November 9, 2012

November 9, 2012

Mary and Barry welcomed us aboard Proud Mary yesterday evening.  Andrew Carr was already in the salon.  All of these Fleming owners greeted us as new family members.  It is as if there is a Fleming family into which we have just been born.   We moved our gathering to the Edgewater Restaurant around to continue our evening together.  The restaurant is known for their crab cakes.  Steve and I both ordered the crab cakes.  We now know why people drive for miles to come to eat here.  The crab cakes were moist, and huge.  Great big chunks of crab meat fell from the cake.  Delicious. 

This morning I was still too stuffed from the crab cakes to eat anything.  I will have to remember to save half for a to go box next time.  I decided to try out the guest head today.  It was cozy, but I discovered the water was not draining properly as my feet were in about 3 inches of standing water.  I panicked that I had done something and immediately turned off the water.  We informed Buddy--the handy man for lack of a better tern--who has been working on our boat this week.  He informed us that the switch to the bilge pump had not been properly clicked into place and that is why it filled up with water.  He replaced it and left us the used part to save for another time if needed.

Mick took us down into the engine room this morning.  Mick is about 5'11, Steve is 6'2, and I am 5'8.  All three of us fit into the engine room.  When we got down there--it is quite a maneuver--a telephone was ringing.  One of the technicians had dropped a phone behind the fuel tanks.  It was impossible to retrieve the phone, so we have a phone in the engine room which goes off periodically.   Unbeknownst to me, another technician was down there with us.  He was squished behind the engine painting something.  After a while he unfolded himself and emerged from his spot.  He is a young guy--I supposed that is why he could crawl into that space. 

The engine room is probably the most important place on the boat.  I am glad Steve is mechanically inclined, because I am woefully ineffective, useless when it comes to anything remotely mechanical.  We moved onto the fuel tanks which did make some sense to me.  I did learn that we should never let the fuel tanks get empty.  We gave the engine room a final check for oil level and other miscellaneous items before heading up to the pilot house to take her out for a spin.  I don't know if spin is the correct terminology--but it works for now. 

There are several steps to getting a boat out of the dock and into the open water.  Mick walked me through these steps.  We flipped several switches on in the electric box (again, a term that is probably not correct) in the pilot house, put in two keys (there are two engines) and she cranked right up.  Then we got out and set about taking off the lines.  There were several lines to be taken off since they had secured her while readying for hurricane Sandy.  Thankfully, Sandy did not come ashore here. 

We headed up to the fly bridge after all the lines were untied where Mick guided me through getting our boat out of the dock.  Since there are two engines, I used those to wiggle my way out of the slip and move into open water.  I drove to the marina next door and backed into a slip there.  There was no wind to contend with so I managed to get the boat into the slip with no mishaps.  Steve took over then and took the boat to a T-slip where he did what Mick called a tough and go.  Steve moved the boat in at a 45 degree angle and then moved to become parallel with the dock.  This move would probably be used when getting fuel.  After this maneuver, we moved down to the pilot house and skirted up the South river.  We had to move carefully around the channel markers.  These are still a little confusing to me.  I know to keep the red marker on the right when returning from sea, but I sometimes don't know which was the sea and which way is the river.   A course on chart reading is in my near future.  

After this spin, it was my turn to dock the boat.  We were moved from our inside slip to an outside slip.  Mick talked me through the docking process in which I was to move our boat in between two other boats.  I was going in front of Providence, a brand new 65 foot Fleming, whose owners are coming into town soon.  I have seen all the workers frantically preparing Providence for delivery, so I was pretty sure I didn't need to bump into her.  GetAway was in front of the space I was to use.  Her owners are taking her out on Saturday to play on the Chesapeake Bay.  I moved into the spot without a hitch.  Several deckhands appeared out of nowhere to help tie us up.  I hear that happens a lot--so thankful for the people who are attentive to situations where help may be needed. 

After docking, we raised the antennae and spent a few minutes trying to install the Dish network receiver when we discovered that there were no remote controls included in the box.  Fortunately, we found out that the previous owners had not turned off their satellite TV service so we have television again.  This is not that big of a deal because we had been too tired to watch any television.  But there is a big football game we want to watch on Saturday, Georgia vs. Auburn.  We are not rabid Georgia fans, but since it is about twenty minutes from home, we enjoy watching a good game.  My brother and his family are planning to come visit us on Saturday.  They live close by in Virginia.  I say close by because they live ten hours from our home in Georgia, so anything within 3 hours is close for us. 

While I was cooking supper, I asked Steve to wash some clothes.  We need to learn how to use all of the appliances before we leave Burr.  I went back to through the companion way a few minutes after he had started it and found water building up beneath the washer and into the starboard stateroom.  We immediately shut that off, scurried around for towels and dried everything up as much as possible.  Calmly, Mick explained over the phone that we had probably not shut the door completely allowing the water to flow out.  We did get the clothes to wash and had no more leaks.  We also tried out the dryer, but could not find the vent to allow the heat to escape.  After running for about ten minutes, we decided to let the clothes air dry.  We will save that question for tomorrow. 

Supper was Hawaiian Chicken with pineapple, rice and a salad.  It was a crock pot recipe and I will share eventually.  It was very good.  We tried to use the dishwasher, but found that no water was running to it.  All of our appliances are made by companies with which we are not familiar.  As I tell of the mishaps, please understand, that the issues are not with the boat or with the appliance, but are owner induced.  Mick had forewarned us that most problems are owner induced.  Being somewhat proud people, we hoped to be different.  It appears that we are not very different at all. 

We are learning so much each day that when the sun goes down it is not too long before we are ready to fall into bed.   I am sure our daughters would tell you that is not different than any other day for us because we are early to bed, early to rise kind of people.