After the weekend in Philly, Eitan and I returned to the motor yacht to grab our belongings and officially move off of the boat. But where to next? Once we decided we would leave the yacht after our three-month trial period, Eitan serendipitously received a call from a former charter client with a timely proposal. Last year Eitan had captained a charter boat around Long Island Sound for a family and they were interested in doing a similar trip again this year, if Eitan was available. Coincidently, the boat they wanted to charter was currently in Annapolis. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect and we hopped off the motor yacht and onto the chartered catamaran in the neighboring marina. The new plan would be to sail the charter boat up to Connecticut, where the family lived, do some day sailing for a week, then do a week-long trip with the family to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
The new boat is a Bali 4.5, a 45-foot catamaran sailboat. After living in bunk beds for three months, I was excited that we would have our very own room with a full-size bed. The boat is designed for charters and has 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. On our way to the new marina, Eitan mentioned the boat was scheduled to be cleaned in the morning before we head out and he hoped it wouldn’t be a total mess when we got there. I had been on a couple charter boats before and couldn’t imagine leaving a boat very dirty. To my surprise and Eitan’s suspicion, the boat was FILTHY and covered in spiderwebs. It was unclear how long the boat had been sitting there since the last charter, but it looked like the last guest had been covered in mud and possibly murdered. There was dirt and human hair everywhere and some sort of red smears on the walls. Not to mention someone did not flush one of the toilets, leaving a delightful aroma onboard.
Trying not to gag, I cleaned up our cabin and bathroom and made the bed with clean sheets from the charter office. The next morning the cleaning crew arrived and did a very mediocre job. I worked to clean up everything they missed as another crew came by to wash the exterior. Unfortunately, two of the windows leaked and completely soaked the newly made beds in two of the rooms. Eitan asked the charter office if we could pick up some cleaning supplies to clean the boat ourselves along the way to which they replied “that’s not included in the package”. We only had a bottle of multipurpose cleaner and half a roll of paper towels, not even a spare towel to dry off the deck and benches. Clearly off to a great start, we didn’t have time to deal with boat aesthetics now and needed to get underway if we were to make it to Connecticut in time. So, it was lines off and we pulled out of the harbor.
There wasn’t much wind so we motored up the Chesapeake while whistling “On The Road Again” by Willie Nelson. It was great to be back on a sailboat again, and with just the two of us. As we reached the end of the bay, we entered into the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, or C&D Canal. It took a few hours to transit the canal and the trip was filled with a lot of cool bridge crossings. We made it out of the canal around sunset and got ready to drop the anchor. Of course, the anchor chain had no markings and we had no real way of telling how much chain we actually put out. Eitan just rolled his eyes and scoffed “charter boats…”.
We left early in the morning on the outgoing tide and managed to see about 10 knots of speed over the ground, which included a few knots of current going our direction. As usual, Eitan had been watching the weather and was unsure about the conditions in the Atlantic Ocean, which gave me some anxiety. Considering the condition the boat had been kept in, I had little confidence it could survive much swell in the open ocean. We rounded Cape May and headed up the New Jersey coastline and, to our delight, in very calm conditions. It was a long day, motoring 120 miles before pulling into the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway and anchored for the night. Glad to be out of the Atlantic, we had a quick dinner and it was off to bed.
