Winter on the Chesapeake?

[schoonerdog]

lighthouse is thomas point.

[shazzard]

Live on a 52 irwin on kent island

[hpeer]

We are in Delaware City, not exactly the Chesapeake but connected. 44' steel center cockpit. We spend a week on then a week off.

We have an Espar D4 hot air heater. It has done well. The aft cabin gets chilly but we snuggle into a sleeping bag and agree to not argue. One night was real cold, 6 I think. That night I also used the aft cabin kero bulkhead heater. Got toasty. When here by myself I shut off the aft cabin. Nothing to freeze and it is easier on the Espar.

We have a 1/4" steel hull, so other than the grinding sound, ice is no issue. We have a Krogan and a 34' Nauticat here also who seem to be doing ok.

A few boats in the water, but not live aboard. One older guy regularly does this. He says his sailboat just gets squeezed up in the ice with no problem.

When off the boat we run a West Marine heater that keeps the interior at about 44. When it gets below 20 I make sure to stay on the boat, just in case we loose power. But it is a comfortable 7o here right now, and 16 outside.

[Nicholson58]

Take the mast down and go for indoor heated storage. $5000 in Muskegon.

Its been the coldest winter for a long time here. % ice coverage on Lake Michigan is very high and Lake Superior is around 60 %. Harbors are solid. I think they turn the light houses off when it gets this bad. The tall lighthouse is 70 feet with a 16 foot high pedestal. The Grand Haven light is about 35 and the wire truss is 12 feet above the walk I looked this morning and the ice is 10 feet thick on the base.

Not much reason to stay in the water around here.

With snow all the way to the Gulf, it must be pretty unbearable in Chesapeake.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Take the mast down and go for indoor heated storage.

With snow all the way to the Gulf, it must be pretty unbearable in Chesapeake.

Not so much available around here; I'm not aware of any boat-specific heated facility between Solomons and the C&D Canal (aside from indoor spaces where some of the yards can be doing work inside, during the winter).

Lots of marinas are frozen in, some partially (I think it's 11° just now, and it's been ranging from single-digits to low 20s).

We're having a low low tide just now, so we're sitting on the bottom... de-icer running and no particular ill effects so far. The live-aboard couples in our marina say they're doing fine.

-Chris

[Bluemansailor]

I'm in Philly at the Piers Marine and there are about 45 of us hearty live-aboards. Marina frozen in last night again, probably 3rd time this winter. Most of us now running electric heat, I'm pretty comfy- and we still have water coming out to our boats, it's heated and most of us have heated lines to our boats.

Worst winter here in about 7 years I hear, I've only been here now for 6 months.