Sunday, October 14, 2007

On the Boat Again...

Wednesday we finally got off of the dirt and back into the water, bringing an end to our lack of toilet and refrigeration on the boat. After a day at the dock spent completing in-water projects, on Friday we barreled out of Havre de Grace in 25 knot winds with gusts to 35 (technically gale-force gusts)!! My mom was along for the rocket ship ride down to Baltimore. We're currently anchored smack in the middle of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. No city beats Baltimore when it comes to being here on the water. Not Chicago, not San Diego, not San Francisco, not Miami, and sure as hell not NYC. It's calm and protected, beautiful, and we're a stones throw from everything. (That's Cielo anchored just to the left of the tall building in the picture, the Baltimore WTC.)

Marathon!

Baltimore even clears the streets for you to run. At least that's what we thought as we jogged out to Fort McHenry yesterday. Turns out it was the Baltimore Marathon. (Un)fortunately the marathon path was exactly where we wanted to run, so along we went. Our timing was such that we were running past all the late-starting walkers. We tried not to appear chagrined as we looked like the biggest underachievers on the planet, blowing past all these poor walkers, some of them old or somewhat handicapped, on miles 8-12 a mere 3 hours after the marathon's start. Literally hundreds of folks cheered us on and offered us drinks and police officers tried to direct our path (No, thank you, we don't need any water. Or Gatorade. Or gummy bears. Or Vanilla Goo. Thank you, yes, we know we're doing a great job. Yes, we'll keep it up. No officer, I don't want to take a left here. I know the marathon is that way. We're just out for a jog. Really.) We tried running on the other side of the street, on the sidewalk. Didn't matter. At times we just said screw it, and ran in the middle of the pack.

There Be Dragons Here

There are two odd and slightly annoying things about the anchorage in Inner Harbor. One is the USS Torsk, an old submarine docked right in front of the Aquarium. Some lovely and brilliant Parks & Rec employee has decided that an appropriate accessory for an old WWII era submarine is a loudspeaker on a timer that plays, over and over "...BWAAH, BWAAH, DIVE, DIVE, DIVE...BWAAH, BWAAH, SURFACE, SURFACE, SURFACE...". When that started going off at 7:30AM this morning I began rummaging around for a depth charge.

The other thing is that the anchorage coincides with the paddle boat rental area. Yesterday being one of the most beautiful days of the year, everyone in Baltimore decided it was time to rent a paddle boat. I would't mind the paddle boats so much, but these are not your average paddle boats. They are shaped like dragons, with 4' high heads and tails on the front. All day yesterday we looked out the ports and saw purple, green, and orange dragons swimming by, while the USS Torsk played a soundtrack of "Dive, dive, dive...". It's like cruising with Timothy Leary.

Uncle Sam Wants You(r Money)!

All the while this is going on I'm down below trying to finish up our taxes. Six months seemed like a long extension back in April. Not sure what happened. Regardless, they're done...finally! Now we can still say we are leaving the country, rather than fleeing it.

Dereliction of Duty

Also, apologies are in order for the gap in posts. It was nose to the grind stone over the past two weeks, and we didn't figure you wanted to read ad nauseum about sanding, scraping, painting, wiring, etc. Lord knows you wouldn't have wanted to smell us. In the end we got a lot done, and the boat looks GREAT! Still some projects on the list, but it has gotten significantly shorter.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Just wanted to put the word out into cyberspace: the folks at Tidewater Marina may be the nicest on the planet. If you have a boat and you need anything done and you're anywhere in the vicinity of Havre de Grace you'd be an idiot not to get yourself over there. Seriously.

1 Comments:

Blogger kyle said...

the marathon story is hillarious! I just ran my first marathon last week... It's quite an ego boost to have everyone cheering for you!

October 16, 2007 at 4:38 PM  

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