Thursday, October 30 — Yesterday, morning, we spent a long time discussing whether we should leave Annapolis today for Bermuda. The forecasts promised good weather for the passage. But… Hurricane Melissa, which had decimated Jamaica on Tuesday as a category 5, was still in the Caribbean. It had calmed down to a category 3 and was en route to Bermuda. It was expected to calm down to a tropical storm by the time it hit Bermuda and would be long gone by the time Kosmos arrived. But we’d learned the hard way that when there was a hurricane in the broader area, it could make local forecasts inaccurate, so we ultimately decided that the forecasts couldn’t be trusted and it was best to stay put.

Meanwhile, a storm was coming from the north that was supposed to hit tonight. While Christi and Keith were doing school, Eric spent a long time adjusting the lines and added 4 more lines in anticipation of the storm. For perspective to help understand the tide swings, the first photo was taken near low tide, the second photo near high tide.

Then he ran a couple errands. Eric had inspected the propellor on the dinghy and noticed it had a few nicks in it. He decided to order a new propellor. He went to Fawcett Boat Supplies and ordered a relatively newly released propellor that had a different design that was supposed to be better than our current propellor.

Next, he dealt with the paravane fish. Eric was frustrated because the boat yard had never called him back about sanding and painting the paravane fish. Eric had called several times, and the person he needed to talk to was never available. He took the fish to a different place, called M Yacht Services, for a quote. They gave him a quote right then for $500. It was more money than Eric had anticipated, but he decided it was worth the cost to have a professional do the work. He’d done it himself several times and it was never long before the rust came back. He was hopeful that maybe a professional would do a better job and it would be a while before the rust returned. He left the fish with them.

On the way back, he stopped by the car rental place and re-rented the car for another week.

For lunch, we went to an Italian restaurant called Sammy’s in Eastport. The food was great, the portions large, and the prices good.

After lunch, we stopped by Safeway for more grocery shopping. While Safeway was not one of Christi’s favorite stores, she preferred it to Giant. In the early evening, Keith went to Tiki Tour’s to play. 

It was such a cold day. Each time we went outside, we were miserable. Being from a warm climate, we were not at acclimated to cold weather. And we didn’t have appropriate clothing onboard for cold temperatures.

Last night, as the forecast had predicted, it rained really, really hard, dumping 2-inches of rain in a short time span. Eric woke up early to see the marina was flooded. Our dock was ever so slightly underwater.

But our dock was one of the taller ones in the marina. Most of the other docks were completely underwater.

Eric checked Kosmos’s lines and saw one line needed to be adjusted and one removed because we were so high on the dock that it was too tight. The forecast was for light rain all morning, and we worried about the flooding worsening.

Eric decided today was a good day to try to tackle the closet squeak again, so he worked on it while Christi and Keith did school. He took out the wall and ceiling panels and started pushing on the support beams. He found the culprit! One of the ceiling beams was loose, and when he pushed on it, it made the dreaded creaking noise. It looked like the beam had been glued into place, then fastened with two screws. Now, 19 years later, the glue had deteriorated and it needed more screws to keep it from shifting. Since that piece of wood hadn’t actually been necessary, Eric removed it altogether. We won’t know for sure if this fixed the problem until the next time we’re in head seas, but we’re hopeful.

After the rain stopped, the sun came out, and it warmed up significantly. Keith was comfortable in a sweatshirt and shorts. Christi would have been okay with a sweatshirt instead of a jacket. Since the weather was suddenly so nice, we decided to visit the Maritime Museum. It was located between our marina and Tiki’s boatyard, and quite frankly, we were a little embarrassed that we hadn’t made it over there yet given the convenient location. From the parking lot, we followed a short path through a wooded area to the museum.

The sign on the door said this was an auxiliary campus and to visit them at the main campus in Eastport.

There was an adjacent small conference center.

The maritime museum grounds looked lovely, and there were walking trails throughout the grounds. However, it looked like today was not the right day to try to walk the trails.

We hopped into the car and drove over to Eastport. Maps directed Eric to turn onto a certain road, and we came to a dead stop since the road was flooded.

We decided to try to get there on foot. We went around the corner to the road the museum was on and parked. We’re putting in a photo of the road since it was lovely with the autumn leaves.

As we approached the museum, we saw the road was closed and even the sidewalks were underwater.

We happened to see some locals and asked if this was normal. They said that the mild flooding we’d seen about 11 days before was common, but flooding to this extent was unusual. They said today’s extreme flooding was due to a combination of the winds blowing the water inland, the king tide making the tides abnormally large, and the 2-inches of rain. They said that they’ve seen this extreme before, but the only time they’d seen anything higher was during a hurricane.

Given the road closures, we decided it was probably best to go back to the boat. ChristiI made dinner while Keith and Eric made a halloween costume for Keith. We hadn’t thought about a costume until now because we had really believed we would be en route to the Caribbean by now. We couldn’t believe we were still in the US.

In the evening, Eric and Keith played Civilization VI with the Ocean Posse. Eric was sore from the closet project.