M/V MAERIN

Our plan to spend a few weeks at our “home” base at Stansbury morphed into a 5 month stay, keeping with our cruising philosophy of running a fairly loose itinerary!

Several significant events transpired during our stay, most of them positive. After having had our home of 30-plus years on the market for almost a year, having had some 43 showings, but no bites, we finally received an offer. Lower than we were aiming for, but a solid offer from a buyer who was excited about the history of the house, and realistic in expectations of purchasing a 265 year old home. We made a number of trips between Baltimore and York, arranged for storage, packed up what remained in the house, disposed of what we couldn’t or didn’t want to take with us, and settled on September 24th. Homeless at last! The new owner is truly enthused about having an old house, and will be a good steward of our historic homestead.

As it happened, our daughter and son-in-law in San Rafael also purchased a new home in August, Barb flew there to help with packing and moving. Expecting in September, she was grateful for mom’s help! Barb returned a month later to be there for the arrival of our first grandchild, her 2-week stay was planned to straddle the projected delivery date, my arrival scheduled the second week. Add to the mix, completion of emptying our house! Nature’s schedule didn’t cooperate, and delivery was two days ahead of our departure, a day ahead of our settlement date. With grandma only having 2 days with our new addition, a return trip was booked two days later!

Also during that time, there were the requisite boat maintenance projects, most of which were routine maintenance. As Maerin ages, she requires more maintenance to keep her in cruising condition. The notable upgrade is the addition of 480 watts of solar panels, the objective being to limit our generator run time and reduce the depth of discharge of our battery bank during a typical discharge cycle. The solar panels are located atop the pilothouse roof, an area subject to some shading, so the location is a compromise.  I designed the mounting to incorporate a hinged bracket to enable the panels to be lifted to access the area below them. We won’t really get to test the effectiveness until we are in one place for a stretch. We’ll be traveling, so the engine keeps the system topped off.

We sold our remaining vehicle the day before we left, and slipped lines Wednesday morning the 21st of October.  We are heading south at a leisurely pace, currently we are in Portsmouth, our traditional overnight in one of the public basins will extend to three nights while we await some weather, we’ll revisit Norfolk, do some sightseeing and continue to Coinjock on Tuesday. Destination: south!