Happy Birthday Gloria!

Happy Birthday Gloria!

Wednesday 28th October 2020

As many of you know, Gloria is fantastic. Today is her birthday and we planned to get to Norfolk / Portsmouth, VA so that she could have a fun day, working on her sewing projects. Of course it didn’t exactly turn out like that. I like to tell Gloria she’s the luckiest girl in the world (seriously, I have no idea why she puts up with me). How many people get the opportunity to filter diesel fuel straight after breakfast on their birthday? To her great credit I didn’t hear a single complaint. 

We were able to use our home-built fuel polishing kit to suck out some gunk from the main tank and return the clean filtered fuel. In all honesty, it didn’t look too bad and we still think we are winning in our battle to clean up our fuel system. Not all of the inside of the tanks are accessible from the inspection ports because of baffles designed to minimize sloshing. So in numerous past efforts to drain and clean the tanks we may not have gotten rid off all of the crud stuck to the walls. During our recent bumpy passages (e.g. New York – Delaware Bay) we probably shook loose some dirt, which then got shaken up and sucked into our fuel lines when we got bounced by the wake of the passing cargo ship. Our in-line filters (water separator and fuel filter) would easily remove it, but they don’t get the chance because these clots block the ¼ inch hose before ever getting to the filters, which in turn requires us to literally blow down the pipe to clear it. Anyway we did what we could with the tanks and then went into Ocean Yacht Marina, filled up with fresh diesel and moved onto a slip. Tomorrow we’ll make more effort to try and clean the hoses themselves. 

This afternoon we took a wander through Portsmouth to the local supermarket and picked up some much needed groceries. You might be shocked (as I was) to realize that we finished the last of our beer! We were also out of milk and vegetables, but they rank as lower priority. As you will have gathered Gloria never did get any time to work on her quilting. However, she did get an awesome birthday dinner. Popcorn (lots of it) followed by homemade lemon cake and cherry compote, whilst we watched “The Queens Gambit” on Netflix.

p.s. It turns out that it’s about 550 miles as the crow flies from Somes Sound, ME, our most northern point this year, to Norfolk, VA. A similar distance southwards would put us in Jacksonville, FL.

Mike

36 49.891 N, 76 17.764 W

Looking across the Elizabeth River from Ocean yacht Marina. There is an incredible Naval presence in this area. Naval dockyards and warships are everywhere.

The view across to Norfolk from our marina on the Portsmouth side of the river.