Saturday 27 Nov, re-launch 2021, HHN day 59: Bow toilet service. Final departure items ticked. Firmly aground.
By the end of the day we are totally, utterly and without question ready to GO! But for most of the day we have been aground in the muddy ooze without even moving out of our berth ☹ . The northerly wind of the past 2 days has prevented the tide coming up the river, to the point that today, at high tide, the water was lower than low tide 2 days ago. These pesky winds have now abated and it has been calm all day. I spend some valuable time on the end of the pontoon looking south, doing my water-level dance, to encourage the forecasted southerly wind tonight to bring higher water in the morning. Good job I cannot show you the dance on a blog! But I will inform you tomorrow if it worked or not 😊
One of the last big(ish) jobs before leaving is the bow toilet. The outside water level on the boat is about at mid-bowl level on the toilet. And without operating any controls, this is where it ends up about a minute after flushing. With a bit of boat movement, that water will be slopping all over the place. I pressume the joker valve is no longer working, and is letting the seawater back up the discharge pipe. (nothing worse than seawater flushed up your discharge pipe, right?!). Changing the joker is pretty easy, except for the size of my hands that don’t really fit down the narrow space between toilet and bulkhead. I would ask Oana to do it … but no! She does the food, I do the toilets. Haha.
With that finished we tootle off in the car to get it washed and get final fresh food items to fill the small gaps Oana still has in the fridges. We also must buy a USA courtesy flag. Our old one would get us shot. It’s totally in tatters. A beautiful afternoon for a drive and for once we are relaxed. The jobs are all done, we just have to wait for the weather gods.
Back at the boat it’s the last couple of things to do outside. Put the British ensign on the stern flag-pole. The USA flag up the right side of the mast, and our club pennants (Ocean Cruising Club and West Mersea Yacht Club) on the left side the mast. When these flags are fluttering in the wind, it really does complete the boat’s readiness.
By late evening the inside of the boat is spotlessly clear and tidy, with everything secure. Last job for Oana is to reinstate our contract for the Garmin InReach Explorer (Delorme) which she uses to provide our tracking on our blog site. If you are on our home page and click on “Where is Cloudy Bay”, it is this positioning InReach provides. It also gives us SOS capabilities and allows us to send and receive text messages. Apparently, we can get weather on it too, but we have never tried that. We like our PredictWind forecasting best of all.
Talking of PredictWind. There does seem to be a nice southerly wind starting tonight. And the NOAA graph of actual water level vs predicted shows the normal tides are resuming. It even looks like the actual levels will go above the forecasted, which is exactly what we need to get out of here and still have some antifoul paint left on the bottom of the keel. Though I suspect most is already wiped onto the mud, right below us!
The next weather hurdle will be the Hatteras rounding, in the Atlantic. But that is at least 36 hours after leaving here. We will worry about that when the time comes. Short story is that if we cannot get favorable weather around the Hatteras, we will anchor in Deltaville, at the southern end of the Chesapeake until we see a good window.
Now, off to bed with you, Captain and Commadore. Big day tomorrow! … or it might be a non-event.