2019 Spring Cruise — Late update

While on Swan Creek we received a call that my mother in law had died unexpectedly and horribly.  This set off a chain of events that I won’t detail too greatly here, but even though it was late afternoon we returned to Hobo and made our way home immediately.  It was a six hour trip into the wee hours of the night, filled with uncertainty and anguish.  

To top off the experience, we motored past Aberdeen Proving grounds where they were doing tracer round firing exercises that were highly visible for miles and very threatening in appearance.  We made it safely past and back to the club at about 1 AM.  We drove home with the dogs and our leftover cold food.  Several difficult and dark weeks ensued.  My mother in law lived in Virginia Beach, and we live in New Jersey so we stayed in Virginia Beach and made many trips up and down the coast by car before realizing the situation was not tenable between arranging dog sitters and trying to balance all of the issues going on in Virginia.  We packed up the dogs and on a very hot very still weekend we took a 27 hour motor from Northeast Maryland to Hampton, Virginia.  

I had always wanted to take Hobo to the area where I grew up, and would have liked to do it under different circumstances.  We arranged to work remotely and found a marina in Hampton that would let us live aboard and had good WiFi on the docks.  There was a small shallow pool for swimming, and the bathhouses and laundry were very nice.  The marina was located on the point of land where Blackbeard’s head was displayed after his execution.  It was, at this point, July.  The average daytime temperatures were around 100, and stinging nettles were abundant.  We set up a small portable room air conditioner and jury rigged electrical with extension cords.  Temperatures inside the boat were rarely more than ten degrees cooler than outside.

The seating arrangements for an 8 hour work day were less than ideal and I often arranged all the available pillows into a “chair” and was still pretty cranky most of the time.  

It became clear that living and working aboard without some serious modifications is not comfortable.  Living aboard would have been totally fine if we had not needed to spend so many hours inside working on computers.  At times I worked with an ice pack on my head. 

After about a month in Hampton, we headed back north through the hottest, stillest, most humid days of the year.  Near Baltimore we skirted the outer bands of a bad storm, watching cloud to cloud lightning that spread for miles.  It was a relief to get home.  

2019 Spring Cruise — Late update

While on Swan Creek we received a call that my mother in law had died unexpectedly and horribly.  This set off a chain of events that I won’t detail too greatly here, but even though it was late afternoon we returned to Hobo and made our way home immediately.  It was a six hour trip into the wee hours of the night, filled with uncertainty and anguish.  

To top off the experience, we motored past Aberdeen Proving grounds where they were doing tracer round firing exercises that were highly visible for miles and very threatening in appearance.  We made it safely past and back to the club at about 1 AM.  We drove home with the dogs and our leftover cold food.  Several difficult and dark weeks ensued.  My mother in law lived in Virginia Beach, and we live in New Jersey so we stayed in Virginia Beach and made many trips up and down the coast by car before realizing the situation was not tenable between arranging dog sitters and trying to balance all of the issues going on in Virginia.  We packed up the dogs and on a very hot very still weekend we took a 27 hour motor from Northeast Maryland to Hampton, Virginia.  

I had always wanted to take Hobo to the area where I grew up, and would have liked to do it under different circumstances.  We arranged to work remotely and found a marina in Hampton that would let us live aboard and had good WiFi on the docks.  There was a small shallow pool for swimming, and the bathhouses and laundry were very nice.  The marina was located on the point of land where Blackbeard’s head was displayed after his execution.  It was, at this point, July.  The average daytime temperatures were around 100, and stinging nettles were abundant.  We set up a small portable room air conditioner and jury rigged electrical with extension cords.  Temperatures inside the boat were rarely more than ten degrees cooler than outside.

The seating arrangements for an 8 hour work day were less than ideal and I often arranged all the available pillows into a “chair” and was still pretty cranky most of the time.  

It became clear that living and working aboard without some serious modifications is not comfortable.  Living aboard would have been totally fine if we had not needed to spend so many hours inside working on computers.  At times I worked with an ice pack on my head. 

After about a month in Hampton, we headed back north through the hottest, stillest, most humid days of the year.  Near Baltimore we skirted the outer bands of a bad storm, watching cloud to cloud lightning that spread for miles.  It was a relief to get home.