Jutland Creek MD USA

A beautiful dawn in Hudson Creek

The penalty for our fabulous evening on the Nellie Crockett was that we delayed our sail south and had an 8-hour motor on Saturday 19 October instead of a roaring sail the previous day.  We started hoisting our anchor at 0755hrs in Hudson Creek but the chain was so muddy that it took 20 minutes before we were actually ready to depart.

Resolute at anchor

Gratitude (foreground) on which Jonathan and Dorothy Goldweitz, our friends from the OCC, were sailing

Nellie Crockett (left), rafted with Pearl (centre) and Grey Goose (right)

But the early start to make the best of the tide meant that we were treated to a beautiful golden sunrise over the millpond-like anchorage.  [Ed: We also lost several heartbeats when someone on Nellie Crockett marked morning colours by firing off some sort of very loud blunderbuss!]  We said our farewells to the CCA boats and then set off south.

Leaving the CCA fleet behind us

The wind stayed well below 10 knots throughout and so when we finally switched off the engine we had clocked 8½ hours.  Our stopping point was Jutland Creek near Lookout Point on the north side of the Potomac, just in from the river’s entrance to the Bay.  We had specifically tucked ourselves up there because the weather forecast for the following 48 hours not good.  Tropical Storm Nestor was sweeping up from Florida, bringing with it wind and heavy rain and we wanted sit out all that nastiness on Sunday and then move-on on the Monday.

Pouring rain – very reminiscent of winter in the UK, just a bit warmer

So, whilst it blew and rained outside, we hunkered down below doing maintenance chores and writing emails. Part of our reason for this cruise in the Chesapeake Bay was to check that everything was working before we made a long passage south.  During the long hours of motoring to get to Jutland Creek, we had checked the engine and found that the seawater cooling pump was leaking a bit, which was irritating because we had replaced the shaft seals not that long ago.  But, with a steady drip spotted early on in that passage, I had expected to have to strip the pump down again for a further seal replacement job.  However, before doing that we ran the engine to see how bad the leak had become after 8½ hrs of motoring.  Instead of a steady drip, we saw no sign of a leak.  Perhaps the seals had settled down on the transit or perhaps the seals only leaked when the engine was hot or at higher power settings.  But with no leak confirmed we decided that we would not take apart the pump and instead would just monitor it for leaks over the next few passages.

Our Aquadrive CV shaft showing signs of its age 'when wiggled'

The other motoring issue we had whilst motoring was an intermittent slight vibration in the drive chain.  We had heard this in June and it was back again.  It doesn’t happen often but it does happen enough to tell us that something is wearing out.  After some careful listening and feeling we think that the vibration is from the Aquadrive CV (constant velocity) shaft showing its age.  So I spent some of the rainy and windy day internet searching and fired off some emails to Aquadrive USA to see if we can get a new one made up and shipped to us.  It’s probably not as easy as I had first thought because our 20 year old unit does not seem to exactly match the sizes of the modern ones; there’s conflicting information on 2 different websites!  We’ll see what they come back with next week.

Right: The hot water tank with pipes disconnected and the overpressure valve removed.  Left: cleaning up and descaling the valve (actually our spare that we cleaned up at the same time)

In taking apart the woodwork to get to the engine we also spotted that the hot water tank overpressure/temp valve had leaked.  Whilst this is designed to release excess pressure in the tank, it is also very susceptible to leaking at lower pressures when it gets scaled up.  So, instead of working on the engine pump, we removed the overpressure valve from the hot water tank descaled it and then refitted it; hopefully that will cure that leak.

Jutland Creek when the rain briefly stopped late in the afternoon

The rest of the day was spent doing admin.  Hardly very exciting but it at least brought us more up to date with our finances and the blog.  Nestor may well be the remnants of a tropical storm but it didn’t bring very tropical temperatures.  Later than normal, autumn has definitely arrived which is apparent from the cooler temperatures and the trees finally taking on their autumn colours.

Overnight [Ed: the former Tropical Storm] Nestor’s rain eased but the wind rose.  We had 30 metres of chain out again in 3-4 metres of water which, by the book, is excessive but felt very comfortable with no jarring on the chain snubber as BV danced about in 20-30 knots of wind funnelled at odd angles down the creek.  It had been a useful period to catch up on admin, maintenance and bog entiries but we needed to head south towards Deltaville; we had some mail to pick up and a party to attend!

Jutland Creek, Maryland, USA