The Good, the Bad and the UGLY

As we were trundling south towards the warmth of Florida and the Bahamas, we discussed our itinerary with Dave and Lisa Ke 'Ola Kai. I like to use people's boat names instead of last names as they are more important. They told us the Annapolis Sailboat Show was over and that the corresponding Powerboat Show was to be held the next weekend. Wow! The biggest powerboat show in the whole US!! And we were just a few miles away! It was preordained by the boat gods for sure. We just had to attend.

We pulled into Spa Creek, tied up to a mooring ball and started to tour Annapolis, a pretty cool town. I found out I could use my impressive West Marine credentials (a business card) to attend the VIP part on Thursday and got in three hours of serous study before Sally and I went together on Friday. It was quite the show, with lots of trawlers to tour, many booths with knowledgeable experts, seminars, new products and more. We were in heaven, and so enthralled with the place we didn't take a single picture. We really didn't find anything there we really wanted to take home, except maybe that 40' $500,000 Greenline Hybrid, that is.

We left and moved down to Solomons, Maryland, a beautiful cruising town on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. This is serious sailboat country with all kinds of boats out there enjoying no wind and a beautiful day. So what's bad and ugly? Well a routine maintenance issue turned against us. I've always done all the oil changing on the boat, after watching someone else do it the first time and paying $140 (and furnishing the oil and filters I might add!). And it's really not that hard. This time it was only a filter change, which isn't much of a project. Easy, anyone can do it, no problem....

We fired up the motor to go and Sally yelled that the oil alarm was going. I told her to turn off the engine, knowing way down deep just what I was about to face in the engine room. The gasket on that filter had failed to seat properly, causing the oil pump to squirt out three gallons of oil all over the engine room in those few seconds! There are about eight separate bilge areas on the boat and three of them were completely contaminated with used motor oil. What an awful mess. We pumped it out as best we could and sopped up the rest with special oil absorbing pads and paper towels. It was pretty much what we really wanted to do. So we are still in Solomons. Capt. Jeff