25. Annapolis, Kent Island, St Michels MD Area

Left the Solomons and headed north 48 nm to Kent Island – across the Bay Bridge from Annapolis and 20 miles or so north of St Michaels, both areas which need to be explored. Had a one week reservation at Lippencott Marina also to accommodate a doctor’s appointment.

Also while here, one more attempt was made to fix the two air conditioner units that service the below deck staterooms. It’s hard to remember cool dry conditions below. Don’t think the 2 guest staterooms really ever worked consistently since I got the boat and certainly not since the Owl Creek (Ft Myers -early April to mid May) fiasco. To date, besides the so called AC guy at Owl Creek, I have had 7 Dometic authorized and trained techs on board. In fairness, some early complaints also focused on the Pilothouse AC unit and the HPF faults showing due to the mud grounding in Ft Myers. Nonetheless, the techs always, in the ensuing months focused on water flow, clearing lines, chemical flushing, water pump in/out flow etc. and with no results.

The thermostats in the staterooms were funky showing temps going down in 3-5 degree increments every 10-20 seconds until reaching 03 degrees and the climbing in the same way till reaching 80-90 degrees. Since the compressors are cooled by outside seawater, one never expects ice cold air when in hot summertime seas but cooling and most importantly dehumidifying is expected and the salon AC, working well, gave a good indication of what should be expected.

These ac units are like home ac systems which have the ac compressors outside with the air handler, general furnace, inside. My compressors/condensers are all below deck in the engine room while the air handler/blowers are in the living spaces. A week or so ago when the pilot house and salon ac’s were turned “off” but the stateroom ac’s were on, a visit to the engine room disclosed that though it sounded like the stateroom acs were on because the stateroom air handlers were blowing air, the engine room was actually silent and there wasn’t even any vibration from the two stateroom compressors. So the thermostats were sending and receiving signals but those signals were not getting to the compressors.

And so I called another AC guy who was instructed to focus solely on the 2 circuit boards. Sure enough, they weren’t working. One had apparently even been ‘repaired’ at some earlier time in its life by having the thermostat cable actually GLUED to the board. Bottom line neither board was functional and I had 2 new boards installed and a new cable end installed and I have had cold dry air continuously in the staterooms for 5 days now!!!!🥶

About a half hour after leaving the marina at Solomons, it was time to round the point and get back onto the Chesapeake.

There were several fun restaurants a couple of blocks from the marina.

A drive across the Bay Bridge into Annapolis

And to the east is St Michaels, a thoroughly quaint town and home to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. The museum is an 18 acre waterfrontg campus dedicated to how the locals used to live, work and play on the Bay (before running tourist traps😀).

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