We're in Miami, again! We sailed down from Fort Lauderdale to Black Point Marina, which is right near Scott and Jenette's house, and they kindly picked us up so we could take a night off, so to speak. We showered, and went to dinner, and even got to sleep in a real bed!
Unfortunately, we didn't bring the proper cord for the camera, so we can't put up pictures right now. But, a quick summary of what happened: We spent two days motoring down the ICW, mostly going under drawbridges (one of the bridgetenders called Erica "captain" on the radio, and she still hasn't gotten over it). We anchored on Sunday in Virginia Key, which is directly across from downtown Miami- the skyline at night was incredible, even more so than usual since the sky was a crazy purple color, indicating that it was about to storm all night - which it did. It was a rather damp and sleepless night of frequent anchor checks and waking up to loud bursts of rain, but all in all we weathered it just fine and were able to set off again Monday morning. We actually got both sails up, and managed to do a little bit of sailing before the wind totally died on us, and we motored in to an anchorage in Key Biscayne. It was a bit disconcerting when our cruising guide told us that the entrance to "Hurricane Harbor" was extremely shoaly, but we picked our way in slowly, encouraged by the large sailboats we could see inside. The next day as we were leaving, we found out from some locals that after the cruising guide was published, the entrance had been dredged to12 feet deep the whole way across.
Tuesday was extremely windy, blowing out of the south, which unfortunately is right where we were trying to go. We beat into it for a while before getting tired and frustrated, so we headed in to No Name Harbor, which is a part of Bill Bagg State Park at the very tip of Key Biscayne. The day rate for tying up there is only $2, so we tied up to the seawall, walked around the beach, showered, and then sailed downwind to spend the night back in Hurricane Harbor, where the anchoring is free (hooray for sailing on a budget! - Treasurer Erica). My favorite part of this second night was hearing the music coming from one of the megayachts docked on shore. First of all, this guy was hanging out on his yacht, instead of in his giant mansion, and second, he listened to all of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack before moving on to Frankie Valli's greatest hits. Must be nice- I like to think that if I had a mansion and an 80 foot long motorboat, I would keep the boat on the dock and listen to Frankie Valli all night long.
Wednesday, the wind was again out of the south, but we were determined to get to Black Point. It was a long day of tacking and motoring, but we finally got to where we could see the markers for their entrance channel, so we called the marina and they told us that they did indeed have room for us. Much relieved by the knowledge that we were in fact going to make it somewhere that night, as we got closer to the channel I started making jokes about how well we had navigated the shallow water. Famous last words. As you can imagine, we immediately ran aground - agonizingly close, maybe 30 feet from the channel. Luckily, it was a pretty soft grounding- we could still turn the boat, we just couldn't go forward or back. Erica and I fought against the wind to pull the mainsail up about halfway, and with the sail full of wind the boat tilted over enough to lift the bottom out of the mud, and we cruised on in to the marina (much chastened).
After we tied up, Erica's wonderful aunt Jenette picked us up, took us to West Marine and the grocery store, and fed us a delicious dinner. Erica was asleep by 8:30, and I followed not long after. We finally have winds from a direction other than the south, so I think we're headed out to Elliot Key tonight, which is directly across the Bay from where the boat is, and Key Largo after that. I would say that our shakedown cruise was a great success. We got to do some sailing- Erica is picking it up remarkably quickly; we broke a few things; we saw some beautiful anchorages, some dolphins, a turtle, and what I could only describe as a giant sea serpent. Things are looking pretty good.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Blasting off
We are finally ready to leave Fort Lauderdale! Maybe!
Yesterday, we took a serious walking tour of Fort Lauderdale in search of the two parts that would finally fix our toilet. We started at Sailorman, which is a gigantic used marine stuff store, where "every day is a flea market." It was awesome. It was like the part of the quest where we met The Sage- a gigantic room full of mysterious treasures and wizened, gnomelike old men who know everything. We found a new deck fitting for our water fill, a twisted shackle for the traveler, 15 feet of 3/16th line (much to the chagrin of the salesman, who really thought I needed 18, or even 20 feet. Shows how much he knows) and best of all, a new clevis pin to replace the one I dropped in the water. That last one was most satisfying- the clevis pin is what connects the open end of a shackle. It is tiny and looks like this:
We were looking through card catalogs full of these things, trying to match the length, diameter and head size exactly. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack made out of other needles. Also like looking for shark's teeth at Calvert Cliffs. When we finally found one, they let us take it for free, impressed by our persistence.
We also found out a lot about our toilet. Erica came up huge by remembering what brand it is, and by flipping through the catalog we found the toilet that is the modern equivalent of the one that we have. That let us find the number of the replacement parts for the ones that I broke. The gnomes at Sailorman told us to go to the marine wholesaler down the street, who unfortunately did not have the part on hand. They in turn sent us to the Raritan store, where they had no idea what we were talking about. In the end, we didn't get the part we needed...but, we at least found out that it exists, and have come up with a scheme for a temporary fix until we can track down the real part. It was more walking than we had planned on, but it was fun to enter the world of people who actually know about boats, where you can actually get parts to fix things instead of replacing them entirely. Then we went to West Marine and didn't buy anything- another major triumph.
This afternoon, we overhauled the rigging. All the halyards were run so that they needlessly crossed over one another at the top of the mast, so we untwisted all of them. We put a reef in the mainsail, because unreefed it is too big for the boat. We rerigged the boom lift, and took two mysterious bolts out of the mast that were supporting the bottom of the boom for no particular reason. Actually, I have a hypothesis, which is that if the boom lift doesn't work because you tied it in stupid knots, and you wanted to lift the boom so it wouldn't swing at head level, you might think that it would be a good idea to shove two bolts into the mast underneath the boom to hold it up, instead of just fixing the boom lift. It's just a theory, but I defy anyone to come up with a better explanation.
Tomorrow, we're going to get up early and start heading south. The plan is to go to an anchorage about 13 miles south of our slip, so when things get complicated and we don't actually leave early it will be okay. It looks like we'll have about two days of motoring until things open up enough for us to start sailing for real. We also got the camera back today, so we will get back to putting up our own pictures.
Yesterday, we took a serious walking tour of Fort Lauderdale in search of the two parts that would finally fix our toilet. We started at Sailorman, which is a gigantic used marine stuff store, where "every day is a flea market." It was awesome. It was like the part of the quest where we met The Sage- a gigantic room full of mysterious treasures and wizened, gnomelike old men who know everything. We found a new deck fitting for our water fill, a twisted shackle for the traveler, 15 feet of 3/16th line (much to the chagrin of the salesman, who really thought I needed 18, or even 20 feet. Shows how much he knows) and best of all, a new clevis pin to replace the one I dropped in the water. That last one was most satisfying- the clevis pin is what connects the open end of a shackle. It is tiny and looks like this:
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| What up, clevis? |
We also found out a lot about our toilet. Erica came up huge by remembering what brand it is, and by flipping through the catalog we found the toilet that is the modern equivalent of the one that we have. That let us find the number of the replacement parts for the ones that I broke. The gnomes at Sailorman told us to go to the marine wholesaler down the street, who unfortunately did not have the part on hand. They in turn sent us to the Raritan store, where they had no idea what we were talking about. In the end, we didn't get the part we needed...but, we at least found out that it exists, and have come up with a scheme for a temporary fix until we can track down the real part. It was more walking than we had planned on, but it was fun to enter the world of people who actually know about boats, where you can actually get parts to fix things instead of replacing them entirely. Then we went to West Marine and didn't buy anything- another major triumph.
This afternoon, we overhauled the rigging. All the halyards were run so that they needlessly crossed over one another at the top of the mast, so we untwisted all of them. We put a reef in the mainsail, because unreefed it is too big for the boat. We rerigged the boom lift, and took two mysterious bolts out of the mast that were supporting the bottom of the boom for no particular reason. Actually, I have a hypothesis, which is that if the boom lift doesn't work because you tied it in stupid knots, and you wanted to lift the boom so it wouldn't swing at head level, you might think that it would be a good idea to shove two bolts into the mast underneath the boom to hold it up, instead of just fixing the boom lift. It's just a theory, but I defy anyone to come up with a better explanation.
Tomorrow, we're going to get up early and start heading south. The plan is to go to an anchorage about 13 miles south of our slip, so when things get complicated and we don't actually leave early it will be okay. It looks like we'll have about two days of motoring until things open up enough for us to start sailing for real. We also got the camera back today, so we will get back to putting up our own pictures.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Hit it with a hammer
Thank you, Alik.
I can tell you that that was not what we were saying yesterday when we tried to go sailing for the first time. The weather was beautiful, the jib went up fine, we turned off the engine, and things were looking pretty good. When I went to untie the mess of knots underneath the boom, in preparation for putting up the mainsail, I realized that instead of being a half-assed measure to stop the boom from swinging around, these knots were actually a half-assed attempt to rig the mainsheet to the boat (Erica's "sailing for dummies" note: the mainsheet is the rope that's used to control the mainsail). This mess was apparently meant to stand in for a traveler, which is a complicated little metal piece that slides back and forth on a track, and is the point on the boat where the mainsheet attaches. So in essence the traveler was nonexistent, replaced by a terrible, terrible tangle of lines, knots, and random blocks, which held everything in place, but was not at all conducive to actual sailing.
Undaunted but mildly distressed, we sailed back in and then motored up to Lake Sylvia, which is about two miles north of our slip, where we gently ran aground. We got floating again pretty quickly, though, and were more mindful the second time of the cruising guide's advice to "hug the eastern wall". We hugged it so close, in fact, that we got to talk to a nice man lounging on shore, who complimented my orange hat, and helped guide us in by waving his arms to direct us where to turn to avoid the shallows (I guess he didn't help the next boat to come in, because they ran hard aground and had to wait for the tide to come up). Anchoring in the lake was a bit of an adventure, too, because we had never done it before as a team. It took five tries- the first time we got the anchor set, but were only about 8 feet away from an extremely skeptical looking gentleman in a very fancy boat, so we kept trying...under his watchful eye. Finally, though, we got the anchor properly set at an appropriate distance from all the other boats, and settled in for some well deserved wine and party mix. It was really nice getting to hang out on the boat and not work on it for a while... hopefully a hint of things to come.
This morning we motored back to our slip, and I started trying to address the rigging while Erica took a stab at fixing some lingering issues with the toilet. After a fruitless trip to West Marine and the hardware store, spirits were running a bit low. And then, a miracle! I was looking in one of the random stuff drawers, thinking that I had seen a traveler in there somewhere, and indeed, there it was. It didn't fit the first time I tried it in the track, but after I wailed on it with a hammer for a while, it slid right on. This is a part that starts at a minimum of $100 dollars, and would probably have required a special order to get one that fit properly. Instead, I gave it a special order with my hammer and now it works beautifully. So thank you, Alik, for having the proper hardware somewhere onboard, even if it wasn't in exactly the right place.
After that, everything started coming together. Working together, we made major progress on the toilet, rewired the boom lift, took out the frozen deck fitting for the water tank, and made a solid start at attaching the mainsheet to the traveler. Tomorrow, we're hitting the used-marine store that we finally located, and also the tent sale at West Marine, where Erica claims there will be free hot dogs.
I can tell you that that was not what we were saying yesterday when we tried to go sailing for the first time. The weather was beautiful, the jib went up fine, we turned off the engine, and things were looking pretty good. When I went to untie the mess of knots underneath the boom, in preparation for putting up the mainsail, I realized that instead of being a half-assed measure to stop the boom from swinging around, these knots were actually a half-assed attempt to rig the mainsheet to the boat (Erica's "sailing for dummies" note: the mainsheet is the rope that's used to control the mainsail). This mess was apparently meant to stand in for a traveler, which is a complicated little metal piece that slides back and forth on a track, and is the point on the boat where the mainsheet attaches. So in essence the traveler was nonexistent, replaced by a terrible, terrible tangle of lines, knots, and random blocks, which held everything in place, but was not at all conducive to actual sailing.
Undaunted but mildly distressed, we sailed back in and then motored up to Lake Sylvia, which is about two miles north of our slip, where we gently ran aground. We got floating again pretty quickly, though, and were more mindful the second time of the cruising guide's advice to "hug the eastern wall". We hugged it so close, in fact, that we got to talk to a nice man lounging on shore, who complimented my orange hat, and helped guide us in by waving his arms to direct us where to turn to avoid the shallows (I guess he didn't help the next boat to come in, because they ran hard aground and had to wait for the tide to come up). Anchoring in the lake was a bit of an adventure, too, because we had never done it before as a team. It took five tries- the first time we got the anchor set, but were only about 8 feet away from an extremely skeptical looking gentleman in a very fancy boat, so we kept trying...under his watchful eye. Finally, though, we got the anchor properly set at an appropriate distance from all the other boats, and settled in for some well deserved wine and party mix. It was really nice getting to hang out on the boat and not work on it for a while... hopefully a hint of things to come.
This morning we motored back to our slip, and I started trying to address the rigging while Erica took a stab at fixing some lingering issues with the toilet. After a fruitless trip to West Marine and the hardware store, spirits were running a bit low. And then, a miracle! I was looking in one of the random stuff drawers, thinking that I had seen a traveler in there somewhere, and indeed, there it was. It didn't fit the first time I tried it in the track, but after I wailed on it with a hammer for a while, it slid right on. This is a part that starts at a minimum of $100 dollars, and would probably have required a special order to get one that fit properly. Instead, I gave it a special order with my hammer and now it works beautifully. So thank you, Alik, for having the proper hardware somewhere onboard, even if it wasn't in exactly the right place.
After that, everything started coming together. Working together, we made major progress on the toilet, rewired the boom lift, took out the frozen deck fitting for the water tank, and made a solid start at attaching the mainsheet to the traveler. Tomorrow, we're hitting the used-marine store that we finally located, and also the tent sale at West Marine, where Erica claims there will be free hot dogs.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (literally)
I am sorry to report that tragedy has finally cast its pall over our grand adventure.
Now, some would say that racking up a 15-year-old honda civic's 195,000th mile is not something to be attempted on a 1000 mile road trip with the car packed completely full of stuff, and toting a homemade wooden roof-rack to boot. Some would see that little car, in all its duffle-bag-filled glory, and say "what is this, a joke?"
But we really believed that Little Blue had it in him, so we went for it.
The idea was to deliver the Little Blue Car (full of all of our non-boat stuff) back to Maryland so that we could formally take our leave of Fort Lauderdale, footloose and automobile free, and head for the keys. Everything was business as usual for the first two legs of the journey (apx. 300 miles to Gainesville, and a subsequent 250 to Hilton Head). After a delightful evening in South Carolina in the company of our dear friends the Hursts, we woke up the next morning refreshed, and ready to put the ole' pedal back to the metal. Which we did.... for about 6 miles.
It was in the midst of a left hand turn in a crowded intersection that Little Blue conveniently began its death throes, locking into fifth gear and coming to a complete stop. With the flashers on, I managed to gun it hard enough in fifth gear to get it through the intersection, and turned immediately onto the nearest residential street, where we had a jolly time waiting for triple A to arrive and haul us to the mechanic, where the verdict was that for $900 worth of what basically amounts to vehicular life-support, we could cruise out of there some time in the next week and probably get the car back to Maryland. So I said "what is that, a joke?" and promptly divested Little Blue of all of our worldly treasures and donated it to Habitat for Humanity.
Good thing for us, Rob has been secretly converting the Hurst Mansion to a storage facility (shhhh - don't tell Sarah!!!), so we were able to store some things with them, and the rest of our belongings accompanied us on the 11 hour journey on the Palmetto Express Amtrak from Savannah, GA to Union Station. The journey was relatively uneventful, with the exception of a rather large man two rows behind us who snored loudly for about 9.5 out of the 11 hours of the ride, and at one point snored so loudly and with such gusto that the everyone in the train car busted out laughing.
We rolled into Union Station around 8:00 on Saturday night, and dragged all of our belongings down to the metro station, where I proceeded to get stuck in the turnstile because of all of the stuff I was trying to carry before finally boarding the train, where we unapologetically offended the citizens of D.C. with our mountain of duffel bags and boxes. By the time we arrived in Shady Grove around 9:30, I was basically delirious but they (Charlie) tell me I ate an entire bag of jelly beans before passing out in Charlie's parents' basement.
But all's well that ends well, and after a really lovely, albeit brief, visit with parents and Gran, we flew back to Ft. Lauderdale today to find the boat still afloat (ohhhh yeahhhhh!!!!!), and with all of our stuff still in it (double ohhhh yeahhh!!!!). Tomorrow, we sail!!
Now, some would say that racking up a 15-year-old honda civic's 195,000th mile is not something to be attempted on a 1000 mile road trip with the car packed completely full of stuff, and toting a homemade wooden roof-rack to boot. Some would see that little car, in all its duffle-bag-filled glory, and say "what is this, a joke?"
But we really believed that Little Blue had it in him, so we went for it.
The idea was to deliver the Little Blue Car (full of all of our non-boat stuff) back to Maryland so that we could formally take our leave of Fort Lauderdale, footloose and automobile free, and head for the keys. Everything was business as usual for the first two legs of the journey (apx. 300 miles to Gainesville, and a subsequent 250 to Hilton Head). After a delightful evening in South Carolina in the company of our dear friends the Hursts, we woke up the next morning refreshed, and ready to put the ole' pedal back to the metal. Which we did.... for about 6 miles.
It was in the midst of a left hand turn in a crowded intersection that Little Blue conveniently began its death throes, locking into fifth gear and coming to a complete stop. With the flashers on, I managed to gun it hard enough in fifth gear to get it through the intersection, and turned immediately onto the nearest residential street, where we had a jolly time waiting for triple A to arrive and haul us to the mechanic, where the verdict was that for $900 worth of what basically amounts to vehicular life-support, we could cruise out of there some time in the next week and probably get the car back to Maryland. So I said "what is that, a joke?" and promptly divested Little Blue of all of our worldly treasures and donated it to Habitat for Humanity.
Good thing for us, Rob has been secretly converting the Hurst Mansion to a storage facility (shhhh - don't tell Sarah!!!), so we were able to store some things with them, and the rest of our belongings accompanied us on the 11 hour journey on the Palmetto Express Amtrak from Savannah, GA to Union Station. The journey was relatively uneventful, with the exception of a rather large man two rows behind us who snored loudly for about 9.5 out of the 11 hours of the ride, and at one point snored so loudly and with such gusto that the everyone in the train car busted out laughing.
We rolled into Union Station around 8:00 on Saturday night, and dragged all of our belongings down to the metro station, where I proceeded to get stuck in the turnstile because of all of the stuff I was trying to carry before finally boarding the train, where we unapologetically offended the citizens of D.C. with our mountain of duffel bags and boxes. By the time we arrived in Shady Grove around 9:30, I was basically delirious but they (Charlie) tell me I ate an entire bag of jelly beans before passing out in Charlie's parents' basement.
But all's well that ends well, and after a really lovely, albeit brief, visit with parents and Gran, we flew back to Ft. Lauderdale today to find the boat still afloat (ohhhh yeahhhhh!!!!!), and with all of our stuff still in it (double ohhhh yeahhh!!!!). Tomorrow, we sail!!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
We're getting there
 |
| Oh yeah |
For fairness' sake, here's a picture of Erica wearing a special suit, of sorts.
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| Gotcha |
I think that I finished fixing the head, but some of the hoses needed to be caulked together so we have to make sure that they sealed properly before it's totally done. Just in case anyone wants to see what I've been doing for the last three days, here she is:
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| Notice the one shiny new hose |
 | |
| V-berth |
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| That's our spare mainsail on the left |
Here's the main cabin:
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| We're getting there |
And before:
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| Find 6 differences |
Tomorrow we're going to move our clothes and books onto the boat, then take off for Gainesville. Hilton Head on Thursday, Richmond on Friday, then Maryland until we fly back Monday morning. Then...off to Key West!
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Anderson has asthma
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| Oh yeah |
We had quite the whirlwind weekend. On Thursday, we took the boat off the dock for the first time. We didn't get to raise the sails, but we made it in and out of the slip successfully, so I consider it a great success. Then we went to the hockey game and got to be in the intermission show, playing musical chairs.
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| What is this, a joke? |
We didn't get the chance to win a car, and they wouldn't let us wear sumo suits, but it was still excellent getting to go out on the ice. Todd and I practiced checking each other into the boards, which is every bit as fun as it seems like it would be. Then we spent the rest of the game heckling the other team's goalie, Anderson.
Back to work on Friday. I started doing battle with the head, while Erica finished bleaching and washing the interior cushions. Look at how sinister it is:
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| My worst enemy |
My approach with the head was the classic strategy of immediately breaking part of it. I find that it make a large problem seem more manageable, because it gives me a good place to get started working. As it turns out, I think the head works fine, and the "problem" is just that the holding tank is full. But, one of the y-valves was totally busted, so it was for the best that I broke it, too. Now all I have to do is put it all back together, and we should have a working toilet.
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| Sailing on the dock |
Saturday we spent at the beach with Erica's cousin. It was insane- turns out, spring break is real. Who knew?
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| Don't worry...we do know that guy on the phone |
Today, Erica made new covers for some of the storage compartments on the boat. We got her a saw, and she didn't cut even one arm off.
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| To a girl with a saw, two arms seems like a lot |
Tomorrow, we finish the compartment lids, which will be great because then we can put the cushions back and put the inside of the boat back together. I just bought a stove on Ebay, and once we get that we're practically ready to move onboard.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
"Make cleaning your new favorite"
Charlie has his work cut out for him reworking some of the drains in the cockpit and wrestling with the bilge pump, so while he's doing that it's me against the dirt in the rest of the boat, and really, "dirt" is an understated way to describe what we're dealing with here - it's the kind of grossness that makes dealing with it feel less like cleaning, and more like doing battle with an enemy that has access to biological weaponry. So for the last two days, I've put on my little SARS mask and my knee pads, and wielded my brand new 14-functions-in-one paint scraper and my bleach spray bottle to the best of my abilities, blasting through all of the assorted rust and dirt and mold and general marine ickiness that has found its way over every inch of our poor boat.
Below: battle mode, and victory mode
It's been pretty intense, but I've found that with enough yelling and swearing, there's nothing so gross I can't deal with it (although, sometimes I throw up a little bit in my mouth/sars mask). Watching the boat get brighter and shinier with each swipe of the sponge has been very gratifying, and totally worth losing half of my brain to bleach fumes. Also, when I want to take a break, I just pop my head out of the hatch, and I see this:
... which is AWESOME! I think we've gotten enough done over the last couple of days to have earned some sailing time tomorrow, so hopefully tomorrow is the day when this officially evolves from a scrubbing and fixing blog to an actual sailing blog... stay tuned!
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