drum point marine.

on monday, labor day, we headed up to solomons.  we were scheduled to have tadhana's aftercooler serviced at drum point marine, a tiny place at the very end of back creek.  ordinarily, one takes a slip at one of the solomons marinas and the tech comes over to your boat and does the work there but we are "special" and drum point marine reserved their one and only "slip," if you can even call it that, at their boatyard  for us so we just went ahead and tied up.  many cruisers want it all at their marinas - swimming pool, wifi, clean bathrooms, well-appointed lounge, etc.  this facility had NONE of that - it's a boatyard - but we brought our own house and as long as there is an outlet to plug into so that we can run the A/C, it's all good.  it was VERY HOT that day and naturally, the one and only outlet available was in use by another boat. no one was around as it was a holiday so we were on our own until the next day.  we had the ability to share the outlet so we just tied into it - it would have been absolutely miserable without A/C! 

the folks at drum point marine have been extremely busy all summer and things are even busier for them now with fall approaching and what should probably have been a 4 to 6 hour job took 4 days while we just sat there and waited. but, as i have mentioned before, solomons is not a bad place to be "stuck." we had a slip and electricity.  both tom and i had work to do and we had bicycles with us this time. what originally would have been a long walk to the grocery store in the heat was an easy bike ride.  we also went to the annmarie sculpture garden and arts center which, although it is located on the water, has no dinghy access.  having the bicycles really changes things - it is very liberating!  there was a bicycle store nearby that we went to because tom's rear tire was a bit soft and they had a high-pressure MANUAL pump that inflated it in no time.  they did my two tires as well and i was completely fascinated by the gadget - it sure beat the drama and three hours it took me to inflate those tires the last time.  the other cool thing about that pump was that it didn't require an adapter for my tires, which is this tiny little thing i have to connect first before attaching the pump.  i'm always afraid i will lose that adapter.  i might have to investigate that pump further...  we also went to the pet store to get consuelo one of those newfangled soft harnesses.  as she gets older, i just feel better when she has a harness on all the time as she sometimes needs help hopping on and off the boat.  the interesting thing is that consuelo no longer seems to object violently to being helped.  it always used to be such a struggle as she would dance out of the way whenever i tried to grab her.  sigh.....  independent dogs, you know? 

in any case, the aftercooler was cleaned and then reinstalled and we left for the choptank river on friday.  the original plan had been to anchor at either la trappe creek or in oxford but we ended up taking a slip at town creek marina in oxford because the forecast was for another hot night, marina queens that we are... but oxford has the highland creamery, an ice cream place, and tom's brother lives there, too.  instead of breaking out our own bicycles, we just borrowed the marina's courtesy bikes and headed out to town.  all i can say is that i definitely missed my 21-speed, 26-inch wheel hybrid schwinn!   it's quite possible that i lost all the calories from the ice cream on our way back to the boat. 

a tribute to the oyster tonger by antonio tobias mendez