we wanted as the ballpark was maybe 15% full and the ushers were easy going.