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Friday evening we visited one of the Chesapeake Bay's historic sailing clubs. Our friend, neighbor, fellow AYC member, and consummate boater, Geremy, called around 1500 to ask if we wanted to go for a boat ride. Of course, the answer was yes. Geremy keeps his center console outboard at our very local marina, now called Safe Harbor Podickory Point. We strolled through our community, chatting about our week's adventures, into the marina and by the putrid fishy trash bins, then down the dock to the boat, fired up the Yamaha, tossed the lines, and headed out into the Bay. I asked Geremy where he wanted to go, and he replied, “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?” I thought briefly and suggested we head to Blackhole Creek on the Magothy River to see the Potapskut Sailing Association (PSA). I have to admit, this was yes, off the cuff given the non-planning aspect, but truly I've been wanting to check PSA out for some time as a dear friend, and also neighbor, gave me a burgee and sent some wonderful old pictures of her memories there. Funny enough, I spent the latter part of my youth living and boating on the Magothy and had never been to PSA – even though it is sort of across from the community where I'd lived. I can only think it was probably because in the mid-1970s my focus was more on water skiing than sailboat racing. Anyway, off we went to check it out. So you have some idea of where in the world this is, here's a little overview of the Magothy and zoom-in of Blackhole Creek on the chart sections above. For reference, we were traveling from right to left on the chart. The entrance is a bit tricky and narrow and would not make for safe waterskiing, so that is my excuse for never venturing there while living in Ulmstead. A short, breezy ride up the river from Podickory to Blackhole Creek, passing a small Friday night racing fleet, we spotted PSA immediately upon entering the little creek. You really can't miss it, there is a large area full of moored sailboats. But, mind you the tiny island in the middle and spit of land going to it, mostly underwater, means you can't cut through, just follow the markers. Anyway, the club, up the hill behind the mooring field, has a small but well-kept complement of regular and floating docks that were completely full with mostly sailboats. As we approached, a man walking the dock returned our wave, so we stopped and said hello. We told him we were exploring, decided to visit Blackhole this particular evening, and wanted to see PSA. Without hesitation, he offered us to tie up and come look around. Of course, we were already aimed at the dock, wasted no time, and were off the boat and shaking our host's hand. The unofficial tour guide was a longtime member, and past commodore, Andy Gillis. Andy could not have been more welcoming and happy to tell us about the club he has been a part of for almost his entire life. PSA has seemingly changed little since its inception. Holly, Geremy, and I all felt like we had been transported to a slightly warmer, more humid Maine. The grounds are neat, and the clubhouse is quaint and exceptionally well-maintained. I digress to share some PSA history. Potapskut Sailing Association was founded in 1938 and was initially located in Rock Creek on Wall Cove, an entirely different river, the Patapsco, north of the Magothy. The first commodore was Marshall Duer. He was a successful business executive from Baltimore. In addition to being a founding member of PSA, Mr. Duer founded the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He was a well-known competitive sailor, campaigning his boats named Marcarle, and a longtime member of the Annapolis Yacht Club. When established, the membership in PSA was limited to forty-five, and today one hundred. Andy said that there are memberships available for interested sailors. Other well-known racing sailors affiliated with PSA were Ron Ward, far left, and Harold “Buzz” White, center. Both men served as commodores, Buzz White twice in the 1950s and Ron Ward in 1961 (many thanks to John White for insight on the who's who). They were also Annapolis Yacht Club members. After talking about PSA and swapping some sailing stories with Andy, we thanked him for showing us around and shoved off to head back to Podickory Point. For an impromptu visit, it turned out to be a fantastic I love yachting history story for a small but renowned sailing club with a deep past.

Happy July 4th everyone! You may be wondering... is CAYUGA in the water yet? Well, no. How many days is that? Who knows. At least we can celebrate a big number for our country! Music by The Crystal Method. "The American Way" on the album Legion of Boom.

For those of you who know us, you may have heard of our disbelief, shock, and sadness upon hearing that friends of ours lost their beloved yacht recently to a fire that burned the boat to the waterline and then sunk. As you know, here at I Love Yachting, we grit our teeth when things go wrong, mutter our eponymous title, and continue on. However, no yachting story could be worse than a fire aboard. There is nothing good about it and one can only hope that the fire either is contained or everyone ends up safe and sound. Not this time. If you feel compelled to search the internet, have at it, but we'd recommend you dial into the in-person interview, our friend's story is mingled with survival/thankfulness, sadness, love, and believe it or not, subtle humor. When you get a text that it was "not a good day" and a picture with the boat we've spent some wonderful time on, on fire, the reaction is a thousand questions all at once, but first and foremost, is everyone OK? Our friends had about half a minute from smelling and seeing smoke, a failed attempt at fire fighting, to abandoning ship. Thankfully all aboard were able to escape, our friends, their mate, and the beloved dogs were all picked up within minutes. While it is tragic that everything they owned was lost, the interview says it all - they are the most resilient of folks and will be back on the water before too long. Please be safe out there.

Last week, my memory was jogged about a boat restoration project I attempted fifteen years ago. The project involved restoring a wooden Penguin that I bought from a local who happens to be a boat broker. He who shall remain unnamed assured me that the boat was in a condition to get ready to sail with some cosmetic work. I digress to the reason it came up this past Wednesday. I serve on the Annapolis Yacht Club History and Artifacts Committee. We had our monthly meeting via Zoom and during the call, the topic of finding an old Penguin to cut in half and mount on a wall in the Spa Creek Galley Club dining room came up. The facility is new and still in the process of getting dressed up with relevant yachting memorabilia. Penguins were used back in the day as the primary boat of the Junior Fleet. The conversation harkened me back to my project, which I believed to be relatively straightforward because the boat was said to be primarily sound. I began by painting the sides (my favorite color at the time, Chesapeake Green, which is no longer available), the bottom, and varnishing the transom. I'd spent a couple of weekends sanding, painting, and varnishing until the boat looked pretty good. For those who know me... I was doing my usual obsessive thing working so hard to get it perfect - the definition of which is "excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement / make flawless or faultless. Next, I flipped the boat over to clean up the centerboard trunk - (the picture is an example I found on the web, not the actual boat I was working on). I found a little surface rot around the base and started digging it out. Well, I kept digging and digging until the bottom of the centerboard trunk was no more. There was no solid wood left to support the centerboard while in its proper position. I gave it a few moments of thought to rebuild it with fiberglass. Then I hastily decided, no, I was not going to spend more good money and time going after bad. There was no shortage of "I love yachting" expressions spoken at a fairly loud volume. The next day, a Sunday, I broke out a power saw, said my goodbyes to the old boat, and sawed it up for recycling to pick up. It took hours to do the painting and varnishing and only minutes to reduce the poor Penguin to recyclable-sized pieces. It was as sad as it was fulfilling to destroy that little dream, take that rot! Later that day, my younger daughter, about twelve years old at the time, came home from visiting a friend and I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw the project remains - a boat I'd promised to take her sailing on - all cut up at the end of our driveway. Poor kid thought I’d lost my mind. I may have a little but really the take-away was inspection, inspection, inspection! Even for a little dinghy. However, it would have made a good wall hanging...

by Warren Dahlstrom I returned to the Annapolis area after college with an entry level job that was a great opportunity in my field (economics) and allowed me to continue my student lifestyle; group house, cheap food, Dodge Dart. I had crewed on PHRF boats in high school so I knew racing would provide a full social life at almost no cost to me. I needed a boat. Active crew has just two degrees of separation from active skippers and I soon found myself being interviewed by Bill Heim for a spot on his J24, LAST CALL. We met at his business; Marmaduke’s Pub in Eastport, Annapolis. So this story has two threads; first, and the focus here, is the story of the late 70’s sailing scene and the Annapolis bar at the center of the action. Marmaduke’s was that place and that was Heimy’s intent from day one. The second thread is sailing action in the J24 fleet’s Wednesday night shootout. The J24 was the hot boat in the 70’a and its fleet attracted all the sailmakers staking their claim for supremacy. LAST CALL was up-close with those hotshots at every start, not so much by the windward rounding. The fleet drew sailors from around the world. I’ll tell the tale of the night a Spanish 470 champion met a Maryland line squall for my upcoming story. I may get some of the facts wrong and apologies for that, but if facts suffer, well, fiction can be entertaining too. Bill Heim must have been a wrestler in high school, he had that low, wide, and ripped physique. His personal energy was always in 'Go' mode. With a civil engineering degree from College Park (University of Maryland), he landed a job helping with the State’s concrete pour of the two giant caissons for the second Bay Bridge. Google a picture of the western caisson Bill was assigned to and you will appreciate there was a lot of concrete involved. Our hero was junior-man but he looked tough so they gave him a walkie-talkie and placed him at the business-end of the long line of concrete trucks at the mouth of the caisson. His job was to test each truck’s concrete for “freshness”. Trucks that passed ended their long, unproductive wait by adding their load to that deep hole at the bottom of the Bay. If your truck’s concrete was too old, Bill failed it and sent you away. “What am I supposed to do with my load?” “That’s your problem, get outta here”. After a few weeks of this question ringing in Bill’s ears, he had an epiphany. He and his brother bought a plot of land about a mile west of the bridge and they bought a second set of radios and new shovels for the work ahead. Then they set about building Maryland’s first all-concrete subdivision. First they dug foundations and soon Bill had an answer for those miserable mixer drivers. “Your load failed, go get a fresh one. If you want to dump it, here is a map. My brother is expecting you and he will give you a place to dump your load.” Brilliant, eh? That’s how Heimy got the money to buy a troubled biker bar in Eastport. In those days, Baltimore had an outlaw motorcycle gang called The Pagans. Their Eastport Clubhouse was now the object of Bill’s next business scheme. “I went to work everyday for a year knowing that I was going to be in a fist fight. It was routine. I could never back down. They hated me. And when I kept coming week-after-week they recruited their toughest friends to Eastport to pound on me. Slowly and painfully they got tired of me and drifted off to a dive bar more welcoming to their kind." Marmaduke’s was born. Bill’s next brilliant idea was to buy one of the very first portable Sony video cameras. It was barely portable; consisting of a big shoulder mounted camera tethered to a suitcase sized Betamax recorder via a 0000 gauge cable. It was $12,000. Bill hired his friend, Tom Petrini, (yes - of the storied Eastport boatyard dynasty which, like Trumpy, had thrived building and maintaining yachts in Eastport from the 1940’s). Tom had served in Vietnam and that had damaged him, but his gentle soul prevailed and he was dedicated to Heimy’s mission. It was to get a Whaler out to the windward mark on Wednesday nights, get a video of the rounding action, and get that tape back to the bar so the winners and losers could relive all the action, tell their lies, and make boastful promises about next Wednesday, all the while drinking Bill’s beer and eating his burgers. Annapolis had a new high-tech sailing bar and you had to be there.

Let's start at the beginning because it's a very good place to start. While feeling rather musical about that statement, it's true because there are three parts to this I love yachting story and we must begin where it all started. The first, which is really last, is Holly and I coming into our now simpatico relationship with the joys of brightwork (varnished wood for those uninitiated) and becoming stewards of our own little varnish farm, affectionately named CAYUGA. Holly secretly refers to varnish as vanish, because that's what it does across a summer of boating. Of course, there would be no story I tell without referencing one of my favorite quotes from The Wind in the Willows, "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." And believe me, I can make a mess in the process of varnishing. So going correctly to the origins of this varnishing epic is Holly and the story she's told me many a time about her father and his boats, back on Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, NY, at the Johnson Boat Yard. I've never been there but can only imagine. Holly's father, Scott, was a classic wooden boat lover, but before his passion for runabouts and restoration started, he owned a few cabin cruisers along the way, culminating with JULIANNA, a 38' Chris Craft covered in varnish (note the US Power Squadron Ensign). As most kids are, patience is not usually one of their talents, and for Holly, while watching and helping her dad with his projects to get ready for the boating season, she tells me that while other boats went out, dad kept at his projects - seemingly always varnish and it was a bummer to still be at the yard. This may have been Holly's first I love yachting moment... The adventures in varnish I learned of shortly after Holly and I met when I made the grievous error of offering to varnish the cap rail of Holly's Beneteau 473, CALIX. To me, that unfinished teak was crying out for a beautiful coat of shiny varnish. However, I was firmly informed that the only thing on her boat I would ever varnish was the flagstaff. Being no room for negotiation, the cap rail remained au-naturel until CALIX was sold; a cap rail that I endeavored to clean to a gorgeous wooden glow each season. The second part to this story, and what got a varnish brush in Holly's hand, is when she began sailing on the log canoe, FLYING CLOUD. The canoes had become her sailing focus and passion. If you've never witnessed a log canoe race, you are definitely missing one of the most beautiful and graceful sailing events, and this is not an exaggeration, held on any body of water anywhere. One of the things quite evident with the canoes is their demanding upkeep and amount of varnish, as a number of them are well over 100 years old. CLOUD was built in 1932 so she's almost there. So, with camaraderie in the mix amongst crew (and a beer-infused lunch break), winter and into the spring is prime maintenance and upkeep time. This may range from fiberglassing weak spots and spars to re-bedding sail tracks, but always it involves lots and lots of varnishing. Holly dug right in and had a blast being a part of history and taking care of CLOUD. I dare say it may have changed her mind about what was formerly the bain of her boating existence. Thus this story is brought back around to where I started, the third part, when Holly forwarded me the listing for CAYUGA in April. My first glance elicited the remark and warning that the boat had a lot of brightwork. Holly said, quite plainly and a bit to my surprise, that was fine. Now, without faint of heart, I decided it was time for me to practice and improve my varnishing skills, I've dabbled but not the likes of what CAYUGA has for us to work with. I'm not horrible with a varnish brush, but getting it perfect is very challenging. It was more about adequate coverage for the log canoes, and an imperfect varnish job was of little consequence. But on our boat, it has got to be done right – smooth flow and no drips, runs, or sags. Being there is no shortage of opinions or advice on how to varnish like a pro an entire weekend could be spent watching how-to YouTube videos. My approach, believe it or not, has been to embrace the Zen of varnishing, the entire process – the prep, the application, and clean-up. I'm buoyed by knowing that even when a coat doesn't go quite right, the next day's sanding will provide an opportunity for excellence. So all in all, Holly digs the time loving a classic boat and remembering her father (he's laughing at her she says), and I'm closer to the boat, as maintenance always brings you, finding out I love varnishing.

Not to be a curmudgeon, but does anyone else out there feel that yachting is not as courteous as it once was? Boaters still wave at each other while passing by. But it's an insult to injury when we get happy hand waves from a bigger boat as they blow by, forcing us to quickly maneuver to take their large wake bow on. Many times I want to wave back with the Digitus Impudicus, but I don't. I hold on, shake my head, and say to Holly, I love yachting! While preparing to address my irritation over massive boat wakes, the hilarious scene from the movie Caddyshack popped to mind. Also spurred on by seeing SEAFOOD in the Annapolis Harbor over Labor Day weekend! The boating mayhem is funny when watching a comedy movie. However, on summer weekends, the scene can plays out for real in the mouth of the Severn River. And it is not so funny. Now back to the topic at hand, the root of my angst, and what I think may be the possible cause. Anyone can go out and buy a big, powerful powerboat without knowledge of piloting, the fundamental right-of-way rules, and basic boating etiquette before leaving the dock. And, most captains (I use the term loosely) would get lost if their chart plotter crapped out. But that is for another post – this is about being aware of and responsible for wakes. The boating boom has brought with it the need for new boaters to learn the Rules of the Road (*applicable rules at the bottom) and yachting etiquette (picture from my 1964 Ed. of Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling by Charles F. Chapman). Not only are there now more boats on the water, but many first-time buyers' "starter boats" are large with a lot of muscle. They skipped over starting with a Whaler as a kid, and now it's not uncommon for first-time boat buyers to begin with a 40-plus foot center console with three or four 350 HP outboards strapped to the stern. Then there are the ubiquitous cruisers – the ultramodern compilations of fiberglass, odd-shaped windows, and big engines. I am not picking on any specific brand, but there are many shapes and sizes that money can buy in today's boat market. Let me step back from my biased analysis and offer thanks and appreciation to new boaters who wisely avail themselves of training resources. Onboard training, such as that provided by the Annapolis School of Seamanship is excellent. Another exceptional resource is America's Boating Club (formerly known as the US Power Squadrons). But clearly, many beginner boat buyers hit the water with little to no prior instruction or training. The I love yachting point is that wakes can and do cause damage, and big powerful boats leave large wakes behind that can swamp smaller vessels. Some captains seem utterly oblivious to the mountainous waves they create. I want to attribute their disregard for smaller vessels they encounter to being new to boating and simply unaware (which ultimately is no excuse). I get frustrated because while our older boat can handle most waves, we prefer to treat her more gently in hopes of avoiding harm to her systems. The Ray Hunt Design deep V hull is built for taking on rough seas, but when slamming into or off of waves, things can get loosened up or break at inopportune times. There is no need to exacerbate yet discovered faulty parts by beating the boat into a heavy chop. Sometimes that is hard to avoid, such as when we take CAYUGA into Annapolis to get to our club or creek cruise. Getting into the Annapolis Harbor (Spa Creek) requires running the mouth of the Severn River and on the weekends, the boat traffic is akin to rush hour on the Beltway – but without lane lines or speed limits. So, we maintain a keen lookout for large, fast-moving, big wake-producing, oblivious power-driven vessels. It's not uncommon for 50-foot boats to run at tsunami wake-producing speeds with reckless abandon as opposed to smaller powerboats like ours and sailboats. After all, they are in a hurry to relax. In case you are thinking I'm just nuts or rude, I offer the story of a powerboat owner being held legally responsible for their wake. This event occurred on the Chester River in 2015 when an oblivious boater capsized two log canoes. The 58-foot cabin cruiser's wake not only swamped the log canoes but also inflicted damage. The owner was found guilty of negligent operation of a vessel and hit with a small fine and court costs. In closing, this website is intended to be interactive. So if anyone has had similar experiences to share, please either leave a comment or submit a short story. I'm not here to just tell this story, I also want to provide you with the knowledge to not be the Rodney and end up making someone's day an "I love yachting" misadventure. Below are the regulations from the US Coast Guard concerning wake effects, wake damage, and boater responsibility. Regarding one's wake, vessels over 1600 Gross Tons (GT) are specifically required by Title 33 CFR 164.11 to set the vessel's speed with consideration for...the damage that might be caused by the vessel's wake. Further, there may be State or local laws which specifically address "wake" for the waters in question. While vessels under 1600 GT are not specifically required to manage their speed in regards to wake, they are still required to operate in a prudent matter which does not endanger life, limb, or property (46 USC 2302). Nor do the Navigation Rules exonerate any vessel from the consequences of neglect (Rule 2), which, among other things, could be unsafe speeds (Rule 6), improper lookout (Rule 5), or completely ignoring your responsibilities as prescribed by the Navigation Rules. As to whether or not a particular vessel is responsible for the damage it creates is a question of law and fact that is best left to the Courts. For more information, contact your local Marine Patrol or State Boating Law Administrator.

So one day at band camp... No, no, just kidding, but one Saturday morning, while I was supposed to be reviewing my dad's estate taxes (and do you blame me for getting sidetracked?) I said, quite out loud, "Heck with this, I'm going to look at boats". I had no intentions but to get lost in the YachtWorld rabbit hole looking and dreaming and maybe someday when I found the right boat... and well, so I proceeded. I've been looking at boats since 2013 when I sold CALIX, a Beneteau 473 - in the picture she's anchored in the west fork of Langford Creek, one of my favorite spots. I've yet to find a sailboat that I love, except for one back in 2015 out on the west coast in Seattle, SILVER APPLE, a 1985 Swan 44. She was perfect, so perfect that she sold right away and barely a week before we arrived for a wedding. A close friend of ours, who lives out near Seattle, (not related to the wedding visit) went and took a look at the boat and called and the exact words are still with me today, "Are you serious?" He said it with incredulity in his voice like it was impossible this boat could exist. But yes, Berke, we're serious, and he proceeded to describe what you might call my dream sailboat. Anyway, we thought our trip out was going to be so conveniently timed to look at the boat in person. Nope. Nothing has lived up to that sailboat since. A few years ago, we started looking at center consoles. Then we pivoted to Chesapeake Bay deadrises. Then back to sailboats and I pushed the idea of a day-sailer for a short while. I even went as far as let's get an Etchells and join the fleet at the club. Then after a run of other boats that I found that Brad poo-pooed (mind you, he asks around to other folks for valuable opinions), I stopped. Brad kept looking but nothing he found we loved either, not really. So, that Saturday, I decided to look at powerboats again. Why? Because the reality is I don't have the time for sailing as I want to do it. Whether racing or cruising. If it was going to be powerboats, I decided to channel dad. Dad had Trojans and Chris Crafts. The first Trojan I ever knew was Dad's 1968 Trojan Sea Skiff named TRIUMPH. That's me in 1970 sitting in a deck chair (safety first!) while Mom and Dad went through the locks on the way up or down between the Finger Lakes and somewhere, maybe Lake Ontario. Photographic gold. I gave Chris Craft a moment's thought. Dad bought into the first or second year of the newly re-designed, overhauled, total re-imagination of what Chris Craft could do on the water. Glad he did, I enjoyed that boat quite a bit - he almost always stood at the end of the dock when I left or arrived. While yes, beautiful boats that my dad spent oodles of time loving, I thought to myself, what would be the boat that if I were to have it, dad would maybe, just maybe, be pretty excited about? And it popped into my head - let's research Hunts. I cried a little and laughed a bit while memories streamed through my head of boating experiences because of dad, etc. It got a bit emotional... At this point back in May, Dad had been gone but a year and a few months so I like to think he would be happy for me and maybe even guiding my boat-buying thought process. Armed with experience and knowledge from Dad and my own boating adventures, I typed in Hunt, and away I went. I figured it was folly to find one I liked and wouldn't break the bank, but then she scrolled into view. What?!? Who is this girl, this most beautiful powerboat, such classic lines, not utterly out of my financial reach, what? This all happened in about 20 minutes. I copied the web link to Brad and said, "Dig in". Here's how the boat looked in the listing with FINAL GOAL shown at her mooring in Scituate, MA. They say the happiest two days of a boater's life are the day they buy a boat and the day they sell a boat. I knew this was the boat when I found the listing, there was no question. So that was the first happy day, but I'm still pretty darn happy, even with a bunch of I love yachting moments since the boat arrived in Maryland. Thinking about it, "I love yachting" could explain most of the days between the first and last day. But thanks to Dad, and I hope he likes it, I found a boat Brad and I love.

Sailing as in life, generally, is influenced by the axiom S=k. I think of the late Edwin “Nasty Ned” Shuman when an I love yachting moment occurs. About twenty years ago while making an ocean passage, Ned provided some priceless advice about what happens when you think things are going fantastic. The short version of the story of S=k is as follows. Going back those twenty years or so, we were both sailing on the Swan 44, TONIC, from Guadalupe to Annapolis. It had been a rough couple of days, especially getting through the Mona Passage. It is the strait that separates the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, and it connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. It's an important shipping route between the Atlantic and the Panama Canal, but aboard a small sailboat, it can get turbulent. A few days after getting tossed around in the Mona Passage, we finally got treated to some great sailing. I was at the helm steering the boat comfortably on a beam reach, warm sunshine on my face, and a freshly opened cold Heineken in hand. I looked over at Ned and exclaimed, “This is perfect". Ned’s reply was, “Yea, but don’t ever forget, S=k.” I looked back at him and asked what he meant by that cryptic formula? Ned then explained to me, just because conditions were excellent at that moment, “shit is constant in the universe” and shit would return. I thanked (yes for the explanation but not for the newly found wisdom of knowing shit was always right around the corner) Ned and then reminded him that I wanted to enjoy the cold beer and pleasant conditions while it lasted. I have never forgotten that bit of simple insight, though, and use it often. It is so true, it seems that just when things are going well, S comes back to mess things up. You might be sailing along thinking what a lovely time you’re having – bang, the main halyard breaks. S=k.

And here I am with some uber concentration... really mostly b/c as soon as Brad says "smile" I do about everything but - if it's not a naturally caught photo, anyway, I said we'd be back at this and here we are, getting this steering fluid sorted out. In my opinion, a minor I love yachting moment, the fact that we had to do this ALL over again, but thankfully it's not a major problem. The Seastar tech told us to do it this way for the second attempt: keep the bleeder caps on and turn the wheel all the way and then another turn past. For both port and starboard turnings. Getting the wheel to turn past where it stops was a hard over while watching the rudder indicator. I did this twice. By the way, it's messy even if you have paper towels everywhere, drip pads, and containers within containers. But thankfully none of that created an inadvertent follow-on I Love Yachting situation. Result? We may have gotten things where they should be. Or at least closer than they were before our outing Friday. The wheel "catches" almost immediately. No major lag or nearly a turn and a half for nothing. Brad's got it all neatly stowed away now. So until next season, at least the steering fluid and performance of the SeaStar system is off the I love yachting ****list. I can't say the same for the electrical system...

It was a rather warm day in Annapolis yesterday and we were expecting some storms to roll through later but that did not stop us from taking CAYUGA off the dock and motoring into town for a fuel up and our first ever dip in the pool at the Activity Center. It was a very welcome dip too. After that, everything seemed a little cooler. Around 4ish, the storms came rumbling as predicted. I had already run down to the dock and buttoned up the canvas. So we sat at the Burgee Bar and watched the lightning show with the rest of the former pool-goers and folks who had started to show up for happy hour. Once the skies started to clear I turned to Brad and asked what his radar app was showing and if we had a window to get back to the marina. Yes, but it was time to leave! It was a beautiful ride home in cooler air with dark 'n stormy skies behind us. Brad shared this picture he got - I love the steam from the exhaust and the perfect wake. We docked the boat and had about 5 minutes to roll down the canvas from the ride then blammo, the rain came with a cool blast of air ahead of it. Under the dodger, we enjoyed a glass of wine and marveled at our girl. Great day, great boat!

A friend defines yachting as fixing a boat while in exotic places. The marina where we keep CAYUGA, while not exotic, is a pleasant place to tie up and a suitable yacht yard to make repairs. There is an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Out of necessity, because of difficulties getting expert assistance these days, we are rolling up our sleeves, bloodying knuckles, and fixing what we can ourselves. Our most recent self-fix earlier this month, was to bleed air out of CAYUGA’s SeaStar hydraulic steering system. The play in the wheel was way too loose. Holly was making almost 3 full turns before the wheel would "catch". While not difficult or a knuckle-buster job, hydraulic fluid bleeding can get messy. Holly and I prepared by watching a few YouTube videos. Holly found a person who showed a way to do it without needing two people. I ran it by SeaStar tech support (trust but verify) and got instructed to stick with the instructions in the SeaStar manual, and here's a link for your reading enjoyment. So, along with needing a bottle of SeaStars' hydraulic steering fluid, filler bleed kit, tools, and lots of paper towels, I needed a friend to volunteer to help me (it turned into a weekday job, as Holly could not break away from hers.). By the way, this story is not intended as another “how-to” bleed a Sea Star system, but more “lessons learned” by me for the next time. Anyway, as luck would have it, longtime friend (a retired airline Captain) John Yackus offered to lend a hand. And, John has done the job on his Saberline 42. What could go wrong? John showed up at the marina at the appointed time, and we knocked it out. Start to finish took less than thirty minutes – except for the clean-up afterward. John took the helm end of the job and I the hydraulic cylinder at the back of the boat. Assuming the bottle of fluid gets properly connected to the fitting at the helm, that part of the operation should be a breeze. However, my end of the job was to be a mess. Full disclaimer, the reason for the retroactive photos is that my hands got coated in hydraulic fluid at the time, making holding onto my camera impossible. The short version description of the job is as follows. John held the fluid bottle at the helm and turned the wheel from side to side as instructed. I loosened the two fittings on the ram where the fluid comes out while simultaneously holding the cylinder rod and trying to contain the fluid squirting out of the fitting as John turned the wheel. And re-tightening the fittings. I should have gotten a piece of tubing to attach to the fittings to control where the fluid bleeding out of the system went. Instead, I sawed the top off an empty Modello can (from out of the trash!) and attempted to catch the fluid in mid-air as it squirted into the bilge. The lesson learned is to connect a piece of tubing to the fittings next time. John’s debrief echos that the plastic tubing would have made the job go better and cleaner. It also would have enabled me to watch the air bubbles come out of the fitting, as well as regulate the flow to a container. With a hand free, I could have adjusted the fittings and held the ram. John also suggests that when referring to instructional YouTube videos, look for the helpful pointers derived from experience. The videos about bleeding SeaStar systems always seem to have that clear tube going to a containment bottle. Yep, I should have gone to the ship’s store and purchased a foot of clear tubing before, and my day would have been easy-button. Then again, CAYUGA’s bilge is even a bit cleaner now! The bottom line, proper tools help, but patience, patience, patience is always the key. In the end, we got the feel of the wheel better than it was, and Holly would be the judge. John went on his way, and I stayed behind to mop up the mess. Other than that, I felt it was a modestly successful “do it yourself” job. But! In the true spirit of I Love Yachting, there is more to this story... and tomorrow morning, Holly (on a day off) and I will be doing it all over again.