S/V Veranda

2012-01-23T22:20:00.000-05:00

January 22, 2012.

It's funny how quickly solitude can disappear. Yesterday morning we arrived and were the only boat here and by late afternoon there were 8 boats here along the western side of the cay. This is a huge cay with close to 3 miles of shoreline offering appropriate anchoring opportunities. Four of us are spread out fairly well in House Bay which is over a half mile long. When Sapphire arrived they settled themselves perfectly into the middle of the confines of tiny Spanish Well Bay.

When you're inside Spanish Well Bay there is an ironshore peninsula to your north and south, with a small sandy beach inside the bay where you can have your own private slice of paradise even with other boats sharing the cay. Unless a complete stranger shows up and decides that it looks as if you might be lonely and decides to wedge themselves into the small cove with you.

We were anchored immediately to the south of Spanish Well Bay. So we had front row seats to watch as a late arriving trimaran pulled into the tight confines of SWB. I'll admit that I laughed out loud as I watched above the ironshore as the new masthead settled in right in front of Sapphire as the new guy set his hook. Evidently Mike was able to convey the disappointment they were feeling with the interlopers anchoring directly in front of them in the miniscule cove because an hour later the new guy pulled his hook and moved a mile north.

It hasn't been all anchoring hijinks though. There’s been a lot of catching up with sailors we haven't seen for quite a while at the evening garbage burn/ cocktail hour. Be there or be talked about is all I can say about that. There's been some fishing and even a few welcome fresh water rinses as late afternoon showers have come through.

I know I always spend too much time writing about the hunting gathering that we partake in. (We ate number 84 tonight) One thing that I've been remiss in reporting is the gathering of coconuts. I for one was shocked to find out that coconut didn't actually come from Mounds bars. It grows on trees! Crazy, right? The best part is that when they're ripe they fall from the tree, so no climbing involved.

Of course getting em' open is a whole different story. Sure, I walk upright, I could take the machete and whack the coconut a few times to get rid of the husk but that would be too easy. I prefer the more natural, complete experience. We're hunter gathering, we don't need no stinking tools unless you count large heavy rocks as tools.

After successfully stalking and capturing the coconut you place it on a large stable rock. Then you find the largest rock that you're capable of wielding as a weapon. You kneel down and raise the rock as high over your head as you can and smash it down on the unsuspecting coconut. After the first solid crushing blow you'll note that the coconut didn't even flinch and now your wrists and elbows hurt. WTF? After a frenzy of anywhere from 6 to 26 maniacal blows with the B.F. rock the coconuts outer husk hopefully will develop some minor cracks. At this point you cast aside the rock and you attempt to squeeze your fingertips into the minute cracks and tear the little oblong bastard apart. After a moment of futility you consider going back to the rock until you realize that your arms already hurt too much to try the rock again.

At this point you ask yourself the question “Do I really even like coconut and why can't I feel my forearms?”. But in the Homo Sapien spirit you carry on pulling, wedging and ripping until you tear off one small section of husk. Its about at this time that you realize you've evolved to the point where opening a coconut is a chore. If you were still a Neanderthal, opening the coconut would be as easy as tearing open the packaging on a Mounds bar.

But unfortunately nature has removed from us the ability to bite through a coconut husk. But with a little pain and perseverance you will make progress as sections of the husk begin to peel away. As the last of the husk is torn away you will experience a type of euphoria that has been lost to us through thousands of years of evolution. You will proudly present the small round, freshly peeled coconut to your mate.

She will then take your good ball peen hammer and lightly whack it like a soft boiled egg splitting the inner coconut neatly in half.

She will then pry the sweet white meat out of the coconuts inner shell. The coconut can be eaten as a snack or grated and used to encrust fish, it can be mixed into fudge or used in various baking endevours. Heck, we can even make Mounds bars....

2012-01-23T17:43:00.000-05:00

January 20, 2012.

We still miss you Molly, its hard to believe that a year has already passed.

Its been a pretty good week here in the Jumentos. We've only been able to go hunting for a few hours every third day or so because we can only eat or give away so much. We took our 80th bug of the season the other day so we decided to start paying more attention to fish. Nassau Grouper is out of season until March 1st so of course I'm seeing those left and right.

But I did manage to take 3 Hogfish yesterday including 2 very nice sized ones.

One of our 3 propane tanks ran dry a couple of weeks ago so we decided to send it north on the mailboat for a refill. The Captain C is the small inter-island freighter that serves as this areas “mailboat”. Produce, freight, people and hopefully our propane tank all travel between the cays and islands on the mailboat. The mailboat is bigger than it appears and I had to stand on the dinks tube to reach up and pass off our propane tank to a deckhand. That, along with 20 bucks was the complete transaction. No paperwork, no receipt, nothing. Our tank will now slowly make its way up to Nassau where it will be refilled and then head back to us after visiting Staniel Cay, Black Point and Little Farmers Cay before showing up next week here at Duncan Town on Ragged Island. Lets hope.

At the moment we're one of about 16 cruising boats down here. We woke to 13 knots out of the east so we raised sail and headed 11 miles north to Raccoon Cay. A perfect sail ended with us being the only boat anchored behind the cay. Thats right naked time. We headed in to shore where I burned some garbage and walked the beach while Christy snorkeled the shallows looking for shells and sand dollars.

Its nice to have the place to ourselves and we were working on our “all over” tans when a sail appeared on the horizon. So after about 2 hours of having the cay to ourselves I had to put my “all over” away.

On the bright side it turned out to be our friends on Puddlejumper. Bill & Mara have never been here before so it'll be fun to watch them explore this tropical paradise. Best of all though is that they have a huge freezer so we can kill some shit too....

2012-01-19T22:44:00.000-05:00

January 16, 2012.

The noon weather here today is and sunny with 22 knots of breeze out of the northeast.

A blog reader wrote in with the question “What is a hamburger bean?”. That's pretty much what I said the first time I heard the term “hamburger bean”.

The hamburger is one of several different types of tropical seed. True sea beans are from the family Fabaceae. Some ride the equatorial currents all the way from Africa while others hitch a ride in the Gulfstream from South America and various islands of the West Indies. They are commonly found throughout the Bahamas and even the coast of Florida. It is said that a floating Heart Bean in the Eastern Atlantic led Columbus to believe that there was land yet to be discovered to his west.

The most common of the collectable beans is the Heart Bean. They are usually a brown/burgundy color and shaped like an idealized heart.

They're kinda cool but common enough down here that you could easily pick up hundreds a day so most people who bother only take an unusual or really pretty example.

The Hamburgers are on the next level of desirability. The most common are the browns and the reds.

They wash ashore at the whim of the tide and breeze. Sometimes they're buried in the seaweed and flotsam above the high water mark while other times they're laying right on top out in the open. Its rare, but occasionally a bean will wash ashore as you pass by. They physically resemble the hamburger of Wimpys dreams with a generous meat patty bulging out from between a fresh bun.

A lot of people collect them because it gets them off the boat and forces them to do a bit more walking than they might otherwise. A few of the more artistically talented of our peers turn them into jewelry.

The Hamburgers surface is thin but very hard. When polished with proceedingly finer sand paper the finish is furniture quality and very pretty.

Next up would be the Purse Beans. The purses come in various hues.

They have a fine seam around the circumference and the surface often looks like a fine piece of burled wood. Hamburgers on the beach probably outnumber the Purses 20 to 1.

Even more rare are the Mary's Beans and Monkey Faces.

The Mary's Bean are usually very dark in color and have a cross shaped depression across the top.

They resemble a tiny, burned hot cross bun.

The Monkey Faces take some imagination. They're a small elongated bean that has three holes in it that if looked at optimistically resemble a face.

The Cathy's Bean is among the rarest of the beans to be found down here.

We've walked countless miles of beach and have found only 1 Cathy's Bean. It resembles the purse bean with the biggest difference being the sharp red color of the Cathy's Bean.

The goats here have it tough....seriously

2012-01-13T20:40:00.001-05:00

January 11, 2012.

It's been a bizarre week as far as the local goats are concerned. Most of these southern cays are overrun with wild goats. Once in a while the locals will drop off a guy with a shotgun while they go out fishing. The guy will hunt and then meet them back on the beach at the end of the day with a harvested goat or two.

A week ago one of our friends was out walking with his wife and they came across a goat in trouble. It had one of its back legs caught in the crook of some thick brush. It was lying on its side bleating repeatedly. Only after creeping close enough to try and help did they realize that the goats leg had a compound fracture. It had been trapped for so long that the leg was rotted and had completely fallen apart. After freeing the animal it became apparent that there was no hope for recovery so he used a large rock to dispatch the animal as humanely as possible. He did the right thing but that doesn't really make it any easier.

It's the first time I've heard of something like that taking place down here so imagine my surprise when Christy had a similar experience yesterday. She and Leta were out walking and they were drawn to the small voice of a tiny goat. They found him similarly wedged but with both his back legs caught in the crook of a small bush. Christy said he was only half the size of our miniature Schnauzer, Tucker. She was able to work him out of his predicament and held him while he continued to cry. He seemed fine and once she put him down he headed back off into the undergrowth.

Then today, bizarrely enough we were walking down a path we had taken only yesterday when we were overwhelmed by a stench. It turned out to be a dead goat's entrails, that were completely covered by hermit crabs. The locals must have killed and gutted the goat right there.....

We were still kinda creeped out and when we reached the ocean side beach. One of the first things we saw was a dead baby goat rolling in the surf. I think tomorrow we'll stick to swimming.....

2012-01-10T23:42:00.000-05:00

January 10, 2012.

To recap the last few days. We sailed down to Southside Bay on Ragged Island for a few nights. Our first day there was spent walking the beaches of Little Ragged Island. We found a few desirable sea beans here and there but nothing really stood out until I picked up “the find of the day”.

The Bahamanian Defense Force was probably doing some training here on the island and inexplicably somebody left behind one of their assault rifles.

Its chambered for the widely used NATO standard Hamburger Bean so ammo won't be a problem. Some days I just can't believe my good luck.

The second day at Southside was devoted to hunting. In the morning I took 5 lobster and our first Tiger Grouper ever.

He weighed in at a bit over 6 pounds and turned out to be damn fine eatin'. After lunch we headed down to some out of the way heads that rarely get done. The water was fairly deep but there were so many lobster that I just took the easy ones. If they were tucked in at all I just skipped em' and moved on to the next.

The afternoon in the water was just as short as the morning session and we soon headed home with 6 more bugs and our first Hogfish of the season.

After 2 nights in the fairly rolly anchorage it was time to sail back up to Hog Cay. After the short sail we set the hook and headed in to do a little hiking. While we were gone we had more friends show up in the anchorage so we had a really nice bonfire/ garbage burn/ cocktail hour in the evening.

Plans were made to go hunting today so of course we had to go as well. I can't help it, its a sickness. We've got some friends in the anchorage that don't go in the water anymore so we'll give away most of what we take. And take we did.

I plopped into the water and when the bubbles cleared there was a 3 ½ pounder in a crevice right between my feet. I went down, shot him and handed him to Christy in no time. The quickest lobster record now stands at about 12 seconds. It was that kind of day. A 3 mile round trip in the dink and home in less than 2 hours with 8 more lobsters in tow. I even saw a few more good sized Hogfish but I decided to pass on them.

Our friends are fed, the anchorage is dead calm, tomorrows a new day and I'm still feeling pretty lucky.

2012-01-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

January 7, 2012.

We were anchored in the lee of Hog Cay with one other boat in the next cove north of us. The headland between us hid them from view so it was almost as nice as having our own island. The problem was that I wanted to hunt that cove. With so much island available to either of us I didn't want to encroach on them in their cove.

Its just that the spot they chose to drop the hook is next to one of my favorite lobster holes. Every year I get a bug or two and maybe even three out from under this one small rock. There’s a long vertical wall with very little cover so any lobster in the area seem to hide under MY rock. Imagine my surprise when they upped anchor and moved. Honey, lets go swimmin'.

My rock sits in 4 feet of water and is shaped like a large coffee table. One end provides excellent shelter but you can see under it from side to side for 75 % of the rock. As I approached I could see several antenna and a multitude of legs against the backdrop of light coming under from the other side of the rock. There was a nice 3 pounder right in the opening with more bugs behind him. I lined it up like a pool shark and took what turned out to be a pair of 3 pounders with the first shot. After that it was like shooting fish in a barrel. I had to wait for the sand from the previous bugs struggle to settle but once I could see again it was one lobster after another.

It turned out that there were 7 lobster under my rock. I took 5 and let a small one run away. That left one more stuck way up inside in the back. I could see both of his antlers completely but had no shot at his body. He was definitely the biggest of the bunch. I tried teasing him out to no avail. We left and swam the rest of the wall and came back 30 minutes later with no change. He thinks hes patient, I'll show him patience.

Okay okay, I'll admit it it, I have no patience. I found that if I wedged my arm and head into the hole I could almost, sorta keep the snorkel tip above water. This enabled me to grab him by both of his antlers. I figured I'd just whip him outta the hole and it would be “game over”. It turned into a stalemate as he was rock solid as he wedged himself into place. He wanted no part of the whole being whipped out into the open thing. I had to take slow shallow breaths as sometimes the snorkel pulled air while as often as not it pulled water. Finally one of antennas broke off. I needed the antenna to keep track of where he was beneath the rock so I grudgingly let go before I broke the second one off.

When I went to pull back from the hole I found that my mask or snorkel was stuck in the opening. I couldn't free myself until I stripped off my mask. I thought I heard him snickering from under the rock when I pulled free and when I surfaced Christy was definitely laughing. Round one to the crustacean.

I regrouped and used a small bent stick to reach around him and poke him in the butt. Its a little known fact that lobsters are raging homophobes. He instantly stepped forward and spun around to see who had snuck up behind him. Mistake. And now hes dead.

All in all we saw 10 lobsters. We let 3 wee ones go, I missed one and we took 6 for the one way ride to the pressure cooker.

Who asked about sharks....

2012-01-08T17:31:00.000-05:00

January 6, 2012,

Its been an interesting couple of days. We've done a lot of hiking in the pursuit of sea beans, sea glass and shells. We've also been in the water a bit and had two interesting shark encounters.

The other day when we were at Raccoon Cay a 7 foot Reef Shark swam into view. Visibility was excellent at probably better than 100 feet. I was working a coral head looking for lobster while keeping one eye on him as he lazily meandered my way. At 20 feet he had my full attention as I floated up and bobbed at the surface. I take each shark encounter individually and this guy was just cruising through the hood so I wasn't worried. His body language was mellow but my concern did grow as he continued to come straight at me and finally passed directly under me in 9 feet of water. My first thought was “Wow, that was SO cool” and then he turned and did it again. The second time it had lost some of its luster. Fortunately Christy was in the dink by now and roared over and chased him away.

Then yesterday I wanted to swim an area I've never done before. I had a pretty brisk breeze opposing a decent amount of current and as a result the water was really stirred up. The area is pretty shallow and the visibility sucked. There was a ridiculous amount of sand suspended in the water. I could vaguely make out the shape of coral heads at 8 feet away. Trying to find either fish or lobster was waste of time so after 20 minutes of swimming through this shit I was just about to get out of the water when I practically ran head on into a 10 foot shark. I was looking down to my left when I looked up and he was right there, 4 or 5 feet in front of me. Evidently I startled him and he definitely scared the shit outta me because both of us had a mini stroke. I had no inkling that he was there until his sudden movement as he exploded away from me.

He turned 90º to me and darted away before turning again doing a frenetic half circle around me. I jumped straight from the water into the dink without ever touching the tube on my way over the side. Its amazing what terror can do for your ability to defy gravity. Needless to say, my day in the water was over. We went home and Christy thawed some ground turkey for Mexican while I cleaned the shit stains out of my wetsuit.

2012-01-05T22:13:00.000-05:00

January 5, 2012.

Happy Birthday Christopher.

We survived the front. The predictions were spot on and we had quite a bit o' wind for a day and a bit. Right after listening to Chris Parker in the morning we decided to get up and underway for a short hop to Hog Cay. Its only 9 miles and with good breeze we covered the distance in no time.

Hog Cay is the island where one of our Miniature Schnauzers, Molly, passed away last year. We carried her body to a very remote ledge on a prominent ridge line that overlooks most of the cay. There’s not much in the way of topsoil here on the islands so instead of burying her below ground we built a large rock cairn on top of her remains. Next to her cairn we left a small solar powered light like you'd have along the sidewalk by your home. It was kind of like her own eternal flame just like JFK. I'm sure when the people that run Arlington National Cemetery read this and calculate what they've paid for natural gas for JFK's eternal flame over the last fifty years they'll be switching to a solar garden path light as well. Anyway....

This past year Hog Cay took a big hit from hurricane Irene with sustained winds above 100 miles an hour. I expected the “eternal” flame to have been blown away and even though the rocks we used for the cairn were pretty big I figured I'd be doing some rebuilding. There’s no path to the the ledge so the climb is a bit challenging. When I finally reached the summit this year I almost fell right back off the hill. Everything was exactly as we had left it.

Everything, even the 4 dollar Walmart garden light. The entire fuel dock on Long island was destroyed by Irene and here at the top of the hill our monument to our wee dog survived. Go figure.

Of course this leaves me with only one option. Another business opportunity. The Veranda Heights Internment System. A family member passes away, you bring em' to the Bahamas, I cover them up with a pile o' stones, you pay me some money (4 bucks extra if you want the garden light) and your loved one rests in eternity in a hand built, hilltop monument. I still have to work out some of the details but the concept is solid.

2012-01-04T17:24:00.001-05:00

January 4, 2012.

Since we're due to have excessive wind for a full day this would be one of those days where the wind generator really earns its keep. So of course last night it started to act up. Crap.

I was up and had the wind generator sitting on deck first thing in the morning. The wind was still light but I could actually see the front bearing down on us. I disassembled the wind generator and found that the slip rings were filthy causing intermittent connection problems. I lightly sanded the rings and slapped everything back together as quickly as possible.

Removing or replacing the wind generator on its mounting pole is a bit of a pain in the ass. I have to stand on the top of the stern pulpit with my chest barely leaning into the radar arch. I can't lean into it enough to be real steady. So in calm conditions its a delicate balancing act. The wind was starting to build when it was time to reinstall the genny in its place atop the pole. The boat was just slightly beginning to rock but it was enough to keep me from being able to stay in place so Christy had to stand behind me and lean into me to keep me pressed into place while I maneuvered the generator back on top of its pole. Its all about the teamwork. Kinda like the Giants beating the shit out of the Cowboys when it mattered.

Its now late afternoon. The wind generator is working fine, the wind is blowing about 28 knots and there’s a turkey breast baking in the oven. Life is good, hell, it even smells good.

2012-01-04T17:18:00.000-05:00

January 3, 2012.

We left Flamingo Cay at 0700 on a perfect 15 knot beam each. Sailing a little slower by putting in a double reef allowed us to time our crossing of the infamous Nurse Cay Cut. The Cut is a stretch of 15 miles of water that you definitely want to cross with the wind and tide in agreement. The wind veered a bit turning our beam reach into a close reach but it was still a spectacular sail over agreeable seas.

Even though we were arriving on Sunday we were already planning ahead for Tuesday. On Tuesday there’s a front scheduled to blast through with 24 hours of wind between 20 and 30 knots pretty much straight out of the north. We planned to weather the front in Man O' War bay on the southeastern side of Raccoon Cay. So since we were picking tonights anchorage for basically one night we decided to try a new one.

We anchored in a small bay on Raccoon to the south of Pimlico Cay. The bay is full of fairly shallow coral heads so we carefully wove our way in through the heads and close to shore. Since we were anchored before 1400 hours we decided to hit the water and see what we could come up with for dinner. We had given away the remaining lobster we had onboard before we left Georgetown so we decided see if we couldn't find more. An hour later we were back aboard with 6 lobster without ever moving more than a hundred yards from the boat. Its good to be back.

On Monday after an extremely long hike that yielded 40 Hamburger Beans we pulled the hook to move over to Man O' War bay. Its a trip of just over a mile and color us surprised when we came around the corner and found a trio of boats already there. Night Hawk, Sam The Skull and Countess Cosel had all just arrived with the same plan.

We said our hellos and decided to hit the water for a little swim around the anchorage.

After another 6 bugs the freezer is now full, we're settled in nicely and awaiting tomorrows weather.

2012-01-04T12:43:00.000-05:00

December 31, 2011.

Happy New Year everyone. We hope the new year brings health and happiness to everyone unless you're a racist, a Muslim extremist or a televangelist.

We pulled the hook in Georgetown at 0630 and motored slowly south through Elizabeth harbor. Our destination is the Jumentos and there are a few options when leaving Georgetown. If you have the tide in your favor, a shallow draft vessel, calm conditions and a bit of nerve you can take the shortcut through the Hog Cay Cut. Or you can take the traditional 35 mile trip to Long Island and wait for a favorable breeze to send you off to the Jumentos or......

You can just kinda cram it all into one long day. The catch is that you don't want to burn a whole lot of diesel heading to the Jumentos. We burned about 4 gallons of fuel before a light but favorable breeze filled in. So 2/3 of the way to Long Island we turned towards the Comer Channel and the gateway to the Jumentos. With only 6 knots of wind we were sailing between 2 and 3 knots as we gently moved along on dead flat seas. We opted to drop the hook shortly after completing the Comer Channel about a half mile off the channel. We were in 9 feet of water in the middle of the banks with the nearest land about 3 miles to the north. It was a calm night at anchor but we were both surprised by the number of local fishing boats passing by in the dark.

On Saturday we had a bit more wind so we easily covered the 35 miles to Flamingo Cay. The nice thing about being anchored in the middle of nowhere was that we were able to sail off the hook and didn't have to start the engine until we anchored for the evening.

In a weird twist of fate, Flamingo Cay is the place Christy & I spent last New Years Eve. Last year we spent Christmas in Pipe Creek on the fabulous First Edition, then we waited out a front before running down to Black Point and doing an overnighter down the west side of Great Exuma to Flamingo.

This year we had to go to Georgetown so we dragged our feet in the Exumas, spending at least 10 more days there than needed. Sapphire had friends flying in on December 28th and they were willing to bring small items that anyone might need. So since we had to be in Georgetown for Christmas anyway we had them bring us an unlocked air card for the computer. We ordered it and had it shipped to their home and they brought it with them. We spent an hour at the Batelco office getting it hooked up and now we can get online almost any place in the Bahamas where we have a phone signal.

The point I was trying to make was that last year we pretty much roared down here. This year we've been static more than we've been moving and still, we have the same tiny anchorage at Flamingo Cay all to ourselves on New Years Eve.

See a doctor.....

2011-12-29T13:49:00.000-05:00

December 28, 2011.

We're anchored as close to shore as possible. When we returned from an afternoon of shelling we found that we had a new neighbor. Unfortunately, they have an embarrassing issue. You know, a social disease, like gonorrhea only worse, it was a ridiculously loud wind generator.

The Air X and the Air Marine wind generators make great power when the wind blows. The odd thing is that some of them are shockingly loud while others aren't really too bad. Our friend Roland has one and its not too bad until the wind hits exactly 28 knots. At 28 knots it sounds like somebody has thrown open the gates of hell and every demon and fury within has come shrieking out. It actually makes you duck as you can't imagine that pieces of it aren't hurtling at you.

The blade profile generates some of the noise while the bulk of the noise comes from the blades “feathering” in an effort to slow the thing down. I've seen aftermarket blades that do an amazing job of quieting them down so there is something that can be done about the noise.

Our new neighbors generator mount ensures that his generator will never be one of the quiet ones.

Instead of the pole being vertical, it leans aft at about a 15 degree angle. So rather than the wind generator being level and facing the breeze it looks “up” through the breeze. This leaves the thing constantly shrieking as its always on the verge of trying to feather itself. Its crazy how loud this thing is even in only 12 knots of breeze.

As an unexpected bonus they also have the loudest inboard diesel generator EVER. The thing barely pumps any water and the exhaust note comes through practically dry and pounds down onto the surface of the water and as an added bonus there’s an echo. Its just crazy how loud this boat is. Oh look, they don't use an anchor light either. Perfect.

So what I'm trying to say is that if you have VD you wouldn't be welcomed with open arms at the weekly neighborhood orgy. You made the choice to have unprotected sex with a prostitute and now you're saddled with a ridiculously loud case of Cupids Itch. So if you have The Clap, anchor out near the edge of the group instead of right in the middle. Nobody else should be expected to bear the consequences of your decisions.

Alpha Mike 1 standing by......

2011-12-26T17:15:00.001-05:00

December 25, 2011.

Happy Birthday Ashlee & Jesus.

On Saturday morning I was awakened by the sound of Santa and one of his elves arriving by dinghy. But then I realized that Santa doesn't have a dink and it was only the Savages dropping by EARLY to drop off a gift bag including a very special lobster hat which I will probably never take off.

On Sunday the official Georgetown Christmas dinner celebration was a huge meal planned for noon. Tables were set up for 5, 6 or 7 boats per table. With each table being responsible for the food at their own table. This seemed like a pretty good plan as there was no huge “chow line” for people to wait in. Each table was left to their own devices as to what the menu included and who was responsible for what. It sounded like fun but we skipped it.

We had Christmas dinner with Fine Lion 2 years ago and since they're here as well we decided to get together and do it again. Along with the crews of Sapphire and Alibi II we all descended on the good ship Fine Lion for the afternoon. Everybody brought a portion of the meal and once again it was a meal to remember. There was ham, beef tenderloin, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, Caesar salad, hot rolls, stuffing and apple crisp for dessert.

We were there for hours and we spent the entire time either eating or laughing.

I hope everyone got to spend their holiday eating good food with people they enjoy.

2011-12-26T16:17:00.000-05:00

December 24, 2011.

We're still hanging around in Georgetown. We've been to town and successfully extended our immigration status. Since we were coming here to Georgetown to take care of immigration we decided to have a small electronic doodad shipped in. The first weather window after its arrival, we're outta here.

My nonexistent love affair with Georgetown continues. For a lot of people Georgetown is “the” place to be, I'm just not “that” type of person. At the moment there’s a hundred boats here but in another 6 weeks there might be 300. It's already too crowded and don't get me started on the radio traffic.

Monday on the morning radio net a guy proposed having a Wednesday night cocktail hour at Sand Dollar Beach where he,and we, are anchored. Why it has to be two days away I dunno, maybe his ice maker is slow. On Wednesday morning he got on the radio and canceled “his” event as he had determined that it was too windy. Too windy to go drinking? Seriously? “his” event? Really? I had no idea that we were all under his supervision. Needless to say he was ignored. The crews from several boats were enjoying each others company when the guy actually pulled his hook and left. That'll teach us. Control freak.

We've been to a couple of evening beach cocktail events and I really do enjoy seeing old friends and meeting new people. It's just that I prefer my groups to be smaller. We had one such event just yesterday. Ten of us brown bagged our lunch at the secluded beach at the northern end of the harbor.

We sat in the shade of the enclosure and chatted for a while over lunch. One by one people drifted away and wandered down to the water.

We all ended up sitting in the dead calm, neck deep water and just talked. We sat there and wallowed for hours, it might be the best time I've ever had in Georgetown.

2011-12-21T08:42:00.001-05:00

December 19, 2011.

Happy Birthday Allyson.

We had a small window of decent wind from a good direction so at 0700 we headed out the cut at Cave Cay and into Exuma Sound. The trip to Georgetown is a jump of a bit more than 30 miles. The remarkable thing about this little jump is that we'll be able to do some deep sea fishing for the majority of the trip. The water along this route is between a few hundred to a few thousand feet deep.

While Christy and I have the whole spearfishing down pat we still don't have much of a clue so far as the whole rod and reel thing goes. In the past we've caught one tuna, one Mahi Mahi, one Sailfish and a few Cero. Considering how much time we've spent dragging various lures around we haven't caught shit.

Our friends Jay & Di sold their cruising boat this past year. They're now touring the country via motor coach so they felt they had no need for their various deep sea fishing bits and pieces. They generously bestowed several pieces of gear upon us including what would turn out to be a magical lure.

I tied on one of our new lures and dropped it over the side. I was paying the line out to leave the lure trailing 150 feet behind the boat. It wasn't even played out yet when it got hit. Fish on! It ended up being a small Mahi Mahi of about 5 ½ pounds.

That pretty much set the tone for the day an hour later we took a 44 incher that I had to gaff. When I gaffed him I hit something arterial and there was blood everywhere.

We land them on the side deck and then after subduing them I walk them to the bow to fillet them so I can use the anchor washdown to clean up afterwards.

There was blood the length of the boat.

Twenty minutes after cleaning up as best I could we took a 36 incher. This one got hit by a Barracuda as Christy reeled it in. We did get the entire Mahi although he was a little worse for wear when we got him onboard.

Mike & Kathy on Sapphire were trailing 3 lures at the same time and ran through a school of Mahi and scored simultaneous hits on all 3 lines. After landing the trio they caught one more before they were through. I think there were about 18 boats strung out over a ten mile stretch and I heard 15 Mahi Mahi taken. Nice day, actually magical.

We arrived at Conch Cay Cut at noon at the head of the pack. This cut always makes my ass clinch a bit, even when its decent out. You come in a large gap between breakers both to port and to starboard. As soon as you're past the breakers you turn hard to port and travel a half mile just inside the breakers, parallel to them.

I dunno, breakers to port and a reef to starboard, I just hate that section.

After dropping the hook at Sand Dollar Beach we scrubbed the topsides as best we could before settling in to an afternoon of doing nothing. We'll be here through the holidays before continuing south.

2011-12-17T16:59:00.000-05:00

December 17, 2011.

Yesterdays 6 lobsters brought the season total to 22. The weather wasn't the greatest today so we farted around a bit before deciding to do a little hunting. The tide and breeze were both coming in so we decided to drift dive the cut before the tide changed.

The cut at Cave Cay is deep as hell. The center is every bit of forty feet deep and can be a bit intimidating as you rocket along on the tide. The southern edge has a awesome vertical wall and the tide at the edge is a little easier to deal with. The vertical wall is probably 25 feet tall and composed of one shelf on top of another. There are even walled canyons that angle off towards Musha Cay.

The surface was a little rougher than Christy would prefer so she manned the dink while I slipped into the water to reconnoiter. Immediately I was surrounded by a school of Spotted Eagle Rays lazing about. There were some the size of a twin bed and pretty special to see. I saw several more fish that were just too large to even consider shooting (Last years broken spear event)as they'd probably break my spear and beat me to death.

I was in the water for about 5 minutes when I came across number 23. Actually, Mr. 23. I was descending near one of the walls when I spotted an antenna sticking out of a crevice. I cocked my spear and angled towards the opening. I grabbed the rocky ledge just above the opening and swung my shooting arm and shoulder under the ledge. And nearly shit myself.

He was massive, he looked at me as if to say “what?”. I got a good shot that ripped diagonally through his body. I ripped him out of the hole and headed up to the dink. Christy grabbed one of the other spears and was about to hand it to me when I said “ I think we're done” and then showed her the catch of the day.

I've taken more impressive lobsters before but never one this heavy.

He weighed in at 7 pounds 12 ounces. Thats not a dessert plate that his tail is on thats a full sized dinner plate.

We're gonna need more butter.....

Cave Cay

2011-12-16T20:19:00.001-05:00

December 16, 2011.

We woke to a pleasant breeze outta the east north east so it was time to finally bid Big Majors Spot adieu. We hoisted the main, pulled the hook and sailed out of the anchorage. As soon as we were pointed in the right direction we let out half of the genoa and headed out around Harvey Cay and turned south.

We were content to be a bit under canvassed as we rode a favorable breeze south at between 5 ½ to 6 ½ knots. We soon passed Black Point and the half dozen boats anchored there. Then we slid past White Bay and the easily recognizable landmark, the Sand Castle.

Its a beautiful home that's designed to look like a sand castle. There were another 7 boats anchored nearby.

After a very nice 22 mile day under sail we stopped before noon at Cave Cay. Cave Cay was one of the first “off the beaten path” anchorages that we stopped in several years ago. Most people head out into the sound at the Galliot Cay cut but by continuing on for another mile we found the little chunk of bliss, Cave Cay.

Right after lunch we were in the water and after an hour and a half we were headed back to the boat with a half dozen lobsters. Then I fired up the laptop and made a pleasant discovery, wifi! We're anchored about a half mile north of Musha Cay and they broadcast a pretty strong wifi signal.

Since they were nice enough let us use their wifi Christy did some internet research and found that Musha Cay is owned by David Copperfield. Evidently pulling a rabbit out of a hat pays a lot better than I had envisioned. Christy's time on the internet found his website promoting the Cay as a high end get-away. When I say high end I'm not kidding. The advertised price for a stay for you and up to eleven of your closest friends is $37,500 per night. Four night minimum! The link will take you to their excellent website, it really does look quite spectacular.Musha Cay Who knows, maybe once my Energy Circle takes off we'll be hanging with Oprah and Dave on Musha Cay. In the mean time we'll have to be content watching the same sunset, eating lobster. If you do decide to drop the 150 large on a long weekend at Musha be sure to tell them that Veranda sent you..........

2011-12-15T16:01:00.001-05:00

December 14, 2011.

Yes, we're still hiding. 25 knots was the norm for today so I did some boat chores. Just not boat chores on our boat.

A friend was having trouble with his watermaker. It was sucking air from somewhere and it was screwing up the whole magical process of turning seawater into drinking water. I tightened every hose clamp within a three mile radius and it only made things a little better. Then I realized that one hose just before the boost pump was deforming. The little boost pump was actually pulling a vacuum and collapsing the hose. That meant there had to be a blockage between the boost pump and the water inlet.

The seacock for the raw water was on the other side of a bulkhead and I hadn't seen it. It turned out that the seacock was an inch and a half that was necked down to 1 inch, necked again to ¾ of an inch before being reduced one more time to a ½ inch and THEN it went through a sea strainer. So anything small enough to fit into the original 1 ½ inch opening could theoretically slip down the hose until it found a diameter that was too small for it to fit through. But what are the chances of that happening.....evidently a lot better than you might think. Sure enough I found a damn Lincoln Log™ firmly wedged into one of the reducers. Once it was removed and the watermaker actually was presented with some sea water the magical process was once again happening like it should.

After that it was on to another boat. I met this guy the night before, he was looking for help because his 50 foot trawler wouldn't start. Hes out on the hook with twin Detroit diesels and a 20KW generator and none of em' will start. He only recently bought the boat and didn't seem too familiar with the boats systems. Even knowing that, I was still pretty surprised when I headed down into his engine room.

There were the starting batteries sitting in a great battery box with complete access. Nothing unusual about that but what immediately caught my eye was the fact that sitting there on a shelf was an automobile type battery charger. It was hooked to the batteries and plugged in to the wall. I said “Cap'n, where are you getting the power to run that charger?” Because I already know that the generator isn't running, the engines won't start and unless hes got a mile and a half of extension cord run over to Staniel Cay there might be something supernatural going on here. He answered “ From the inverter”. Huh, the inverter.

I'm not the brightest bulb on the holiday tree but I can pretty much instantly envision this little amp circus. The inverter takes DC and turns it into AC which runs the battery charger which takes the AC and turns it into DC to charge the batteries and then the inverter takes DC and turns it into AC which runs the battery charger which takes the AC and turns it into DC to charge the batteries and then the inverter takes DC and turns it into AC which runs the battery charger which takes the AC and turns it into DC to charge the batteries as my friend Buzz Lightyear would say “to infinity and beyond!”.

This method of charging is called an “Energy Circle”, often referred to as a “black hole of energy” and sometimes shortened to “Amp Hole”. Not to be too technical but the mathematical formula is something like AC ÷ DC × DC ÷ AC × TIME × CHARGER INEFFICIENCY ± √ INVERTER INNEFICIENCY = dead batteries pretty f'ing quick. I eventually got the boat started but this lesson in alternative physics got me thinkin'.

When we get back to the states I'm gonna look into building a huge battery bank that I can combine with the largest inverter ever made all used in conjunction with a battery charger of immense proportions. By my yet unfinished calculations this set up will provide me with a power excess in the 70 million megawatt range. I can sell this power and within 3 weeks should have the necessary funds to build a second set up much like the first. From there its 4 and then 8 of these money makers. I'll be able to take existing amps and multiply them by themselves in this cutting edge equipment that I'll call "AMPlifiers". Its all so neat and clean, its amptastic!

Of course, with so much cheap electricity, fossil fuels will go unneeded. The middle east will revert to the stone age without our petrodollars and we'll all be driving Jetson like electric vehicles for practically nothing. Nuclear power will be a farce and investment in solar and wind power will come to a screeching halt. Why bother, they can't compete with an Energy Circle. I can't believe nobody has thought of this sooner.

Naturally actual construction won't begin until June of 2012 just in case the Mayans turned out to be correct about the world ending in May. This delayed start will give you the time to liquidate your holdings so you'll have plenty of cash when this obvious investment opportunity is ready. Who wants to be the first to pour some money into this cutting edge Energy Circle technology. I've already got the company logo.

In the meantime I'll be finishing up the planning as soon as I recharge my calculator.

2011-12-13T22:26:00.000-05:00

December 13, 2011.

The luck of the draw. That pretty much sums up what every year often boils down to when talking about the weather. These last 5 years have been very varied in how well the weather has treated us during the cruising season in the Bahamas.

The first 2 years we were down here the weather was akin to what tropical sailing dreams are made of. 10 to 15 knots of warm breeze outta the east for days on end. The clocking cold fronts would come through every few weeks with the regularity of a train schedule. It really was a very special time.

Three seasons ago the weather was technically speaking, pure shit. In the states there was snow in the Carolinas, freezing temperatures in Miami and noteworthy blizzards in the northeast. Down here in the Bahamas things were better but by local weather standards the year sucked. Significant cold fronts were coming through every 4 or 5 days. Run and hide a day ahead of time, swim and hunt before the front arrived, sit on the boat and read for a day or so as the front passed through and then what? The next front was often due to hit in 4 days. Do you head out for a day or so and then return to your hole to repeat it all again. Or do you just sit in the safety of your hidey hole and just wait for the next front to arrive and pass? If that had been our first Bahamas experience I don't know that we would have ever come back.

Last year was another very nice season but this year has been something new altogether. WIND. Not necessarily from a bad direction but the intensity has been limiting what we can do.

When we were in Nassau we wanted to head southeast but even though the winds were outta the northeast they were hovering at more than 25 knots. So beam reach or not we hid until the wind dropped below 20 knots. But then it had also come around closer to the bow and forced our hand to where we could go. After we made our break the winds built again right away and pinned us at Normans Cay. The wind finally veered enough that we lost our protection and had to run before it down to Big Majors Spot. It was a great day of sailing but we've been fairly well pinned down since then.

After 6 nights or so at Big Majors we made the 8 mile sail south to the settlement at Black Point. After 2 nights there we made a short hop north to Bitter Guana. We had never dealt with Iguanas before and the double bonus was the fact that we were there alone for 2 nights. After that bit o' fun we jumped back up to Big Majors.

I shouldn't really complain because theres been plenty to do.

Yesterday we dinghied in to Staniel Cay and enjoyed a meal at the yacht club and then walked around the cay a bit. There’s also been some swimming

and a few beach get togethers in the evenings including Rolands 75th birthday party tonight.

Its only Tuesday but all 12 boats here in the anchorage are praying that the pleasant easterlies forecast for this weekend come to fruition. Right now the wind is pretty steady at 25 knots outta the northeast. We'd like to jump out into Exuma Sound and the cuts have been ferocious for days. So we'll be here for a few more days, who knows, maybe tomorrow night we'll burn some garbage....

2011-12-12T10:27:00.000-05:00

December 9, 2011.

We went for a mile swim today. We took a 2 pound lobster as soon as we hit the water and the rest of the swim was spent looking at every rock and piece of coral we saw. One is better than nothing so we headed home for lunch. I didn't have any trouble with my ears so it seems that Christy's magical cure did the trick.

After lunch we set out to find some fabled ocean side beaches to the south. Again we found ourselves walking along a fairly clean beach. No flotsam or jetsam, pretty much nothing. Unlike other places we've been, I guess the currents just don't hit this section of the Banks like it does in other places.

Speaking of junk on the beach. As you know from past postings, a lot of the ocean side beaches are covered with the flotsam of mankind. In the past 5 years it would be fair to say that we've seen 10,000 shoes washed up on shore. You'll see a fairly distinctive shoe and think to yourself “I think I just saw the mate to that one, but where? Was it earlier or was it yesterday, was it even this island?” A few days ago, Bill from Alibi II removed all doubt when he found a matched pair of sneakers.

Anybody need a pair of used sixes?

One of the cool things about being behind the small cay between Black Point and Staniel Cay is that were just off the highway.

The workday must end for everyone at 1600 because by 1615 its one small speed boat after another loaded with folks headed home from work in Staniel.

2011-12-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

December 8, 2011.

The anchorage was the calmest of any spot we've stopped this season. We woke to light winds and the promise of a sunny day. After breakfast we traced down an electrical problem with our fridge. It turned out to be a bad ground connection but was quickly fixed.

We dinghied in towards shore and slipped into the water to do a little hunting. The bottom was mostly rocky but offered decent protection for lobsters so we were optimistic. The water was less than 8 feet deep for several hundred yards. Once we reached deeper water my ears started giving me problems. I took a lobster in about 10 feet of water but then the water started getting deeper. We were getting swept along by the outgoing tide and soon found a Nassau Grouper in the 15 pound range. He's out of season and I just couldn't bring myself to drop the hammer on him. Part of it was trying to keep my Karma intact and the other part was that my ears were hurting to the point that I was getting nauseous. Hiding near the base of the very next rock was a huge Black Grouper. He is not protected so I dropped down to give it a go. My head was pounding, I was feeling queasy and even though he was hiding under a fairly small rock I just couldn't put forth the effort needed to take him. It was gonna be at least 2 or 3 dives, fighting a pretty big current, I just didn't have it in me. Staying in the water was going to be a waste of time so we hopped back into the dink and headed home.

After lunch I popped a decongestant, Christy poured some magical crap in my ears and I took a nap. After an hour I was feeling better so we headed in to shore to meet the iguanas and do some beach combing.

There are 3 cays that I’m aware of in the Exumas that have populations of wild iguanas. There’s Allen Cay, Bitter Guana Cay and Leaf Cay.

This was our first stop at any of them. The iguanas are cool as hell. When you reach the beach they come storming out of the brushline. The bigger ones are every bit of 3 feet long. I brought my iguana stick and they sensed my willingness to use it so they were only a bit aggressive with us but they did seem to enjoy beating the shit out of each other.

After communing with the wildlife for a bit we headed across the cay to the ocean side in search of some beachiness. We found a pretty nice tidal pool surrounded by acres of ironshore.

After walking for a bit we did find a series of small beaches that were actually quite clean and yielded only a few beans and some seaglass.

The wind is building, we're very protected and looking forward to what tomorrow brings.....

2011-12-10T12:36:00.000-05:00

December 7, 2011.

We spent the morning taking a walk along the oceanside beach.

We alternated talk about the weather with scanning the shoreline for treasures. We were with the crews of 3 other boats and everybody came home with something cool.

While we were walking the mailboat arrived. We headed home to eat lunch to give the people a chance to collect their goods for their shops. After lunch we headed in to Deshamons. Deshamons makes a hell of a good pizza. We had just eaten lunch but Fine Lion, Sapphire and Alibi II were all over it. We did have a few beers with them while Christy took care of some last minute online chores.

Much to our surprise as we untied from the dock we spied the Savage Son just dropping the hook in the anchorage. They opted to stay in the states for Thanksgiving and were about a week behind. We swung by to say our hellos and headed home to the boat to put away our newly purchased vegetables and special ordered coconut bread.

You see, when you arrive in Black Point the first thing you HAVE to do is hail Lorraine’s Cafe on the VHF and order some of her mothers fresh baked bread. If you order it today her mom will make it first thing the next morning and its ready to pick up around noon.

Lorraine’s Moms coconut bread is an institution and might be the finest bread ever made. Including bread made in France. Baguettes be damned.

After stowing our food we bandied about several ideas of what exactly we should do while we ate a few slices of that damn good bread. Our original plan was to head for some seclusion and after some back and forth Christy & I decided to pull the hook and get out of Dodge. There was a bit of rain and we were treated to a great rainbow as we slowly motored out of the anchorage.

An all motor trip of less than 4 miles brought us someplace we had never been before, the northern anchorage at Bitter Guana Cay. Fortunately Bitter Guana is right between Staniel Cay and Black Point. Most people stop at the great anchorage at Big Majors Spot because of it proximity to Staniel Cay. When they leave there its only an 8 mile trek to Black point and Lorraine’s mothers bread so Bitter Guana kinda slips through the cracks. I can't recall ever seeing a cruising boat anchored off Bitter Guana so we were looking forward to some alone time even though we were just around the corner from 2 great destinations.

The anchorage was bigger, better protected than I expected and more picturesque to boot. The island is populated by wild iguanas and tomorrow should be an interesting day. We have the whole island to ourselves...........................Yeah, thats right, naked time....

2011-12-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

December 6, 2011.

The huge winds out of the north northeast have abated and people are once again on the move. Evidently there were several boats hanging on the moorings up in the park at Warderick Wells. The wind is down and people started showing up in Big Majors Spot so it was time to move on.

We pulled the hook and had a perfect 8 mile sail out around Harvey Cay and into the anchorage at Black Point. Internet was sketchy with the wifi at Lorraine’s Cafe being down. We walked into the islands tiny grocery store and found it empty. One inedible pepper, two onions well past their prime and nothing else. Fortunately, the mailboat was scheduled to arrive the next day so we sat for a day and hoped to grab some veggies the next day. On the plus side though we were able to do our laundry.

Its been a while since we've been here at Black Point and the evidence of hurricane Irenes passing is everywhere. The thing that impacted us the most was the fact that the laundromats dock was destroyed. We had to lug our laundry from the government dock rather than just flop it up onto the laundromats dock and walk it inside. The government dock was usable but was still being repaired when we arrived. Several homes were in various stages of repair. This block home has been standing for years but it looks as if someone has started to finish it.

I'd love to read the building code here....if there is one.

2011-12-02T20:32:00.000-05:00

December 2, 2011.

We're still safely tucked in near the middle beach at Big Majors Spot. The winds been blowing 20 knots outta the north. Its supposed to climb towards 30 and come from the northeast over the weekend so we'll sit here for a few more days. We're anchored just off the exclusive resort on Fowl Cay.

There are worse places to be trapped.....

There’s about 8 sailboats here and room for a hundred so crowding isn't an issue. We spent a couple of hours in the water yesterday and grabbed another 5 lobsters. I'm a little disappointed in the amount of Lionfish that I've been seeing. I usually kill em' whenever I see them but there’s so many here it would turn into a full time job. I did kill a bunch though and even took one that was the size of a damn chicken. By far the biggest I've seen yet.

Last night we spent the evening on the beach burning garbage and sharing cocktails and snacks with the rest of the anchorage. I have to throw a compliment to Bess from Alibi II's way. She took the conch we managed to chase down the other day and whipped them into the best cracked conch I've ever eaten. Of course, shortly after that one of the pigs from Pig Beach came wandering out of the woods and made a beeline for the assembled snack foods. I had a 4 foot long branch and used it to tap, poke and prod the pig to keep him at bay. He was insistent and I was actually feeling a bit bad about whacking him on the snout to back him off. Finally Bess says “you're not doing that right” and snatches the stick from my hand and smacks him. He backs off a bit but shes after him and pretty soon she looks like some insane shepard as she chases him back into the woods smacking at his ass the whole way. She even had him squealing. A word from the wise, if Bess has a stick and says move, I'd do it. She talks softly but carries a pig stick.

2011-12-01T10:11:00.000-05:00

November 30, 2011.

On our second day at Normans Cay Christy and I decided to take a long swim. So we took the dink up the backside of the cay to the northern end. We slipped into the water and started swimming back towards the boat. I towed the dinghy behind me on a long tether. After over an hour we got back to the boat in time for lunch.

After lunch we headed out with the Alibi II's for a little hunting & gathering. After a short time we had collected a half dozen large conch and a trio of lobster between us. I happened to look up and noticed that the front we've been waiting for was bearing down on us.

So we quit the water and raced back to the boats to square everything away before the wind hit us. And hit us it did.

The wind built to 20 knots out of the north northwest as did the wind driven chop. The only problem was that when the boat turned to face the wind shift it left us beam to the rolling seas. Sleep did not come easily for anyone within radio range. Our night sucked but so did everyone elses. One guy just 5 miles to our south said his wind machine had recorded a gust to 50 knots during the night.

So since we were already awake we were outta there at first light. The benefit of this front was that we had an excellent day of sailing down to Big Majors Spot.

With 18 knots or so behind the beam it made for a wonderful 35 mile day. We had the hook down by 1300 hours with the huge anchorage practically to ourselves.

Later in the day several friends slipped in and dropped the hook.

As the plan stands at the moment I think we're gonna sit here for a week or so. Its supposed to blow briskly from the east for several days. Its pleasant here, we have superb easterly protection and there’s opportunity to do some hunting so we're pretty happy here.

2011-11-30T18:50:00.000-05:00

November 27, 2011.

The weather forecast is a little bit up in the air with several sources predicting different things. The next wonderful opportunity to head south isn't until Wednesday. Screw that, we're not waiting around for four more days before we head south. We'll take “uncertainty and possible mayhem” for 400 Alex.

We pulled the hook and ventured out the eastern end of Nassau Harbor. The wind for the last 2 days has been hovering at about 25 to 30 knots out of the northeast. This morning it had ebbed to 20 knots out of the east. After 2 hours of motorsailing our 144° course left us close hauled but sailing southwards.

During the first 8 miles we were pounding into close set 4 footers. It was about at this time that I realized what a waste of time washing the boat the other day had been. After those first 8 miles we were able to kill the engine and sail close hauled to the southeast. For about an hour the seas flattened out and we were actually enjoying the sail. And then the world went to shit.....

We had a double reef in the main and as one 35 knot squall after another beset us. We had to reduce the headsail until we furled it altogether. We pulled into the bight at Normans Cay after a mentally exhausting 41 mile day.

We haven't been to Normans in 5 years and it was good to sleep in after yesterdays trip to get here. We did boat chores all morning and decided to hit the water for the first time this season just after lunch. We've never been in the water here for whatever reason. We took the dink out in search of some coral that we passed on the way in. We never found the heads we sought but after heading towards the southern end of the cay we came across a tiny patch.

To my surprise on a small patch of coral the size of an average living room I came across at least a dozen lobster. They were all pretty much legal as far as size went but I'm a bit spoiled so after taking the largest 4 we moved on. After another 5 minutes Christy found a cluster of small heads which yielded 2 more bugs. So including the long ride both ways we were home in an hour with 6 lobster. Its just like riding a bike....

2011-11-27T07:54:00.000-05:00

November 26, 2011.

Okay, the long version of the crossing incident, complete with previously unreleased material. This will be an investment of your time that you will not get back. It's not my fault if you miss Dancing With the Stars tonight. Seriously, its like 5 full pages and is still really only the highlights. If you're undeterred grab a drink and join us as we head for the Bahamas.

We left Government Cut in Miami at 0800. The skies were clear and crystal blue; an absolutely beautiful day. We had about 10 knots of breeze just a little too close to the bow to be able to sail so we settled in for a pleasant motorsail across dead calm seas. I would guesstimate that about 35 boats left from Cape Florida, Government Cut and Fort Lauderdale. We were alone and about an hour behind a half dozen boats with several others less than an hour behind us.

We angled the Gulfstream perfectly, never dropping below 6.5 knots and arrived at the North Rock waypoint about 2.5 miles behind the group of vessels in front of us.

At North Rock our course turned more to the south but we were still able to carry all sail as we motorsailed along. We were now on the 34 nautical mile leg to the Mackie Shoal waypoint.

While listening to the VHF as darkness fell we followed several conversations and determined what boats we knew and how far along they were. In the darkness I could make out 8 different stern lights all headed towards Mackie Shoal. We knew most of the boats including Options 3. O3's buddy boat was a new one for us though, Serenity 5. Over the radio we learned that O3 had no radar and was trying to stick right to S5's stern in the darkness. O3 was chiding his friends on their inability to steer a straight course, even joking “Where you going, Andros?” During the course or their frequent radio conversations we learned that Serenity 5 has no radio in the cockpit, their radar is below at the nav station and to top it off they were hand steering as they have no autopilot. So on a 24 hour crossing if one of them was napping the other one had to leave the helm to drop below to answer the radio or to check the radar. Which meant that the helm was unattended with no autopilot. No wonder they were wandering all over the place.

They were also trying to match speeds with each other which can be pretty difficult, especially at night. The night was full of radio calls of “which one are you?, I lost you, flash a light so I can find you again.” They were constantly comparing SOG's to try and stay evenly spaced. Every time they called out a speed I noted that we were actually running the same speed or even a tenth or two slower yet we were gaining on them because of their meandering course. Sometimes they'd be well off my port bow and 30 minutes later they'd be way out to starboard while the other stern lights remained dead ahead as we ran the rhumb line.

The rhumb line from North Rock runs directly to Mackie Shoal. The excellent Explorer Chartbooks provide you a latitude and longitude for every turning point. No matter what chart information your particular chartplotter runs on if you take the Explorer waypoints and manually insert them into your chartplotter you can provide yourself with a safe route. Its not like trying to blindly follow your chartplotter on the ICW where your machine might run you solidly aground.

As we rounded the Mackie Shoal Light (extinguished) O3 and S5 were 1.7 miles wide of the rhumb line, off our port bow. Since they had gone so wide in an effort to avoid the Mackie Shoal Light we gained a ton of ground on them and the next time they crossed our bow as they wove their way along they were only a half mile ahead of us.

After rounding the Mackie Shoal mark we had to adjust course 14 degrees more towards the breeze. It was just too much and the headsail wasn't doing anything but blocking our view so we furled it. With Options 3 and Serenity 5 running several hundred yards wide of the rhumb line off our starboard bow we once again set Rover and headed through the darkness towards the NW Shoal waypoint.

Over the next 20 miles we made up the half mile deficit and pulled even with S5 and had O3 off our starboard quarter. For the next 4 miles we ran with S5 400 yards off our starboard side with O3 trailing them by a hundred yards or so. And then there was the incident.....

There was a single sailboat anchored on the banks well off to starboard. By dumb luck I happened to be looking at the anchored boat when I saw Serenity's stern light disappear. I had been watching his portside running light and the glow of his stern light on his dinghy. I realized that after leaving the NW Shoal light (extinguished) well to port they were diving down to leave the NW Channel Light (extinguished) well to starboard. The only problem with that plan was that we were right next to them. We now had a single red light bearing down on us closing the distance quickly.

I called S5 on the VHF and got no response, I hailed again and the wife answered with “hold on”. I chopped the throttle and S5 crossed our bow about 70 feet in front of us. As soon as he was clear I hammered the throttle to move forward as O3 blindly followed his buddy boat and crossed our stern 100 feet behind us.

I can't believe this shit. We're in the middle of the Bahama Bank with water everywhere and I've got to chop the throttle because some dolt decides its time to turn left? We literally passed through a hundred yard gap, in the pitch dark between two boats turning to the left. You might expect me to be upset, I’d say that you were right. When I finally did make contact his impression was that he couldn't believe that we had turned right and cut between he and his buddy boat. He was trying to explain to me the responsibilities of an overtaking vessel. Overtaking? I explained to him that I’d been next to him for over 4 miles, 40 minutes at this speed. It had taken me over 60 miles to make up the 2 miles we had started behind him. Hardly an overtaking situation. I'd been abeam of him for miles. Even though he was the starboard vessel it doesn't give him the right to just turn into us and attempt to pass through us. Livid doesn't begin to cover it, I was vibrating.

Then he started a conversation on the VHF about “this guy turning right and cutting between us” with his buddy boat. O3 is stupid enough to add “yeah, I don't know where he came from, I never even saw him”. That's probably my fault as we often travel on an alternate plane in a parallel universe often just inexplicably popping out of the dark void. Idiot. We'd been off his port bow for the better part of an hour and he hadn't even seen us? Then Serenity's wife got on the VHF and started to explain to O3 how “some people shouldn't be allowed on the water without having taken a navigational course”. Okay, now I wish someone would choke this bitch until her uterus plops out onto the floor. It was one of those moments when I realized how much I appreciate my Mothers efforts to raise me to be a gentlemen. I'm in the Bahamas, its going to be a splendid winter, Ommm, Ommmm. I was really trying to pull it back together so I didn't engage them any further on the radio. It wasn't easy.

Rover had been steering this course for HOURS. We hadn't deviated for HOURS. This asshole is hand steering like a drunk and he thinks we're the ones making unexplained turns. I was in that range between perturbed and HOMICIDAL. But I was trying to pull it back together, Ommmmm Ommmmm.

After ten minutes we altered course onto the final leg for Nassau. The small course change allowed us to once again pop the headsail and we were off like a prom dress. We passed a few boats in the pre-dawn darkness and we left the ass-clowns far behind. I was running “the incident” over and over in my mind and I couldn't fathom how neither boat had a visual on us even though we were lit up like a Christmas tree. They both had genoas up with their steaming lights illuminated. Did the glow of their steaming light reflecting back into their faces off their own genoas destroy their night vision to the point of not being able to see us? I decided I didn't give a shit, it's behind us, they're history. Thank God we had some chits in our Karma box. It's going to be a beautiful winter. Ass-clowns.

We dropped sail and motored into Nassau Harbor at 0715. We make a nifty landing at the tidal flow ravaged fuel dock before heading over to our slip. We were safely tied up by 0830 and a pleasant young woman from Customs & Immigration was on the boat and we were filling out forms by 0900. At about this point Christy said “look”.

Whoever says God doesn't have a sense of humor has never spent the day with me. Serenity 5 was pulling into the slip next to us and Oh Look, Options 3 is pulling in next to them. God, my hats off to you, well played, you funny funny motherfucker.

Customs went exceedingly well, I' was in good spirits and I am not going to lose my mind. We headed into town with Fine Lion, Sapphire and Night Hawk. We succeeded in locating phone cards, sim cards and pretty much everything everyone needed. Then we stopped in for our Thanksgiving meal at the Green Parrot. Christy & I left everyone else downtown and walked back to the boat. The Veranda was still salt encrusted from our jaunt down to Miami so since we were paying for a slip we wanted to wash the boat.

I had the boat clean and as I stood on the foredeck rolling up our hose, Brian from Options 3 walked down our finger pier, leaned against the piling and good naturally said “Hey, Hows it going?”.

I distinctly remember opening with “now that we're off the water with you fucking clowns things are great”. That was to be the end of the pleasantries. Right away he got angry too. Good. Kicking puppies is no fun. We started to argue a bit when “Bruce” from Serenity 5 walked over and joined in. Not surprisingly, he wasn't on my side. This was better because I actually like Brian and having Bruce to focus on let me vent more completely. Rage will eat you from inside so its always better to let it out. It turns out it takes about ten minutes, a lot of which is foggy to me now.

His whole point of contention was that we had turned right abruptly and cut between them and that they had never altered course. I countered with “you left the first maker far to port and needed to leave the next on the starboard side, you absolutely turned to port”. “Nope, no we didn't.” I gave a direct look at Brian like “come on' be serious” and he was honest and said “yeah, we turned but only a little bit”. All of a sudden it turned into Perry Mason versus Laurel & Hardy.

Since Brian seemed to be embracing the notion that they may have f'd up I ignored Bruce and spoke directly to Brian when I went with “this guy's a complete buffoon, he's incompetent, he can't tell if hes going straight or turning, he's INEPT and whats worse is that he doesn't realize it, he f'ing dangerous”. It was the first thing I had managed to say with any composure. Bruce turned and stalked away.

Once the douchebag was gone Brain and I were able to tone it down a bit until we parted civilly. I'm sure the forty or so people on the docks enjoyed our version of improvisational white trash street theater.

After Brian left I finished up on deck and went below. A short time later there was a knock on the hull . The evening security guard stopped in to tell me that “the guy on that boat over there said you was picking on him”. (S5)
ME “hold on here, I'm on my boat washing it, I never got off the boat, I didn't go looking for him, he came over here to give me grief and he thought he was not gonna get some back?”
THE GUARD “well, I guess a man has to wash his boat”.

This shit caught me completely off guard, I was actually astonished.
ME with a little smirk “he said I was picking on him?”
THE GUARD grinning “he said you was mean to 'im”
ME “unless he shows back up over here I think we're done”
THE GUARD “cool, have a good night”

I was mean to 'im?, Christ, inept and a pussy as well. Next thing I know he'll be having his dad exhumed to come over to kick my dads ass. More like a candyass-clown.

I've vented, I've re-centered my Wa and its going to be a beautiful winter......
Leaving today, no internet for at least a week, adios mi amigos...

2011-11-27T00:48:00.000-05:00

November 25, 2011.

Usually I'm dead set against paying for a slip if I can avoid it. While considering the imminent weather during our crossing we decided that Nassau was the place to go.

You are required to take a slip if you check in at Nassau so we've always avoided going to Nassau in the past. But we're here and a slip it is.

The marina we chose has concrete central docks with wooden finger piers. The concrete docks are scarred with reminders that something as simple as taking or departing a slip can turn ugly pretty quickly. The tide roars through the slips at close to 2 knots when the tide is running. It can make docking intimidating but actually makes things a bit easier if you think things through first. After tying up, plugging in and signing in it was off to take care of business in town before stopping in for a traditional Thanksgiving day meal in paradise. A huge cheeseburger, a huge chicken breast sandwich, terrific spicy fries, a bottle of water, a glass of wine and 2 beers.......52 dollars....plus tip. Paradise ain't cheap.

As promised the wind is pretty strong from the northeast. We're in no hurry so rather than head out in 25 to 30's we opted to leave the slip after 1 night and anchor here in Nassau harbor. There’s a few places to anchor here in the harbor but we chose one a little more out of the way. The most popular anchorage is west of the bridges and has ribbons of sand interspersed with patches of grass. If the sun is high and you drop the hook in a patch of sand you're all set. But when the last minute arrivals drop their hook indiscriminately because the sun has dropped a bit, well, when they start dragging its a crap shoot as to who they'll take out. Its gonna be fairly crowded there for the next 2 nights so we'll do something a little different. We're east of the bridges, just off the main channel with excellent protection from the blow and evidently right in front of a local tourist attraction.

I've been told that Elvis Presleys daughter owns the house that we're anchored in front of. Several small guided boats full of tourons stopped to snap pictures during the day. All I know about her is that I think shes the same girl who married Michael Jackson back in the day. Creepy.

There’s 5 cruise ships currently in the harbor so the channel out of the eastern end of the harbor was a nonstop parade

of dive boats, monstrous sailing catamarans and booze cruises traversing the channel. It makes for excellent people watching.

2011-11-26T08:50:00.001-05:00

November 24, 2011.

We're here. The short version......no wind, 24 hour 160 nautical mile motorsail, pitch dark, almost killed by a new boater who couldn't successfully fall over Niagara Falls in a barrel, went through Customs & Immigration by 0900, Thanksgiving dinner with friends, found that my asshole magnet still works, huge dockside argument w/ previously mentioned neophyte who then ran and sent security down to the boat because I was “mean” to him. Lol. Hope your holiday was good too.

2011-11-25T09:54:00.001-05:00

November 22, 2011.

We've arrived in South Beach after 2 long days. We left Vero Beach with the intention of heading out the inlet at Fort Pierce for an overnighter to Miami. Just as we were nearing the inlet we heard a few sailboats heading in after a night on the ocean heading south. I chatted them up on the VHF and they seemed pretty pleased to have survived the inlet. Our worst ass kicking in the inlet category was right there in Fort Pierce a few years ago. It seemed that the inlet was a little whipped up so I was hesitant to head out. I've never been a big fan of having my ass kicked. The topper was when I asked about their point of sail. Apparently, the wind was close enough to their nose that they had to motor sail all night. If I'm gonna have to run the engine I might as well stay in the ditch.

So we barreled along as best we could with the 8 bridges and all and arrived in Lake Worth 45 minutes after dark. Sneaking down the channel and around Peanut Isle in the inky darkness made safely dropping the hook a welcome respite from the tension of the day. And then I hatched a new plan......

I woke at 0340 and checked the engines fluids, strung our jacklines, woke Christy and pulled the hook. We were headed out the Lake Worth Inlet into 4 foot seas with 15 knots a wee bit too close to the nose. We had to motorsail for the first 2 hours before bearing off just 10 degrees. Then the engine was off and we had ourselves a very nice sail down to Government Cut in Miami.

So, as I write this we should be outta here around 0900 tomorrow and headed for The North Rock entrance onto the Bahama Bank. After that, who knows.....

2011-11-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

November 21, 2011.

Lets talk about “Buddy Boats”. There are several different degrees of buddy boating. Your first buddy boat is probably the most important one you will ever have. You've read all the books, gotten the boat ready, maybe even taken a few classes and you head out. You might not realize it, but you still don't know anything. The passage of time will cull away some of the stupidity but finding a buddy boat that has the “mentoring gene” will save you countless miles of scratching your way clear of your own easily avoidable mistakes.

Our first buddy boat was Non Linear. They picked us up in South Carolina and hand fed us the rest of the east coast of the US as we followed them to Marathon, Florida. Once there, they crossed to the Bahamas while we spent the winter in Marathon, exploring the Keys. During the 8 weeks we spent with them they showered us with the benefit of their experience. For them it was like raising a child but once the umbilical cord was cut we went out on our own stumbling our way down the waterways. Did we still make mistakes, absolutely, but their lessons saved us from countless others.

Another type of buddy boat is what I like to call the Compadres. They're the type that when you see one of them you can be sure the other is fairly close by. These people are happy in the fact that they've found another boat of such like minded people that they can follow one another from port to port without ever tiring of each others company. They're social with other boaters but when its time to move on its pretty much always in concert with “their” buddy boat. Compadres are usually 2 boats, a third boat makes things a little awkward and comes dangerously close to becoming an Entourage.

An Entourage is a group of good friends that happen to be boaters. I've traveled for a while with an Entourage so I can appreciate the benefits but I can also remember the drawbacks. A big plus is that no matter where you head you always have several of your closest friends just a dinghy ride away. The downside of course is that sometimes you just want a little private time. Trying to decide where to go, when to leave and how to get there becomes an exercise in futility when you consider the opinions of a gaggle of boats. Throw in some weather discussions and you'd be better off trying to herd cats in a burning building. Then there’s always the chance that someones feelings are going to be hurt by some imagined slight. Or God forbid that a subset of the larger group form a tighter bond. For me, the logistics are just mind numbing. Its fun but a little trying at the same time.

Then there’s the Kid Boats. Having kids on board adds a whole new dimension. Finding a buddy boat with kids on board is pretty important to other boats with kids. It gives the kids an outlet where they can just be kids and the parents can get together to commiserate with each other about added difficulty of having kids on board.

One of the great things about having a buddy boat when doing the ICW is that some days you just get to take a day off. Instead of sitting up and paying rigid attention to the depth and every twist and turn you can just relax a bit and follow your buddy as he leads the way down the ditch. The next day, he can follow you. You make the same amount of distance while only doing half the work. We've spent months traveling with the same boat and enjoyed it as much as any time we've spent on the water because we shared the load.

On the flip side of that coin is the buddy boat that always follows. You end up being the tour guide while the boat behind you basks in the safety of your wake. I'm not sure what it is. Whether they feel inadequate to the task or if they feel entitled. If its a boat with years of experience and miles under the keel but with no confidence, then I kinda feel bad for them. But once in a while I get the feeling that its more like the follower feels entitled. As if their personal comfort and safety is more important than yours and that just galls me. They can come up with more “you take the lead, because........” excuses than I have fingers and toes.

One type of buddy boating that doesn’t fit into any category is the Armada. The classic example of the Armada is a crossing to the Bahamas. The weather window starts to look promising a few days before it arrives. This gives anyone wanting to cross an opportunity to get themselves staged at a logical jumping off point. Its not unusual to have dozens of boats waiting to cross from a popular spot like Miami. When the window opens there will be dozens of boats heading out from No Name Harbor, Government Cut and even from Fort Lauderdale all converging on a few safe points to enter the Bahama Bank. The Armada provides the illusion of safety, forms on the whims of the weather and dissipates as everybody scatters among the islands.

I guess all these thoughts about buddy boats came to me because this is the first year we won't be seeing our friends on Far Niente out on the water. They sold the boat this spring and bought a huge motor-coach to cruise the United States with. They live in Vero Beach so we saw them this week while we were there but unlike every other year, this year we left them behind. We've been Compadres, we've shared an Entourage and followed each other for more miles than I can recall. Things change, we move forward and remember the fun we've had in the past.

In the mean time we are looking forward to our next Armada......

2011-11-20T16:35:00.000-05:00

November 18, 2011.

Chores, chores and more chores. Even though the boat was fairly well squared away before we left Annapolis there’s always a revolving list of chores to be knocked out.

In the few days we've been here in Vero Beach we've been able to pare down the list quite a bit. I've been up the mast to clean the corroded contacts in our deck light. I've also cleaned the transom, resealed the mast boot, changed the engine oil, serviced the generator, sewn a torn seam in our canvas enclosure, stenciled on the new dinghy registration numbers, tuned the rig properly, installed the new roller furling line, new traveler control lines and hand sewn a 4 foot seam in the cushion on the “mother-in-law” seat.

Christy hasn't been exactly sitting around either. The fridge has been defrosted, the laundry is done and another 500 pounds of provisions has been purchased, lugged home and stowed. Then throw in a few hours of vacuum bagging meat and we're almost done.

Its not all been drudgery though. We've been to a great get together at the Solitaires home with the crews from several other boats. Then to Jay & Di's house for another great evening. We even got to see Di's workshop where shes putting a lot of her collected sea glass to work.

After completing a holiday wreath she went “all in” and started

making enough ornaments for an all sea glass Christmas tree. Throw in a happy hour up at the marina and

an evening on a neighboring boat and its been a pretty good time here.

After some last minute details on Sunday I think we're going to head out of Fort Pierce inlet on Monday and sail the 120 miles down to Miami. Right now it looks as if Wednesday will be an opportunity to cross the Gulfstream. The weather right after the crossing opportunity is looking pretty dire so crossing will be a game time decision.

2011-11-15T22:08:00.000-05:00

November 15, 2011.

What I consider the first third of this years trip is done. After 19 days and covering 920 nautical miles we arrived in Vero Beach before lunch today. If you subtract the 5 days we lounged in Oriental, NC we averaged about 66 miles a day. Some days we were running away from the cold while others we were running for the next anchorage. Getting the timely weather window that allowed us to skip Georgia made a huge difference to us as Georgia, while beautiful is incredibly meandering.

This year the weather dictated that we spend more time on the ICW than we usually do. Even when the winds were reasonable and from good direction the offshore swell was much bigger than normal due to near hurricane Sean passing north along the coast.

Large portions of the ICW can be sailed but its hard to do with winter temperatures chasing you. Sailing a 5 knot 40 mile day is hard to justify when you can motor at over 7 knots for another 20 miles made good. It seems that every 50 miles south equates to about 1 degree Fahrenheit.

I think that everyone considering the trip along the east coast should do the entire ICW at one time or another. There really is a lot to see. The animal life along the waterway is more prolific than I had ever imagined. We've seen flamingos, pelicans and bald eagles....we didn't have any of those back in Jersey. We've had to stop the boat to allow a bear to continue his swim across the ICW. We've seen alligators, pelligators (The Pelligator ), deer, wild horses, the beast with two backs(The beast with Two Backs ), wild goats and this year we can add a flock of turkeys to the list.

You can never predict what might be around the next bend. Quaint towns, history, abandoned boats, challenging routes, forest fires and Frenadians....there's just so much out there.

Every anchorage is different. Will you have it to yourself, will it be filled to capacity, will you run into friends long unseen, will there be anchoring antics....? Of course there will, that parts always a given.

Will you bump the bottom....probably. Will you run hard aground....possibly. Will you die from it....lets hope not. It might be inconvenient, it might be embarrassing but there’s a good chance you'll get yourself off. Sometimes you need some help from the tide while other times it takes a call to TowBoat US. But it'll pass. Will you see someone else run aground....absolutely. Will you ask yourself “what the hell was he doing over there?”....of course. Will a complete stranger ever offer to help.....yes, will you pay it forward....you better.

2011-11-15T15:38:00.001-05:00

November 14, 2011.

We left Saint Augustine at first light, went through the bridge and stopped at the city marinas fuel dock. Dumped some garbage and filled both the water and fuel tanks and then once again turned south. We had a tidal push for several hours and dropped the hook in Daytona Beach by 1330.

This morning we had the hook up before first light and started making our way south. We wanted to knock out an 82 mile day so we had to start especially early. We had the tide with us for the first 45 minutes and then it ran against us for most of the remainder of the day. What the tide giveth the tide taketh away. We nailed the timing of all the bridges and dropped the hook just 6 minutes after sunset near Melborne.

The Eau Gallie public library is right on the waterfront so we always drop the hook right outside the reference section to grab some of their free wifi. Another plus is that the Packet Inns live close by and dropped in with pizza.

Vero Beach tomorrow.....

2011-11-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

November 12, 2011.

We left Minim creek at first light with a bold plan. Not really, but it sounds cool. Anyway, we wanted to get down past Charleston if at all possible. The mileage is doable its just that the bridge just before Chucktown can be a pain in the ass with it restricted hourly opening schedule.

Color us blown away when we arrived and the bridge tender told us he was on request. Cool, open sesame. From there it was a quick 7 mile jaunt across Charleston Harbor to the Wappoo Creek bridge. The Wappoo is closed in the morning from 0600 to 0900 for rush hour on weekdays. We wanted to get through the bridge before tonight’s rush hour closing from 1600 to 1830 so we could avoid so many wasted hours of daylight in the morning.

We made it handily and after traversing Elliots Cut we settled in for the night along the marsh grass bank of the Stono River. As forecast the wind jumped up to 35 knots from the west northwest but we were snug as bugs. A plus in our chosen spot for the evening was some free wifi. By 10 AM every day lately I've been in shorts with no shirt as the weather has been so pleasant. When I checked the weather for the area on the internet I was disappointed to see that temps were forecasted to fall to 30º the next night.

With that harrowing thought in mind we set off even earlier the next day in an effort to get south. A long day would put us in Beaufort, SC. After about 15 miles I heard a guy calling his buddy on the VHF. It seemed his buddy had gone out of Charleston inspite of the less than enthralling forecast, light winds with huge seas. His buddy said that while the wind was light, the waves were in fact only 1 to 2 footers.

With that in mind we made the semi rash decision to skip taking the Slawson Cutoff to the ICW and headed down the Edisto River for the ocean. At 1100 Veranda once again felt the Atlantic’s chilly embrace. The wind was about 12 knots out of the northwest and the seas were basically flat.

We had a pleasant sail until about 1830 when the wind completely disappeared. We cranked up the engine and motored for the next 20 hours. Skipping the meandering Georgia ICW saved us 60 miles so even though we had to motor it was well worth it. Out on the water the night temps never fell below 40º so that was a bonus as well.

We entered the inlet at Saint Augustine at 1430 on Saturday. The remnant swells from Sean and the new curving inlet made the entrance a bit puckering but we were through quickly and anchored just north of the Bridge of Lions in Saint Augustine.

We're tired, we're warm, we're in Florida, we're happy and we're outta here tomorrow.

2011-11-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

November 9, 2011.

We decided that this morning would be a good day to try a new inlet. We wanted to head offshore and the Little River Inlet looked to be the place since we anchored directly across from it last night. We were up and underway along with the Alibi II's at dawn. The mainsail was up as we wove our way down towards the inlet and then the phone rang.....

It was our friend Dawn from Annapolis who had received an email from weather guru Chris Parker. After midnight he had sent out an addendum to his regular daily weather advice. He never does that. She knew we were headed out and the forecast had once again changed dramatically. We were expecting 3 to 4 footers from the southeast with 10 to 15 knots of breeze from the east northeast. The wind was the same but due to tropical low Sean building in strength we could expect seas at 10 feet growing to 15 by late afternoon. 10 to 15 footers rolling under our beam with marginal winds directly behind us sounds like a miserable experience. We've actually already have that experience so we turned around and headed back towards the ICW and that's when it happened.....

We almost killed our first health nut. We were the first southbound boat as we sliced through the dead flat waters of the ICW. Our health nut was in a one man rowing scull heading northbound. Since he was rowing his back was towards us. He was smack in the middle of the channel so I adjusted Rover a few degrees to put us hugging the starboard side of the channel to pass him port to port.

I've seen these rowing fanatics before and a lot of them wear a tiny rear view mirror on a headband so they can see whats going on behind them....but this guy, no. As far as I could tell he hadn't heard us approaching, he hadn't turned around, he was just lost in the moment rowing to his approaching doom. We were going to pass well clear of him but as 300 yards became 200, then 100 he finally sensed our approach. He looked over his shoulder, saw us, spazed and turned directly across our bow in an effort to get out of the way.

He took 2 quick strokes, realized he went the wrong way and froze.....Shit. If I went even further to starboard we were definitely going to run aground. He was already pointing in that direction, if he took one more stroke we'd run aground and kill him anyway. Holy f@#k me. It happened so quickly I didn't even have time to disconnect the autopilot....so I hit the port tack button. The boat immediately turned 90 degrees to port. We cleared him by a boat length at best. I threw off the autopilot and spun the wheel hard to starboard before we shot out the other side of the channel. I don't know what his heart rate was but I’m pretty sure mine was higher.

Shortly after that we had another first. We encountered a northbound tug pushing a loaded fuel barge in the “rockpile”. The rockpile is a section of the ICW that was blasted through bedrock. At low tide you can see ledge after jagged ledge of unforgiving bedrock that lies just below the surface at high tide...The common dogma is that you do NOT leave the center of the channel. Somebody wants to overtake you, fine but you don't move over to help him, he's on his own. Period.

I hadn't heard any security calls so when I heard the tug coming through the bridge at the lower end of the rockpile I was quite saddened. F@#k us. I contacted the tug on the radio and told him we were a mile away and headed at him. We arranged a port to port pass, he gave me as much room as he could spare and we slipped down his side as close as we could without trading paint.

After that the day leveled out and we made good time down to Minum Creek where we are hiding out down below because of the mosquito swarms.

2011-11-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

November 7, 2011.

Today was one of those rare days that makes you glad to be traveling the waterways. We had one confirmed celebrity sighting after another for a good portion of the day. We saw all 3 Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, The Keystone Cops and even had an encounter with Jerry Lewis (back when he was still zany). It was a very special day on the water.

We left Mile Hammock Bay at dawn and headed down the ICW. Even though we're in the confines of the ICW I still plot our course. I put a waypoint at each liftbridge that we'll be encountering. That way, for example, if the bridge only opens on the hour the chartplotter will do the math for me. It considers our current speed and the distance we need to cover and tells me exactly when we'll arrive. That way way I can tell if I need to add some more coal to the fire or if I should just back off a bit and take my time.

We were making about 7.5 knots on our way to the second bridge when the Keystone Cops decided that they had to pass us. We were going to arrive with 2 minutes to spare at our present speed. The Frenadians behind us decided that if they passed us, arrived sooner and waited even longer than that would be a whole lot better. So they pulled to our starboard side at 7.5000005 knots and began to sloooowly overtake us. No big deal except.....

There was a small jonboat with 2 old guys in it recovering a fishing net directly in our path. As they retrieved the net they were pulling their boat across the ICW from left to right. I stayed on the green side (left) of the channel and planned to leave the fishermen 50 feet to starboard. I looked over and expected Jacques to either move closer to us or to the extreme right side of the channel leaving the fishermen in the middle. Then I realized that he was headed straight at them and we had front row seats. I don't know WTH he was looking at but finally, he jumped to his feet, threw the wheel hard to port and chopped the throttle.

He missed running them down by 15 feet or less. There were only 2 guys in the jonboat but I'm sure I saw at least 5 middle fingers sent in his direction. 200 yards later Jacques fire walled his boat and easily overtook us. We settled in behind him and not a half mile further along we were once again treated to a display of seamanship like few others.

Another small boat anchored on the extreme left side of the channel in a cluster of crab pot floats. Jacques stayed dead straight and looked like he was going to pass them closely on his port side. But at the last possible moment he once again threw the wheel hard to port and left the channel missing them by a few feet. Their oaths and epitaphs must have had some powerful ju ju because Jacques managed to wrap one of the crab pot floats in his prop bringing him to a rather ignominious halt. We stayed in the middle of the channel and rounded the bend just in time for the bridge. Jacques missed the bridge but he probably met some new people.

Even after we were safely anchored the nautical hijinks didn't end. A single hander came in, dropped the hook and promptly sucked the dinghy painter into his propeller as he backed down on the hook.

Oops. Nothing like a November swim in Carolina Beach.

I thought our day of simple amusements was over until one last Frenadian joined the list. They pulled in, wedged themselves into the middle of the herd and dropped the hook and then......nothing. No snubber, no setting the hook, nothing.

The guy just stood on the side deck with his arms across his chest for 10 minutes. What he was doing eludes me but it looked to be connected with his non anchoring ritual. Of course, he was directly in front of us. Jesus, we've got to get offshore and away from these people.

2011-11-08T18:19:00.000-05:00

November 6, 2011.

We were off the dock and underway at first light. The wind has the ocean just too whipped up for us to be jumping out at Beaufort, NC. We could sit and try to wait for favorable conditions but winter is creeping south after us. With this in mind we've decided to cover as much distance as we can on the inside.

The day was an uneventful mix of motoring and sailing along with some of our closest friends.

Early in the day we were hailed by the sailboat traveling behind us. They wanted to overtake us and were calling to let us know so we wouldn't be surprised. The pass was taking a long time to materialize so we took the next few turns wide hoping that they would sneak past on the inside of the turn. A quarter mile went by, then a half mile, then a mile, then another and then I kinda gave up trying to help them pass. Then the wind presented a favorable angle so out came the genoa. They did finally catch and pass us......44 miles later. I think their radio call was a bit premature.

We knocked out 62 statute miles and dropped the hook in Mile Hammock Bay along with 30 other boats. We've definitely caught the crowd.

2011-11-06T00:22:00.000-04:00

November 5, 2011.

First off, Happy Birthday to our now 25 year old jar of Skippy peanut butter. You may have to go back to March 6th of 2010 to make sense of our having an antique jar of cremey peanuty goodness aboard.

Although Oriental is one of our favorite stops along the east coast it wouldn't be possible for us to stay as long as we do without the generosity of our friends Ken & Carol. We sneak all the way up Whittaker Creek and tie up behind their home. Most places we stop we tend to anchor out. Unfortunately, the only downside to Oriental is the anchorage itself. The space inside the seawall is pretty tight with room for a half dozen, short scoped, tightly spaced boats. Outside the seawall you can get as many boats in as the wind direction will allow.

Besides taking a slip there is one more alternative for those trawlers or sailors with shorter masts. If you can squeeze under the 45 foot tall fixed bridge adjacent to the harbor you can have a bit more room to swing at anchor.

Our friends Bess & Bill on Alibi II took this option and squeaked under the bridge when they got here. They are a 32 foot ketch with a mast height of about 42 feet. Unfortunately there is a down side.....

There’s really no tidal range here in Oriental. BUT when the wind blows out of the north through east northeast the water gets piled up in the Neuse River. Since the Alibis arrived, its been blowing a bit of a hoolie. Its been honking anywhere from 20 to 45 knots for 30 hours and the water is 3 or 4 feet higher than usual. They're pretty much trapped behind the bridge. They're not in any danger but they're stuck there until the wind abates a bit.

Since we've been here we've completed a lot of boat chores, enjoyed a lot of socializing, attended the nautical flea market

and pretty much walked around town waiting for the wind to die down a bit.

2011-11-04T11:03:00.000-04:00

November 3, 2011.

Oriental is being Oriental again. If it wasn't for the whole “cold in winter” thing, this place would be perfect. Town is looking pretty good considering that Oriental was walloped by hurricane Irene. They experienced about a nine foot tidal surge and quite a bit of town was under water.

The best thing about town is once again, the people. We generally stop here twice a year as we pass through. We have friends that we knew from Jersey that have made their home here and allow us to tie up at their dock whenever we're here. Through them we've met several other couples that we've become close with as well.

Between doing boat chores during the day and trying to keep up our end of the bargain when it comes to the rigorous social schedule, it can all be very exhausting. Last night we were included in a cruisers get together that was held in our friends, Don & D's house. A half dozen locals along with a dozen cruisers invaded their home for a sit down dinner. Our friend Carol baked 6 chickens and everyone brought something to share. It was very Thanksgivingesq, right down to the stuffing and cranberries. 20 people for a sit down dinner with an afternoons notice, just another day in Oriental.

2011-11-02T15:27:00.000-04:00

November 1, 2011.

Happy Birthday Mom.

We had planned to consider today as a lay day if the weather forecast proved accurate. They were predicting 25 to 30 knots from the north with rain. Screw traveling in that. But we woke to clear skies and 15 knots out of the west.

We had to motorsail for a few miles until we turned south into the Pungo River.

At one time I was able to count 29 other sailboats underway all around us.

It seems that we've caught up with some of the pack.

It ended up being one of the nicest sailing days we've had in a while. Of the 30 sailboats we saw I could count on one hand the boats that were sailing. Most were motorsailing while a few were even underway sans sails. I just can't understand it. This Pearson 36 came by us under full sail with a beautiful wing and wing spread.

The wind did build to 25 as the day wore on but we just reefed a bit and barreled along across flat seas.

We arrived in Oriental by 1500 and are tied up behind a friends home on Whittaker Creek. We'll be here a few days while we await a window to jump outside at Beaufort.

2011-11-02T15:11:00.000-04:00

October 31, 2011.

Boo.

We were up and off the dock at Midway Marina in Coinjock just before dawn. We had to be out early as we wanted to knock out an 80 mile day. Its not that easy at this time of year with the days being so short.

After the trip down the North River we entered the Albemarle Sound with 10 to 12 knots of breeze from the east. We sailed through a 2 inch wind chop with the occasional rogue 4 incher thrown in. The Albemarle can kick your ass in a heartbeat so it was a welcome change to head out in such lovely conditions. Of course with 3 miles to go the wind kicked up over 20 knots, the seas instantly grew and we dove into the Alligator River just in a nick of time.

With the breeze kicking a bit we rode a perfect beam reach down the length of the Alligator River. We arrived at the northern end of the Pungo Canal at 1415 so it was a no brainer to continue on.

The Pungo Canal is about 22 miles long and is pretty much always a motoring experience. True to the norm we powered down the waterway and had the hook down by 1745. We shared the expansive anchorage with 9 other boats all attempting to hide from the nights 35 knot wind forecast.

2011-11-01T21:37:00.000-04:00

October 30, 2011.

Remember that whole part about the nice people in Naptown blah, blah, blah. Then there was the whole bittersweet last day of work thing. But I guess it all boils down to the fact that we were really looking forward to getting out of Dodge more than we realized. So much so that while Christy was in the shower on our second day out....we ran out of water. Fortunately, the 2 deck jugs were full so she was able to rinse away the shampoo and such.

We had a list of things to get done before we departed and Christy thought I topped off the water tank while I assumed that she took care of it. So basically we left town with no water. Crap. We'll have to stop and pick up some fuel and fill the water tank while we're at it.

So with that in mind we left Mill Creek at 0730 and headed down through Norfolk. Once again like every year, the Gilmerton Bridge screwed us. Its always something with this bridge, every year its different but its always something. The Gilmerton Bridge sits right next to a railroad drawbridge that is actually fairly busy. We came around the corner and the bridge was already up and several boats were passing through. We were the fourth of five additional boats trying to get through the bridge. She said she had been open too long and she closed the bridge preventing the last 3 of us from making it through the opening. An additional 3 minutes and all of us would have been through.

Shes got to close the bridge so as not to interfere with the schedules of all those people sitting in their heated cars, in park, drinking frappe lappe chinos while talking on their cellphones and playing with their Ipads on a Sunday morning. While we're backing and filling trying to hold position in 20 knots of breeze and getting blown around like leaves in the Walmart parking lot. During the hour long wait for the next scheduled opening another 9 boats showed up to add to the fun......and then the train bridge went down. Crap. After wasting 1 ½ hours at the Gilmerton Bridge we locked through at Great Bridge and made a quick stop at Atlantic Yacht Basins fuel dock.

AYB is the last place that we purchased fuel on our way north in the spring. After our 300 mile round trip to Annapolis and back our fuel tank was down just 12 gallons. The water tank was still filling so I filled 2 deck jugs with an additional 10 gallons of diesel just to allow more time for the water to fill our tank.

Anchorages along the Virginia Cut Route are kind of few and far between. The loss of an hour and a half at the Gilmerton Bridge really put a hurting on our days run. We opted to knock out the crossing of Currituck Sound. But once across the sound darkness was falling to quickly for us to get to the anchorage we pined for just past Coinjock. So for the first time ever we had to stop and tie up on the marina wall in Coinjock. On the downside was the fact that it cost us about 70 dollars to sleep on our own sheets. But the plus side was huge. Internet and electric. Since we were plugged in we ran the heater all night. When we rose this morning it was 38 degrees in the cockpit. Thank God the Gilmerton Bridge screwed us once again or we might have frozen to death.

2011-10-30T19:18:00.000-04:00

October 29. 2011.

We woke to a bit o' sunshine and 15 to 20 knots outta the north. We took our time and were underway by 0800 with the Alibi II's 20 minutes behind us.

The forecast was for 15 to 20 dying off to 5 to 10 in the afternoon followed by higher winds in the evening. The forecast for this area includes both small craft and gale force warnings after midnight. They're also forecasting snow for the DC- Baltimore area. Yikes. Those people out at MaxProp have no idea how close things got to getting ugly.

We figured we'd go all night, getting south far enough to avoid the gale force winds and head down to Norfolk where the temperatures are supposed to be 10 degrees warmer. So we unrolled the genoa for what I hoped would be a relaxing trip down the bay. With the wind over our left shoulder we found ourselves blasting down flat seas at better than 7 knots. The sun was bright and warm, life was good. Until 1100 hours, that was when the sun disappeared behind a ceiling of low gray cold winter skies. Crap.

The wind died away until we were ghosting along at only 2 knots. Several motoring sailboats caught us and turned into Solomon Island as we passed by. We considered this option but the next 2 days are supposed to contain 30 to 45 knots of wind on the bay. Getting trapped in Solomon Island for 2 or 3 nights with the possibility of snow in the area was not an attractive option.

After me deciding to put out into probable gale force conditions the other night Christy has assumed the role of onboard weather router. She said we were not taking the chance of getting caught in the snow so we pressed on. (Good)

By 1900 hours the wind had picked up and we had to reduce sail. Our friends on First Edition had extended us an invitation to stop at their home on Mill Creek off Ingram Bay. With last nights nighttime entry into an unfamiliar anchorage still fresh in my mind we kept on going.

For the rest of the night the forecast of 15 to 20 topped out at 30 knots. We had a slice of genoa out in an effort to control our speed. The sea state was bigger than I expected in the Chesapeake. Close set 4 footers with what I swear were rogue 7 footers thrown in. Crossing the mouth of the Potomac got a little sloppy in spite of having all the wind you could want. The wind was clocking up onto our beam and the seas were rolling under us from the port-side as we flew along. It was a balance of having enough sail up to lessen the amount of rolling we were doing without having too much up and crashing along headfirst.

With about 10 miles to go to Norfolk we had to reduce sail even further in an effort to slow us down. We wanted to anchor in Mill Creek near Fort Monroe. The last time we were there the anchorage was full of crab pots so we wanted to make a daylight arrival. Alibi II opted to continue on hoping to grab a spot on the free wall at Great Bridge for the next few days of gale force storms. We were tired and the holding in Mill Creek is top notch.

Even dragging our feet we got to the entrance of Mill Creek at about 0600. With the severe overcast it was still dark as hell. We crept into the anchorage using the reflection of the nearby street lights to scan the waters surface for crab pot floats. We found 3 other boats riding peacefully at anchor and nary a crab pot in sight. By 0700 we were safely anchored, the boat was squared away and we were eating breakfast with a well deserved cocktail in hand. Thats right Mom, bagels and rum for breakfast.

We covered 123 nautical miles. The first 3 hours were what sailing dreams are made of. Then there was 8 hours of light air ghosting along and the balance was spent under various reefs depending on conditions at that moment. The autopilot worked it ass off negotiating the trying conditions often spinning the wheel from stop to stop in the blink of an eye. Its time for a nap....

2011-10-30T18:19:00.000-04:00

October 27, 2011.

The highs and lows of the cruising lifestyle really manifested themselves this week.

We've been saying goodbye to our local friends as we've seen them during the last few weeks. Its nice to go south but it is a bit saddening to say goodbye to so many good people.

On top of that, today was my last day of work. While it's nice to be done with work for several months it really was bittersweet to walk out the door at the end of the day. The company I spent this season working for could not have been a better fit for me. The place was busy all year with a variety of work to be performed. From toilets to custom teak with every mechanical and electrical repair in between thrown in. The people there take pride in their work and it shows in their results. I gave a good effort, I learned a lot and Christy and I were accepted as family. They even put up with my unusual view on things. I really hope none of them freezes to death this winter.

A little bit after 1700 hours Christy and I dropped our lines and headed south. We left the dock with about 10 knots of breeze blowing out of the southwest. After about 400 yards the wind completely died. We drifted for close to an hour as we ate dinner before finally starting up the engine.

The wind was forecast to be 10 to 14 from the northwest on several weather sites. While NOAA was broadcasting small craft warnings and an actual gale warning. Turned out that NOAA was right. We went straight from zero wind to Auntie Em, Auntie Em!!

Christy was on the phone with the youngest girlchild when I saw the ominous clouds coming up behind us. I reefed the genoa and told Christy that we had to reef the mainsail. Before she could even hang up the phone the wind was on us. So while the wind was topping out at 35 knots we put in a double reef and turned south. We were doing over 7 knots with very little sail up and saw over 40 knots apparent several times. It was blowing a hoolie.

I was hoping the big winds would be short lived as the front overtook us. But after a few miles it didn't seem to be the case so we decided to tuck in and try again in the morning. But where? Herring Bay was a nice downwind run from our position but once in there if the wind came around to the northeast it would make for a miserable night. The nearest place was the Rhode River. On the plus side is that it would offer great protection. Another plus was that our friends Alibi II had believed NOAA and had tucked in there earlier today and could give us a few pointers on the entrance.

On the negative side was the fact that we were already due east of the entrance and we'd have to go close hauled through 2 miles of nasty 4 footers to get there. Another negative is the fact that we've never been there before. Is it full of crab traps? Are all the markers lit? Should we enter an unknown anchorage with the wind hovering between 30 and 40 knots, in the pitch dark with a smattering of rain flyin' about. We'll take 2 mile pitch dark close hauled hell ride for $600 Alex.

The seas laid down as we approached the shoreline and we slowly motored through the winding channel in complete darkness. We dropped the hook at 2000 hours and buttoned up for the night.

So as the day went, we got to stop working for a while but we're really gonna miss the people. We also got to do some sailing but I coulda swore it used to be more fun....

2011-10-26T12:31:00.000-04:00

October 25, 2011.

I was up at the shop by 0700 and told them that I needed to take care of my prop and would punch in later, they were cool with that so I got started.

I removed the non spinning spinner and headed up to the shop. I degreased everything and carefully inspected the bearing surfaces for scratches, burrs and any other anomaly that I could find. I did find a tiny dent and polished it out. Then it was back down to the boat to reassemble the unit. Once again it bound up tight, as I seated the last 2 bolts.

I painted the inside surfaces with Dychem Blue. I reassembled everything and once I pulled it all back apart I could see from transference of the blue dye exactly where the parts were binding. Then it was trial and error as I repeatedly polished away the dye and a bit o' metal in an effort to alleviate the binding.

Removing too much metal would make the whole refurbishing all for naught, so it was polish, assemble, attempt to spin, rinse, lather, repeat. After the first few attempts I could start to see a difference. It was still way too tight but there was definite progress.

After close to 4 hours I was satisfied that things were as they should be. I put the blades on and everything moved pretty smoothly. Cool. About time.

Then I sanded the shaft and put on a shaft zinc. Next up was the zinc that PYI supplied for the prop. When I flipped it over I thought I had picked up an old zinc. It was horribly corroded.

I've seen zincs come out of the water in better condition than this one. One side looked fairly clean and new while the back face was shitty. I mean, seriously, where do they store their zincs, at the bottom of the ocean? So it was another trip back up to the shop to clean up the face of the zinc.

Once both zincs were installed I applied a couple of coats of anti-fouling paint to the prop and shaft. The travel lift picked us up and while we were hanging in the slings I painted the jack stand pad spots.

While that dried, I compounded and waxed the bow sections that had been hanging out over the water while we were on the hard.

The boat was finally ready and after moving a few boats to make room we were once again back in the water. The wind genny is up, the backstay is tight, Christy washed the decks and as of Thursday evening the Veranda will be officially southbound.

And it only took all freaking day....

2011-10-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

October 24, 2011.

The box showed up on Monday as promised. The weight said 33 pounds, probably a new zinc inside, close enough. I opened the box and peered inside. I unwrapped the bubble wrap and was greeted by the cry of “dude, ¿que pasa?”. In spite of his quirks I was relieved to see our Max starring up at me from the bottom of the box looking fresh and revitalized. So it turns out that 6 years ago we were told we were getting an 18 inch prop and I took their word for it. It turns out Max has been a 20 all along. It was still early in my workday so I stuck Max under the boat and went about my day.

I finished up the installation of a new style wind generator. It's an AirMax and seems to be more popular on the west coast than out here in the east. It's the first one I've seen and the Taswell 44 I put it on will make an excellent test platform.

It only weighs about half as much as the newly popular D-400's everybody seems to want right now. As soon as it went on top of a new Kato telescoping mounting pole the wind pretty much died so it'll be a while before I find out how it performs.

After lunch I had to make a road call on an older Passport Yacht. I ended up replacing the raw water pump on their Perkins 4108. The noteworthy thing about this part of my day was that this 4108 was SPOTLESS. The boat itself was pristine but that is often the case. The woman who owns the boat takes advantage of the wonderful engine access and keeps her engine as clean as any I've ever seen.

That killed the day and it was back to the Veranda to reinstall Max. That's about when the wheels came off. Crap.

The MaxProp has a central hub that slips over your prop shaft. Then there is a 2 piece “spinner” that you bolt together covering the central hub. Everything was perfect until the last little tweak of the wrench. The spinner didn’t spin. It should rotate freely once its in position on the hub. Loosen the bolts just a hair and it was fine....but it ain't right. F@#k me. The central hub assembly comes assembled but the bolts are only firm. The difference is miniscule but once the bolts are tightened everything locked up.

So now instead of finishing the prop installation tonight and putting the boat in the water in the morning there’s a new plan. I'm going to have to take the morning off so I can polish the internal journals to allow clearance for the spinner to actually spin. It galls me that I have to rework this after 2 weeks and close to 2000 dollars spent.

I called PYI and spoke to the technician who suggested that I overnight it back to him and he'd polish it and turn it around ASAP. My suggestion was that maybe he should have done it correctly to begin with. I'm finding myself fantasizing about really bad things.

2011-10-23T09:03:00.000-04:00

October 22, 2011.

We talked to the people out at PYI about sending Max home. Now we're worried. We originally bought Max from PYI about 6 years ago. Due to Christy's meticulous record keeping we still have the receipt showing Max to be an 18 inch prop. When we sent Max out there he weighed in at 31 pounds. We've been assured that Max's rehabilitation is just about complete and he would be shipped out on Friday for an arrival on Monday. Cool.

The problem is that now Max's shipping weight will be 41 pounds rather than 31. Excuse me? How is that possible? When we posed this simple question we were told that 41 pounds was the standard shipping weight for all 20 inch props. That's all fine and dandy but what does that have to do with us, we sent you an 18 inch prop.

I was assured that the receiving dude measured Max when he arrived and found him to be a 20 inch propeller. So there’s definitely been a mistake made but what and when? Did they originally ship us the wrong propeller that we've been using for 6 years or have they confused Max with another and reconditioned someone elses prop which is now winging its way to us. That vein in my head is starting to bulge.

In an effort to allay our fears the receiving dude put a coworker, not a supervisor, but a coworker on the phone with me to try and explain that Max was definitely the right prop . I suspect that the real reason they put this guy on the phone was because of his ability to speak constantly while saying nothing. Every time I was able to speak over him to get him to shut up whatever question I asked, his answer was “I don't know anything about that”. Then why are you on the f@#king phone? At this point I was wishing that PYI had a call center in Asia rather than right here in the USA where my questions would have gone unanswered but at least in a timely fashion by someone who at least appeared to be trying to be helpful.

The box arrives Monday, will it be Max, will it be an imposter? Was Max ever who we thought he was? You let a stranger into your life and then you find out he might not be who he is purported to be.......Could Max be one of the long lost Romanovs?

2011-10-18T18:44:00.001-04:00

October 17, 2011.

The Annapolis Powerboat Show has come and gone. Several vendors brought their trailer-able boat to us to be put into the water for the show.

There were some pretty good looking little runabouts but nothing that really made me say “Wow”. Although I did see some pretty shoddy workmanship that did have some Wow factor. More like Wow, unbelievable, what crap.

On Saturday afternoon it was blowing between 20 and 30 knots while Christy & I sanded our brightwork. We're right at the waters edge and had front row seat for some nautical mayhem.

One of the nearby brokers was taking a pair of prospective buyers out for what he probably thought would be a rollicking good day of sailing. As they cleared the protection of the fairway and the wind hit them on the port bow things went seriously amiss. Or I guess it might have all gone according to plan if the brokers plan included hitting 2 other boats and more than a half dozen pilings.

My attention was drawn by the extended screaming of the Bavaria’s bowthruster. The bowthruster was completely overpowered and the boat was pushed across the fairway to the leeward side. I watched in disbelief as the Bavaria sideswiped and was pinned to one of the big Leopard catamarans tied to our dock. This particular Leopard has just completed the commissioning process and was due to be picked up by the new owners on Monday. Oops.

Christy grabbed the camera while I got down off the boat and ran down to the Leopard and jumped aboard to start trying to fend the Bavaria away. Once clear of the Leopard the broker opted to skip the daysail and retraced his route and backed down the fairway towards the slip they had just departed from. Except that on the return trip he bounced and whacked off every piling on the leeward side of the fairway.

Since they didn't successfully get out of the fairway there was no sail. And I'll bet that since they didn't successfully get out of the fairway there was no sale.

Still waiting for our propeller.

2011-10-13T18:22:00.000-04:00

October 13, 2011.

We received a postcard from our propeller out on the west coast. He is enjoying the reconditioning, so much so that hes decided to stay out there another week. Crap.

Looks like we'll be here for an additional week. But on the bright side we'll both be working which should help to offset Max's extended stay.

I had a little feedback from another eyewitness to the boat show breakdown *incident*. It seems like the captains version of the story might just be a bit inconsistent with the facts. Our friend Lana had a front row seat as the crowd tried to warn the captain that he was still tied to the dock as he hammered the throttle. The resulting embarrassment seems to have been well earned and enjoyed by many.

2011-10-12T22:00:00.001-04:00

October 12, 2011.

Wherein lies the truth?

There was an interesting *incident* during the sailboat show break down. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, although one mans ego may be on life support depending on which view of the incident you believe.

First a little back ground info...... One of the new 50 foot sailboats in the show has an interesting new drive system. Instead of being shaft driven, the this boat has a sail drive. While sail drives aren't all that new or remarkable this one has a new twist, the sail drive can rotate 360º. This enables the boat to be pivoted in its own length. The boat can practically spin around its own axis. This action is done with a “fly by wire type of system” that is controlled by a tiny joystick much like on your kids gaming console.

The Captains version of the incident was that he and his deckhand were untying the boat to depart the boat show. His companion was standing at the bow when the captain tossed one of the stern lines onboard. His clumsy toss landed the line right on top of the joystick. The joystick was bumped forward immediately engaging full throttle in forward. Yikes. The captain valiantly jumped aboard as the boat pulled a nifty holeshot and lurched forward.

Fortunately, there was nothing but open water in front of them. Unfortunately, there was still one dock line tied to a stern cleat. The captains version is that before he could stop the boat the slack in the remaining dockline was gone and the boat came to a screeching halt. For a moment. And then the piling ripped from the bottom. LoL The piling was cut away and the furious captain and his deckhand felt fortunate to survive an encounter with obviously faulty yacht design.

Great story, but is it true? Fortuitously one of my friends happened to be standing 12 feet away as these events unfolded and since he wasn't involved he might be a bit more unbiased.

A little more background info. The breakdown of the boat show has become an event unto itself. There’s quite a bit of one-up-manship and ill perceived bragging rights to be gained by leaving the show with a show of your “expertise”. Women swoon over this or so seems to be the perception. It is not unusual to see boats backing out of the show unnecessarily, making ridiculous maneuvers for no reason or even hoisting a brew or two while throwing tee shirts to the crowds at the nearby waterfront bar. I'm getting moist just thinking about it.

Anyway, my friends version of the incident was as follows. The captain and his deckfluff, er, deckhand untied the boat and with the captain firmly at the controls he slammed the joystick full forward to accelerate as quickly as possible to the excitement of the crowd. The machismo, the adrenaline, the bravado, the adoring crowd, the testostero.......the slack gone, the immediate but short lived stop, the panic, the piling ripping free from the bottom, the roar from the crowd, the remaining dock line being cut away and finally Captain Buffoon motoring away to the laughter of the crowd.

While both stories are entertaining, I know which one I believe. The only indisputable fact is that an unfortunate piling won't be going home to its family tonight. Its always the innocents....

2011-10-12T07:08:00.000-04:00

October 10, 2011.

After we pulled the boat on Thursday I pulled the propeller off. On Friday it was winging its way across the country to be reconditioned out in Washington state. Since we needed it to be there on Monday morning we had to pay for magical expedited shipping to the tune of $255. I think I may have been able to fly there with the prop as carry-on for less than that. Crap.

Anyway, with the prop vacationing on the west coast we decided to hit the boat show. A disturbing trend that I noticed is that a lot of monohulls are getting fat asses. In the past the Shannons seemed to have the market cornered as far as ridiculously fat sterns went but a few more “sailboats” showed up this year looking like they needed to spend a few hours in the gym. This Moody 45 is a prime example. If you look closely at the woman in the blue top at the helm you will see what I find so disturbing; she can't see a god damned thing.

They put 2 helm stations in the cockpit and you really can't see shit from either wheel. Either side of the cabin is directly in the helmsman’s line of sight. Better yet is the fact that they flatten out the trailing edge of the roof line so they can utilize the space as dual nav pods.

Did you ever wonder how they weave double braid? Yeah, me neither but it was cool to see.

The boat show is always fun but more for the renewed acquaintances than the actual boats. We had meals with friends and saw people we haven't seen in about forever. We also missed seeing people that we were looking forward to catching up with. Everybody is running into different friends here and there; its just so hard to coordinate. On Saturday night we once again attended the Eastport Yacht Clubs Boat Show Bash and as always we had a real good time. Music, friends, eating and a bit o' drinking. On Sunday we put in a full day of boat chores. I compounded and waxed the entire hull while Christy Flitzed all of the stainless.

The Veranda hasn't been out of the water for 2 full years which means she hasn't been waxed in that time.

She never really struck me as being ratty looking but she must have been because shes looking pretty spiffy now.

While I was at work on Monday Christy spent the day preparing our brightwork for its yearly rehabilitation. When I got home I finally got around to replacing the main sheet. 4 years ago my brother in law, the racer, proclaimed it to be an antique. Due to the passage of time the old main sheet was now an official fossil so after applying some of my newly acquired mad splicing skills we are now in possession of a new main sheet.

Tonight we watched from the bow as the 42nd Annapolis Boat Show ended. Less than a minute after closing, the docks are moved to release the boats from their temporary captivity.

There’s a little bit of mayhem as so many boats jockey to get out of the confines of the show. Once all the sailboats are gone, the docks will be reconfigured to accept the boats due to be displayed at the Annapolis Powerboat Show which starts on Thursday.

2011-10-07T07:13:00.000-04:00

October 6, 2011.

The last 2 or 3 days before the boat show opened were very hectic. Brokers and other yachties were running about like chickens without their heads trying to get everything taken care of before the show.

Karl and I were even semi abducted when the call came in for the boat we were on to report for dockage in the boat show. We had just stepped onboard to install the mainsail when they got the call and had to head out immediately. I called my boss on the phone and he said “okay, go, I'll pick you up in the skiff in 10 minutes”.

The 3 minute crossing of Annapolis Harbor was one of the most harrowing crossings of my life. We were going 300 yards, tying up the boat, bending on the sail and being picked up, simple enough. Except that the broker/captain of this little adventure showed up with his wife and 2 hyperactive and probably ADD diagnosed kids. I considered tossing one of the kids overboard to see if the other one would straighten up and fly right.

The foredeck was littered with tables, chairs and potted plants for the show. The children were literally running around the boat as the captain negotiated the mooring field as we headed to our assigned dockage.

Part of the boat show preparations are the installation of probably 50 pilings which are used to hold the large temporary docks in place. We missed one by less than a foot. Karl asked “Captain, didn't you see that?”. The good captain replied “that never used to be there”. I'm thinkin' “how about we live in the present, Captain?” but I hold my tongue. Then we came within a foot of tee-boning a dock. The people on the dock fended us away like crazy, either out of self preservation or pity, I'm not sure, either way I was embarrassed to be there.

Finally, mercifully we got tied up. Karl and I bent on the sail. The good captains wife actually had a clue about clews, pitched in and made the sail installation much easier.

I snapped a few pictures of the last minute boat show preparations as we waited for our ride home.

Traditionally at the onset of the boat show the work around the yard slows to a more manageable pace. So this is when we decided to haul the Veranda. We motored over from Back creek and spent the night on the wall with the plan to be hauled this morning. So not quite according to the plan I cranked the engine this morning and *nothing*. Crap. She cranked just fine but no starty. Crap. There wasn't time to change fuel filters so we pulled the boat down and around the docks by hand and into the lifting well. I'm a little agitated and pretty embarrassed but I'll get over it, probably. We drop the forestay, the travel lift moves into position and the mast is in the way before the travel lift is far enough over us to pick us up. Crap. This means we have to turn the boat around and back in. We hook the forestay back up and for the hell of it I turn the key and the Veranda starts right up. Cool. I back away, turn around and back into the well. Now the backstay has to come down. Which it does with very little effort. Cool. Once out of the water and power washed the Veranda was blocked as low as possible to allow the travel lift to back away without me having to drop the wind generator. That part of the plan didn't work either but after dropping the wind genny we're now sitting high and dry with a front row seat overlooking the harbor.

We haven't hauled the boat in 2 years and I was happy to see how good the bottom looked. We had 2 years on the Petit Trinidad SR and the bottom was pretty much growth free. But, I was a little disheartened to see how much slop there was in our 6 year old MaxProp.

We'll spend a week out of the water while we get the Veranda ready to head south once again. A bonus while we're on the hard is our outstanding view of the now opened Annapolis Sailboat Show.

2011-10-06T18:51:00.002-04:00

October 4, 2011.

Oops! It seems there was a little bit of a mistake (not mine). The new traveler system that I was ridiculing the other day turned out to be WRONG.

The US representative for Jeanneau came to the yard with a blueprint for the new traveler system. The 2 bails that were the anchor points for the 3 boom hung blocks were mounted out of position by 30 inches at the factory. Plus, there was supposed to be a third bail that had never been installed.

I drilled out the rivets holding the bails in position and mounted all 3 bails where the new blueprint showed them. After drilling the new holes and riveting everything in place the boat immediately headed across the harbor to be received into the boatshow. Nick o' time, embarrassment avoided.

2011-10-04T06:56:00.000-04:00

October 2, 2011.

Someone wrote and asked about “building” a mast. Since I had yet another boat show mast to get ready I snapped a few pictures.

This mast is going to be stepped on a Jeanneau 43 footer.

Once the boat arrived here it went straight into the big tent to be painted. The mast arrives in a long PVC shipping tube.

The standing and running rig are all rolled up and crammed into the cockpit lazarrettes on the boat along with the annometer and the lights. The foils and the rest of the roller furler assembly are usually found down below in the main salon.

The yard uses a crane to pull the mast out of the tube and to put it up on saw horses. I try to gather up all the crap I'm gonna need before I get started. The first thing I like to do is to install one spreader on the mast to make it a little more stable to work on.

With the mast stable and laying face up I install the radars cable. This mast arrived with a hole drilled in the face of the mast and a small “messenger” line in place. I'm supposed to take the messenger line, tape and tie it to the cable and then in theory I should be able to pull the cable gently through the mast down to the foot of the mast.

Predictably it wasn't to be as simple as it could have been (it rarely is). The radar and its cable are shipped here with the boat.

They know how big the cable is but when they drilled the hole in the mast they made it too small for the wire to pass through. So now I have to push the messenger line back into the mast so I can re-drill the hole to an appropriate size to accept the cable. Then I have to go fishing around inside the mast to find the messenger line to once again pull it back up through the hole. If they're gonna drill the hole in the first place why not use an appropriate sized bit. Its a simple enough fix but 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there start to add up. I'm not sure if they don't think it through or if they just don't give a shit but it could all go so much smoother with very little effort.

After the cable is in place I install the mount and then the radar. After that I mount and wire the deck/ steaming light. While the mast is still basically a stick I run the genoa and main halyards along with the topping lift and the spinnaker halyard.

After that I start on the masthead crappola. This usually involves pulling several different wires down through the length of the mast. This mast needs an anchor light, a VHF antenna, the annometer, a windex and of course a television antenna. This style tv antenna is one of my favorites.

It works well and it gives the birds plenty of room to sit at your masthead while they take their morning dump all over your boat.

After the masthead is done I roll the mast over so the radar is hanging down. Then I install the rest of the spreaders followed by the upper and lower shrouds. Then I unroll a 60 foot strip of carpet to lay the roller furler on during assembly. Once the furler is ready I connect the top of the headstay to the mast.

Then the backstay is connected. If there’s any bullshit like burgee halyards I install the blocks on the spreaders now. The last thing I do is to check all the lights on the mast with a 12 volt battery to see that everything works as it should.

Reading back on this it all seems pretty simple. All the little tedious things like drilling holes, tapping holes and soldering cable ends adds up and I spend between 7 and 10 hours getting each mast ready to stand.

The timing worked out perfectly as the mast was ready to stand immediately after the newly painted boat was pulled out into the light of day.

2011-10-01T16:20:00.001-04:00

September 28, 2011.

First and most importantly, Happy Birthday to my better half, Christy. Now lets make fun of the French....

I had to install all of the running rigging on a new sailboat bound for the boat show. I've done quite a few and I even live on a freaking boat so I’m pretty familiar with the way various lines need to be run. That was until today when I realized that this new boat didn't even have a traveler (the sliding thing used to control the mainsail).

I got a bag with 4 small blocks and another 9 large blocks (pulleys). Everything runs back to the electric winches (labor saving device allowing lightweights to adjust lines even when under incredible loads which will probably lead to an upswing in the number of torn sails) in the cockpit. I ran the genoa sheets (ropes that unroll and control the big sail up front) and the furling line (the wee line to roll the genoa back up). Then I ran the main halyard (rope used to raise the mainsail) and genoa halyard (rope used to raise the genoa, usually once a year) along with the topping lift (line used to support the end of the boom). Then there was the mainsail furling line (used with a roller furling mainsail) and the boom vang control line (a vang is used to make the area directly aft of the mast unusable for any other purpose).

So I was moving right along until I tried to figure out the traveler. After a lot of trial and error I ended up with a birdsnest of lines that uses 7 blocks and an additional pair of cheek blocks to get both ends of the line into the cockpit.

I pictured the boat designer, Jacques Lackluster sitting at his desk in France trying to come up with a radical new design to make his mark on this particular new yacht. Read this next section with your most obnoxious french accent---> Let me zee, what can I do to completely revolutionize zee yachting industry. Oops, its time for my 9 wine lunch. I'll draw up my new traveler design after lunch. Three hours later.... The wine, she was perfect but now its back to reinventing zee wheel. Let me think, the traditional traveler that most yachts use is too efficient. It's simple, uses a minimal amount of hardware and is infinitely adjustable. I will make my mark by getting rid of it altogether.

My parents were wrong, I am brilliant. Back to English unless of course you choose to use the french accent for the rest of the evening. C'est votre choix.

The new “traveler” has no car or track and completely relies on a series of blocks.

The main sheet is about a mile long and has 2 ends running into the cockpit. It looks a lot like a giant spider web with plenty of opportunities to trip if someone decided to move forward on the cabin top. The installation of a dodger would be interesting and with a line running down each side of the boom I'm thinkin' there’s no way to install a stack pack. Well done Jacques, well done.

I tease about the French because I'm not under any contractual obligation not to. I've actually enjoyed the time I've spent in the company of people from France but none of them was a yacht designer.

2011-09-27T18:54:00.002-04:00

September 25, 2011.

The marina I work at is not like most yards in the area with all the amenities like a pool and captains lounge. The yard I work in is more of a working boatyard. You show up here to have your boat either repaired or upgraded rather than in the futile pursuit of a rum drink at our non-existent pub.

At this time of year a lot of my job centers around getting brand new boats ready to be displayed at the upcoming Annapolis Sailboat Show. There's been a steady stream of boats arriving for over a week now. Most are brought in to the country on container ships and trucked in with the mast in a large shipping tube.

The average assembly includes building and stepping the mast, installing radar, VHF antenna, windex, annometer, lights, the anchor, the bow pulpit, the sails and all the running rigging. Christy has joined me there at the yard and is now sanding and applying finish to the wood on some of these new boats.

Most of these boats are coming over from Europe and have both fire extinguishers and propane canisters that can't be used here in the states. It seems incredibly wasteful but one of the first things we do is to replace all the fire extinguishers with US Coast Guard compliant models. Then we change out the steel propane bottles and replace them with aluminum tanks with valves that can be serviced here in the states.

Some of the vessels are already bought but are going to be the display boat in the show so the owners have a list of things they would like taken care of in addition to the basic assembly.

One of these boats has been a particularly challenging boat. Its a 42 footer with a large aft cabin. Aft of the headboard in the bedroom is the sugar scoop stern. The space inside the large sugar scoop is the only available space for installing the new 6KW generator. Its actually a fairly large space but the only access to the area was blocked when some complete buffoon decided to place the aft air-conditioning unit directly in the opening to the space.

So the first step in installing the generator was the repositioning of the air-conditioner. I disconnected everything and pulled the unit out out onto the bed.

I had to fabricate and install a shelf that ran anthwartships aft of the steering quadrant. Once that was glassed into place I was able to squeeze the air-conditioner up into its new home. The I had to rerun the duct work, the plumbing and the wiring to the units new home.

After that was all done it became apparent that the shelf that had held the A/C unit was only made of some bullshit plastic that was glued to the hull. Since the new generator weighs in at 375 pounds a new beefier shelf was in order. I ripped out the plastic and made a staunch shelf out of 1 inch marine plywood and fiberglassed it into place. My coworker Karl popped in the new intake and exhaust thru hulls while I ran the new filter and fuel lines. Next I took care of the raw water strainer and lines while he ran the new wiring.

The generator is so big that the opening in the aft bulkhead had to be cut larger. Once mounted in the hole, servicing the unit would be impossible so Karl order a set of very cool telescoping rollers. The rollers were mounted to the new plywood base with the generator pan sitting on top of the rollers. Now the entire unit can be pulled out and telescoped into the aft cabin for servicing.

While Karl finished up the generator installation I was tasked with installing a pair of dinghy davits and a stainless steel pole to mount the antenna for the Trac-Vision TV antenna. Because what 42 foot sailboat doesn't need 2 high definition flat screen televisions. I hung the TV's and mounted the pole and domed antenna while Marco ran the wiring and hooked everything up down in the bowels of the boat. When I was done I told Marco my part was done and he could fire up the televisions to check them out. He asked if the boat was plugged in and I replied “No, why?” His answer was that the TV's were AC only. I was surprised but responded “So just flip on the inverter”. His response was “There is no inverter”

Microwave, blender, 2 televisions and they can't run any of it unless they're plugged in to a dock or the generators running. Sheesch. Marco kinda chuckled while I stood there slack jawed. These people will be out on the hook and decide to have a couple of blender drinks but will have to fire up the generator just to run the blender for 2 minutes. All because they didn't think things through. But at least they've got 2 televisions.....

2011-09-24T09:14:00.001-04:00

Not being in the water for months at a time after having been spoiled for so much of the year is a problem for me. We really enjoy lobster hunting so when I found this web cam that is attached to a lobster pot up in Nova Scotia I thought it would be interesting to check in on once in a while. The link leads to a live feed web cam so it only works during daylight hours up in Nova Scotia. Live lobster trap cam here

I've been checking the cam for about 2 months now and this morning there was finally a lobster inside it; 2 actually. It turned out to be the one of the saddest things ever. I thought they climbed into the pot and sat there happily eating the bait until the lobsterman came along and harvested them. This mornings lobster were anything but complacent. They were literally bouncing off the walls as they searched relentlessly back and forth for the way out of the trap.

I find myself rooting for the lobsters that are on the outside of the trap to NOT find the door. I might be going a bit buggy. I need to get back into the water and kill something.

2011-09-21T19:39:00.002-04:00

September 18, 2011.

We just got back from a whirlwind visit to New Jersey. Drove up late Friday and spent time with my Mom. Dined with the oldest boychild and finally met his lovely girlfriend. Shared a meal and some time with my brother and his family.

The trouble with whirlwinds is that they happen too quickly. We missed seeing several people that we wanted to catch up with. Duty calls. Drove back to Naptown on Sunday afternoon. Fantasized about horrible flaming deaths for several other drivers. We took a vote and it was unanimous, we hate driving anymore.

2011-09-21T19:38:00.000-04:00

September 12, 2011.

I built the mast for a 44 foot catamaran the other day and yesterday the schedule finally allowed for us to step the mast. The mast is huge and unwieldy with a shitload of wires hanging out the bottom. There are wires for the steaming light, the deck lights, the anchor light, the VHF, the television antenna and 2 pairs for the radar.

After the big deck stepped thing was stood up and tensioned I had to run all the wires down into the boat and hook everything up. First up I determined which wires were for the steaming light, hooked em' up. Check, done. Then the deck lights. Check, done. Next was the anchor light. Beep. Excuse me? What was that? Beeeeep. Shit, There’s a horn on the mast, I forgot. Crap. After hooking the horn wires to the correct breaker I was left with a conundrum. One pair of wires too few. Shit, no anchor light.

After sticking a Bore Scope into the bottom of the mast I found that there wasn't a pair of wires lurking in the mast base that we had overlooked. That meant a trip up the mast to see if there was even a wire hooked to the masthead light.

The masthead light was installed in South Africa and when I got up to the masthead I was a little perplexed when I saw that there was a wire from the fixture and down into the masthead. I gave the wire a little tug to see if I could gauge how much wire ran down into the mast by how heavy it was. And it popped right out of the top of the mast at the slightest tug. It seems that somewhere along the line the wire had been broken 5 feet below the masthead and never replaced. With the mystery solved I ran another wire down the mast and the anchor light does its thing. Sounds like one of those “f@#k it, they can fix it when it gets to America type things”.

2011-09-06T20:09:00.000-04:00

September 5, 2011.

Holy shit, we're still sailors after all. We had torn the headsail and I made a temporary repair while we were underway back in May. I dropped the sail off at Doyle Sailmakers here in Annapolis 2 months ago. I told em' to take their time as we weren't leaving the slip until October. Fortuitously I got the sail back Thursday just in time for the 3 day holiday weekend.

Usually we use the extended time off to do boat chores. But this year both of the girl children showed up to spend the 3 days with us.

Allyson brought along her boyfriend Sunil so we decided to cast off and do some gunkholing for the weekend.

On Saturday morning we slipped the lines and soon found ourselves dodging hundreds of racers as we tacked our way south down the bay.

A splendid day under sail ended with us ghosting into Spa Creek to take a mooring near Truxtent Park. Late that evening Ashlee completed her long drive from upstate New York and I dinghied in to pick her up.

On Sunday with everyone aboard we once again headed back out to do a little more sailing.

Again we were treated to perfect breeze and in the afternoon we headed up the Severn River. We turned into Salt Creek and picked up a vacant Navy mooring. The “kids” spent the afternoon relaxing in the sun and using the main halyard as a Tarzan swing.

The end of the day was spent enjoying the 3 D's; Dinner, Drinking and Dominoes.

We lost a few vanes off the raw water impeller so we sailed into the mouth of Back creek before starting the motor for the short trip in to wedge ourselves back into our slip.

Since we were back in the slip at a reasonable time we decided to take the kids, gather some friends and spend the evening performing the age old sailing ritual....the pub crawl. The five of us were joined by the Alibi II's and the Savage Sons as we headed out in search of a pleasant cocktail experience.

We walked down to The Boatyard Bar & Grill for the first beer of the evening. The bartender was obviously the love child of Marcel Marceau and Frankenstein. The dude never said a word as he plodded back and forth from one customer to the next. The plan was to hit several pubs for a single beer and then move on. With this droid for a bartender I was glad we had a plan.

Next we headed over to The Rockfish Grill. The experience was the complete opposite of the Boatyard. Between the good bartender and the engaging patrons nobody minded when we had to settle in for a second round as it began pour outside.

The rain let up so we headed across the bridge into Naptown proper and stopped in at the Acme Bar. We tried on a few different styles from their wing menu so that led to another 3 beers or so. Good drinkin' place.

After that we grabbed a table at one of my personal favorites, The Armadillo. After another 2 beers we popped in next door and had ourselves some ice cream. I'm not usually a beer and ice cream kinda guy but hey, we were in the neighborhood.

We opted to end the evening by walking back into Eastport and stopping at Davis' Pub. We settled in (the plan was out the window) and had more than our fair share of beers. We drank, we laughed, there may have been a few tears, we ate, we dodged the rain and everybody got home safely.

Its been a nice weekend.....

2011-08-29T20:39:00.001-04:00

August 27, 2011.

Friday evening after we work we took care of our last minute hurricane preparations. We ran a couple of long lines out to distant pilings to help spread the load our boat would be putting on the pilings surrounding our slip. Then there was the obligatory happy hour which became a pre-hurricane gathering.

Since our slip is so tight we decided to drop the dinghy in the water. We're backed into the slip and by getting the dinghy off the davits we freed up about 4 feet of space behind the boat.

That should give us a little more “wiggle room” when we're forced to start adjusting lines. We tied the dink to a line between our dock and the shoreline. It can't reach the dock at either end of its tether so chaffing shouldn't be an issue.

Since we're the only live-aboards here in the marina I always try to help the marina owner out by adjusting this and that while the water rises and ebbs. So I made a quick trip down the docks and was flabbergasted at what some people consider appropriate when it comes to tying up their boats. These were two of my favorites. The one guy slipped the loop ends of his docklines over the little wooden hooks designed to hold coiled lines. Why would you ever want to go to the trouble of tying your boat to that big staunch post when you can just drop the loopy part over that little spindly part.

Like that was gonna hold the weight of his boat in any type of blow. And then there was this guy who figured that as long as the line reached the cleat it was good enough.

Seriously?

I worked on Saturday morning getting the last of the stragglers out of the water. The wind and the rain started during the morning and by noon the wind was blowing about 30 knots. Heading home after work I was pleased to find that there was no wind at all in our tiny little haven just on the other side of town.

It was pouring here, the wind out at Thomas Point light was blowing close to 40 knots, but we were only seeing a third of that. So far so good.

Right after I finished writing the above post, the power went out and the internet disappeared so I was unable to post it. It's now the next day and Irene has left the building. The sun is out, the wind is dying away and if not for the amount of detritus from the trees you'd never know there had been a weather event.

During the night I went topside and walked the docks every 2 hours checking on things here in the marina. My biggest impression of the storm was the NOISE. Between the wind whistling through the masts and roaring through the trees the noise was very much like being in close proximity to a freight train. It was very impressive.

Every once in a while the Veranda would get hit by an especially violent gust of wind and heel ever so slightly in her slip. But for the most part the wind down at deck level was 15 knots or less. The instruments at the masthead recorded a high of 42 knots so it must have been blowing stink out in lesser protected anchorages.

Our biggest concern was the expected surge. There was a chance of the tide rising 4 to 6 feet as the storm approached our latitude. Then as it passed, the wind would be blowing the water out of the bay with some forecasters calling for as much as a 10 foot drop. We ended up with a rise of only about a foot and when the wind turned and started blowing the water away it was raining so hard that the water only dropped about 2 feet.

The dodger and bimini did their thing and the cockpit stayed dry. Tucker rode out the storm in his cockpit bunk and seemed no worse for wear. The extra lines have been retrieved and stowed, the leaves have been cleared from the deck and the sunshades are back on the dodger. There’s no power in town so our Honda generator has been lent to a neighbor and life goes on.

2011-08-27T06:32:00.000-04:00

August 25, 2011.

Working here in Annapolis while a Hurricane bears down is a little bizarre. All day the marina was a flurry of activity as preparations were going on. The phones were ringing non-stop all day with people who wanted to be pulled out or were looking for an inside track on getting them hauled at another marina.

I've been working on one boat for several days. First I had to install separate refrigeration and freezer systems in the boat. That all went very well and both boxes are nice and frosty. While the boat was on the hard so I could install keel coolers, the owners stopped in and removed the old name from the boat and applied the new name.

There’s a superstition that says it's bad luck to change the name of a boat. There is an alcohol based ceremony that if performed properly will keep the bad luck at bay. They changed the name on Monday, we had an earthquake on Tuesday and now there’s a hurricane scheduled for the weekend. Coincidence.....?

Today I installed a 400 watt solar array on their boat. I built and prewired as much of it as I could yesterday and had it installed and ready to go by noon today. The moment I was ready to hit the “go” button the skies went dark and opened up. I was looking forward to seeing how much power the new array was going to put out and the rain kinda put the kibosh on that. I think they screwed up the ceremony. Just sayin'.

Afterwards I got to be a yard dog again and pitched in to help pull and store boats. It's fun, I enjoy it and it looks like I’ll have another 2 days of the same as we wait for Irene to drop in.

We have the option of being pulled, but after watching several different weather sources we've decided to ride this one out. We're in a very protected corner of a tiny, tight tributary off Back Creek. The wind forecast has the highest winds coming out of the direction of our best protection. Our biggest concern is the storm surge.

The forecasters all seem to have it in the ballpark of 4-6 feet. That means the tide could be several feet higher than normal. The biggest fluctuation is after the surge. The water is supposed to be blown out of the bay with the water possibly dropping 10 feet more than normal. That might suck since we usually only have 2 feet of water under us in the slip. But it may end as a great photo op (or an insurance claim). We'll just have to wait and see.

2011-08-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

August 23, 2011.

Like everybody else on the eastern seaboard we've been watching the swirling mayhem known as Irene. Its kind of amusing to me that whenever someones area is in Mother Natures crosshairs they start to pray that it doesn't happen “here”. But then when their prayers are answered and the storms predicted path moves away from them and focuses on somebody less fortunate they begin to pray for those folks. Wait a minute, didn't you pretty much just wish this weather on somebody else? Your prayers were answered, its gonna be hell for somebody else and now they're trying to pray it onto a third party? Where does it end?

Irene looks as if she might spare Florida. Then for a while it looked like the South Carolina/ North Carolina border was going to be ground zero here in the states. Now it seems that the Outer Banks are gonna get hammered. If it skims the Outer Banks it could come slamming right up the Chesapeake Bay. We'll have to wait and see, its the weather, we'll be ready but anything could happen. Me, I'm praying it stays offshore until it slams into Long Guyland. And today while I was deep in prayer we had a freaking EARTHQUAKE!!

I was down inside a boat that was floating in the lifting well. I heard the travel lift start making this horrendous noise. I poked my head out the companionway and was startled to see the travel lift jumping around doing the shimmy shimmy shake shake. I turned around and every piling in the marina was violently wagging back and forth.

It was bizarre to see. I was in the floating boat so I felt nothing but everywhere I looked things that usually don't move were doing the Watusi. The several dozen people in the 3 story office building adjacent to the boat yard came flying down the stairs and out into the parking lot.

I could actually feel the nervous energy in the air as I moved through the people checking the stands of the boats on the hard. It was funny to see all the individual and sometimes competing brokers gather together and become one herd for safety. I'm now praying that when I experience my second earthquake I'll have my camera ready.

2011-08-22T17:48:00.000-04:00

August 20, 2011.

Friday was one of those days we've all experienced but would love to forget. I was tasked with a few small repairs on an elderly gentleman’s sailboat. I took the skiff with my tools and parts and headed up the river. That's about as far as I got before the day turned to shit.

I rebuilt the boats cockpit mounted manual bilge pump. The pump now works but can't be mounted back in place because we're having trouble locating a weather seal. This pump is mounted in the lazarette with the pump handle extending through the top, without the weather seal, every time it rains the water is free to cascade into the boat. So the pump is fixed but remains unmounted with the mounting hole covered with tape while we search for a seal for this 40 year old application. Okay I'm O for 1.

The owner reported that his electric bilge pump wasn't working either. It lives at the bottom of a 3 ½ foot well directly beneath the batteries. Great, so the batteries have to come out as well. When I opened up the floor to access the batteries I almost shit. The water was right up to the top of the batteries. The water was literally lapping at the bottom of the floorboards. And of course, none of the bilge pumps were working. Crap.

I grabbed the hand pump out of the skiff and went to work pumping like a madman. I only had enough hose to reach the sink in the galley. I would pump like mad for 2 minutes and then I would have to wait for 30 seconds as the water very slowly spiraled down the sink drain. Christ, what does work on this boat?

After 20 minutes I had the batteries sitting dry with only another 3 ½ feet of water to go. I was sweating like a pig and needed a break. Yes, those two ovals are the puddles of sweat from my knees.

I opted to jump in the skiff and head back to the shop to retrieve an electric pump. Once back at the boat it still took another 30 minutes to drain the bilge enough for me to work. As the water receded it left a slime from the top of the oily water on every surface in the bilge. What a mess.

The old pump worked intermittently when run straight off the battery. The old float switch didn't work at all and the control panel was a rotted mess. I ordered everything new and started from scratch. The bilge system was actually hooked to the battery by a piece of corroded wire wrapped around the battery post. No terminal end, nothing, just a twist of wire.

I mounted the new pump and float switch on a platform so that I could lower them into the bilge and secure them from above.

After some new wiring and the control were in place everything worked as it was supposed to.

Okay, it was a LOT more work than I figured on but I’m now 1 for 2.

Next up was the installation of a new alternator. I took the old one out the other day and the alternator shop wanted $290 to rebuild it. The owner opted to spend $350 on a new one instead. Cool, new is clean and after that bilge I'm due for some clean.

Its faster to wire it and then mount it and that was my plan until I actually looked at the alternator and noted that all the mounting hardware was missing. That's right, no nuts. Oh look and they're little bastard metric nuts. Shit.

A trip back to the shop brought me no joy as there wasn't a metric nut to be found. While the parts kid ran out to purchase the appropriate nuts I went back to the boat to clean up. The owner also wanted me to see if I could determine where the water was getting into his boat. Everything below the floor was wet so it was pretty much anybodies guess, that is until it started to rain. It turned out the water is coming in EVERYWHERE. Besides the manual pumps leaking seal every stanchion base was leaking like a window in a submarine.

To be continued......

2011-08-17T22:50:00.000-04:00

August 17, 2011

Things at work have been pretty much run of the mill. I installed a new refrigeration system for one guy and new air conditioning for another. I also built a few masts for new boats that we're commissioning. I also got to dismantle the interior of a large sportfisher to gain engine access.

Both engines needed warranty work and with each head weighing in around 500 pounds I was glad not to be involved with that part. Cool crane truck though.

The youngest girlchild dropped in for a visit on her way back from vacation in Mexico with her boyfriend whats his face.

It was good to see Ashlee again. Time flies when shes here.

I got a flat tire on my bicycle on the way home from work yesterday so Christy hit Walmart and picked up two new tires and tubes. The old tires were pretty dry rotted and the change over went pretty quickly.

Recently our friends Jay & Di put their beloved cruising boat, Far Niente up for sale. They're at that stage in life where a lot of cruisers choose between a trawler or a motorhome. A few months ago they found and purchased the perfect 40 foot motor coach.

Fate stepped in and sent them a buyer so today the Far Niente changed hands to a new owner. We're really glad for them that they were able to sell the boat so quickly and to be able to pursue new adventures. Although my inner selfish prick is a little disappointed that we won't be sharing anchorages this winter. The chocolate they lavish upon me has nothing to do with it, I'm bummed.

2011-08-08T17:53:00.000-04:00

August 5, 2011.

We had visitors here on the Veranda this past weekend. The middle boychild, Colin showed up with his lovely girlfriend Jamie in tow. We ate and drank, had a river tour and pretty much hung around.

I told them about a pretty cool banana trick I read about on the internet. On the morning after they left it was cool to see that they had been paying attention…..

2011-08-04T18:59:00.000-04:00

August 2, 2011.

We’ve got a brand new and very interesting catamaran that needs to be commissioned down at the marina. It’s here after arriving in Baltimore on a freighter from South Africa.

The thing is 44 feet long and will be the Belle of the Ball when it comes to hosting cocktail hours. But as with any “new” design there are a few things that at first glance make me say “what the hell were they thinking?”.

The first thing that rubbed me the wrong way was that the helmsman is seated in a semi tuna tower up above the main bimini. Any type of running seas and the ride up there should be pretty active. I can’t wait to see what they come up for an enclosure. Once the mast is up it will be interesting to see just how high the boom is off the water.

A boat this big has an incredible amount of windage so good ground tackle is important. I was picturing a 60 or 70 pound anchor hanging from an all chain rode. That was until I saw the micro tiny anchor roller and realized that their vision must include tying up at a lot of marinas.

How can a manufacturer let a boat that big get out the door with such a skimpy roller. Well color me embarrassed. After I wrote this bit about the anchor roller I had the opportunity to explore the boat a bit and was relieved to find a normal sized anchor and roller in a locker aft of the trampoline. What the hell that tiny roller is for still eludes me.

For me the most astonishing design was the forward end of the salon. It’s a flat, vertical wall of glass and plastic with a door in it and a roof extending forward. The door leads to the forward cockpit. The what, you say? That’s right, the forward cockpit. You know the forward cockpit where you’d sit to do…..Well, I have no idea what you might do up forward in there.

It might make a good spot to stow your bicycles, I dunno.

All it would take was one boarding wave and the flaw in that design would be readily evident. A few years ago some friends we were traveling with on a Lagoon 41 buried both bows when just the right combination of current and wind hit us in the Cape Fear River, so it can happen.

This big ole’ cat will definitely be the Belle, but it will be interesting to see if it can make it to the ball.

2011-07-29T18:49:00.000-04:00

July 27, 2011.

Let’s say that you and a buddy decide to spend some time touring the east coast in a 27 foot Catalina. Simple day sails, gunkholing your way through the Chesapeake. You finally make your way to Annapolis and its pretty hot outside. You take a slip, tie up for the night and head off to one of the towns many watering holes. Sounds like a fine way to spend a summer evening.

After a few beers and a meal you and your buddy head back to the boat. It’s after dark and something just doesn’t seem right with the boat. You hop onboard and step below into shin deep water. Oh f@#k. Fortunately, the captain was aware of one of the golden rules of boating; the water should NEVER be shin deep inside the boat.

Water was coming in somewhere but they couldn’t figure out where. They checked all the usual suspects but nothing jumped out at them. The difficulty in finding the leak was compounded by the fact that every thru hull fitting was under water. Shit. It’s not that big of a boat, where the hell was the water coming from?

The bilge pump was running, but fighting a losing battle. One guy got the boat started and backed out of the slip while the other guy grabbed a bucket and started bailing. There is no more powerful bilge pump in the world than a scared sailor with a 5 gallon bucket.

In spite of this near disaster the Gods were really smiling down on these two. They got back from their night on the town just before the starter went under. They headed off in the dark into an unfamiliar port towards the first travel lift they saw. It was our travel lift and by dumb luck our service manager had stopped in late to take care of something. They flagged him down, he phoned one of the yard crew who lives nearby and the Catalina was soon safely hanging in the slings.

The culprit turned out to be a nasty crack a couple of inches below the waterline on the starboard side.

The crack is beneath the starboard side settee. There is no thru hull there so they never bothered to look there for the leak. In the dark I doubt they would have found it anyway. The cause of the crack is up for speculation. There were no real scrape marks as if they had glanced off something. It was almost as if something had impacted them directly from the side but well below the waterline. According to them they were tied up in a slip between 2 other boats so I can’t imagine how that might have happened. Dud torpedo perhaps or maybe an aggresive helmet wearing rogue manatee, I dunno.

Or it could be a bullshit story and they were out drinking and boating and bounced themselves off something in the dark. Who knows, it’s a mystery either way.

The hole is fixed and they have some new bottom paint and they’re back out continuing the adventure…..

2011-07-23T11:22:00.001-04:00

July 22, 2011.

Evidently Satan left the door open because it’s hot as hell here. I know that everything is relative. It’s not like we’re in full battle dress doing a thankless job in some shithole in the Middle East.

But God damn, it’s hot but at least theres no breeze.

We have air conditioning, but use it sparingly. We’ve only run it lately when we get home in the evening and shut it down just as we turn in for the night. This evening when we fired it up the room temperature was 100°.

I didn't even know the thermostat went out 3 numerals.

Boats generally aren’t the most efficient of air conditioned dwellings. Our AC unit will knock the humidity out of the air pretty quickly but the temperature drops oh so slowly. But once the humidity’s gone, it does start to feel pretty good pretty quickly. Tucker even enjoys the rare evening below in more temperate surroundings.

Christy is at that juncture of a woman’s life when she could burst into flames at any moment. Working outside, with a heat gun in her hand, combined with the weather this week has been challenging at best. I pretty much bob and weave and try to stay out of the way.

Christy and her boss Maggie have their backs to the wall. They have a 1957, 60 foot wooden Chris Craft that has to be refinished by the first week in August.

Unfortunately, last week Maggie fell on a section of decrepit dock and broke 2 ribs. That left Christy in the sun with her heat gun and scraper by herself for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. She worked long days and made good progress but Maggie had to get back to it, in order to have a chance at making the deadline. Whoever says women aren’t tough hasn’t met these two.

Things at my job are still going nicely. I drag my tools around the boatyard on a small wagon like the Radio Flyers of old. It probably weighs better than 200 pounds with my tools, goos, screws and miscellaneous crap onboard.

I had to do some work at a small marina about 3 blocks away. All the company trucks were out on the road so I walked the 3 blocks pulling my little wagon behind me.

(not my actual cart, just an appropriate visual aid)

All my shit is pretty much balanced on the wagon so I have to walk on the street rather than use the bumpy sidewalks. Kinda like Dennis the Menace runs away to fix boat crap. It’s a little bizarre as I stand in the driveway punching in the security code to gain entrance at the giant rolling gate while the guy behind me in cue is sitting there in his Benz drumming his fingers on the wheel. That’s right buddy, I see your impatience. You better hope that it’s not your boat I come for. Then I’ll really show you some slow.

Oooh, its getting cooler in here, where’s my socks.

2011-07-22T06:46:00.000-04:00

July 20, 2011.

Unfortunately, there has been a bit of a crime spree here in Annapolis this year. About a month ago there was a rash of television thefts. Someone was breaking into boats with TVs and ripping them off the walls and escaping. We’ve got no TV so we’re safe but still….

The bizarre thing was that several boat owners were able to pinpoint the thefts as happening during the daytime. One of the marinas that was hardest hit has a security gate that requires you to be buzzed in, so somebody was being pretty brazen. The thefts stopped when a guy was caught in another area marina with a pair of TVs that didn’t belong to him.

A couple of guys were installing TVs in a pair of new boats when they decided to break for lunch. While they were gone the thief climbed onto the boats and ripped the TVs off the bulkhead before they were even wired in. He just waltzed in like he owned the place, snatched the TVs and attempted to drive away with them in one of the marinas golf carts. Fortunately, somebody stopped him and it was “game over”. Until this weekend….

Somebody slimed their way through the marina adjacent to my work place and stole the shore power cords from 14 boats. These things are 50 feet long and they weigh quite a bit. They’re an unwieldy pain in the ass, but somebody dedicated enough time to steal 14 of them.

The sick thing about all of this is that the thieves left all of the adapters and pigtails behind. The cords can cost up to $650 a piece. The adapters are also expensive as hell and even though they are much lighter and easier to handle they were all left behind. That probably means that who ever took the power cords is going to scrap them for the copper within.

What a waste, scraping a $650 power cord for the $40 worth of copper. Hopefully, the thief will use his ill gotten gains, get all drunked up and step in front of a truck….

October can’t come soon enough.

2011-07-17T23:09:00.000-04:00

July 16, 2011.

The last 7 days have been a roller coaster of a week.

Bess and Bill stopped in for an evening of dominoes and some fine coconut rum sippin’.

It’s been several months since we’ve dusted off the dominoes, so it was a lot of fun, >>>>KoKoMo, Christy kicked ass. Then on Sunday we finally met Greg & Lynn of S/V Paperbird. They’ve just become the owners of a sister ship to our Veranda. They bought the boat in Texas and had it shipped to their home waters here in Annapolis. We arranged to get together so they could see what changes we’ve made to make the Veranda more livable.

After 2 hours on our boat they took us out for lunch and then we headed over and spent a couple of hours exploring their “new to them” Pearson 422. They’ve got 2 years to chip away at their list of repairs and upgrades as they prepare to cast off and head south. It was great to meet them and we look forward to seeing them on the water.

The Savages are back from Maine so we got to spend some time hanging around with them. So the roller coaster definitely had some highs……and then there was the Achilles.

The Achilles is a big SeaRay type powerboat. It turns out that even if you’re going really, really fast you still need enough water for the boat to float. The math works out that if you draw 3 feet of water then you need to be in MORE than 3 feet of water to properly operate the vessel. So the rule of thumb is that the water depth has to be greater than the vessels draft. Surprisingly enough this presents a challenge to more boaters than you’d expect.

When a sailboat bumps the bottom they find the bottom with their keel. Generally, its no harm no foul, they sit there until they “unbump” themselves and continue on their merry way. Power vessels generally find the bottom with their delicate moving bits like the propeller or rudder. This usually results in job security for people in the marine repair industry.

I was tasked with removing both of “Achilles” propeller shafts as they were pretty twisted after an unfortunate combination of a lack of math skills and a short attention span by the helmsman. The cramped conditions made removal a nightmare and Oh Look! they're v-drives. It literally took me 2 full minutes to step down from the deck and worm my way into position behind either engine. It took me about 15 hours of ass busting work to finally get both shafts out. The majority of that time was on the starboard shaft which I ended up having to cut out.

When I got home from work last Thursday Christy told me that since the Savages had gone sailing for a long weekend and she had the use of their minivan and that she wanted to drive up to Ithaca, NY to see Ashlee, the youngest girlchild. I didn’t realize that Ithaca was in my plans for the weekend and it turned out that it wasn’t. Since Christy had Friday off she wanted to leave early on Friday. Since I was working on Friday, that left me with a different kind of formula to cipher. Bill’s working until Friday evening + Christy being on the road early Friday = Bill’s not invited….Fine. Chick thing.

So Tucker and I puttered around the boat on Saturday. At least I got to watch the US Womens National Team play Japan in the Woman’s World Cup final on Sunday……Crap. Talk about your rollercoaster.

2011-07-14T18:44:00.000-04:00

July 11, 2011.

Late Friday afternoon we got a call from a guy on a mooring in the harbor. He couldn’t start his boat and had diagnosed it as a bad starter. I drove the company’s skiff out and towed him in to our dock.

The boat is a 1970 Cheoy Lee and is as beautiful a boat as I’ve ever seen.

The guys is a single hander and has restored this 41 year old boat to pristine condition. Or so it seemed. Now I know where that expression “Beauty is only skin deep” applies. Its about boats.

Topsides and inside, the boat is perfect. The electrical system was a disaster. Right away I found a really crappy connection at the starter. I fixed it and was pretty surprised when the boat still didn’t start. Next I checked voltage at the starter and it was only 10.1 volts while there was 12.6 at the battery. Crap. Corrosion or a loose connection.

All of his battery connections were deplorable and then there was the battery switch.

It was the original bakelite

switch probably installed by Thomas Alva Edison himself. It was over 40 years old and spun with virtually zero friction. When I pulled the switch off the bulkhead 3 of the 8 wires (all on one post) pulled out of their ring connectors.

I installed new terminal ends on everything and installed a positive buss bar. Once there was a new switch in place that actually went *clunk* when you turned it, the boat fired right up.

It was amazing how beautiful this boat was while the electrical system was a complete shambles.

2011-07-07T06:56:00.000-04:00

July 6, 2011.

Today at work was one of those special days where everything goes right. Every boat had the potential for disaster but somehow everything went right.

The last boat of the day needed a new hand held control for the windlass. The old one had rotted away and of course the wiring harnesses were different so it had to be replaced as well.

The minor issue. The old switch only had 3 wires. One for *up*, one for *down* and one for power, simple. The new harness had 8 wires of which I had to use 5. The issue was that all this great stuff came without a schematic. Sure, there was a diagram complete with color coding but nothing else. It actually listed all the wires by color but didn’t break it down into what each wire actually was designed to do. It was like somebody had hit *send* before finishing the diagram. Phone calls to the manufacturer didn’t help so it came down to intuition, dumb luck and a smattering of skill. Intuitively I knew that dumb luck was my greatest skill so it all worked out without me frying anything.

The boat before that was a 28 foot speed boat with dual inboard V-8 gasoline engines. The woman reported that she was blasting along (because that’s what powerboaters do) when the port engine “stopped”. She didn’t say that it sputtered and died, she said it “stopped”. Gas engines aren’t in my area of expertise but her description of the problem had me thinking electrical, so I opted to drive to the boat and give it a shot. Actually, I had no choice, the boss sent me.

After schlepping all my crap down to her boat I opened up the engine enclosure and was immediately awestruck. The manufacturers of this jewel of a speedboat had actually stuffed 2 huge V-8 engines into a hole the size of a hamster’s ass. There wasn’t room in there for anything let alone me. Worse yet, there were several greasy palm prints on the smooth fiberglass surfaces. Somebody had been here before me and failed…..Crap.

I’m kneeling in front of this useless iron monster and I can’t see or touch at least half of the electrical system and its components. I said to myself “Jesus, where’s the coil, I can’t even see it”. I dunno why but for whatever reason, all of a sudden the coil was very important to me. So I ran my hand down the wire from the distributor in search of the coil. And the back of my hand brushed something….a broken wire. Holy shit, I found the problem 9 seconds after I opened the engine compartment. I couldn’t see it and could only get some of my fingers from one hand on it but I found it. Talk about divine intervention.

It took me an hour and a half to replace this one short section of wire. I never saw it, could barely touch it but God damn, I found it. Once the new wire was in place the engine fired right up and purred like a hamster with 2 giant V-8’s crammed in his ass. Right about now I’m pretty much invincible.

But the day didn’t start out that way. I had to remove an old PSS dripless shaft seal and replace it with a new one. Kinda cramped position but simple enough, no problemo, right?

Of course this entailed taking the shaft coupling off the shaft. Predictably it was a pain in the ass since its been on there since the Eisenhower administration. Oh look, I can’t pull the shaft back far enough so the propeller also has to come off. Its like 200° in my tiny little tomb and I’m here dealing with the “snowball effect”.

The couplings off, the props gone the shaft is out of the way and after 2 hose clamps and the old seal will be out. Do you notice anything odd, unusual or even sadistic about this particular hose clamp?

Once I had defeated it and removed it from the boat I showed it to all the other mechanics and none of them spotted the true evil in this little stainless bastard. Don’t bullshit me, you didn’t notice either…..its f@#king backwards. The tail of the hose clamp is always on the same side as the screwhead. This one sticks out on the other side. While this trait is unremarkable what it really means is that when you go “lefty loosey” on the little piece of shit its actually getting tighter. You have to go “righty tighty” to get the thing to loosen up.

Try figuring that out while upside down without being able to see it. I was happy just to be able to get the screwdriver into the slot. I could actually feel a vein bulging in my head.

The worse thing about it was that the schlub that put this together umpteen years ago was probably laughing when he did it.

Normal is on the left while fiendish is on the right….

2011-07-04T18:02:00.000-04:00

July 4, 2011.

First off, Happy Fourth of July to everyone.

Yesterday we attended a house warming barbecue given by one of my coworkers. During the course of the afternoon I ended up playing volleyball for a few hours. I used to play one night a week for a few years but somehow I forgot about the passage of time. Once I did the math it turns out that I haven’t struck a volleyball in 27 years, give or take. Somewhere in that 27 years I was evidently afflicted with a case of early onset “old”. I’m almost better now but this morning I was pretty damn sore. One of my shoulders still isn’t talking to me.

Enough about me. Do you notice anything different about this guy’s transom? No? How about the hailing port?

Imagine the good captains discomfort when it was pointed out that he has traveled thousands of miles over a period of 2 years with a misspelled hailing port. San Fransico? Talk about walking around with your fly open. Needless to say, after a quick phone call one of the local sign companies came to his rescue.

Since we’re sitting here for a few months Christy has hung a small strawberry plant from the boom vang. Today she was able to harvest her first 2 berries.

Christy has also been able to keep her boat borne shoe collection to under 40 pairs. Barely.

I was betting that it was over 50 pairs but I admit it “I was wrong”.

To some people it may look as if I am a master procrastinator. It’s just that my overview of things is different. Some people see that their bow thruster isn’t working and they say “Oh, I’ll have to get that fixed”. I figure most people don’t even have a bow thruster so we can just put that repair to the back of the list. I don’t know how but somehow we finally arrived at that section of the list.

During last years Annapolis Sailboat Show I cornered one of the Vetus bow thruster guys. I explained our bow thrusters symptoms and he laid out the cure.

Our bow thruster only worked in one direction so we haven’t used it in about 2 years. Neither one of us could ever remember which way it worked so it was always safer not to touch it at all rather than to risk compounding a problem. We just got used to not having it and never really missed it.

The Vetus guy was certain that only one side of the main solenoid was making an electrical connection. “Take it apart, clean up the contacts and you’ll be good to go”. Sounds simple so today, after 8 months of considering it I moved everything out of the way and got started. Almost immediately simple got thrown out the window. There was an unmentioned issue, SPRINGS. He never said nothing about no SPRINGS. In the middle of my gentle disassembly, Sproing!, damned springs were shooting everywhere. Oh look, the tiny washers that used to live on top of the springs were now in orbit in the lower ionosphere. Or were they under the springs, or both, I dunno. First time I saw em’ they were banging off the wall. Shit.

Well, it was apart. The contacts didn’t really look too bad to me but I cleaned em’ up and went about figuring how to put it all back together. With a delicate mixture of ingenuity and cursing I got it all back together correctly, I think.

I sat and starred at the thruster while Christy went up to the helm to give it a whirl. And it works….in one direction. Still. You gotta be kidding me. Shit.

I should have taken the Vetus guys picture so I would be sure to murder the right guy this year at the boat show. Crap. Then I set about taking apart every electrical connection in an effort to find the problem. And there it was, a bullshit little push me pull you connector was broken off at its solder connection. The wire was still connected to the connector and holding the connector in place. It was just that it was no longer attached. After a little cleaning, some new solder and we’re now back in the bi-directional bow thrusting business….

2011-07-01T22:28:00.000-04:00

June 30, 2011.

We all live in a world that is so much more technological than the one most of us grew up in. Although sometimes I think people can get a little carried away.

We got a phone call at work from a woman whose head wasn’t flushing properly. She wanted to bring the boat in the next day for some immediate attention. Because of limited dock space she was told to call the following morning and she would be told what time they could bring their boat into the yard.

In an effort to facilitate timely repairs there was an email waiting for our service manager the next morning. The emails attachment was a video of their toilet not flushing as it ought to. Are they kidding me? Thank God Al Gore invented the internet otherwise we would have had to wait until the boat actually arrived before getting to see the toilet not working.

I suggested that we should go out and video a toilet that worked properly. I thought that we could send it to her in an email and tell her that it was the latest “service pack”. All she had to do was print it out, wad it up and flush it down her own toilet. Once the “download” was complete things would be back to normal for her. Unless her head is a Vista machine, then she’s pretty well f@#ked.

2011-06-29T19:31:00.000-04:00

June 28, 2011.

After 6 years of this you’d think that new experiences would be few and far between. But this week we scored an all time extravaganza as far as new experiences go. A boat wedding.

Our longtime friends Bess & Bill on Alibi II decided to finally tie the knot. They wanted a pretty small affair and they’re boaters so they decided to rent a small electric boat for the ceremony. These little electric Duffy Boats are pretty cool and I’ve been coveting the chance to take one out as I watch them ply the river all day.

As far as the officiating goes, its simple. The internet has made becoming a certified clergyman as easy as a few mouse clicks. As long as you file the properly filled out forms with the appropriate fees, the government is happy. So on this boat ride Bess’s lifelong friend Marcel would act as Pope and perform the marriage ceremony.

Since I don’t drink and have my Billion Ton Masters License I got to drive. Perfect. Okay, I exaggerate, I might drink every now and again and my Billion Ton Master License has expired and needs to be renewed.

Anyway, lets go wedding-ing. And what a wedding it was. After a leisurely, champagne fueled trip up Spa Creek we pulled off into an idyllic cove and Marcel stepped up and started the ceremony. The setting was perfect, the bride and groom were glowing and then the pump out boat came around the corner. I kid you not.

We were drifting in a fairly shallow area and the pump out boat saw us, assumed we were aground and made a beeline for us. Fortunately they realized what was going on and veered away just as Bess and Bill exchanged their vows.

After the sentence was pronounced, er, the vows were completed we headed back down Spa Creek. Then it was a slow trip up Ego Alley during which the guests enjoyed a spirited exchange with the patrons of Pussers waterside restaurant. There was a rolling wave of applause for the newlyweds as we moved along.

After a few celebratory doughnuts at the end of Ego Alley it was over to Back Creek for a little cruise.

After 2 hours on the water we returned the boat and headed over to Carrols Creek for dinner. Carrols Creek is an upscale eatery with a second story deck overlooking the mooring field and the Spa Creek Bridge. Bess’s family has this weird tradition where the Pope signs the marriage license on the brides back.

Bess isn’t one to buck tradition.

Speaking of tradition, what wedding is complete without a haiku:

We all share their joy
Bess loves Bill and Bill loves Bess
Now they say I do

The food was fantastic, the company was perfect, the weather went from nice to better and I got to drive.

I hope they want to renew their vows every year…..

2011-06-25T19:47:00.000-04:00

June 23, 2011.

Both of us are working on other people’s boats or on our own boat every day, but there is some time for play.

On Saturday there was a “Cotillion” at the Eastport Yacht Club. I was a little concerned because “Cotillion” sounds a little hoidy toidy to me. I was picturing 16 year southern belles in hoop skirts, and I was a little concerned because I left my cummerbund on my other boat. After finding out what the dress code for the “Cotillion” was, I was relieved. Shorts and sandals, awesome, we’re there.

Live music, loads of friends, reasonable drinks and good food made for a nice evening.

On Wednesday evening we went over to a friend’s boat for pizza and race watching. The finish line for Wednesday Night Racing is between the main mooring field and the Spa Creek Bridge. The Honu, a gorgeous Lagoon 38 (currently for sale) is tied to a dock adjacent to the mooring field and makes for a first class observation deck.

First in, were 2 J-105’s tacking their way dead upwind

towards the finish line through the packed mooring field. Then the rest of the fleet came in one right after another. There had to be 75 boats so it made for quite the spectacle.

As boats finished the race they would drop

sails and turn and head back out through the incoming sailors still competing.

Throw in a couple dozen moored boats, kayaks, paddle boarders and some powerboat traffic and it’s surprising that things go as smoothly as they do.

We even got to see our friend Terry who competes on a J-30 with an all girl crew. They more than held their own as they finished near the front of the J-30’s.

There was even a successful marriage proposal on the water....

2011-06-18T16:05:00.000-04:00

June 17, 2011.

We woke up to a really high windblown tide this morning.

Just some random photos from around the yard. There were some performance issues. This might be the first tune up ever done with a barnacle scraper….

The Savages are in town and having their bottom fancied up.

I love our hard dodger and bimini but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the beauty of someone elses. My photo doesn’t do justice to the size of this enclosure. Four people can be seated under the dodger with protection from the elements……really nice.

I had the opportunity to do some extensive work on a small Bayliner Bowrider this week. The guy has a boat lift in his backyard and he decided to save some coin and winterize his boat himself. It’s a pretty simple boat as far as systems go so he accomplished his task successfully except for one small detail. He forgot to pull the plug out of the transom. The devil is in the details.

This left the boat sitting up on the lift with no path for the rain and snow to drain off. The bilge pumps float switch failed, there was no divine intervention on the bilge pumps behalf and the boat filled up like a fishbowl.

Enter me.

At its height the water rose half way up the engine block.

There was a distinct high water mark throughout the boat. The battery, the alternator, the starter, the starter wiring, the bilge pump float switch and the hydraulic pump for adjusting the outdrive were all destroyed.

The corrosion really ran amok when the water rose high enough to get the starter cable under water. Entire pieces of wire were reduced to a piece of insulation sitting in the bottom of the bilge with no evidence of them ever having been attached to anything.

I replaced the battery and then pumped the bilge dry. At that point I realized that there was no battery switch in the boat. I had no idea that you could actually buy a boat in the states that doesn’t have a way to shut off the batteries. The owner seemed surprised that boats ought to have a battery switch but after weighing the benefits he quickly approved the installation of one. Then came the new alternator and starter and their associated wiring.

A new float switch had the bilge pump working again followed by the new hydraulic pump.

There were a few hours of “chase the intermittent problem” as I removed rotted wire and corroded connections.

After several hours chasing electrical gremlins the boat fired right up and purred like a kitten. So the owner is once again off enjoying the water although wiser for the experience. I guarantee that he NEVER forgets the drain plug again. And if he winterizes his boat himself for the next 9 years he’ll just about break even from the first time he winterized his boat. The devil is in the details…..

2011-06-13T21:04:00.001-04:00

June 13, 2011.

It poured buckets here last night but only for 30 minutes or so and then the heat all just went away.

A couple of years ago we finally got tired of chasing our tails and plunked down the big bucks for a trio of high quality Alpenglow lights.

Alpenglow basically had 2 styles that were offered in a variety of finishes. After several attempts at buying suitable reading lights from various manufacturers we were hoping for the best when we ordered our Alpenglow LED reading lights. The things were freaking astonishing. They use virtually no amps, which makes the amp nazi (me) happy, the quality of the materials was first rate and they’re super bright.

The light fixture we chose for the main salon light was only offered with a fluorescent bulb. It has 2 different intensities and is just what we had in mind.

So this week when the halogen bulb dome light in the galley shit the bed we decided to upgrade to an LED bulb. After a quick trip to West Marine we found ourselves in possession of the lastest and the greatest in LED bulb technology.

The word that comes to mind after installing this new bulb in the galley was…..disappointing. Yeah, it’s LED, it uses no amps but the $40 bulb really didn’t blow us away with the amount of light that it produced. So we decided to see what was new at Alpenglow. Fortuitously, they now offer the same fluorescent fixture we have in the salon as an LED fixture. Great, send us one.

It was a bit pricey at $125, but I really can’t complain about the price when I consider the amount of light this thing sheds.

This new LED overhead light is like turning on the sun, it is bright! I really can’t call it pricey when you consider the other LED fixtures on the market. Do not waste your money on any other lights, trust me, you will save money over the long run because these lights are so far superior to anything else that we have seen. The good folks at Alpenglow are a small family business who builds the lights to order, they try to ship your order within a few days, plus they are really nice people. The Alpenglow fixture also came with the option of red LED’s, which we didn’t order, but that is what they shipped us. Since the fixture is right near the bottom of the companionway steps we can leave the red light illuminated while underway at night. It’ll be safer going below at night without destroying our night vision. Bonus.

Alpenglow rocks......

2011-06-10T22:39:00.000-04:00

June 9, 2011.

I’ll skip the part where I was gonna bitch about the heat. I’m sure everybody is pretty hot these days and bitching is not gonna change anything. Sooooo…..

I’ve got a customer who’s driving me a little crazy. He’s got this huge, beautiful sailboat and has a list of items several pages long that he’d like addressed, including one full day of head issues. Terrific, 95° and playing with poopie.

The owner was complaining of odors coming from behind his nav station. The only hose behind there was the vent hose and of course, it was almost impossible to access. Almost. It took some quality time with a Fein tool but I did succeed in getting to it and replacing it. Cool. One head issue addressed and no fecal matter encountered. Lovely. Then I had to replace the macerator outlet hose. It went a lot easier than the vent hose but there was definitely some fecal matter encountered. Shudder.

With the aft head done it was off to the forward head. The owner suspected a partial blockage because when he pulled the handle to flush this head the handle felt *different* than the other head. The turds still disappear but it just didn’t seem right to him. Great, I was now in search of the phantom stubborn turd.

I took all the hoses off between the toilet and the holding tank. No turd, no tampon, no jar of pickles, no obstruction whatsoever. Nothing lurking inside the back of the toilet, nothing in the pump and the holding tank was empty. Since I had everything apart he wanted to replace all the hoses, fine, new hoses. That might solve the imaginary problem.

After everything was brand new and back together, we were both walking from head to head doing comparo toilet pumping. He swore that one had a *clunk* in it while they both felt the same to me. I’m thinking the excessive heat and humidity has turned one of us into Rain Man. This toilets good, this toilet sucks, this toilets good……

Since I didn’t have to take a shit at that moment I convinced him to give it the ole morning bowel movement test and we’d go from there…….

2011-06-02T18:49:00.000-04:00

May 31, 2011.

After 2 mornings of varnishing, followed by 2 afternoons of mast climbing and port polishing we decided to sleep in this morning. It was the third morning of our holiday weekend, I figured we were entitled.

After a leisurely breakfast it was time to knock off the biggest chore of the weekend, the new hot water heater. On a side note, its kind of a stupid moniker isn’t it? Theres no need to heat “hot water”, why aren’t they commonly referred to as water heaters rather than hot water heaters. Anyway…..

Our old water heater was leaking from a cracked fitting and unfortunately I was going to have to remove the water heater to replace the fitting. The thing is of undetermined age so if I was going to the trouble of emptying and removing it I may as well replace it.

The only problem was that I forgot that all of my tools are at the shop. Crap. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. I had a Philips screwdriver and a small pair of pliers. I put in a call to MacGyver and he said I was screwed.

Fortunately Alibi II is only a dozen slips away and Bill dropped off 3 of his toolboxes. A couple of hours and a few quarts of sweat later, the old one was out and the new one was in. Perfect, just in time for a cold shower.

2011-05-30T10:09:00.003-04:00

May 30, 2011.

After doing some varnish work down in Herrington Harbor yesterday we found ourselves with nothing scheduled for the afternoon. So I was catching up on some of the various blogs that I follow when I got to Theretirementproject.blogspot.com

They just bought their retirement boat, Kintala, and have started on that litany of things that need to be done before they head out for warmer climes. Like us, their ports were a *little* grungy due to the severe conditions that boats endure. They had about a dozen plastic ports that could be replaced to the tune of several hundred dollars. Or they could think outside the box and gamble 25 dollars, an afternoon and some elbow grease.

We have 16 opening ports of which 10 are plastic. They work fine its just that after 26 years the plastic is a bit “fogged”. Theres micro scratches that have built up over the years and the lens had actually yellowed. They still let light in but seeing through the lens was a lot like having cataracts. As luck would have it we also had 25 dollars, an afternoon and some elbow grease.

So after seeing Kintalas results we followed their example and headed out to the auto parts store and bought a Meguiars Headlight Restoration Kit. The kit comes with some polishing compound, a buffing wheel to mount on a hand drill and a micro fiber cloth.

We also had new weather seals and screens for 4 ports so we started in the aft cabin. Some compound, 20 minutes of drill action and the difference was amazing. Installing the new weather seal is a huge pain in the ass so I was glad that we only had 4 of them to do.

When Christy saw how much better the ports looked after polishing she immediately ordered 6 more sets of screens and seals so we can do the rest of the boat the next time we’ve got nothing to do….

2011-05-29T12:44:00.000-04:00

May 29, 2011.

One of the biggest benefits (besides being handed money) of working again is that the weekends are once again something precious to look forward to.

With this being a 3 day weekend I found myself overcome with joy.

With 3 days off we did what most folks would do, we worked. Christy is finishing up the varnish on 2 boats down in Herrington Harbor. The sanding and masking is all done, we just had to show up for a few hours each day to lay on another coat of finish.

I was shocked at just how many boats were still on the hard.

We spent a month on the hard here a few years ago and the place only had a couple dozen boats sitting about. This year theres literally hundreds of boats still banished to the storage yards. Of course some of them are works in progress while others will probably never see the water again....

The other day a neighbor asked Christy if I would go up his mast to replace his windex. On Saturday afternoon Bess & Bill from Alibi II stopped in so up the mast it was. Bill did the winching while Christy tailed the main halyard. The halyard was pretty small and old enough to make me a little leery. Fortunately there was a spinnaker halyard available. It was also an antique but with Bess tailing the safety line I was whisked to the top and returned safely to the ground without incident. I did take the time for a few photos….

2011-05-26T21:56:00.000-04:00

May 23, 2011.

Yesterday a boat owner called and said “send me an ace mechanic”. Ace was sick, so they sent me.

I drove out to the owner’s home and his large power yacht was up on a boat lift. It seemed his generator wasn’t spewing water out the exhaust. His theory was that there was a raw water intake shut off valve that he couldn’t find. It’s only a 3 foot piece of hose so I could see flaws in his theory.

With a flashlight and mirror I could see that all the paint was gone from the little door that covered the impeller. I figured that the pump must have gotten hot as hell to have all the paint fall off. So I was suspecting a bad impeller as I finagled my way into a space that I was not built to fit into.

I could only get one arm and half my head into the proximity of the pump. On the plus side, there were only 4 bolts holding the little door in place. Hex heads at that, no jerking around with a screwdriver and slots that I couldn’t see.

I got the little door off, stuck my fingers in and the pump body was ……empty. WTF? Where did the impeller go? With my mirror I could just make out the metal bushing that lives in the center of these little rubber impellers. Not only was every vane gone but the entire rubber hub was completely gone.

I found most of it living in the heat exchanger.

As it turned out, when I asked the owner to lower the boat so we could try out the new impeller, a clue to the cause of the problem became apparent. He lowered the boat until the water gently lapped at the hull…….but not enough to let the water reach the generator’s intake.

So the story is, he and his buddies sit out on the boat enjoying adult beverages with the generator running the A/C. He’s at his own dock with shore power, but he’d rather use the generator??? He told me he doesn’t like to put the boat completely down because then it tries to float off the boat lift. He was actually skeptical when I explained to him that the boat had to be IN the water before he could fire up the generator. When I walked away he was happy that his generator is working and I was completely dumbfounded.

Today’s amusement for me came in the form of a large powercat. The owner was complaining of an intermittent electrical problem. It seemed that when he was watching television, once in a while the 12 volt system would shut down momentarily. Intermittent problems are ALWAYS a pain in the ass to find. <- I think that’s one of the 12 platinum rules of boating. Anyway….

He has 3 battery banks onboard; one starting battery for each engine, and the house bank. I checked both starting batteries and found them in good health. I almost fell off the boat when I opened up the compartment where the house bank lives. The house bank consisted of a single pair of 6 volt batteries. The house *banks* resting voltage was barely 12 volts and when I applied a moderate load the voltage plummeted to 11 volts.

I figured that he was watching TV with a light or two on and maybe a fan or three and when the voltage dropped low enough, the TV kicked off because of a low voltage condition. He’s got to replace the 2 golf cart batteries anyway so I’m pretty sure that’ll solve the problem. I also recommended that since he has the room perhaps he could go with 4 golf carts and end up with a reasonably sized battery bank. OMG

2011-05-22T17:27:00.007-04:00

May 22, 2011.

First off, we weren’t raptured. When we checked the Rapture Flow Chart we realized that we pretty much had no chance of being swept up to heaven with the folks who qualified. Disappointed? No. I figure that the group that would be swept up was a pretty boring group so we consider ourselves lucky to still be here with the cool people. Besides, this clears us for the southbound Great October Exodus which should be better attended and more fun.

Not being raptured did allow us the opportunity to attend a neighborhood block party. It was kinda cool that they bothered to invite us.

Work is going great and I just found out that they’ll do “direct deposit” so now we don’t even have to walk to the bank. Life just gets better every day.

It’s been raining for several days and when I got home from work the other day, Christy had rigged herself a fan to move fresh air though the closed up boat. Who says we don’t have all the conveniences.

This Mallard duck was here with us last year. We recognize him by the way his wing doesn’t fold like it should when he lands. He’s a pretty laid back dude. During dinner the other night we watched as he was dead asleep but drifting here and there at the whim of the breeze.

2011-05-16T17:26:00.003-04:00

May 15, 2011.

This past week at work went pretty well with the exception of my feet which are royally f’d up. The picture from the last post was after a single day, by the end of the week let’s just say that I can’t in good conscience subject anyone to a photo. Christy did buy me some flip flops to wear for the weekend to give my heels a chance to heal.

During the week I changed a pair of cutlass bearings, replaced a few impellers, fixed 3 bilge pumps, installed some deck hardware and did several oil changes. It’s been a bunch of small jobs but I have to say that it’s nice to go to the same place every day and have the work lined up for me.

I had to get a large power cruiser ready for the season. I changed the engine oil and various filters, diagnosed some electrical anomalies and changed plugs and wires. So I loaded up my little wagon with tools and supplies and transferred it all to the boat. It was going to be several hours of work and I kinda like the solitude that working alone offers. I was on the boat for only a few minutes when I realized that I was not alone at all.

The boat has been closed up since last fall and was completely infested with stinkbugs. Stinkbugs typically show up at the onset of Fall. They look like a chip of tree bark and are about the size of a finger nail. They’re slow enough that they’re an easy kill but typically there are just SO many of them. Plus, they fly, so they’re either bumping into you or landing on you, they just suck. Escaping Annapolis in the fall without any stink bug stowaways will be a miracle.

Dead stinkbugs were everywhere. I had to move mattresses to gain access to the various nooks and crannies of the boat and there were stinkbug bodies everywhere. They were on every surface in the entire boat. Thousands of them. I consoled myself with the fact that at least they were all dead.

After the electrical problems were worked out I pulled up the salon floor and settled in to do the engine work. That’s when I happened to glance up at the windscreen that dominates the forward end of the salon. Dozens of live bugs were walking across the inside of the windshield luxuriating in the suns warmth. That’s one boat that I’m glad to have behind me.

On Saturday we had a friends van for the day. Christy had to drive because I couldn’t rest my feet on their heels to drive. We haven’t traveled over 12 knots since November and once again it was an adjustment to get used to hurtling along at 60 knots. I resisted putting my head out the window like a Cocker spaniel.

2011-05-13T17:03:00.003-04:00

May 11, 2011.

You know the term “working stiff?”. Now I totally understand it. After getting back into the swing of working again my body is stiff as hell. The first night I came home and just laid on the couch until it was time to get up, to go to bed.

Since then I’ve gotten used to being part of the working class once again. So once my body adjusted, of course something else came up, the boss at my new job wasn’t pleased with my choice of footwear. He felt that my toes were too vulnerable in my Keens. Whatever, I need the job so its no big deal…..I’ll go back to boat shoes.

By the time my first day wearing boat shoes was over, all the skin was completely gone from the back of both of my feet. As soon as the day was over, I shed my shoes and walked the 20 minutes home barefoot. It’s been years since I’ve had to wear shoes other than Keens and as a result my feet are a bloody oozing mess. I’m really looking forward to this weekend just to give my heels a chance to heal.

But on the bright side, our landlord Jared has lent us a pair of full sized bicycles. That’ll help my feet quite a bit and make life in general much easier.

As every Yin has its Yang, our bright side has its polar opposite. We have to leave our slip. Crap. Jared is a real nice guy and when he dropped by on Sunday evening his demeanor told me something was amiss.

He owns a beautiful home with 11 slips in the backyard. We’re the only liveaboards of the 11 slips. He doesn’t live on the property and he rents the home out. The tenants that are in the house moved in while we were here last year. And even though we were here when they rented the house all of a sudden this year they feel like we’re "invading their privacy" by being here in “their” backyard. I didn’t bitch when they moved into my front yard. WTF?

Jared was not happy when he told us that we had to vacate our slip. Shit. But he did have a possible solution. The first slip down at the edge of the property had just been vacated and if we’d move down there, everybody should be happy. No problem, consider us moved. After Jared left I launched the dink and we went down and sounded the slip for depths. Every thing looked good so tonight was the night for us to move.

The only downside to this new slip was that the outside pilings are only 11 ½ feet apart. We’re 12 foot 10 inches wide so once again we were going to have to be creative. Cool, that’s how we roll.

Our friend Terri was here so we put her to work and she helped fend us out of our old slip. Having an extra set of hands here was great but once again with the whole Yin & Yang thing, she was also witness to us backing out of the slip while forgetting to unplug the shore power cord. At least she’s the only one who knows of our buffoonery. The cord slipped free on its own so the only damage was to my ego.

Since we couldn’t pass between the outside pilings of the new slip I decided we’d back past the slip and pull into it from the side since it was at the end of the dock. I sensed some skepticism amongst the crew but we pulled the maneuver off without a hitch. If I hadn’t forgotten to unplug that damn cord I’d be hard to live with right now.

So now we’re outta sight, outta mind and digging the new view……

2011-05-09T19:32:00.006-04:00

May 8, 2011.

The first few days after arriving in Annapolis were spent scrubbing and cleaning the Veranda. We cleaned the hull as best the confines of the slip would allow. We also did some more Flitzing, washed the boat, waxed the topsides, scrubbed the cockpit, used Aluma Guard on the arch and ran the Ethernet cable for the Bullet.

Running the Ethernet cable from the radar arch to the nav station was going to be a pain in the ass so I was avoiding it as long as possible. Yes, I procrastinate, I’ll explain why in the future. I had the cable temporarily draped through the cockpit and down the companionway (for 3 months). I just wanted to be sure that the Bullet truly was the next best thing in wifi before I permanently ran the wire. It is, we ran the wire and now it’s done. Thank you, Jesus.

My job that I’ve had here in Annapolis for the last 2 seasons has evaporated. Bob and Dullard were partners and they’ve broken up. Bob is a very talented diesel guy and he’s opted to stay in Florida where he typically spends the winters. Dullard’s main talent was being a millstone around Bob’s neck and now that that opportunity is gone I’m not sure what he’s going to be doing. You want fries with that comes to mind.

So I emailed my resume to a friend of a friend who has his finger on the pulse of Annapolis. Within 2 hours he had forwarded my resume to a guy that was looking for some help. Perfect, I am some help. I called the guy up and scheduled an interview for the next morning.

The place is within walking distance so on Friday morning I headed over for the interview. The interview went well and I was asked when I could start. When I replied “immediately” he took me at my word and said “great, go get your tools”.

I walked the 20 minutes back to the boat to get my tools. I have 2 large canvas bags of tools, and another small but extremely heavy bag, and a rather large bag of electrical tools and a boxed ratchet set. I grabbed 1 bag of the most commonly used tools and my ratchet box and headed back. I figured that I’d just bring something else with me every day.

My first day at work went well with a bunch of small things filling my day. This could work out pretty well….

2011-05-04T17:02:00.006-04:00

May 3, 2011.

After the 2 nights anchored at the entrance of Broad Creek hiding from adverse weather we headed up to the free wall at the Great Bridge lock. As each boat comes in onto the wall anybody around grabs their lines and each boat is pulled up tight to the boat before or behind it. Minimizing the gaps we were able to get 8 good sized sailboats on the wall. Free dockage is both rare and fun.

The next day the wind was honking out of the north. We debated staying on the free wall or moving on. We decided to make the 20 mile trek north through Norfolk to the anchorage at Mill Creek in Hampton Roads, Va. We’re still in the ICW so the adverse wind isn’t a big deal for a short day. After a night there the winds were supposed to swing around from the south and build steadily over the course of 3 days. Friends of ours had a little more ambitious schedule and decided to get as far up the Chesapeake as they could. 20 knots and 3 to 4 footers dead on the nose, all day. I’m glad our schedule was a little more lax….

So on Sunday morning we pulled the hook at 0700 and sailed out into the Chesapeake Bay. It was a trip of about 125 miles to Annapolis. In the past we’ve done it in 3 easy days, 2 long days and we’ve also done it as an overnighter. Favorable building breeze from a good direction…..overnighter it is.

We had less than 5 knots of breeze and dead flat seas. With the tide against us we were making 1.8 knots…..for hours. We were passed by boats of every style and description. The only vessel we passed all day was a life ring with 2 seagulls aboard. It was 1500 hours before we topped 3 knots but the wind did as it was supposed to and slowly built.

By dinner we were pleasantly skimming along at better than 5 knots with a 1 foot chop directly behind us. After dark the wind built and because it was so close to the stern we were forced to drop the mainsail as it was blanketing the genoa. It really was a very nice sail, averaging 6 knots as we jibed our way up the bay under full genoa.

The bay was alive with big ship traffic all night. There were a couple of other small boats out there with us although not close enough for us to see other than on radar. At times I was embarrassed by some of the other boaters as they did their best to make fools of themselves in dealing with the larger ships.

We ended up giving routing advice to 2 different sailors that were doing their best to become tragic boating accident headlines. It’s awkward when you are trying to decide whether or not to jump in when you can hear someone who is obviously confused.

I always feel like somebody’s gonna get pissy with me for butting in but on both occasions these guys were both a little overwhelmed and very thankful to get the help. The one guy was hailing the freighter on his stern that was overtaking him at 18 knots but was answered by the tug and barge 7 miles off his bow who was heading at him. They were both confused as they tried to arrange their safe passing. I could see both large vessels on the AIS and realized the mistake the sailor was making. I explained to the sailboat that he was talking to the wrong ship and gave him the name of the vessel that was bearing down on him from behind.

The eastern side of the channel up the Chesapeake is the deep water side. All the big ships do 18 to 20 knots and prefer to stay to the eastern side of the bay. The western side of the channel is called “Tugboat Alley”. The tugs all average between 5 and 8 knots so it’s a lot safer to stick to the western side of the channel. Especially at night when those big fast movers can be on you in a shockingly short amount of time.

We sailed right up to the mouth of Back Creek. We motored slowly into the creek and after rigging lines we wedged our way into our tiny slip. We had to really take our time and fend heavily as we forced our way into the slip. With the breeze blowing us sideways it made things more than a little difficult. The first time was a complete clusterf@#k with Christy moving with ninja like quickness as she fended here and there. It ended up with Christy standing on the side deck of the boat in the slip next to us while I backed away to try it again. I had to approach with more speed than I wanted too but I had no choice as the wind was being a pain in my ass. With Christy on the other boat it was big help and we were soon safely tied up in our home for the next 6 months.

I know I’m like a broken record as far as the whole AIS thing goes but….. I installed our AIS for about 300 dollars and I can’t begin to explain the amount of comfort that it gives us when dealing with the big dangerous guys. The AIS unit and an antenna splitter are all the equipment that we needed. The antenna splitter allows you to utilize your masthead antenna for the AIS as well as the VHF. It makes no difference what so ever in the performance of your VHF and the height of the antenna allows you to “see” vessels from a greater distance. I see everything within 20 miles and when out at sea it’s not unusual to see the big guys 60 miles away. Even in the bay most vessels show up 40 miles away. It’s not a substitute for radar but compliments it very well and helps to make life aboard the Veranda a breeze.

2011-05-03T16:08:00.003-04:00

April 30, 2011.

The vast majority of the fixed bridges on the ICW have a height of 65 feet. Our mast height is only 52 feet so it’s a non-issue for us. But we have friends whose mastheads depend on the tide boards found near the approach to most bridges. I’m thinkin’ someone’s butt is gonna clench when they come across this one.

Lets talk about the Coast Guard for a minute. We are lucky to live in a country that can afford to field a professional force as dedicated as the US Coast Guard. If your life is in danger they’ll risks theirs to save yours. Its that simple. But no matter how professional any organization is theres always some room for improvement.

If a boater makes a report about something unsafe that they’ve seen the Coast Guard broadcasts a Notice to Mariners. The Notice to Mariners contains all the info you need to transit the area safely. Terrific. The problem is when somebody reports a floating log or deadhead and the Coast Guard starts broadcasting the Notice to Mariners.

We just spent 4 days transiting North Carolina and every couple of hours for 4 days straight they warned any and all of us about a deadhead in the Pungo Canal. It’s a LOG, they float, they move with the tide, a beaver ate it, its not there anymore. Stop talking about it.

Its not just one broadcast; there have been several running for days now. Theres a sunken barge in the channel just north of the Gilmerton Bridge in Virginia. The US Navy has determined that its highest point is 24 feet under the water and its marked with a special wreck buoy. They’ve been telling me about this thing for days.

We draw 5 ½ feet, coupled with the 24 feet of water available we should be able to squeak by with 18 feet of water to spare. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that every pleasure boat on the water will easily slip by this sunken barge. The only boats in these waters that might come close to having an issue with the barge are large commercial ships. Those ships all travel with a Pilot aboard when inshore so why not make a call down to the Norfolk Pilots and make sure they know about the wreck. Seems to me like it would save a lot of unnecessary radio chatter. When we arrived at the sunken barge not only was it marked with a wreck buoy it had another barge anchored over it.

Its like they hand a stack of paper to the radio guy or girl and tell em” “read this every 2 or 3 hours”. Its not unusual to have a special adverse weather report broadcast. One I enjoyed this week was a tornado watch “in effect until 1600 hours”. Its great to get the info but its already 1730, is the watch still in effect, do you know, do you care, do you even comprehend what you read?

2011-04-30T20:43:00.012-04:00

April 29, 2011.

Since we're pretty much done with the ICW for a while I though I'd share some of our recent sightings.

We watched as this southbound trawler barreled straight between 2 red ICW markers. I called him and asked where he was going and he swerved straight back into the channel. He said he mistook the second one for green....

Who knew you could stack trailers 3 high?

A hell of a lot of clams. A nice mornings work....

Some pinks and some greens........

Cute boat but I was jealous of his dinghy....

Nobody likes wind blown tides.

Hawaiian high speed ferries in Norfolk?

Little tug, huge crane barge.....how does he see where hes going?