On the Road Again or Bridge Over Continuing Troubled Waters

After surviving the Storm of Aug 2, which devastated so much of the beautiful foliage in our area (40 trees down on our property), and enjoying some late but terrific fall colors in Northern Michigan,

we departed on Monday October 26th to get back into the proverbial saddle by sailing the Balia back south for the winter. The intent was to take a few weeks to enjoy the Chesapeake, since our trip home last spring was so rushed, and get to Southport, North Carolina by Thanksgiving; then return to Traverse City for the holidays and back to the boat in February for a few points south then begin the journey back up the east coast and take the alternate route back to the Great Lakes through the Champlain Canal and Montreal.
 As we began our travels our cat Pounce quickly adjusted to hotel life by finding new places for relaxing.

 But alas the sailing god curse was upon the Ruzaks again as two days before we left the charter operator in Maryland reported that the batteries were not holding a charge. So upon arrival Tuesday we have spent the first 3 days here testing the batteries to determine if one or all had a problem and today we purchased 3 new ones.   If all goes well and this is the fix, versus something else draining the batteries; we have decided that we are going to miss our original timeframe for leaving. So instead we will either winter the boat "on the hard" here in Maryland then return next spring to pick up the trip north; or if after Jay installs the batteries tomorrow we discover more problems then we would still leave the boat here to have the yard try to determine what else is going on. Or if all well at just the batteries we may call it quits and ship the boat back to Michigan by truck.
 We vacillate daily between the options but by the early part of next week we will make the final decision, then leaving the inn in competent hands we are going to take the opportunity to travel north to Massachusetts and Maine by car before returning home for the holidays. And what an odd coincidence that the day after we arrive a blimp from the Aberdeen Proving Ground just south of where we are breaks loose and roams for 200 miles west into Pennsylvania wiping out power lines along the way. Is this some electrical anomaly or a balancing of nature forces. Who knows but we are definitely frustrated and apparently our canvas cockpit enclosure has gone walkabout and no one knows where it could be!
 In the meantime we are enjoying the area with a great, albeit expensive, crab soup at the Tidewater Grill while Jay enjoys the north end of the bay scenery on the Susquehanna River.