palmer cove.

from olverson's, we went back down the yeocomico river to palmer cove, not very far away.  apparently, some people (eric and chris) who live along that cove own a boat that tom and his family had built and eric and tom had been in contact.  palmer cove is very pretty but it is built up and no place to beach consuelo that isn't private property, so it had never been a consideration as an anchorage until now. we were invited to tie up at the home's dock but we declined as anchoring is just so much simpler and more comfortable - one anchor dropped as opposed to four (or more) dock lines tied, tweaked and re-tweaked, not to mention fenders and fender boards. in the meantime though, we were welcome to use their lawn as consuelo's toilet so that worked out pretty well.

consuelo's toilet

we decided to park ourselves for a while as we didn't have to be in st. mary's until monday.  both tom and i had work to do and, of course, the endless boat projects, which are just so much more fun to do when at anchor.  the difference between tom's and my approach to projects is marked - i usually find something lying around that i can use while tom's projects are much more involved, requiring design and engineering and power tools!  they also sometimes require a trip to either west marine or the hardware store and may take several days.  he also often improves on my jury rigging.  we went for our usual dinghy ride exploration expedition and visited a couple of boatyards that tom described as "the place where old wooden boats go to die." pretty sad.  tom's and my take are one and the same when it comes to boats - NO wood on the outside!  yes, they can be very pretty.  no, we don't have the time, the inclination or the funding for the maintenance required.  anyway, consuelo got very tired after all of that, i guess, and wasn't particularly interested in dinner which worried me a little - when has she ever not taken an interest in food??  we were invited for dinner at eric and chris' home and i overruled tom's suggestion that we leave her on the boat because i wanted to keep an eye on her.  she was fine, as it turns out, but like any other child, she made it pretty clear after dinner that she was bored and that it was time to go home.  yes, she has been embarrassing me for 13.5 years, what can i say?  good thing she is so cute. 

the next day, sunday, was picture perfect - you couldn't ask for more spectacular weather or more beautiful surroundings.  it was like going to church - a religious experience.  we had our usual sunday morning pancakes and bacon for breakfast and then opened up the flying bridge which had been covered up this whole time.  days like these are what cruising is all about.

here is the obligatory sunset photo:  

sunset at palmar cove

the only "fly (literally) in the ointment" was that it seems to be midge season.  every morning, the boat was covered with these mosquito look-alikes.  they came at night, attracted by the lights, and although they do not bite (at least!), it was a pain having to clean the dead bodies off the boat every day. if you didn't, they left marks that would be harder to clean off the longer you waited.  the evening we went out for dinner, the transom lights were accidentally left on.  when we dinghied back to the boat, the transom was BLACK with the bugs.  i heard a sound and i thought we had left something running until tom pointed out that it was a collective buzzing from the little buggers!  all three of us stood on the swim platform for a while.  tom unzipped the cockpit enclosure and reached in to turn off the lights and i was waving away in the dark with a paper bag to get them away from the door and then 1-2-3, open door and rush in en masse and slam the door shut!  good grief...  :(

here is a little more information on our bug:

LINK:    chironomidae