Annapolis

I'm visiting Northern Virginia and decided to go to Annapolis, MD. I plan on going to the sailboat show (Oct 10-14) for a day or two so I thought I would drive over and see what it was like there before the show and crowds. It's a pretty nice area. I parked right by the Harbormaster office building and walked around for a couple hours. I like the old town feel of the area immediately in the area the show will be.

I took a few pictures of the area from my walk. Not much but I do plan to visit again.

 

For lunch, I stopped at the Market House that's next to the city dock and had a falafel sandwich that was pretty good.

 

 

It was nice looking out at the mooring field and seeing all the boats in the area. Walking on the city dock area, I saw a boat with a French flag and a Canadian flag flying from a couple boats and just thought of all the travels they must have had in the past.

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to visiting again. Not just for the boat show but also to walk around town some more.

Wasps

There seems to be quite a few wasps around. Last weekend, I took the mainsail cover off and found a couple mud clumps around, then raised the main sail and found more within the folds of the sail. Today, I went for just a short time and did some cleaning/organizing.

Today, like last week, there was a wasp that was flying in and out. Last week, I just sucked the thing in the vacuum and that was it. Today, I did something different. I wanted to keep things out of the boat. There's also a lot of spiders around too. It doesn't take long for them to build their webs either.

Just as I was wrapping up the cleaning, the wasp I saw today flew in as I was closing things up. I took some green tape I had on hand and used it around the opening of the companionway boards and hatch. This sealed things up pretty good, I think. The opening is about 1/4 inch so anything can fly/walk in as they please.

Here I taped it up on the inside of the cover and outside of the boards.

This wasp I mentioned isn't a small one either so I'm really not comfortable with them flying around me. The two holes in the front of the hatch is for the Nor'sea plate that came with the boat that I will attach after doing some finish work on the wood. So, those two holes are a little too small for the wasp to get through. I made sure to tape around side corners too.

The hatch as a clear (mostly) top that anyone could look down into. It didn't take long, but the thing was flying into the hatch. It really wasn't too happy. It was flying into it and walking around trying to find a way out.

I took some video trying to get a shot of it. it's about 1 1/2 inches long. This is a still picture of the flying visitor.

The few I've actually seen are all about the same size. When it starts getting colder, I plan on going through all over the boat to make sure there is no clumps of mud hiding anywhere. I did find it interesting that one of the clumps I found last week on one of the mast winches had dead spiders inside it. Saving for later?

Creepy little things. Now if only I could get rid of the spiders, that would be great too.

In hopes to at least keep the flying critters out, I'm thinking to make a couple hatch covers. One with Sunbrella canvas material to block some light and another made with a mosquito net I happened to have sitting around the house that will still allow airflow through the boat. I could use some sewing practice anyway.

The previous owner had the boat stored on its trailer in Arizona and it got infested with bees and now in mid Kentucky, I have wasps and spiders. How fun (sarcasm).

UPDATE: I just looked up some info on wasps. I found out that because of the mud clumps, this is actually classified as a "mud dauber".  I read stings are rare but I'm sure it's possible so I don't want to take any chances. I read that there are eggs inside the mud clumps so another good reason to look throughout the boat to get rid of them.

The Nina and Pinta

Over the past month, I was away for work. I got back during the weekend and spent some time at the marina on the boat.

I did some cleaning on the boat. I scrubbed the blue strip on the hull and it looks so much better now instead of a chalky look. I also scrubbed the cockpit as that was looking pretty bad too. I hope to do some more of the deck itself but that will come later. I also raised the main sail and evicted a bunch of spiders and wasps. While down below, there was one that flew in and was starting to make a new home and I pulled out the vacuum and after a couple attempts, sucked him in. With the amount of mud clumps I found around the boat, you can be sure I'm going through everything when it gets colder to make sure they're gone. I need to come up with a way to keep them from getting in.

Visiting the marina are two ships, replicas of The Nina and Pinta, the ships Christopher Columbus sailed to find the Indies. The ships are part of The Columbus Foundation. The site about the ships can be found here: http://www.thenina.com/

They were built in Brazil and some pictures of the build can be found on their site. It was interesting to see these ships. I think most of the people working on the ships are volunteers but there was at least one guy who have been a part of these ships for the past 21yrs, at least for one ship, the other was completed in 2005. I told one of the guys that I expected the ships to be much larger and he said many people say the same thing. I guess it's because these were considered merchant ships and not for long ocean voyages.

Anyway, here is a bunch of photos I took with a GoPro.

That thing with holes is the windlass



They say this smaller boat was made by a 14 yr. old

That's a big tiller