Days Events:

Wx - heat advisory today, again.

Marina - watched a 32' boat leave this a.m. at 06:30 - he was tied up stbd with bow away from the ebb tide current, which was 1mph at that time; tried to pivot his bow out from dock but current pushed him into a catamaran docked immediately downstream from him and they had to do some 'jumping around' to finally get out into the channel and the bow pointed into the current; glad we are already bow 'North' and will be heading into the ebb current when we leave the channel Wed.

Photos - I took one of the fresh water pump with its strainer, [discussed below] since a picture is worth a 1000 words - the strainer has the clear plastic cover, sitting on top of the pump on the left side; the water from the two water tanks comes in via a blue hose on the right, passes through the filter, then out the bottom of the pump head to go to either the hot water tank, just out of the picture on the right, or to the cold water lines.

Also, one of the pump beside the Racor fuel filter for the port engine, just to show their sizes in comparison, etc. The glass bowl on the fuel filter is filled with red diesel, which comes from the fuel tank, and water and any other crud will drop to the bottom of that bowl and you can drain it from the bottom, since water is heavier than diesel, before the diesel is sucked up through a paper filter to go to the engines.

Admirals Desk:

Another stay out of the heat day. Our a/c units are barely keeping up.

A uneventful day on the dock. Usual housekeeping chores that, like boat maintenance, need to be done daily. We have a lot of stuff in a small space so de-cluttering is an endless chore. Sometimes it feels like I'm just moving things from one pile to another pile, but making the piles neater.

In deference to the heat I decided to make a cold soup. Mango gazpacho. Lots of chopping stuff into tiny little pieces that seemed to take most of the morning. It was a new recipe and was pretty tasty.😁

We are here in the heart of seafood and fish and thousands of crab fishermen and their annoying crab pots. So why is there fake crab in fresh seafood salad??!!

Thats all for today.

PS

I just did a quick count - we have stayed at 52 marinas!! Too many to remember.

Maintenance:

Water pump strainer - my 'fix' yesterday was truly 'transient' as it still was leaking around the cover; tried a bead of butyl tape [used mostly for deck fitting seals] around the edge where the O-ring is - and that failed miserably. So, when nothing else is at hand, use teflon plumbers tape, the 'duct' tape alternative; and it worked. A functioning fresh water pump is rather critical if one is not connected to a shore water pressure line. Will order a replacement strainer.

Aft deck spider poop - amazing how quickly the little devils can leave their markings all over a white surface; used soap and water and a brush and some '409' in places; did it before sun was up and before too hot.

A/C strainer - also cleaned it before the sun warmed us too much; not much crud in the basket, just sticky crud and 'stringy' gunk all on the inside of the strainer glass [the basket sits inside the glass 'bowl' with 'sea-water' pulled from below and dumped into the basket to filter out the crud, with water passing through the basket and sucked up the glass walls into the pump hose]; used a stiffer brush with an angled end and was able to remove most of that; used the wet/dry vac to empty the cruddy water with rinses from fresh seawater x 3. Can now see clearly the basket inside the bowl. Of course, had to prime the pump using the wet/dry vac pulling water through the system. And all works well now. Again. Will check in a couple of days.

Holding tank monitors - the #1 ['old' one - not just the one for '#1'] reads 37% - we are on Day 3, so pretty good actually. The #2 [not just the one for '#2' :) ] one still reads '1/4'.

Navigation software update - had to download maps from Navionics for the chartplotter; the one we have, new Axiom 9, has a 2 GB micro card, so can only hold so many charts, which requires me to erase the card every 500 miles or so and download the maps for the next 500 miles. The card is on the back of the chartplotter which is screwed into the Pilothouse bridge so have to remove the screws, pull out the chartplotter, remove the card, insert into a card reader connected via USB to our laptop, connect to Navionics company, run the programs to make the changes, wait for a good wifi connection because it can take an hour for all the downloads, disconnect, yada yada yada. But, it works fine.

Tomorrow - we travel on a SE heading, down Delaware Bay to Cape May, NJ, to Utsch's Marina, 61 miles. Likely leave 07-0730, on the high tide as it starts to become ebb tide [dropping water level] and run bit faster [11-12mph] to get full benefit from ebb current and NW winds, and be there before noon, when winds are forecast to shift to SW. Local experience says do not go when the wind direction is opposite to the current or will have a less than ideal ride.

Stay safe.