My very clever plan for avoiding moving the car down the east coast while we moved the boat south was just leaving it in the BWI parking lot. We would Uber and maybe rent a car or two as needed, but it would be less hassle than we had on the way up. After we got to Brunswick we could rent one last car while preparing to leave the boat for the rest of the year, then Uber down to Jax, then fly to BWI for the boat show, picking up the car at the airport.
My plan lasted less than 72 hours in the face of Dorian. We clearly had some time on our hands waiting for Dorian to do its thing and finally turn right out to sea. We were stuck in Solomons without a car for maybe a week, and that is about a week too long. We switched gears and one day we picked it up at the Baltimore airport and drove it down to Solomons. We had lunch at Newk's in Annapolis on the way. We used it for a few days, then shuttled it down to the Richmond airport. There we had lunch at a fried chicken place downtown called Hot Chick. Wow. Some of the best fried chicken ever, rivaling Hattie B's and Porch.
I did some review for my upcoming meeting and a little bit of paperwork. We got a hotel one night to enjoy some of the niceties civilization has to offer while fringes of Dorian passed by. It drenched the area and blew some things around, but nothing substantial.
The boat engine had briefly stalled on our approach to the floating dock there in Solomons and I discovered that the auxiliary fuel pump appeared to have stopped working. By itself that should not have been the cause of the stall. It is after all, auxiliary. But it was very nice for fuel polishing, and almost essential for easily swapping out fuel filters, which we were now doing every other tank fill up. We probably need to get our tank professionally cleaned out. I ordered a highly rated pump, and picked up a spare at a local auto parts store that looked a lot like the old one.
Installing the ordered pump required me to lower myself down into the aft lazerette, not my favorite thing as its only opening at the top is small, and I am not. I tweaked my back a little bit doing the pump swap out but the new pump works great, although if the engine is off it sounds like an electric woodpecker. I'll work to be able to replace the next one (or the one after that) without having to get inside the lazerette again.
We did laundry again and some more provisioning, but even after doing our chores and such we still had some time on our hands, some of which I spent admiring the wildlife, acting casual (inside joke).
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