Cutting the cord

Our friends at Dinner Key Marina organized a going away party for us on July 28th. It is now August 25th and we are still tried to the dock, ugh. There seems to always be "something else to do", like layers in baklava. Is there such a thing as "we are ready to go"? I'm not sure?? Maybe it's like planed parenthood. I have six kids, they're always kids to me even if they are in their late twenties, and I can't really say any were planned. I may have been more ready for some than others, but never planned. They are all the collateral damage of a vacation or in some cases a party, you know when you're so distracted in the moment that your reflexes lag a little too long. Where am I going with this?, oh yeah, I think there comes a time in preparing for an extended voyage when you just have to go, and hope that all the major stuff is on board. Just "Cut the cord" so to speak.

Last night my friends John and Mary Lynn, took me up on an offer to grill. I am endearingly called the "Grill Master" by my friends, and it suits me fine cause I do put love into it. They graciously bought the "slab-o-meat", over eleven pounds. I had to cut slab in half just to get it on the grill. I asked John about splitting the cost of the meat, but he said "no I got it , but now you have to leave". As if the pressure from the first party wasn't enough? The leader of my fan club, Stephanie, and her husband Andy provided the grill, Darcy and Erick brought over a mango cucumber salad with sesame seed dressing that was a great complement to the meal. The libations flowed, and laughter was the "white noise" heard all over.
The life we have made for ourselves here at Dinner Key is as close to perfect as I have ever heard of. There are more expensive lifestyles out there but better? I don't think so.  We are surrounded by people, always in good spirits, that we love. Almost every day is an event. How can leaving this place be easy?! However, human nature being what human nature is, we must push the envelope.
Seriously now, I have drawn a line in the sand...and that line is the end of August. I refuse to pay the marina for September. At the very least we will be on the hook in Biscayne Bay for September.
It seems I have a million little things yet to do. It is amazing how complex our  modern lives are, we just rarely ever need analyze all the inner workings, our society provides or facilitates so much. As we try to sever ourselves from "the Matrix", nothing can be taken for granted, the details are endless, and at times overwhelming...not unlike family planning.
 

Cold shower

How do you get a family of 4 ready to leave on a sailboat for 2 years? I thought getting the kids ready for school on time was a challenge, but lord, lord, lord, this is going to shorten my life by a few years. My wife and I have talked about sailing away for 15 years. She was definitely on board for all the trash talking. Yeah, we're gonna do this and, that and, visit this place and that place...and so on and so forth. I guess it's not the same to talk about the Devil as it is to see him coming. In any case, she procrastinated quitting her job of 20 years like taking a cold shower, but she had me, on her shoulder like Jiminy Cricket. I knew she had to give fair warning before she left so I was on it, "did you tell then, did you tell them?", every day. And so one day she did it, she resigned. So what's my problem with this? Well for god sake she agreed to work until the week of our scheduled departure. We're not getting on a plane, we're leaving on a sailboat for 2 years. We have to prepare, stock up and test the boat, and plan, We needed to get in the zone...you can't get in the zone in one week. No you need a few weeks. I wanna hurry up and slow down.

Actually the problem with delaying our departure is that we are getting deep into hurricane season which is something like June thru November. August and September are the busiest months, you really want to be at a safe harbor by August. I'm okay leaving in July and taking my chances then because I figure I have a certain amount of good luck, and Gods' had plenty of chances to put me down before and he hasn't so why would he do now? But August? I don't know about August.

I wanted to be in a safe harbor by August, something like Luperon in the Dominican Republic. Our boat, "Mirador", is a mess. Everything is all over the place from all the work I have been doing over the past 8 months. We have not provisioned at all, that's what we call food on a boat, provisions. It's going to take a week to provision the Mirador for our trip.

Marie has planted the idea of heading north instead of south, maybe Washington D.C. This is a possibility, but it would mean that we would have to take the "Thorny Path" south. With a name like that, who wants to take the Thorn Path? Not I. The Thorny Path is a sailing route that takes you first to Bermuda, 700 miles east, out in the middle of Atlantic, and then south to the Caribbean, another 1000 miles. That's about 20 days of offshore, blue water, middle of nothing sailing. My crew is going to mutiny. You think Columbus had it bad?

So no, I don't think we will be headed north.

Just in case I wasn't feeling the pressure yet, our friends here at Dinner Key Marina want to schedule a going away party. Nobody just says "Hello" anymore. It's always "so when are you leaving?

Bottom Job

  It is December, I have 180 days to go before our loosely scheduled departure to the Caribbean. I'm just plugging away at what seems as a never ending list of projects for our boat "Mirador". It has been 10 years since it's last haul-out! A boat kept in saltwater should be hauled out every 2 to 3 years. She was in better shape than I thought... well, for the most part. I was planning to service the thru-hulls and seacocks, but Neptune had a different idea. As I started to fiddle with the first one, it simply snapped right off! Man, if had tried that while the boat was in the water I would have ended up like that little Dutch boy that found a leak in the dam...plugging the leak with my finger til someone rescued me!

This is Mirador...the morning after, no makeup. I still love her!

For some reason sailboats do not get electrically grounded. That is to say when all metal parts are wired back to a common zinc so that you don't get galvanic corrosion. All of my thru-hulls will now have to be replaced. Sounds pretty straight forward right?? Well think again. All the hoses were hard and stiff and cramped up in tight spaces with no room to maneuver. Some of these hoses are 1 1/2" diameter, it's like wrestling an anaconda  with rigamortis. Well I decided to hire a poor grunt to take the brunt of the punishment. I have bigger fish to fry.

Modifying my semi-skeg rudder.

Well you shouldn't read beauty magazines or boating magazines for that matter. Why, because they make you feel bad about what you have or don't have, like six-pack abs or a skeg-hung rudder. The abs were just too ambitious so lets talk about that rudder. Mirador had a semi-skeg rudder (this is when the rudder just hangs with no support at the bottom), but I always admired the strength of skeg hung rudders that other cruising boats had. Modifying this feature would be a major undertaking, but I didn't know it at the time (I say this a lot) so off I go. It all started 5 years ago while Mirador was still in her slip at the marina. I was able to remove the rudder while she was still in the water. The first step was to find a new rudder post that would extend through the rudder and out the bottom. I was shocked at the price of stainless steel, not so much when I'm trying to sell it as when I'm trying to buy it.

The new rudder post cost about a grand...one thousand dollars. I'm lucky my best Friend owns a welding shop so the welding part's somewhat financially painless. To not go too far off course, it took me a few weeks to fabricate a new rudder to accept a skeg shoe. I installed the new rudder while she was still in the slip and there she sat until this haul-out.

This the new profile being epoxied into place.

Well, is not like I've really done this type of work before, but I've had to build a lot of things where I really didn't know how I was going to get the job done when I started. So, I have sort of developed a knack for assessing my objective and figuring out a way to get there. With this particular project I figured if I could establish the profile I wanted I could just build up to it. And so I cut my profile out of a thick sheet of fiberglass, then I cut a deep groove the hull where it would fit in, nice and deep. It had to be an integral part of the hull.

Here, I'm building the skeg around the shoe to accept the rudder post.

After everything was glassed in solid I filled the void with canned foam.

My belt sander was just what the doctor ordered for sanding the foam into shape.

After the foam was shaped I glassed everything up to the hull with plenty of overlap. I just kept fitting and removing the rudder again and again through out the whole process.

Layer by layer the new skeg became a part of the boat.

I also shortened the rudder a bit so that if I did hit ground the keel would hit first. Notice how tall the keel is compared to the painter.

And here's the finished product...finished being more of a state-of-mind than anything else. you could never tell the boat was modified.

Here I am with Marie, you'd think I'd lose weight after soo much hard work? There is no justice in this world! My daughter says we look like the number 10 when we're together...she's up for adoption.

In all it took 17 days to do all the work. I worked all day, every day. By the end of it I was just numb to the aches and pains. I could have stayed a little longer but the boatyard was closing for Chirstmas and I wouldn't be allowed to work. They would however continue to charge me for having my boat there so it was time to wrap it up.











Well it's been a while since I tried to add a post. You know, not being computer literate is a terrible impediment to someone trying to start a blog. The amount of time that I have to devote to this thing before something legible comes out the other end is just ridiculous. On the bright side, this is my second post so I am making progress, yea!

Why the renewed effort after 20 months since my first post? I turned 50 and recieved my AARP card. About two months ago I decided to set a date for our departure. If I didn't I'm afraid that time would just continue to pass and we will never leave on our cruise. Now with 10 months remaining til our departure date, July 5, 2013, I can sense the moment approaching and urgency of addressing anything that I would want to accomplish before we depart.

As I look at my old "to-do" lists it is apparent how much we have worked on the Mirador, but there is still much to do. I need to make water and fuel tanks, repaint the bottom of the boat, install a wind pilot, install an electric generator, and assemble the watermaker. Then there is the aesthetic items like new upholstery and a headliner. I have found that it gets difficult to stay motivated as you work through your list alone. If only I had someone beside me to to hand me a screwdriver when I needed it I could stay focused. But alas, If I put everything else aside I can finish the boat in about a month so I don't worry about it much.

The last couple of nights i have been dreaming of what a typical day cruising might be like. My dream goes something like this: I wake up slowly and make breakfast for the family. After my coffee I check boats systems, battery banks, water levels and such. Then Hadrian and I get in the dinghy and head over to a reef to catch food for the day. In the Bahamas I can catch enough yellowtail snapper for the week in 5 minutes, but variety is important too. So, we'll be doing some diving to mix up the menu. I'll catch of lobster, conch, shrimp, and clams to add diversity to our diet. As I plan to continue to fly to Honduras once a month, I will take advantage of the opportunity to bring back steaks and pork or whatever we may need. Back to my dream, after lunch we'll do school work and run any errands (write in the blog) that need tending to. The day ends on the beach with family, frends, and cocktails.