Entries about boats

Woke up Sunday morning and the stalled front over New Providence Island had finally engaged the clutch and gotten into gear and moved on. Clearer skies, high winds, 20~30 knots, and cooler temperatures. Of course, when I turned on the computer and saw that Hot Springs was 16^o and it was 72^o in Nassau the air felt a little warmer, at least by 56^o. That didn't last though; bu 2:00 pm it was 31^o and 66^o, down to a 35^o difference. I would not wish cold temperatures on the folks back home but, please, give me some warmer ones.

Having nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to re-rig the secondary anchor to the way I would have done it the first time if I had actually been thinking without my head in my nether regions. The new way is better and if it does not rise to the standard of elegance it is, at least, way less ugly and somewhat more functional. Then I got to thinking about the big Manson Supreme so I downloaded a video taken underwater of it engaging in sand .... pretty impressive. I also saw that Lloyd's of London, insurers of lots of big ships, had given it an SHHP rating for Super High Holding Power. So, off went the Danforth and on went the Manson, as a test. If we don't like it we will put the other one back on the chain. I couldn't think of a better place to stow it so it, too, is back on the bow pulpit -- very crowded! Small boat, many anchors, not enough good places to put them. I think about anchors like Big John thinks about bullets: you cannot have too many when the crunch comes.

We want to leave on Monday and have been watching the weather, which does not look so great. The front has moved along but seems to be pulling stuff from the Gulf in behind it. The winds are supposed to abate on Monday, 14~17 knots,enough for us to feel comfortable leaving but still a lot of clouds, cooler air and possible rain for the next several days. At least the barometer has started to rise, going from about 29.90 last night to 30.20 today.

Got up Monday and it did not look very good; overcast with heavy, dark clouds; wind kicking up whitecaps in Nassau harbour. With the wind the modest temperatures felt very cool. It was a great day to leave the dock. A couple of years ago we would have hunkered down for another day but now we were in a hurry to leave, so we did, getting underway at 0740.

There were only a couple of other boats also heading east. One was a smallish catamaran and these folks seemed completely clueless. I almost radioed to ask them to maintain a course for at least three minutes so that I could pass them but that would have been a public rebuke and unkind, although appropriate. And then I thought that all boaters have to have a first trip and this was, I hope, theirs. So, we worked our way around them and put that boat quickly over our stern.

The wind was pretty good for sailing, which we did much of the way. We, again, elected to head south on meridian W77^o 10' and made really good time. It's really hard to sail slow on our size boat when the wind is 15~20 knots, which it was. When we made the turn for Highbourne Cay, we were about 10^o inside the wind and the foresail was useless, so we took it down and motor sailed with just the main sail.

Along the way I noticed an unsettling vibration, seemingly near the stern, right under the seat. One of the benefits of having a boney butt, I suppose, is that there is less between me and the boat, so I feel these things. My immediate concerns were motor mounts, the rudder and the zinc that I had just installed.

WE arrived and had the anchor down by 1430. From the last time here we learned that there is more and deeper sand closer to shore so we went in and dropped the anchor on what we hoped was an all/ almost all sand bottom. When I swam out to inspect the anchor it was well and truly buried, showing just a small portion of the top arch. So, we're one for one with this anchor which is always better than zero for one. We'll keep the Manson on for now. While doing that I also checked the zinc -- OK-- and the rudder -- very solid. Earlier I had checked the motor mounts -- all seemed very tight.

Carol did not have a good boat day on Monday, having done little right and much wrong, culminating in discovering that when she re-installed the bins in the forward cabin she did that poorly and they had come loose, shifted and spilled all their contents ... a big mess. I secured the bins this time; the rest was her job.

On Tuesday morning I turned on my BTC smart phone to read the WSJ and to check the weather. Nada! I called the BTC service center and was told that internet access, at least the wireless portion, is down for the entire country with no prognosis on when the service comes back up.

As the anchorage started to clear we saw this boat getting underway with a spinnaker, a sail we have never actually seen before.

On Tuesday morning we set a time and channel to try to call our friend Victoria on the SSB radio. She is in Stuart, FL, and the propagation tables directed us to the 4 MHz band which we duly selected. No luck there; I could not hear her and do not know if she heard us. We'll swap emails to figure that out. I have also discovered that our SSB handset needs replacing, the plastic coating on the curly-cord handset having disintegrated. I think that the handset wires are intact, but maybe not, or maybe not well.

Having rigged the secondary anchor, I was looking for a place to put the larger Fortress anchor and could not come up with a likely spot for it. Then came the DUH! moment: if you are truly anchor obsessive, I am, why rig the smaller of the two anchors? So out came the tools and I moved the large Fortress anchor to the side and brought the smaller Fortress anchor to the stern where it had spent the past three years. While securing the anchor hangers the magic hands struck again, dropping a very good, very expensive 11mm ratcheting wrench off the stern. This was particularly aggravating since it was a replacement for the original in the set which I had lost over the side a year ago. It seemed like it would be easy to find, shiny metal, 16-ft. down, directly below the stern. Even when it's not too windy, like today, the boat moves .... a lot. I did find it eventually, maybe 20-ft. from where I started looking. Hopefully, a good soaking in 3in1 oil will prevent it from rusting solid.

We are back again at Highbourne Cay, a place we left on January 23d. We have no particular plan in mind other than, eventually, to head south to George Town. We know that Debbie L. is not too far away so we might stop near her for a day or so. And, as Luke would have said if he were on a boat instead of in jail, " Sometimes (doing) nothing is a real cool hand."

Monday morning at 0910 we got into action. Hooray for the sat phone. Called Lewmar got a lot of information. First decision: repair or replace. The unit is 10 years old. Boat years are like dog years, making this unit functionally over 70. So, we decided to replace it, more expensive but, we hope, a safer long term decision. I was assured that the new one will be like for like, plug and play. That's almost never true but it would be a nice surprise if it were so. When we get back home I'll get the repair parts for the old one and we'll sell it, maybe for enough to pay for shipping and installation.

We called Boat Owners Warehouse first to see what they could do about getting a new windlass to the Bahamas. Sounded iffy. Then we called Defender Ind. They had 5 in stock and getting stuff to the Bahamas is doable for them. The next decision: where to send the package and arrange for help with the installation. Replacing an anchor windlass while at anchor is possible but poses problems and risks. We decided to head back to Nassau for a dock and electricity for tools. We also know an electrician for a previous trip who we may be able to get to help. If the windlass is truly like for like, I think that I could do this myself. But even if so, I might have problems with the weight of the thing and Carol is zero help with this type of project.

So, after all that stuff, we got underway at about 1100 on Monday and headed north without a specific place in mind, simply planning to see how far we could go with the wind and available daylight. We made it to Shroud Cay and moored there, a little over 35 nm. With the dinghy was on the davits, it's awkward using the camp shower. So, I decided to take a shower in the head, which I did, since we would be in Nassau the next day with water freely available but not for free. Carol then decided that if I was showering she was too, finally getting her first shower in a couple of weeks.

On Tuesday we headed out before sunrise, 0615, and arrived back at the Nassau Harbour Club Marina at 1330, having made incredibly good time, over 6.5 knots with the motor alone, there being almost no wind the whole trip of 50 nm. Arriving at the marina she did not want to cook and I did not want to go out. We compromised on pizza, probably the first since we left the states. She ordered so I had to hope that conch did not figure in the toppings.

Had this windlass problem happened a couple of years ago it would probably have rated an 8 on the 1 to 10 boat disaster scale, and that only if it had been stateside. Over in the Bahamas, an easy 11. This trip it's a solid 4, maybe, due to the expense, a 5. I don't know whether that means that we are becoming jaded to problems, enured to them or just more confident and capable. There is a silver lining: on the way south we thought that there were things we wished we had done, places we wished we had gone, and anchorages we wished we had made. Watching what others do with where they anchor is always a learning process; if they can, we can too. Now, we get a second bite at the apple. And, perhaps, we are a little bit behind the crowd now that the FFFFF is past and will get to enjoy the Exumas with a little less boat crowding and people pressure.

We also get to act on new learning. We concluded that out dinghy anchor line is too short; the dinghy anchor is one of the two kinds available stateside, sort of a grappling hook. Here, of course, people use mini Danforth anchors, one of which we will buy. And, most importantly, depending on ones perspective, Carol gets her hair bobbed. Plus,we got to see this moon rise, with pictures not possible on an anchored, moving boat.

Debbie, our friend on S/V Illusions, moored at Warderick Wells on Wednesday evening. We spoke with her briefly then but the weather was not very good and she headed straight back to her boat after checking in with the office. The next morning, more or less as we were getting ready to get underway, Debbie came by and we chatted for a while and compared some notes. We still plan to see her at Little Farmers Cay.

At 0900 we got underway, the wind and current not requiring any special maneuvering, a good thing for the captain. I had checked the weather and nothing seemed like an issue. By the time we cleared to the Exuma Bank, weather was an issue. If the wind was ever less than 20 knots, I didn't notice, and it was running 130 to 140 true; our general course was 135 to 150 degrees, messy and bumpy, made worse by the depth of the water, about 20-ft., which created very choppy water, not waves like in deeper water. In the big picture it was the perfect day not to do what we did; we should have stayed on the mooring ball. At least I didn't screw up like the captain of the Costa Concordia.

After almost two months we did actually sail the boat. We found a leg that had good water to the west so we were able to run close to the wind and then tack back to the way point. I thought that I had this right. In the event, I came up a half mile short on a leg of 4.5 miles, pretty poor. On the other hand it's been a long while since we truly sailed; an even longer time since we have sailed and tacked. Anyway, we will probably not get drafted for the America's Cup team. But it was really nice to sail.

I have been trying to get out of the point A to point B "are we there yet" mind set. Hard to do. So, the thought was to anchor near Sampson Cay, a small, tight, very well protected anchorage near a pretty nice marina with a good restaurant, and to go for a nice anniversary dinner. Didn't happen! When we headed to the anchorage we could see that there were several boats there already and that other boats had been forced to take less sheltered positions.

It was still blowing 20~25 knots, so the next idea was to go to the marina on Staniel Cay, only another 5 nm with plenty of light and time. But with the wind, and the current that I believed would hit us in that channel, it seemed a bad idea, never having been there before.

No profiles in courage here! We saw all the boats anchored in the lee of Big Majors Cay and headed there hoping that there is, in fact, safety in numbers. I nosed in with all the other sailboats and we anchored in about 10-ft. of water over sand. I did do my swim out to the anchor and it looked good. Of course, I do not actually know how a well set Danforth anchor should look, so I'll have to make that a conditional statement. Maybe after a few more dives I will have a functional clue.

It's a pretty crowded anchorage, at least 30 boats, giving just the right protection from the SE wind. Lots of sailboats but also several big motor yachts of the 60~100-ft. variety, the type that I thought never anchored and always went for the marina.

This was the first time we have been around so many other boats at an anchorage. It's not crowded, just busy. At night it had its own tableau. Most sail boats showed just a single anchor light atop the mast; the large motor yachts, presumably with full time AC generators, were lit up like a city street with cabin lights, deck lights and, most, underwater lights that surround their boats in a luminous glow, which actually looks kind of neat. Most boats now have anchor lights that are LED for power saving. They also have a clean blue/white color that is quite distinct from incandescent bulbs. Their color and number look like an alternate Milky Way when this many are together in one place.

This morning we are headed to the marina on Staniel Cay for a couple of days, probably a trip of no more than 3nm.

We got up at the usual time, about 0600, and got the boat ready to get underway. It was pretty close to high tide, so leaving early seemed like a good idea. During this I got to thinking about our planned anchorage for the evening. It struck me that the fine sand we had seen on the beach would also be the same sand in which we would be anchoring. Our experience in Biscayne Bay, Florida, which also has a very fine sand bottom, was that the Danforth anchor was the only one that had good holding. So, off goes the Manson Supreme and on goes the Fortress, something we have done often and easily. When we were in Nassau two years ago we visited some marine supply stores and the only anchors they sold were Danforth anchors. Maybe there's a reason.

We went very slowly trying to find the channel using the depth meter, no markers, and turned the corner to head for the cut. Imagine our surprise when we could not find the #@!*^% thing, once again. Carol said that she was sure that the channel was in a particular direction, so we went that way until the depth hit 5.5-ft. and then backed up like crazy to get out of the shallow water. There was a fairly large ship moored to our port and it was starting to get underway. We reckoned that that captain could find the channel, so we followed him out. Without that "seeing eye dog" we probably would not have found it this time either. It's so well concealed that Capt. Jack Sparrow could hide the Black Pearl from the English fleet without worry.

There was a little wind on Sunday, and we motor sailed most of the way, making great time 6~7 knots, covering about 50 nm. It's remarkable how much route planning changes when the basic daily increment is 50 nm, rather than 40 nm. Carol mentioned that when we cleared the North West Channel on the last trip we were making less than 3 knots prior to the engine failing in the channel to Chubb Cay. Today, 6.5~7.0 knots and no problems except for one little thing. About four hours into the trip we saw what looked like steam or, possibly, smoke in the companion way, above the engine compartment. Major panic attack! I opened the engine hatch expecting to see the worst and saw ....... nada, bupkus, nothing. No smoke, no fluids boiling off, the temperatures were good, everything was dry, no odors from fried electrical insulation, no alarms going off, no similar haze of any kind in the engine compartment. We have no clue what it could have been, but we both know what we saw. I'm thinking POLTERGEIST!

We thought that we might stay at the mooring field at Fraziers Hog Cay despite the facility being closed for renovations. Carol was talking to someone and was told that another sailboat had done that just that and that the mooring ball cable had parted and the boat got into serious trouble. The next plan was to anchor west of Chubb Cay with the newly installed Fortress anchor. As we approached the anchoring area we saw that there were no boats anchored, maybe just a coincidence although the wind was probably a little more brisk than would be comfortable there. There was also a boat that looked like a dredge moored in the area. So we bailed and headed for the marina, always a safe choice but, here, an expensive one.

Having left the marina we awarded ourselves the Anchoring Weenie Award. The barges & dredges were gone; there were two sailboats anchored where we would have; there were several more anchored at Texaco point; and, even more near Whale Cay. I guess that we are forever scarred by our first anchoring experience at Okracoke, which went bad and almost ended very badly. I figure that we will spend a lot of time on the hook; we're just not in a hurry to do so if there is a better alternative.

On day 26 of the trip, having left Brunswick on 12/14/11, we got to Nassau, it being 625 days since we last entered this port. This time was better! The last time we limped to the port, got towed to the harbor and towed again to the marina. This entry was under our own power ... what a concept! Things are pretty much the same at the Nassau Harbour Club Marina. Peter still runs the place; Dudley is still the dock master. The main difference: the pool has been repaired, a prospect against which Carol would have bet big money .... and lost. We are in exactly the same slip as 625 days before.

We went to dinner tonight at a Chinese restaurant which we had frequented before and to which Carol wanted to go again. Food must be important to her; she remembered the combinations she wanted and the menu page on which they were printed. We left for the restaurant at 5:30PM and the traffic along East Bay Street, which goes in front of the marina, was just like the Dan Ryan Expressway, and it was backed up to the other side of the bridge from Paradise Island. When we left after dinner an hour later ... no change, including the bridge. I do not know how there could be so many cars on that island but we were told that it will be like that until 9:00PM.

The good news was that when we arrived at the marina the package from Boat Owners Warehouse was here with the spare toilet part. The bad news was that I asked Carol to order two and they only sent one. Not a major problem because 1>0. The fee at this marina includes fresh water; it's not separate and metered as in many marinas in the Bahamas. That's good because this boat needs to be cleaned. After the last two passages we have an alternate plan for trip financing: scrape the salt off the boat, put it in 5-lb. bags and sell it. I guess that we have at least 10 bags we could fill.

We've just been doing chores, getting ready to head south. Two of the last untested items were the dinghy and motor, the motor not being much of a concern since we had it serviced at a Mercury dealer in Brunswick that was nice enough to hold it for us until we left in December. Still, if there were a problem, Nassau would be a good place to get it fixed. We have had the dinghy during two previous trips and the motor for the trip last year. The only place the two have been used together was in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, FL, which has all sort of speed restrictions. The motor, improbably, fired up on the very first pull and off I went. With just me in the boat, it went fast enough to be scary when there was a wake in the water or any sort of wave; it felt like it wanted to get airborne. I'm sure that with Carol as additional ballast getting airborne will not be a problem.

Having dispensed with that the other item was the SSB and getting the weather, in this case, Chris Parker. So one morning, when I was semi-coherent, I powered it up at 0630 and waited. In the islands 0630 is not an promise of precision, military or otherwise; waiting 5 or 10 minutes is part of the deal. We never heard Chris Parker, but we did hear lots of cross talk so we know that the unit works. In most populated islands these is a VHF net that rebroadcasts the weather so, not too much about which to be concerned.

When in Great Harbour Cay a gentleman told us about FFFFF, The First Friday in February Farmers Festival, in this case Farmers referring to Little Farmers Cay, the last stop for most boats before heading into the open water, south to Georgetown. A friend of ours, Debbie, plans to be there so we would like to meet her there and enjoy the fun.

That's a ways away, so our plan is to sit out some very windy weather here in Nassau where we are secure and the costs are much less than those in the smaller islands. Depending on how the weather settles out, we may not leave until next Tuesday, fine with Carol because they have conch here in Nassau too.

Our night view of Nassau Harbour.

We are waiting for weather. We should have left on Monday arriving on Tuesday. But, we still had things to do; so, we missed that window. Regardless, Ft. Lauderdale is a great place to wait. It's sort of like Miami Beach but without the traffic and high prices. The city fathers did a smart thing either by accident or design; they have about a mile, or more, of uninterrupted open beach in the sense that it is possible to view the beach without high rises in the way. There is the west side of A1A, then two lanes only, and then a white beach and blue water. Carol and I like to have dinner at any of the several restaurants on the west side of A1A. They, quite literally, have tables on the sidewalk with a view of the beach 50-feet away. The traffic is not bad enough to detract from the experience and the people watching is great. It's slightly down market from, say, the Lincoln Road Mall but fascinating just the same. Carol much enjoys her morning walks, an irony of a sort. At the house I am the one up and working out in the morning; on the boat I am the sluggard and she is the one going strong. The daytime view from where we had supper at the table in the center of the picture closest to the road.

I want one of our batteries replaced, the starting battery, a pretty important part of the boat's equipment. On the boat all days are fungible; not so on shore. Most places, including the battery guy, were closed Friday through Monday. So, we waited and missed the first weather window. We also want the other house batteries checked. The start battery is only 4 years old, and shows no signs of problems; the house batteries are only 3 years old. This is Ashley's concept of preemptive replacement: make the change before the thing actually goes bad and needs to be replaced under duress. I have had a very hard time adapting to this idea since it is so generally contrary to life on shore. But, it is a sound policy on a boat if it's applied wisely. I don't know that we do that but we try. So, a new start battery whether we need it or not. Getting to the batteries is a lot work: some for me and some for Carol. She has to take apart the rear cabin, where we sleep, to gain access to the start battery. I have to empty most of the port lazarette to get to the three house batteries. The good news ... none of the house batteries needs replacing.

In the same vein of preemptive replacement, I would like to replace the standing rigging which is, now, almost 10 years old, about to the end of its useful expected life. We had it professionally checked in May and there were no cracks or concerning deterioration. The running rigging was almost all replaced last year in Marathon. Regardless, the standing rigging is now on my worry list. With a deck stepped mast the downside for failure is considerable.

We have been watching the big boats come into and leave the Bahia Mar Marina. We speculate that many boats went out for the holiday and returned on the Tuesday after Christmas. The boats are two and three times our length and beam and we think that they cannot possibly get around that corner or into that slip -- almost always backing in -- but they do, and seem to do it easily. With two propellers and all of the several side and bow thrusters on those boats they can literally parallel park more easily than any car. Our boat, being unburdened with all of that technology, crashes into things, scarring and scratching the hull. But, when by accident we get it right .... it feels really good.

Tuesday and Wednesday were hair cutting days. One of us memorized a red hair color formula and called all over town to find a beautician who could reproduce the special, selected red. The other of us plugged in the electric clippers and got a cruisers' cut, good enough on the premise that hair grows. I won't say which of us was which.

Having had such rotten "luck" getting to and staying in the Bahamas, one of the questions with which Carol and I have been working is whether we will go to the Florida Keys this year as we have done in the past. We think that we have seen enough of them the past three years and will forgo that journey this year. This means that we will miss seeing Cousin Sue and Jay, a serious regret since we always enjoy their company. But we have three years of island cruising that we have missed and will try to cram into this year.

We have been thinking about getting to the Bahamas, i.e. where to cross and where to make our port of entry to clear customs. If we were to elect for Bimini, more or less right across from Ft. Lauderdale, we would have to go south a day or two to be able to manage the Gulf Stream, our boat not being able to cross directly east against the current; we would be pushed too far north. So, we have elected to shoot for Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. This is north of Ft. Lauderdale and will make the Gulf Stream's current help us across. Carol has decided, I think, on some marina in the Lucaya area, there being no anchorages available due to geography. Freeport is the 2d largest city in the islands after Nassau. The trip from dock to dock will be about 95~100 nm, about the same as from Ft. Pierce to Ft. Lauderdale.

We spent 117 days at the house this year, too few in a place we so dearly love. So, there was a great deal of emotional and mental inertia to overcome in order to head the cars south toward the boat. Then .... the first snow fell on Oct. 29th; the next snow fell on Nov. 29th. All that inertia became a very modest, snow covered hill to climb (actually, to drive down, i.e. the driveway) and we left on Nov. 30th, arriving at the boat on Dec. 2d to discover that several months of having a (bird) pooplessly clean boat probably ended about the beginning of November. The boat is crusty, and, so it goes.

Wile E. is ensconced at Carol's sister's house in Tallahassee; Danielle is ensconced in the house for the winter; we are ensconced on the boat, safely at the dock in Brunswick Landing Marina .... a lot of ensconcing for two older folks who are listening to Def Leppard pounding out Rock & Roll while getting settled on the boat.

The update from the last blog is .... after settling in Ft. Lauderdale for a few days we got down to a serious discussion of what Plan C was going to be. Several long discussions cut short .... two options were left on the table after all the others were discarded: (a) sell the boat; (b) replace the offending and offensive motor.

Since we are on the boat and I am pounding out the blog, ipso facto, there is a new motor in the boat. This is still the first, last and ONLY boat that we will own. Which motor? We looked at several options including replacing the old Westerbeke with a new Westerbeke, replacing the smaller engine with a larger one, breaking the bank to buy a Volvo-Penta engine of any kind. In the end we settled on a Yanmar diesel engine, a brand with a stellar reputation in the sail-boating community. It is about the same size physically as the old one; it is a 3-cylinder, 3,600 RPM engine, just about the same as the old one so it was a reasonably easy replacement in the engine compartment. The larger Yanmar that we considered and wanted simply used too much fuel per hour for our tiny, 25-gal. tank and would have reduced our motor cruising range by one third, a bad deal. The price, in the grand scheme of boating, probably qualifies as reasonable. And, since it was very much a like for like replacement the amount of labor needed was considerably less than estimated.

The only hitch in the process was that this engine, and only this Yanmar engine, was in short supply in the USA and we had to wait over six weeks for one to arrive from Europe and even then there was some uncertainty as to whether we would get ours from the May shipment or have to wait an additional month. We got lucky and the engine arrived in mid-June after we had made the buying decision in late April.

We were able to use the down-time at the marine center. We had the boat hauled and the bottom cleaned and painted. The auto pilot had died on the way back to Ft. Lauderdale from the Berry Islands and I sent that off to RayMarine for repair under warranty and then re-installed it.

We did meet an interesting pair of French men, a man and his son on a 55-ft. Amel sailboat on which they had been for three years, having sailed it from France. They father spoke little English but his son was picking it up quickly and, somehow, we had some good times together well lubricated by spiced rum which seemed to help bridge the conversational gaps.

So we settled in at the Lauderdale Marine Center, went up to Brunswick to get one of our cars, and waited for the motor to arrive. Ft. Lauderdale is a nice place to visit but not so much if you have to sit idly for a month and a half. When the motor finally did arrive the installation went quickly. Day one was only about a half day when the old motor was disconnected and pulled out from the boat. Day two set the old motor and some of connections were replaced. Day three was finishing the several water, fuel and electrical connections and a quick sea trial to make sure that everything was working correctly which was the case, at least on that day.

The installation was not without problems. For one, they banged up and scratched our woodwork way more than we liked but that's done. We had to go through several hours of breaking the engine in before we were able to get underway north. During this process I asked the installer to look at the alternator, which he did. However, when he re-installed the alternator belt it was not properly seated in the pulley grooves. When we got underway for a day of breaking in the engine, the belt shredded when we got about 100 yards from the dock. No power, no cooling, no electrical output and a very strong current pushing the boat toward the bridge against which I had almost crushed the boat in the previous blog entry. Out went the anchor; out came the cell phone to call Tow Boat US. Then we sat back to watch all the crews scrambling on the ka-jillion dollar yachts see if we were going to be able to control our powerless boat without crashing into and scratching their livelihoods. The anchor finally set and we had several thumbs-up and a smattering of applause for our effort. Tow Boat US showed up to get us back to the dock.

The last contretemps was when we finally set off for Brunswick we discovered that a major fuse had blown. This probably happened when the installer looked at the alternator and got the belt messed up. The problem was not apparent until we finally left shore power. A simple fix; we have spares; but, another delay in a long period of delays.

Finally, on June 21st we left Ft. Lauderdale for Ft. Pierce, the first leg of two for the return to Brunswick, GA. We laid over in Ft. Pierce for two days before beginning the, we thought, two night trip north.

Our first afternoon out we were north and east of Cape Canaveral when the USCG blasted channel 16 on the VHF telling all boats to return to a safe harbor. The weather forecast had failed to predict that the entire state of Florida was now covered by a late developing storm and that storm was headed east and moving very fast. We would have needed about 10 hours to return to port and the storm was less than two hours away and between us and the recommended safe harbor. So we took in the sails, broke out the foul weather gear and the safety harnesses to ride it out, which we did. The storm was so big that there was no way to dodge it, although we did try that in vain. The storm got to us just after dark, which was a good thing .... we could not see how big the waves were. It was a force 8 storm, a full gale with 40 knot winds, our very first gale in the open water. It didn't take much to convince Carol that I should be at the helm for the duration. Fortunately the duration was short; it blew past us in about two hours. If we hadn't been busy we would have cranked up REO Speedwagon's "Riding the Storm Out." Handling the boat in the wind and waves was not too difficult, but it was good that I had installed a lap seat belt on our chair at the helm. The only scary thing was the lightening by which we could just about read it was so consistent. The 51-ft. lightening rod in the middle of the boat was a concern, but all turned out well.

Our next surprise was when we hit the Brunswick clear water buoy at 7pm the next night instead of 7am on the following morning. The new engine, along with a little wind assist had moved that us much faster than did the old engine. As luck would have it we were in the middle of another thunderstorm and did not know whether it would be better to stay in the open water or to head in. We decided to go in, which turned out to be the right choice, but had to make our first inland passage through the channels and rivers in the dark. Despite knowing the area very well, things are different in the dark .... every tail light, every traffic light, every neon sign glows red or green, conflating with the navigational markers to confuse the heck out of tired sailors; thank goodness for chart plotters. All ended well and we tied up at the marina a little after 10pm on June 25th.

Different from all other years, we only came to the boat once this summer, that to have the 50-hour service on the new engine. We did use it as a condo a couple of times on trips through the area. But, the seemingly endless list of repairs and improvements was not on the agenda this summer. And, a good thing too; we both had had about enough of the boat without it consuming the summer and Fall.

So, we're getting ready to go. There is not a lot we have to do to be ready; some cleaning, some organizational stuff, emptying the storage locker and getting things, e.g. sails, back on the boat. Although, we have been working very hard despite the Not Having to Much to Do claim. Mainly the list is of things is of those not to do: don't break my body (Dec. 2009); don't break the boat (Dec. 2010). Avoiding these would be a big contribution to a good trip with an early start.

Carol has had an amazing epiphany, of sorts; she is actually taking stuff of the boat. Well, maybe not actually; it might be artful and sincere dissembling, as in she really intended to get stuff off the boat but it just did not work out. The fore cabin, the combination larder, closet and garage is almost, not completely, organized with a difficult result. A major part of the storage issue in on my head: BOOKS! I have a quantity of books that measures in the several cubic feet, maybe not quite a cubic yard, but close. We will be gone for several months and, at leisure, I consume most of these mind numbing books at the rate of one day. So, lots o' books. In addition, we have my iPad, loaded with tons of books; our son, Sean, gave Carol one of his early generation Kindles, also loaded with tons of books. We are in no immediate danger of running out of stuff to read. Interesting, to me at least, is that about 10%~15% of the physical books I have are hard cover. Because of their size and mass they take up about 25%, or more, of the space. I guess that the plan will be to consume and off load the hard cover editions first. My challenge will be to get rid of the books without replacing them and their cubic volume.

Tomorrow, Friday, 12/09/11 we will have been on the boat eight days. We will also have completed all necessary tasks to be able to get underway. Ironies Abound! Having done all the work .... the weather goes south so that we cannot south for several days, maybe midweek, next week. This is a problem: it gives me more time to break my body or to break the boat .