Schooner

Schooner

Friday, January 31, 2014

Playing the fiddle for the first time, and upgrades.

Yesterday I played the fiddle for the first time.





   The first one was very bad. I failed to get the core inside the cover. The second try was better. I found out I was missing a "pusher" This is a crucial item. I did not have a screwdriver long enough for the job, so I ended up short of the interlace distance needed to do the splice. On the second attempt I was determined. It must have taken me 2 hours. but i got the cores where the should be, and this thing is strong! So this was the first splice I have made. I am a fast learner. Starting on 5/8 line was my mistake. It cost me $3 in line to learn, lol.

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The next task of the day was engine work. I have a multitude of projects going on at one time. Project 1 is repair. There are questionable hoses on the engine that need replaced before a trip to Antarctica. I can't just ring up the local chandlery and ask for a hose. So I will be buying two of most parts I replace.


The engine looks bad. The paint is peeling off most places, and there is a small oil leak.


   Not wanting to pay a dear amount of money, I tried my hand at making my own.



   So i mixed up a batch (too bi a batch) and painted the area I had just sanded.


 Results another day.

The next project of the day was alternator installation.

   I scored a 100 amp Balmar alternator and a Balmar MC-612 multi-phase charge controller. Total price? $225. I had it tested and it came back very good. The bearings whine a bit, but not so much as to warrant $100 replacement. Besides, I will have a spare that is self regulating, so even if both of these fail, I have a backup. The setback was my adjustment arm was straight, I needed a curvy one, so I ordered a Balmar adjustable arm. Best price after an hour of research was $36. ouch.



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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

St Augustine, upgrades and repairs

   Here we are, in St Augustine. Its repair, upgrade, and cosmetics time. No idea how long we will be here. We have a list of items that needs addressed. We had some that should have been done before we left, but were not completed because of time constraints. My personal first project was lighting.
   We currently have no less then 16 halogen light fixtures. Each one draws 2.5 amps. Even if we light only one room at a time, this is 10 amp, over 4 hours this means 40 amp hours, just for lighting!!! So we went out and bought a collection of LED lights. We wanted to test what ones were bright, and find the worthless ones. The results are stunning. Out of 3 we bought, only one was bright. One was broken, and one was useless.


1. West Marine brand surface mount: $25. 4 white LED's, adversities 1/10th the power requirements of conventional lights. The only issue is, what conventional light? Really this thing is so dim, i could not even read by this light. The real kicker is, it was broken. it has 4 LED's, 3 of them light up. No thanks! moving on...

















2. West Marine brand LED accent light. $35 Triple intensity beam, 80Ma. This little light was actually brighter then the 4 LED light. It was also too dim to be useful.















3.  Lumitec Aurora. This light was expensive. $89, but we found one that had been returned without a package, got the price down to $50, score!!! The employee price on these is $35, I wish i worked here during our refit.

On the left is the 25 watt halogen light. On the right/bottom is the Aurora LED light. It draws 0.5 amps.
We could actually power 5 of these lights, for the same power as one halogen light. This exact light has a turning bezel, it turns it on, off and dims it. The color is not warm as I would like, however this is a minor inconvenience. We will be buying these lights, in a switched version, without the bezel. These lights are $48 each online. We will be buying 4 of these for our main entry way, and kitchen. It should give us 100 watts of lighting, enough to live on for sure! But the power draw will only be 24 watts. This process will also be repeated on the exterior. All the navigation lights will be converted to LED. What do you think? What have you used on your own boat?


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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The Final Leg, St Augustine.

The night on the mooring ball was nice. It was a bit chilly, but bearable.
We are truly not setup for being on an anchor, or ball for an extended period of time. For example, at this point we have no heater. The generator died within a month of purchasing the boat, and we have yet to replace it. This is because of two reasons. The first reason is because I have decided to avoid an 3600RPM unit. These are everywhere, and can be had for almost nothing. The other popular option is an 1800RPM unit. The later being quieter, and vibrating less. This new design has not had enough time to get cheep. I have not seen a decent one for less then $4000. Solar. This is going to be on the yacht no matter what. I have the option of adding more. The first big stop sign for solar is 800 watts. The most expensive part of a solar system is the MPPT solar controller. The largest, common, one of these that can support 800 watts of solar. They are $500 on their own, where the panels themselves are under $1 a watt. Honestly I do not want more then 600 watts of solar, as this would make the stern of the yacht look like the van from, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.


So the second renewable energy part is a windmill. The most difficult part of this is the mount on our yacht. If we had a ketch, and we do not, then mounting on the top of the mizzen would be an easy task. However unless we kept the windmill less then an 8' diameter, this would put us over the magic 65'. The second issue is keeping it from exploding in a storm. If it was lower I could go tie it off before a storm. I however will not climb up a 55' high mast in bad conditions. The best solution is after we rebuild the boomkin to mount it on a pole, on there. Wow, does our boomkin need a rebuild. So, alas, we find our self marinaless, unheated, on a mooring ball. After about 8 phone calls I found a nice place, on a side river on the back side of St Augustine. $10 a foot, plus the complementary fee of $100. This place is run down, unmaintained, with dangerous docks, and showers that will make you more dirty then clean. Frankly, we love it. It is quiet, cheep, and the boats here are in good shape, and not abandoned. The dock master is friendly most days, and when the marina nearly burnt our boat down, they repaired it :P lol. Our last day on the mooring ball we went walkabout in town all day. We ate some more food that was mediocre. We also found some great local businesses. One of them had white truffle oil. I got a small bottle, and its the real deal. Goodbye bland french fries! Another thing I noticed about the town is the homeless population is right in the public view. They are also treated well in town. I noticed a few little things. One had new shoes, another had a hand made blanket. They were all just begging on a pedestrianized street. There was even one playing a accordion. They also all had dogs. I guess this might be begging tip number one, make yourself and your dog look pathetic, get more money. I will have to take Daphne to town someday and see if i can make $10 an hour... :)

Friday, January 24, 2014

Day 6 FL ICW to St Augustine

   Current is how we started our day. The tide was running out at full speed by the time we woke up, and got moving. We had a few dock visitors, I told Dana, who instantly wanted to shoot them, so she went and got the camera.

   I wanted to get going earlier, but we were both tired from the 30 hour passage, and we slept in, and lazed about. I am very glad I took the time to review my GPS charts for the ICW. There was a submerged jetty between the river and the ICW cut. I am not sure how many have hit it, but i think some must. It is marked, but not overly.  The same is true for the actual entrance. In the current it was tricky, and the deep part was not marked. If it was not mid-tide i may have hit bottom.


   So we left, and I fought a 4kt current up the St Johns river. When we got to the ICW, it was only 3KTS. I do hate to fight a current. I feel like we are dumping diesel into the drink.


   I wish I could tell you some grand story about this day, but it was just nice. Nice scenery, little traffic, everything worked. The dogs love going up deck now. They are braving their fears about the companionway. Daphne is the best at it. Up or down, she is all paws on each step, quick and efficient. This companionway is very steep. Even the fat cat is slower then Daphne. Velma is another story. It is still very scary to her. If her sister goes up first she will sit there and chirp (some crazy way to whine) until her sister comes back to help her up by standing at the top of the stairs. They do love to run up deck thou. I hope soon they calm down, and just lay down up there. We have had them up there for up to 3 hours, still no change. They think the deck is a race track. They circle the entire outside of the deck, and each lap they stop by the cockpit to make sure we are still there.
                            

So we arrived in St Augustine, FL. We decided to go to a marina called "hidden harbor". The price was $11 a foot, plus $140 utility's. (This is a game they play here in Florida, quote a price then add things you cannot remove.) So we arrived there, and went to do paperwork. The dock master was a bit nasty, but not too bad. She was waiting in the office with a "new rate sheet" She said in two weeks the new rates would take effect. now $13.50 a foot, plus the $140 for power, water, showers, ect. wow, that would equate to an extra $150 a month for us. When i asked if she was serious a old man came out from the back and said, "Thats the price, do you have a problem with it?" WOW, what a jerk.

   So here is my word of advice. avoid hidden harbor. Its run down and now, overpriced. The owner is the biggest jerk I have ever met in a marina.

   Do not misunderstand me, I do not have an issue with run down, as long as it is priced well.

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   So off we went, back down the stream, back to St Augustine Municipal marina. We picked up a mooring ball for the night, and went to have dinner.

   I would not mention dinner, but I hate misinformation. We went to the closest place to the marina, J P Henley's. It was a nice atmosphere. Clean too. Here is my quarrel. They claim world famous wings. Now I have eaten about 10,000 wings over the years, at everyplace wings are served. I have never heard of this place. The wings were oversized, tasteless, undercooked, and the sauce had me feeling that it came from a can. World famous like that? Doubtful. Yet again another restaurant who thinks they have something special, when its nothing.

The marina that was $20 a foot per month, was not special. In fact it was disappointing. All it had was location. Also had a few cool ships.



   That's it for today!













Thursday, January 23, 2014

Day 5 Jacksonville arrival, and the dock of DOOM

   So the passage to JAX was an easy one.





   Thou i did not intend to come in at JAX, poor timing would have had me coming into St Augustine at 3AM with the tide going out. Not a good scenario. So i bailed, made a sharp west turn and headed into JAX, the St John's river.




   As I am going in I was Googleing free dock. This is the first thing I always do when looking for a place to rest. The only one was a good 3 hours up river. My second search is for restaurant with dock. I have had many free overnights because they have a place to eat (typically no power), and free dockage with a meal. I found one with 3.5 stars. OK, so that was our destination, and it was only 3 miles from the ICW entrance.
   The arrival was a bit tricky. The tide was coming in, but at the dock approach was a raging river. As we got closer, it started to suck us in like a vacuum cleaner picking up dog hair. I came into the dock at a 45 degree angle, the first one of these. While we were looking over the docks I noticed how they looked ready to float away. They vaguely looked connected. But alas, they were free.

                            



   The restaurant was named Sand Dollar restaurant and marina. The staff was VERY friendly, and the food was good. We didn't have anything special, just some fried food. It was delicious. Back to the yacht, for a good nights sleep before we take off tomorrow for the ICW. Will we hit bottom yet again? No way to know unless you stay tuned!!!





Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Day 4 Beaufort, SC to ocean

   Day 4 started out rough, but we made it better. At 11AM we walked into town for a last froyo stop before our offshore passage. I figured we would be eating bilge food for a few days, so why not. The froyo place in town was a very friendly place. This was our second trip there in 2 days, and they remembered us. We were the first customers of the day and the franchise owner was meeting with the manager. We struck up a conversation and they had a lot of questions after we told him we traveled the entire east coast having various yogurt along the way. We told him our favorite things about the different places. I also gave him some free advice about being listed online. We had only found him by walking by, as they do not show up online anywhere. After our visit we departed for 30 some hours of sailing. It was a very nice day, with temperatures in the 60's. Not warm, but not freezing. In fact I believe this was our first ocean passage where we did not freeze.



It was just lightly breezy maybe 5kts. We sailed some 5 hours before we fired up the engine for the rest of the trip. It was mostly downwind, and i rigged my first gybe preventers.








The seas were calm the entire day. maybe 2' seas with a long period. Its too bad we had no good wind to sail on. I desire to make passages on wind alone, but if there is wind, there are seas, and at this point our boat is not too comfy on anchor (no generator, or heat) so we do not like to stay on anchor too long. Back in the ocean again!















Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Attempted robbery, and why we will never be without a gun.




 Please share this with everyone you know. Your not always safe, not even in the US.
   So, here, is the story you have all been waiting for. The night at the free dock in Beaufort. Why were we on a dock that says "1AM-6AM docking prohibited" because we could not get off. When we came in to dock a wind pushed us sideways into the dock at about 2kts. There was no getting off the dock until the wind died. So here we are, stuck to the dock.
   At 1:30 AM the local police came by to wake us up by knocking on the hull. Now, why would they do this? Because there is a $2 a night marina right next to the free dock. And they are jerks. Frankly I will skip the town next time and save my $70 we spent for ramen. Now the cops were very nice, and understood what I ment about the wind pushing us into the dock, and left without me coming outside even. The damage was done however, I was not getting back to sleep.
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   2:45AM So as I lay awake in bed, I hear footsteps on the deck. Oh great, I think, Here comes the cops to tell us we need to leave now that the wind has shifted. No. I opened the small 4"x12" bedroom window and saw a foot coming into the cockpit. I said, "Hello?" A voice goes "Yeah?" at this point I leaped out of bed, got on my shoes, grabbed the gun, and went on deck. Only to find the person gone. He must have run 100 yards, on a shaky dock, in less then 30 seconds. I went below and got more dressed while calling 911.
   As it rang and rang I was kind of shocked by how long the call was unanswered. Then it was answered and I was shocked even more. For a period of about 5-10 seconds I heard two women talking and laughing, as i said, "Hello? Hello?" Then finally she turned back to the phone and said 911 blah blah.... WOW, what an incompetent woman. I do not need to tell you if we were in real danger, seconds count. After I hung up I took my gun, and massive spotlight to look for this thug. As I got to the top of the dock the cops arrived. (less then 2 min) As I was talking to the cop a man jumped into a truck, and took off like it was on fire. The cop chased him. From there I do not know what happened.



A few thoughts have gone thru my mind since the incident. The first is what if the "hello" came from my wife.
Would this have made him run? Would this have made him come in? The second is what if he had a gun. I have revisited our safety plan, and the gun will not be next to my bed. The small cockpit to bedroom holes will be used for shooting, not talking. The next person in the cockpit in the middle of the night, without permission, will be shot. We will not be without a gun on our boat.

Monday, January 20, 2014

SC ICW, 3rd day, and Beaufort, SC

   The 3rd day of our journey we woke up early. We had a goal that day of stopping at the free dock in Beaufort, SC. The day however started out rough. The windlass has been finicky. The bolt that holds the shaft, and keeps pressure on the clutch was not installed when we bought the boat. I reinstalled it before we left, but not very far in. The threads were goofed, so I could not get it in very far. It pulled out again. So I had to screw it back in a bit, tighten the clutch, and try to get the anchor up. Unfortunately we were at a 90 degree angle to the anchor. It was not budging. Why were we 90 degrees to the anchor? Me and my stern anchor.... I put it out on 10' of rode so the boat would spin more slowly, only it hooked up overnight.
   Regretfully I cut the stern anchor free. Goodbye 15# anchor I found in the lazerette. This makes me rethink our primary. Every time i have tossed this anchor over, it has hooked up. It has hooked up without me even setting it. Well we may make our primary a danforth. It has worked great in every condition we have tried using it in. I cannot say the same of our QCR. It must be set to work.
   After getting the QCR back in the bow roller, we were off. 12 miles to Beaufort.


   It was a very windy day, and quite chilly. When we arrived at the free dock, after passing under the swing bridge, the wind was blowing hard north. Dana set the fenders on the port side. I brought the yacht parallel with the dock, about 20' out, and we were pushed sideways, very hard. I would estimate we hit the dock at about 2kts sideways. It was fine thou, we had 6 fenders, BIG fenders. So the landing was soft. We tied up, and went into town.

   The town is a nice clean town, and all the shop keepers were friendly. We stopped at the a BBQ joint in downtown. The food was ok. The service was ok. Not anything remarkable, but not bad. We then popped over to the local froyo for desert, then back to the yacht for the night.

Tomorrow I will post the details of the robbery that happened this very night. So check back in the morning!

Sunday, January 19, 2014

SC ICW day 2

   A very cold night, in a very nice anchorage. Are we still in new york? We ask that more then we thought we would. In fact I wonder if we brought the cold with us? Did our mast catch the cloud? Did we drag it kicking and screaming behind us?
   We shared the anchorage with Mon Tiki, Dogstar, and some random trawler. (do they name those too?lol)
Departure was about 10AM, much later then Mon Tiki, as he is an early riser, and Dana is not. (I am writing this at 5AM) Completely uneventful night.
   At this point we had not touched bottom again. That is a big change from the NC ICW, where we hit bottom no less then 4 times.

I often pass other sailboats on the ICW. Most are bare poled. I can never work out why. There are sailing opportunities every day almost. In fact, when I have even a little blow at least the jib is unfurled.
 
I am nearly the only one. In fact sometimes we kill the engine and drift at 3kts for a few hours. Free is free right? That is why we got a salboat. The less we spend, the more we save, the longer we can stay sailing and not working.

   This day went very well. It was uneventful, and again full of dolphins. We motored 5 hours, sailed 4 hours.

Being passed by Dogstar, a trio of happy folks on a small boat. 

This was our last leg of the day, we crossed the bay on sail power, and anchored at the west end for the night. What a nice chilly day of sailing, and motoring. We are still loving our trip, and cannot wait to continue. We are working daily to adjust to this life, and we are loving it.


















Saturday, January 18, 2014

The Megadock, and the first day on the SC, ICW

   After turning around we spent a day with Hootie and the blowfish. Not literately of course, but their yacht was docked 500' from ours. The Megadock in downtown Charleston, SC if very overpriced, and for no good reason. The price is $2 a foot, close to $100 for us, and it is nothing special. None the less, it was too cold to be at anchor, so we had to have power, and heat.

Hootie boat
 


While there, I was watching the forecast, and it was looking rough. I made the captains decision to stay on the ICW for a bit. We left the mega dock early in the evening, and heading back thru Elliot cut, for the third time. This time however we went to starboard.

   Dolphins are everywhere down here. If dolphins were rats, there would be an infestation.


  We went as far as we could, before our very chilly night.


The trip was uneventful. We have been eating mostly on board the yacht. Dana is starting to get the swing of living on a yacht, and cooking without refrigeration. Not an easy task. The meals are mostly sandwiches,  and pizza, and ramen. I am glad I enjoy ramen, for under 30 cents a meal, I can have a full belly. This is an important part of our voyage. The cheaper we live the less money we need to see the entire world. Our goal is to live on under $500 a month, with ALL expenses. We are going to prepare the yacht for life on anchor. Staying at marinas will not get us into a budget, low enough, to go on for a long time. I have been told that on $35,000 you can complete a circumnavigation. I want to do it for under $20,000. There will be places we will skip. Galapagos is off the list. Why? Simple, too expensive. I was reading a blog post last week, of a couple who just made the trip. They had well over $2000 into this one stop.
Things I can do with $2000 that do not involve a flightless bird sighting:
Replace my prop with a feathering prop
New bottom paint
Re-rig our foremast
New high end dinghy
New dinghy engine
A new main sail
A new Raymarine chartplotterwith change left over
All new running rigging.

Get the point? The stop there has become so overpriced, its a dumb move to make, for yet another volcanic island. And that is all it is. Now, if you worship Darwin, and believe all the fairytale's about (0+0=everything) it may be an important stop for you. But no thanks, I will save my money for an ice cream on the steps of
Piazza da Spagna.



   Here is Mon Tiki, the only other schooner we passed on this leg of the trip, and our new stalker :) We passed him, then anchored with him, then played leep frog with him for the next week, until he caught up with us yesterday in St Augustine.



Thank you Mon Tiki for the great photo of our boat!
Here it is.
 That's it for today!





Thursday, January 9, 2014

False start

   I found Dana's limit yesterday :) Its 8' breaking waves. We spent 5 hours getting to the end of the jettys, And then after the 3rd or 4th deck wash Dana was done. We went back to Charleston, and spent the night at the overpriced docks. The forecast is for 10' seas for 3 days, so we are heading down the ICW to Savanna GA. a slow, shallow track, to see if we can find the bottom again. Once we get to Savanna Then we can run down outside to Jacksonville. Gag, i hate motoring, but I love my wife, so making her happy is important.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Departure day

   We have a 165 mile ocean passage to do this week. Forecast said 3-4' seas, 10-12kt winds. My, how forecasts change. So not we are facing another small craft advisory, this means it will be rough, and windy.
5'-6' seas will be the sailing conditions, with 7's Saturday night. We may see 12' sets. With the high wind we may just run the 90% jib, alone. With just this one headsail we will most likely go about 6-8kts. Should make for a quick passage. If money was not tight I would be tempted to keep going to key west.



   The waves are forecast to be right on the beam, woohoo, lots of rolling about tonight! The wind forecast says we will be sailing down wind. I am tempted to use the foresail, but the wind will be so high, 25kts, I would have to have 3 reefs in it. What I desire to work out is how do some sailors lash off the wheel, and in what conditions? I have seen it done on videos, but when? That would be a nice break to not use the autopilot. In fact we will try to hand steer most of the trip, with the exception of when i am sleeping on watch tonight.

It has been so cold here lately that the water from the hose was ice cold, after they turned it on today.


   Here you can see the condensation on the water fill pipe. Cold drinks today! 

   We finally have the dingy well secured, and no lashings on the deck. I ran the spinnaker halyard to the bow pulpit,  so it is not out of the way, and very secure. I guess if i was a pro i would use the spinnaker on this downwind trip, but if i get off a bit, we would broach, and Dana would be cross.




   Goodbye SJYH. I can say this place is very nice. There are a bunch of things i enjoyed,and a few i did not. The best part was the courtesy car. The docks are very clean, power is high quality. The inter net was sort of fixed while we were here, but they are strict on the policy's. Far from an open net. The staff is nice, most of them. There is a bar, and it does attract a roudy crowd, but is far enough from the docks, you do not hear them.
   

   What bugged me? There is an abundance of full time, multi-year, residents here. Many of those have very very very run down boats, and do not bother to keep them nice looking. One of them is building a pilot house out of plywood. The internet is restricted, and monitored. The area is nice, but far from anything, so you cannot walk someplace, you must drive.



Look for a video of our departure if I get the camera charged in time.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Subsidizing store bought food

   One big expense that does not go away is food cost. So the best approach for a long time cruiser is to supplement your diet on caught food. On the east coast that is done with blue crab. Today we experimented with a chick neck, on a line. the crab grabs the neck and hold on until the surface. I caught 3. Two escaped our net with a big hole in it. One did not.
   So tonight we enjoyed the company of a crab, and also the taste.




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Time to move on

   We are now preparing to leave. Off to face another adventure. This time I am determined to SAIL 90% of the trip. No more motor passages for us. I have the Large 155% genoa up on deck, ready to fly.


   It was folded by two girls with not much of an idea how to fold it, and finished by one girl, alone.
Should be a trip to get it on the furler. I hope to use all 3 sails on this trip. The wind prediction is 10-15MPH, with a low of 6MPH on our 3rd day, if we take three days. The waves are to be calm, 2-3'. 

   We went out provisioning yesterday, we loaded up for this three day trip, because upon arrival, we will be on a mooring. We are hoping to stay in FL for a bit and work, then make a big trip to who knows where. We have goals to meet, I hope to make them in 5 months. If they can all be made in 5-7 months, we will head all the way south. ALL THE WAY. 


     A bit of provisioning.
Until then,


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