sv Abake: We're Back And Rolling Again

Catching up ... let's see.

Well, we took our trip from Jacksonville to Annapolis (South River) as crew on a Swan 46. We drove to FL with the Captain and waited out a storm that brought over 7" of rain to the Jacksonville area. It gave us time to familiarize ourselves with the boat and to get the engine in good working condition (including tightening the mounting bolts and fixing a fuel leak). We took off on a Monday morning and headed straight for the Gulf Stream. We watched the water temperature steadily increase and when it hit 80 and the water was a beautiful cobalt blue, we knew we had found it. Oh, and the 3 1/2-knot push of the current gave us a clue, too. We spent about 3 days of beautiful weather riding the Gulf Stream north and even provided a haven for 3 birds who chose to spend their last few hours at sea with us. We hit Norfolk and crossed over the Bay Bridge tunnel at 12:30 at night and headed up the Chesapeake. The weather continued to hold out until we reached close to Thomas Pt. when we saw a storm approach. We dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way up the South River to the slip. We headed home to get sleep around 1:30 in the morning and returned the next day to pick up the rest of our stuff. So 4 1/2 days and a little over 700 miles now puts us on the map for having sailed from Maine to Northern Florida. And, it just made us a little more anxious to get out on Abake for our own adventures.

No better view than the ocean from a sailboat

Time to play!

Enjoying the trip

There's always a sunset picture

Mike continued to work on the watermaker. (We're not going to use it here in the Chesapeake Bay and especially not in the slip -- we're next to the fuel dock and too many people spill fuel. That would ruin our membrane.) He installed solenoid control valves (plumbed them). They will allow us to flush the system when we are done making water and to control the water flow to the high-pressure pump.

Solenoid (control) valves

Our ICOM radio came back before the delivery trip, so we were anxious to get home afterward and get it installed. We took a couple of trips to RF Connection in Gaithersburg, which was recommended by Dave Skolnick from SSCA. What a great place! Even Jenny got excited about all the ham radio supplies. We picked up cables (coax, and ladder line for radials), coax connectors, and in-line lightning protection (and a spare!) for the SSB. Even tho it was a hike to Gaithersburg, the store is in the same shopping center as El Pollo Rico, so we had a couple of great lunches of Peruvian chicken.

It took a few days of running cable, installing radials and counterpoise, and installing the tuner and control head, speaker, and Pactor modem. But when Mike finally was able to test the radio, sending and receiving via the Pactor and voice, he made contact with a ham from Croatia. The following week he was able to make contact with another ham from Italy. So, we think the installation went well. And, now the nav(igation) station is looking like a nav station!

A bonafide nav station!

Mike finally told Jenny that she can start loading the boat. When she went to start stuffing things in the lockers below the bunk in the salon, we realized that they had not been painted (nor had the bunk under the cushions). So, another couple of days of painting and NOW we think we have all of the lockers painted! We then started hauling stuff from the basement (that we had on Namida) down to Abake and started cleaning up all the tools, old wood, screws/bolts/washers, and various hardware. After the first day of cleaning up, it didn't look like much. But we knew we had taken the first big chunk out of the work.