By Wednesday, June 19 and Day 38 of our new lives, we were ready to go. All the boat work that we had deemed essential had been completed. Although we still had a long list of things we wanted to do, Summer School was now much safer and more comfortable, and the boat was well prepared for the rigors of cruising, or so we thought. Again we were confronted with the question of where to go. Of course, it was possible to stay at Summit North but our annual lease would soon expire and the monthly rates without such a lease were expensive. We had to make a decision.
We knew that there was a maritime festival at Havre de Grace, Maryland, on the mouth of the Susquehanna River at the northern headwaters of the bay, with festivities lasting from Friday, June 21 through Sunday, June 23. This was not far from our location, only 25 to 30 miles we estimated, and it was in an area of the bay that we had never visited. Havre de Grace was a familiar name to me since my boyhood days but I had never been there, although I had always heard it was a very attractive small town. Our perusal of the cruising guides confirmed this impression, and we decided we would go there in Summer School. Havre de Grace is seldom visited by migrating boaters on the Chesapeake since it is off the main navigational channel at the northern end of the bay. But just the fact that it is at the mouth of the Susquehanna made it an interesting destination for us. This river, we read in the guides, contributes about half of all the fresh water that feeds the Chesapeake, an astonishing fact when you consider the size of the bay and the many large rivers, such as the Potomac, that enter it. A trip to Havre de Grace would be a good shakedown cruise, we thought, and it would introduce us to a small town where we just might find a slip for a month or two. If this was not the case, perhaps this short cruise might at least attenuate our impatience to be off traveling in our boat.
We left after lunch on Friday. It was a clear warm summer day with a brisk northwest wind. As usual we followed the canal to the Elk River, on past Town Point and the mouth of the Bohemia River to where it empties into the bay proper at Turkey Point. Instead of continuing on the main shipping channel to the south, however, we turned to the west toward Spesutie Island and the western shore of the bay, which is off limits to boaters in this area because it is part of the huge military complex of Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Once clear of the extensive shoals that build south from the mouth of the Susquehanna, we followed a marked channel to the north. We were heading into a 20 knot wind which gave us a two foot chop but it was a pleasure to be out in the open traveling on our boat. We followed the channel for eight miles, passing a large Coast Guard boat on our way that also seemed to be heading to the maritime festival. According to our new cruising strategy we kept our engine speed to about 1600 rpm, which gave us a "speed over the ground" against the current and wind of about 6 mph. We arrived at Havre de Grace at 5 p.m. where we took a slip at the Tidewater Marina right in the center of this small town.
Once ashore we found that Havre de Grace was a delight, even exceeding our expectations. It was a good walking town with broad shady streets lined with old and sometimes spectacular stately homes. There were interesting shops, two museums (the Maritime and the Decoy), and a number of good restaurants. We had an excellent and leisurely dinner at MacGregor's overlooking the harbor.
We were well satisfied with our cruise during the day and our evening ashore, but there were two occurrences that marred the whole experience. One was a bout of strong ulcer pains before dinner that forced me to sit on a bench and wait until they subsided. The other was what we found when we returned to the boat at 10 p.m.
I knew immediately that something was wrong as soon as we arrived because there was no seawater discharge from the air-conditioner pump coming from the through-hull fitting on the side of the boat above the water line. It had been a warm evening when we had departed the boat and we had left it closed up with the air-conditioner on. In our absence the air-conditioner had shut off for some reason and the interior of the boat was now stifling. There was no alternative but to change clothes and go to work on the boat to try to find the cause of the problem. The outside temperature had remained high and I knew that sleep would be almost impossible for us without air-conditioning, especially since the interior of the boat was so hot.
I had always felt that reverse cycle marine air-conditioner/heater systems, although they provided central cooling and heating, were unnecessarily complex. They were also expensive to buy, install and operate since they required large amounts of electrical power. (Ordinarily we used two 30 amp. services to power the boat: one for the air-conditioner system and one for everything else!) The system we had on Summer School was typical. It included a main compressor in the engine room where the heat exchange was accomplished with seawater supplied by a pump fed from a through-hull fitting. The compressor circulated the high pressure refrigerant through copper lines to three evaporator/blower units located in the living quarters of the boat. It was the long length of the copper lines, the many fittings and the complexity of the system that had made it so difficult to leak-check the system back in May. And all of the units were very expensive; it would cost thousands of dollars to buy and install such a system on a boat, even a comparatively small boat such as ours. This all seemed ludicrous to me when I considered that the interior space being cooled or heated was considerably less than the space of a normal room in a house. Furthermore the whole system really did not work very well. Using seawater in the heat exchanger meant that the warmer the water (such as in the tropics) the less efficient was the cooling cycle. Conversely, the colder the water became the less efficient was the heating cycle. In fact, if the water were cold enough (below about 45 degrees in our case) the heating cycle would not work at all. Despite all of these disadvantages all boats that I knew that had built-in central cooling systems used this type of system.
Although the interior of the boat was hot, the engine room, when I went below to check the compressor and pump, was sweltering. I found that the compressor still seemed to be operational but the seawater pump had failed. Without the seawater circulating through the compressor it would soon overheat and shut itself down automatically, which was apparently what happened. I would have to wait until Saturday morning to try and find a replacement for the seawater pump. I only hoped that the compressor had not been damaged as well.
We attempted to sleep in the open air that night, up on the bridge on the two long seat cushions. The attempt was mostly unsuccessful.
Luckily the marina had a service department and I was there when they opened on Saturday morning. I was pleased that they had the kind of pump that I needed, but I was shocked at the price, about $230 as I recall. There seemed to be no good alternative so I bought the pump. When I talked to the service manager about my problem he told me that these pumps relied on the seawater to cool them, and that if something interrupted the flow of seawater, the pump would fairly quickly heat up to the point that the interior on the pump would be ruined. And no, he replied in response to my query, there were no temperature or flow sensors with automatic shut-off capability built into these pumps. This was yet one more flaw in the design of these systems, I thought.
I spent the rest of Saturday morning installing the new pump and testing the system. The system seemed to be working properly without any sign of other damage. By late morning the interior of the boat was pleasantly cool. We had an early lunch followed by needed naps.
Later in the afternoon we toured the town including the Maritime Museum, the Decoy Museum, and the Coast Guard ship that we had passed coming in, which turned out to be a large buoy tender that was used on the bay. We were delighted with Havre de Grace and thought that we would like to live there on our boat for a month or two if possible. Unfortunately, though we visited all the marinas in town, none had an available slip for a long-term rental that would be suitable for our boat.
We returned to Summit North on Sunday. Despite the air-conditioner problem, we were well pleased with our little cruise and what we had seen at Havre de Grace. However, this experience did not serve to assuage our impatience to leave Summit North; it increased it. We had a week to find another place, hopefully in an attractive small town, before we would have to commit to Summit North for another month. We thought immediately of Chestertown, which we had enjoyed so much the previous fall. There were two possible marinas there: Kibbler's Marina, near the center of town and located in front of the Olde Wharf Inn where we had such a fine dinner, and Rolph's Wharf, not actually in town but only about three miles down river. On Monday morning we telephoned each, found that slips were available at reasonable monthly rates, and immediately drove to Chestertown. We were disappointed to find that Kibbler's, which was our preference, had only one narrow slip available located right against the bulkhead only a few feet from the windows of the restaurant. Not only would this slip be difficult to get into, but there would be little privacy there and much noise. When we drove the few miles to Rolph's, however, we were quite pleased. It was a small marina in an attractive rural setting right on the Chester River. It would be quiet here, we thought, yet close enough to Chestertown. We selected a slip and arranged to rent it for the month of July.
On Tuesday we began the process of getting ready to relocate. This included giving notice to the marina manager, arranging to leave our car there until we could retrieve it from Rolph's, servicing our bicycles and loading them onto the boat, terminating our telephone service, stopping our mail service until we could get a new address, and a variety of little chores on the boat. By the end of the week all was ready. We departed Summit North on Sunday afternoon, piloting our boat down the C&D Canal perhaps for the last time. We felt the unsettling yet exciting freedom of being vagabonds, knowing only our immediate destination and nothing beyond that. We arrived at Rolph's on Monday, July 1, Day 50. We were beginning the next phase in this new life.
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