Finishing the Repairs in Drayden, Maryland

Friday, Nov. 7 — The full moon was still up this morning and shining brightly.

Since we’ve missed our weather window to Bermuda, we needed to form a new cruising plan. We’ve decided that once the repairs were completed, we’ll go back to Little Creek to wait for another weather window to Bermuda.

Eric continued to work on repairs/maintenance while Christi and Keith did school. He noticed that the bilge pump sea strainer and hose was leaking. That part was awkward to access, so tightening the sea strainer was difficult.

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Replacing the Low Water Bilge Pump in Drayden, Maryland

Thursday, November 6, 2025 — Despite going to bed so late, we were all up by 0730. While we did managed to get some sleep, we didn’t sleep particularly well — especially Eric. The anchorage was beautiful.

The full moon hadn’t yet set, and was still huge and bright, even at 0730. And yes, the little boat was a working waterman boat.

Eric determined that it would be best to fix the problems in a marina. There happened to be a marina, called Dennis Point Marina, a short distance away. Eric called promptly at 0900, when they opened. They said they did have a slip for us, which was a relief.

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Keith’s Perspective on Our Last Days in Maryland/Le point de vue de Keith sur nos derniers jours dans le Maryland

On Saturday, we were supposed to go to DC with one of mom’s friends, but mom’s friend had to cancel. My parents wanted to go even without mom’s friend, but thankfully the museums were still closed because of the government shutdown. Thank you government shutdown! Instead, we went to brunch at a restaurant, then had Tiki Tour over for D&D. 

Samedi, on devait aller à  DC avec une des amies de maman, mais elle a dû annuler. Mes parents voulaient y aller quand même sans elle, Mais heureusement tous les musées étaient fermés parce que le gouverment était fermé. Merci fermeture du gouvernement! À la place, nous avons mangé un brunch à un restaurant, puis Tiki Tour est venu pour D&D. 

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Settling into Life in Annapolis, Maryland

Tuesday, October 28 — The last three days have been mellow. Now that it is so cold in the mornings, Christi has been finding it difficult to drag herself out of the warm bed to watch the sun rise. Instead, she falls back to sleep and misses the sun rises altogether.

On Sunday morning, Eric ran wing engine again to check to see if it was leaking exhaust. At first, it did smoke a little more, but he determined that was paint. After a few minutes, the smoking stopped Eric was happy to report that the wing engine exhaust was indeed fixed. In the early afternoon, Christi ran a few errands, including a trip to the closest grocery store, Giant. In the mid-afternoon, the Tiki kids came over to play board games with Keith. Here was a couple photos showing how beautiful the short drive between our marina and Tiki’s boat yard was.

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Exploring Annapolis by Car

On Friday, October 24, 2025, Christi went for a walk to the river side of the condo complex to watch the sunrise.

However, it was too cold to stand idly, so she wound up skipping the sunrise in favor of going back to the warm boat.

Yesterday morning, Eric polished the second tank of fuel and rinsed down boat while Keith and Christi did school. At noon, Eric picked up the rental car. Our paravane fish were rusting and he wanted to get them sanded and repainted. He loaded fish in car and took them to the nearby boat yard for an estimate. The person who would be doing the job wasn’t in and told him to come back later. Next, he went to West Marine.

For lunch, we wanted to go to a highly rated restaurant called Grumpy’s, which served Thai food and donuts. We entered the name into Maps, and the cafe popped up as being in the same shopping center as West Marine.

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