Sailing, Love, Injuries, and Memories

I could take it no longer, I had to sail.  Sarah blew out her ankle again a few weeks ago when we moved aboard, and then, just as she was successfully hobbling around without the crutches on her 32nd birthday, she dislocated her shoulder...  again.  This time while she was just walking across the parking lot to our boat.  By now we know the drill and we managed to put it back in socket in record time.

Now, I know it's not all about me, and I am heartbroken to have a wife in an ankle brace and shoulder sling, especially on her birthday, but I can't pretend I wasn't also a bit heartbroken over the loss of a full week promising beautiful weather and ripping wind, just one day after I had finished the navigational light wiring and scraped the prop in preparation for our first sail.

For the panel, I just drilled out some starboard and added a bunch of toggle switches, all wired to of one of the 5amp breakers for surge protection.  I love the positive feel of those big chrome toggle switches.  Since all the lights (except the foredeck and steaming lights) are LEDs, even with every light blazing, the 5 amp breaker won't trip.  Interestingly, the low power LED spreader lights are significantly brighter than the high power draw halogen foredeck light.  Wiring was the easy part.

Then I had to dive into the municipal-swimmer-health-warning water to scrape the prop.  I dove on the propeller a couple weeks ago to discover it was a mess of barnacles, but was mentally unprepared to do anything about it.  This time I was ready.  Suited up with some work gloves, goggles, and a prior evening of internal pep-talks, plus a hose at the ready to finish with a triclosan-rich shower, I still managed to hate every minute of it, but at least it all ended with a clean prop and no sinus or ear infections.

But no hard work of mine can heal Sarah's wounds.  I figured with her new injuries, we were dock-bound for at least another few weeks, but Sarah insisted that we sail (Right?  I totally remember that it was Sarah doing the insisting), so we called our friend Clyde, who also lives on a sailboat in Port Salerno.

Like us, Clyde isn't so much a sailor as much as a self-declared slave to sanding/painting/fiberglass repair.  He bought a fiberglass Pearson 31 on the hard in a boatyard in inner Florida, and after 2 years of restoration, he finally launched it and has still been faithfully preparing it to sail over last year while living aboard.  He is almost done, just three years later.  Sounds like a familiar tale.
Clyde jumped at the opportunity to crew with us/me, and we were on the water only a couple days after Sarah's shoulder dislocation.

Sarah still performs on the camera with one arm.  The lovely motor out to the sailing grounds leads under a fixed bridge.  I hadn't checked the height beforehand, but I have gone under it with a Catalina 32 tall rig with no problems, and we have the same masthead height, so I figured no problem.

Sure enough, the bridge gauge was at 64 feet, giving us an easy 12 feet of clearance...  the problem with vertical perspective still haunts you as it happens though.

Finally, after seven years of planning and saving, and four years of hard work, Sarah and I get to spread sail together for the first time in some stiff 20 knot winds.  But that didn't phase Robin.  Even under full sail, we were able to maintain an easy motion and acceptable heeling angles.  Sarah had no problems enjoying the ride.

Now is my opportunity to brag on Robin.  Such a smooth sailing boat with a slow, comfortable motion, and best of all, with a tweak of the mainsail or genoa, you can get the boat to self-steer on almost any point of sail but downwind.  At one point we crossed the entire harbor close hauled without touching the tiller.

 With our confidence in the boat and bridge clearance, we decided to shoot under, pinching hard on the wind with full sail on the way back.  Clyde at the helm.

The time lapse between the last series of photos, passing under the bridge, and the sweet contemplation photo of a great day on the water, below, included some classic sailor's excitement.  A small pontoon party barge full of curious retirees pulled right up and cornered us between the piers and a rocky point so they could get a look at our pretty sailboat.  I say "cornered" because as a sailboat we are wind-direction dependent and at that moment we were flying towards the piers, just past the rocky point, giving us just enough room to round into the wind so I could drop the mainsail.  Instead, we had to do a 360 degree tack and gybe with full mainsail in 20 knots of wind, all in an area about 30 meters squared as I was clinging to the mast on the cabin top, waiting to bring the mainsail down when we rounded up again.  The exciting roundabout, narrated by a fountain of profanity at the floating cocktail hour, managed to get us a lot more space along with some shocked looks as the party put their cameras away and motored the barge back to the bar.

Serenity at last.

Sarah and I have been dreaming of sailing since we re-met, in fact it is the reason we re-met, and the reason we are together today.

We re-met only 7 years ago while I was on leave after I had just returned from my first deployment to Afghanistan.  I invited her to come along on a week trip to Europe while I was off to feel out what I remembered of her adventuresome spirit.  On the trip I asked her if she was interested in sailing around the world, something I have wanted to do for a long time.  She paused to contemplate the vast reality of that question, and answered yes with no reservations.  In the ensuing discussion, in that tiny attic studio loft in Amsterdam, we fleshed out our future together.  The next day we got tattoos.  After we came back to the US, Sarah moved from Arkansas to New York, where I was stationed at the time.  The Army sent me to Europe where we solidified our love of travelling (check out the back history on our Flickr).  I got out of the Army after another deployment, this time to Iraq, and the rest is history...  literally the history captured on this site.

But that wasn't how I first met Sarah.  Sarah and I met for the first time 15 years ago, then in ballet/jazz class.  She was 16 years old and Prima material: petite, graceful, and with impressively strong ability en pointe; I was taking the class for fun because I loved to move and be physical and it was free for men.  Sarah was likely headed for a scholarship at a dance school.  Unfortunately, she had worsening scoliosis, and at 17 years old she had to have titanium rods and screws installed from the base of her neck to the base of her spine.  I was 18, and we were dating at the time.  Without a car, I rode my bike 10 miles back and forth to her house every day for months as she recovered.  She spent a full month of that summer not moving from the bed, and while I was over I did as much as I could to help out.  I had to carefully roll her onto her side to change the bandage that covered the two feet of stitches that were to become the scar down her back.  It was painful but exciting helping and watching her learn to walk again as her hips were no longer aligned in the same way anymore and her old muscle memory caused her to trip on her own feet.  It took a few months, but eventually she was able to live life mostly like a normal person, albeit with limited flexibility, a lot of pain, and never able to dance again.  Time went by, and eventually, as most teenage romances do, we split up.  We didn't talk nor see each other for nearly seven years before we re-met and found our lives had wandered down different paths that led us into a similar understanding of how life should be lived.

And despite Sarah's current injuries and upcoming shoulder surgery, we are determined.  This is how our lives should be lived.  We are happier than ever.

For the Love of Making

My husband likes to build things. He likes building with wood, metal, and even fiberglass. Though he is particularly obsessed with modes of transportation.  I've spent many dinners listening to him talk about building cars, planes, boats, bikes, surf boards, you name it, he plans to make one one day.  I have no doubt that we must eventually retire to land to build a workshop. Maybe a tree house for us too. But a fabrications shop is in our future.

To say AJ is a bicycle enthusiast would be putting it mildly. Aside from loving to ride them, he knows everything about their history and who manufactured what part when. As he does with any topic that interests him.  Talking to him can sometimes be a bit like talking to an encyclopedia, or listening to a lecture on the history of machining.  He must know how things work, and he likes sharing this pertinent information.

His passion for bikes began in childhood. He took to trials riding at age 13 after seeing the stunts on a friends VHS tape. By 16 he was the Jr. national champion.  This speaks to his personality.  The personality that makes me trust him so implicitly as a partner on this journey. He believes he can do anything. Or to put it less egotistically, he believes anything that anything that can be done, well, can be done. After trials he took to triathlons and eventually running ultra-marathons.  He got a tattoo on the back of his leg to commemorate his first 50 mile run.  During his deployment to Afghanistan he kept running, organized runs and ran marathons, and no one was happy when he lead PT.

But back to bikes.  He has always commuted by bike whenever possible, no matter how many burritos got thrown at him. He worked as a bike mechanic in college, and within a year of moving to Germany we had 10 bikes in our garage. Our Diesel Smart Car (the only motorized wheels we had) was parked in a little space out front in order to allow his road bike, his mountain bike, his touring bike, his trials bike, my bike, and a plethora of lovely vintage local rescue bikes he'd brought back to life to occupy the protected garage. These little restoration projects finally pushed him to do something he had always wanted to do but never afforded himself the tools for.  He wanted to build a bike. His sketch book was full of plans, drafts, and measurements. He'd been designing them for years.  So he finally bought himself a torch, built a jig and began trying to figure out how to rent an oxygen tank in Germany.  (We were stationed in Schweinfurt Germany, from 2008 - 2011).

Schweinfurt is an industrial center. Home to FAG Bearings, SKF Bearings, ZF Marine and Industrial Transmissions, Sachs scooters and small motors, and SRAM Bicycle Components to name a few. Schweinfurt is also one of the largest bicycle manufacturing cities in Europe.  So it would seem we were in the perfect place to find what he needed.  We braved the German internet searching for types of business that would rent one.  A search for welding supply stores (Schweißen Versorgung) eventually proved successful. His first visit to the little tucked away shop though, was unsuccessful.  His conversational German lacked key terms like 'oxygen tank'. It turned out no one in the skilled labor industries speaks English. Any English. They couldn't figure out what he wanted. This was only surprising because thus far everyone we had encountered spoke English so well they didn't want to waste time letting you fumble through German. The waitresses, gas station clerks, the bureaucrats, any random person you stop on the street.. So AJ went home and endeavored to find the proper German terms for what he needed.  He went back asking for a Sauerstoffflasche.  To which they replied "Ja, ja, mieten oder kaufen?" These words he knew, rent or buy. Success.  I'd like to pause for a moment to revel in the German term for oxygen. SaurStoff. Sour stuff. The stuff that makes things sour.  They have a lot of great words. AJ built a solid vocab of random German industrial/manufacturing terms running around to these different shops.

For his first bike he decided he didn't want to waste steel on a full frame if his first brazing venture didn't prove worthy. So he joined this fear with his new found interest in wooden bikes.  He made a steel lugged, wooden framed bicycle. This allowed him to do all the complex work on the joints, without wasting a tube and lug if the alignment was off.  He brazed on shorter pieces of 4130 steel aircraft tubing for mounting the parts and cable routing. He cut and hand filed the steel tubes into shape.

He also made a fork, a stem, and a front rack. (the exact width of two six packs)

And he added rear dropouts with an integrated bottle opener.

The steel was powder coated... Pulverbeschichtung. And I did the gold pin-striping around the lugs at his request.

The tips of the Ash wood rods were coated in high shear industrial epoxy and worked into the metal frame bits. The alignment was not off.

Fin! Fertig! Finito!

This bike is rigged with the following components:

Brakes: 1960's Mafac Racers Center pull U-break. They were all the rage on the French bikes of the 50's and 60's. AJ brazed brake mounts on the frame to fit them.  

Shifter and Derailleur: 1980's 7 speed Shimano 600 "Arabesque" - the model line with cast Victorian scroll work.

Crank Set: 1970's Campagnolo Record. The top end Italian road bike race cranks of the 1960's and 1970's.

Wheels: Campagnolo Record high flange hubs laced to skinny French style Sun ME14 rims. It took a while to find the rims, and even longer to find the tires in the right size in cream-colored rubber. 

Fenders: Tanaka traditional stainless fenders, still hand-rolled by Japanese craftsman.

Saddle:  Copper-riveted stretched-leather sprung saddle. 

Grips: Cotton ribbon and shellac wrapped in elk hide, hand finished with a baseball stitch.

The touches: brass spring bell on the stem, Swiss Pletcher double kickstand to keep the bike upright and the rack level when parked, 1970's vintage mustache handlebars with integrated brake levers salvaged from another restoration project on the side of the road, brass braided brake cable housings, etc, etc.

This beautiful functional art bike needs a new owner! 

It surely can't go out to sea.

Isn't Germany adorable! AJ is in front of our neighbors house across the street.  He restored Vespas in his spare time.  His little daughter wrote "Welcome Family Lea to your new home" in chalk on our driveway when we moved in. She was learning English in school. She got a kick out of our last name being the same as her first name - Lea. Only hers is pronounced like the Star Wars princess.

AJ rode this bike on all the sunny days during his year of non-stop bicycle commuting (that included two Bavarian winters!) and took home many loads of groceries. After the success and confidence boost of the first bike he was ready to build a full steel framed lugged commuter bike.  He made this one for this father.

He used the same Pacenti Artisian cast lugs as on the wooden bike, but he hand-filed them into vastly different shapes.

The alignment was perfect.

It used traditional french city bicycle geometry. His father chose the color, and has been riding it for two years now.  AJ branded his 2 bike run, Dapper Cycles.

There are more pictures of bike building on AJ's Flickr.

When the time to get a sailboat drew near, he wanted to build our own dinghy. He already had plans to 4 or 5. He's had them for years. But he settled on Jim Michalak's Vole, with his own modifications.  In the summer of 2011, we went Back to Arkansas to Build the Dinghy at his fathers house.

AJ has been aching for a building project (that isn't the boat) for a couple years. He spends his nights online reading about building whatever interests him at the moment and sketching. (Right now he's reading about a guy who built his own one man submarine).

A couple weeks ago he has finally stole away the time to sate himself with a side project. His friends birthday is coming up.  A friend of Scottish decent, born in Nigeria where he spent his childhood, who is a Dr. of Medieval Studies and a restorer and archivist of medieval books. So what would be the best gift for this life long friend? An English style long bow made of West African-sourced Sapele backed with Scottish linen from a Haberdashery shop in Scotland. That's what I was thinking too.   (Early spoiler alert to the birthday boy.)

 

He's going to make me one next. Not a long bow though, something more like a Hungarian horse bow.  Possibly out of fiberglass sail battens.  I've wanted a bow and arrows since I was a kid. I was exposed to archery in P.E. in middle school, and loved it. Unfortunately they only did it for a couple months, and I never found another venue.

AJ has recently become quite interested in lutherie, and wants to make a ukulele.  He doesn't really listen to music.  And he can't play instruments. (There is something he's not good at!)  But I have no doubt he can make a fine one.  Then I'll learn how to play the ukulele.

The New Year

I wanted to have a world map somewhere in the cabin. For Christmas my mom sent me the map I found online that would just barely fit on the bulk head wall. It is made of Tyvek, which feels like paper, looks like parchment, and is water proof. I was pretty thrilled the map came in such a material. Who knew they made such a thing and that it would be the cheapest kind. On New Years day we moved the shelf from under the oil lamp to under the clock to make room for it. We put small grommets around the perimeter and screwed it to the wall through the grommet holes with finishing washers.

Now I can stare at the geography of the world to my hearts content. Maleop, Choiseul, Lambok. All sorts of places to know about. The map is a constant reminder of why I am doing what I am doing. When I look at it the annoyances of the moment melt into day dreams of the future that I have to create. It helps me maintain a broader perspective which is always beneficial to my moment to moment emotional state. When I am pissed about hitting my knee on the table again, with a glimpse of the map I am distracted by the thought that the majority of the human experience does not include winter. Most if humanity lives in perpetual summer between the thirtieth parallels. Winter is a somewhat unique human experience.
Speaking of winter, a cold front moved in on January first with a low of 42 degrees. I did not think I would ever get to say “Brrr” in Florida. We even had to light our propane Cozy Cabin Heater. It keeps the cabin about twenty degrees warmer than outside. The cabin, not the V berth. I was ecstatic to get to put on jeans a couple weeks ago. I did not know how much I loved jeans until I got to slide them on after months of weather too hot for them. I never want to have to wear anything else ever again. If it is too hot for jeans it is too hot to wear anything at all. And you can't do that. So you see my point. But it's summer in most of the world, thus my life for the next five to twenty years will be spent without seasons. That is so strange. So I relish these moments in jeans and boots and my favorite hoodie. Oh happy day.
It was in the forties at night and in the sixties during the day for a week. Some great things about cold weather besides jeans are that the necessary activities of daily life improve comfort rather than detract from it. Cooking on a 95 degree day heats the cabin to well over 100. I'd rather not eat. Cooking on a 55 degree day makes your cabin nice and cozy. Produce stays fresh, we can buy cheese, the head does not stink. Hard work makes your warm, not stinky. I think I am alone in Florida in my sentiment, but this is freaking awesome. I was feeling great, that is until six days ago when I sprained my ankle. I spent the last week stuck on the boat with my ankle wrapped trying not to move around much. I can limp around a bit now, but I need to stay off it for the most part for another week.
Three days ago AJ threw his back out. He has residual issues with a collapsed disc in his lower back. So now we are both hobbling around. Now, as in January 10^th, the same date that is in the upper left corner of this post. I am excited about that. And about the fact that I have had the map to look at while I am boat ridden. We are in an internet dead zone and there is not a lot for me to do in this condition. So I am dreaming about the route we will take and passages we will make. Dreaming may be the keyword here, but without the dreams that lead to goals we would go nowhere.
Right now the goal is to be out of here by May. It is currently Caribbean Cruising season. Cruising season ends and hurricane season begins in April. We expect to be equipped to leave Florida by April. We won't be able to go south because it will be the wrong season, and we do not want to stay in Florida for another summer anyway. Not to mention FL is as much in hurricane alley as the Caribbean islands. So we will go North. North up the Eastern seaboard to Nova Scotia. Stopping in DC and NYC etc.. Then cross the North Atlantic to Ireland or France in May. June July and August visiting Newcastle, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the like. Go down the west coast of Europe to France, Spain and Portugal, pop into the Mediterranean for October – December. Cross the Mid Atlantic from Portugal/Morocco to the Caribbean in December, ( the middle of cruising season) bop around the nations there, be in Panama ready to cross the canal by March/April. Then head out to the Pacific. We could start with the South Pacific, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Australia, Indonesia, then north to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, India, Sri Lanka. Then there is a choice to make. We could go to the gulf of Aden and chance hosting Somali pirates to get to the Mediterranean. But why? We will have been there. We can go to Madagascar and South Africa and cross the Cape of Good Hope in in the wrong direction and shoot across the Southern Atlantic to South America. Maybe we will be such salty adrenaline seeking seamen by then that crossing the Cape backwards will seem like a necessary accomplishment. Or, it will be an easy “F” that. Who knows. The third option would be to turn around. I would like to cross the Indian ocean from India and see Madagascar and South Africa. But instead of continuing west past storms or pirates, go back across the Indian east and go North to Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. We have to go to Japan because I want to swim in the hot springs with the snow monkeys. So we have to work Japan in somewhere. Who would not want sail into Tokyo harbor? And who in their right minds would not want to make the acquaintance of these citizens of Earth?
They seem to have things figured out.

From Japan maybe go a little farther North to Russia, then the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, Canada, California,then just keep going south, Mexico, Central America, Peru, Argentina. Cross cape Horn the right direction. Who knows. The first part of the plan, crossing the North Atlantic, depends of completing the boat in the next three months. Tick tick tick. We've got to reassemble and install the engine, restore the 12 volt power, install new chain plates, patch the deck from old chain plates. Find, make, or buy a Mainsail. Build the carbon fiber boom and mast, replace/reseal the windows, bottom scrape and paint. I think we can do it. Some things could be done while while going up the east coast. There is nothing like the threat of tropical summer weather to motivate me to make it work. We will be out of Florida by May. Whether we will be ready to cross the Atlantic, or miss the window and continue to equip until the next optimal season on the Northeast coast, I don't know. We just have to be nomadic by April. That is what matters. That is when the life we want begins. The ability to stay on the move is all we really need to be happy. Being stuck here takes a toll on our sanity. The point of this lifestyle choice is to be nomads with a mostly self sustaining, debt free-micro home that can take us anywhere in the world for almost nothing. You don't have to pay for the wind or the sun or the fish. Just port fees, diesel, and propane. And those can be of rare use. All we want is the freedom to roam. We are so ready to get out of here.

Dock Life

The morning of December 12th we were towed to the dock by the marina's skiff.  D dock is the farthest dock out from the mooring field and Marina office.  It is next to three bridges, two car bridges and a rail road bridge.

View from our boat:

Our boat is side tied between a motor yacht and sailboat that are for sale.  Across from us is an inhabited motor yacht .Just up form us is a 100+ foot mega motor yacht.  Our boat had not had it's decks washed in the nine months it was on the ball.  Being surrounded by all the gleaming fiberglass enhanced this fact rather dramatically, and we found ourselves deciding the outside of the boat needed to be tended to first.  The influence and pressures of having neighbors was back in life.

The day after we moved to the dock the engine was hauled out of the cabin with Marks engine hoist and taken to his shop. They pulled it out while I was at work. So that evening I returned home to step from the dock to my deck, through the empty cockpit, through the unimpaired companionway, to descend the stairs into the cabin. Stairs!  I forgot there were stairs! And they have a paper towel holder built into them! Convenient access AND secure and out of the way.  I stood in my cabin for what felt like the first time and spun in circles. The settees were still piled to the ceiling with all of our stuff that had been moved on but not been able to be dealt with.  But now I could finally start sorting it all out. Finally move in. 

That first week I was crazy pumped. Infinite tasks laid before me. I could wake up and get to work on something immediately. It was all so easy. Step on, step off. Toss my laundry to the dock and wheel it to the laundry room and walk back to the boat to work while it washed. Plug in a vacuum, turn on a hose. After months of stagnation I could see visible progress every day. We found out AJ's parents and nephew were going to come visit us on the twenty-sixth so we had a definite deadline to get the boat presentable. We hoped to get the engine back in before they arrived but that was unlikely. For the next two weeks I was busier than I had been in years. I did not manage to write a single e-mail or make a phone call, If we still had the netbook I might not have dropped off the earth but we don't, so internet time is harder to come by these days.
In the mornings before work I worked on the cabin or the engine with AJ.
Ready for it's final cleaning and multi-step prep and paint.

After metal prep and ready wash

POR -15 epoxy paint:  We applied the thin silver paint with small paint brushes.

Final Paint. AJ used an automotive touch up air gun to apply the yellow final coat. He chose High-po Yellow.

The parts I wire brushed, rust reformed, primed and enameled. 

Every day I got the inside closer to a clean functioning home. I sorted through the piles, filled dry bags with seasonals and stashed them away in the storage compartments that I had vacuumed and scrubbed. I scrubbed mildew off the ceiling, wiped down leaky chain plates best I could.  I found a place or solution for everything until it was all gone. By December 25^th we had settees, a table.,books on a shelf, a pantry, a home.

What is behind some of that pretty teak

We also power hosed the decks and cabin roof and scrubbed them with deck cleaner. Still dingy but greatly improved. The teak in the cockpit was rough, grimy and in bad shape after having so much crap piled on it through rain and shine for months. We vacuumed, then swept, then hosed, then gently washes it with teak cleaner. When they dried they were clean, soft and smooth.

We scrubbed the water tanks with nylon brushes and mold and mildew cleaner.

Christmas Day was our first real day off together in weeks. We would have nothing to do that couldn't wait until tomorrow. We were going to sleep in and have a lazy day. Or so we thought until our neighbor invited us to Christmas morning coffee. Since the marina was going to be closed and not serving coffee he figured he would take it upon himself to serve coffee for everyone at his boat. So at 7am on Christmas morning there would be tons of people standing right outside our boat chatting away. So much for a morning in bed either.  We did not get up for the coffee and stayed in bed and laid low anyway.

While the dock is invaluable for the work we are doing, luckily for our pocketbook there are cons do being docked that won't let us get too comfortable or doddle. Namely the complete lack of privacy. People are walking past the boat morning noon and night. There is no sound barrier. Depending on how high you are floating you can see through the windows into the cabin. If you are outside on your boat at all you will get talked to by every passer by. If we were not in such a rush I would not be as perturbed by this, but being on the dock has me seeing my life on dollars per day. With us both working jobs every moment on the boat has to be utilized. So when I have a couple precious hours to work on the boat and half of that time is taken by inquiries, I have the emotion of being on a pay per phone and you are running out of minutes and you know you can't afford to buy more. I have actually not been prevented from having time to eat lunch or shower before work due to folks wanting to chat. I'm on a tight schedule, they are on vacation. AJ and I have both ducked and hid from the shouts of a strangers voice “Hello? Are you home?” and remained still until their footsteps disappeared.. Neither of us have the propensity to be dressed appropriately enough to answer the door when we are at home, particularly when doing work. So, responding would also require frantic dressing and trying to remain out of view . No one walks up to your window in your house and starts yelling questions at you or looking to see if you are home. But such is the etiquette of dock life. So apologies to all for my curtness of late. I'm poor and on the clock. We are odd little hermits with a deadline.
Moving from the mooring field to the dock was like moving from a country house where you occasionally wave at a distant neighbor as they drive by, to the highly populated noises and bustle of the city. Aside from the constant chatter and footsteps, we can hear the car traffic from the bridges. A train goes by a couple times a day. Airplanes fly low overhead. The nearest bridge opens for passing boats a couple times an hour. There is a long loud bell followed by an announcement on a loudspeaker before it opens. Men fish off the same bridge a stones throw from our cockpit. We can hear their conversations. One night the conversation was in Russian. Sometimes it's Spanish,sometimes it's redneck. While it is a lot of commotion, there is something charming about being able to hear a train, automobiles passing, an airplane overhead and a bridge opening all at the same time while sitting on a sailboat. It kinda makes me feel like I'm in a cartoon with all forms of transportation moving around me. Like the opening credits of Futurama. with less future.

On December twenty-sixth after two and a half weeks of non stop work we were ready to receive our first guests and take a break.

Work Work Work

AJ got back from the yacht delivery October 23^rd. We then cleaned the engine and engine room.  I sat squashed behind the engine with cans of degreaser and scrubbed away at the engine for a week. It had so much build up that I felt like I was rescuplting it, finding all of it's dips and channels and carving them back out. I went through 3 cans of degreaser, a box of que tips (only thing small enough to clean out all the grooves), about 12 rolls of shop towels, and numerous brushes. At then end of the day I was covered head to toe in grease. The clean engine with the greasy tarp finally removed from beneath it: No more grease feet!

The engine room was a hell hole of awkward balancing and reaching. Covered in years of sludge build up. We shoveled and scraped and scrubbed it until we could see the fiberglass.

   

AJ had to order fuel injector pipes and gaskets and random small bits from Brittan. There is one guy in the world selling parts for this engine and he is in England. While we waited on those AJ continued to get parts tested and sandblasted. Aside from cleaning the engine there was also tons of parts to clean and derust sitting in the cockpit. I wire brushed rust off iron and oxidation off aluminum. Metal on metal scraping is not as horrific as nails on a chalk board, but it is in the same family. I don't care for it. But when I brushed around parts of the bell housing it created a resonating sound that sounded like the violin section of an orchestra warming up. That was a nice change.

We slaved away in the grease pit but we were really running out of funds. We had to find jobs time now. By the middle of November we were both working. When I was looking for employment on Craigs list I came across something that sounded like it would suit AJ. The add was looking for extra hands in a composites shop, and rebuilding a small aircraft. AJ loves building and had always wanted to build a plane. AJ contacted the guy and went to work for him immediately.

We could not have even dreamed of a better place for AJ to land. I still can't say for sure what AJ's employer does per se, but he has a carbon fiber composite shop and makes prototypes of boats and small airplanes and a all sorts of things. He is an engineer and inventor. AJ started going to work from 8-5 for Mark.  Mark is making a trimaran that will use a 42' mast. The exact height we need our mast to be. Mark said that if AJ would make the mold for the mast he needs then he would let him make a carbon fiber mast for himself for cost. His cost. Which is virtually nothing. In exchange Mark got a mold he could use again and again. This would mean lack of cash flow but what we would get in return would be worth so much more than he could ever make.  Our mast problem is solved. Mark is also letting AJ make the boom he wants too. The time frame for completing this is unknown, as while the mast and boom molds are on the list, Mark still has other things that need to be worked on in the mean time. But it is worth it for a carbon fiber mast and boom.

For three weeks we rarely saw each other as we scurried to our jobs and back. We had bought another rowing dinghy from someone at the marina for cheap, so we were able to come and go as we needed separately. Funny how you don't notice certain stressers until they are gone. The independence the second dinghy bestowed greatly reduced my overall stress levels. We no longer had to synchronize or get stranded. The weather was cooling off by the middle of November and increased activity became easy. Life became easier. I rowed back and forth multiple times a day. I rarely vistited the lounge because rowing back to my own home on a two hour mid day break no longer meant getting soaked in sweat.  It was now the season in Florida, and the marina was filling up. There were people everywhere.  Parking spaces on the dinghy dock were becoming scarce. I was becoming good at rowing and maneuvering the dinghy around all the other boats.

The sun was starting to set earlier and earlier though, and without electric light there was not much we could do after dark.  We had less and less time to work on the boat.  I would often forget to start looking for the flashlight before the sun was setting and thought about how creating such a habit after 29 years of flicking light switches with no knowledge of the sun's position might be a challenge. But then I remembered that we would have electricity again. I had forgotten that power was even going to be part of life on a boat, and was resigned to it.  This is the good part of living like this. Instead of being pissed every time you don't have power, you get to become excited and happy when you do. I don't know anyone who get's a mood boost from turning on a light, or plugging in their cell phone charger. Being pissed when things don't work has been replaced with a sense of luxury and happiness when they do.

Cooking by headlamp light:

   
Mag light set in the engine ropes for the evenings.

The weeks were going by and we were never home to work on the engine or improve our living arrangement. We were still without power and water and still having to climb around an engine.

When we finally got a weekend to dedicate to our boat it rained. And rained, and rained. The parts were getting wet again. We could not do anything. And I had dropped the netbook in the rain water in the dinghy. Our last and only modern convenience, a crappy wifi signal, was gone. No living space, no power, now no computer. To make matters worse AJ had found out that fuel injector pump and the spare were both bad, and one had to be rebuilt. We were dreading that verdict as the rebuild is not cheap. We felt defeated and AJ was really depressed. He talked about abandoning this engine all together. Finding a used engine that would fit pulling out the credit card and calling it done. But the more we talked we decided our engine had to be finished. There was too much sunk into it already and it was really close to done, we just did not have the proper time or space to do it in. Work took up most of our time, but life on the ball took all the rest leaving us stagnating.

Crisis, depression, drastic re-evaluation and deconstruction of your situation. That Saturday we sat on the boat in the rain and started from scratch. Why are we here and what are we doing? We decided we had to move to the docks. It is more expensive than the mooring ball, but we finally realized that time is also money. And in our predicament, more money than the dock. We would be able to do so much in so little time that it would save us a few months on the ball. On the dock we would have access to a power supply and water hose. We could use the hose on the engine room and the deck.  Water would no longer be a limited resource, as we could fill up our sprayer right there on the boat with the hose, saving a 30 min trip for every 6 gallons we bring on board. We would be able to plug into an outlet with an extension cord and use power tools. We could toss anything off the boat and out of the way when needed. Taking out the enormous amounts of trash accumulated during projects would be as simple as stepping off the boat and tossing it in a bin 4 feet away. We could actually utilize the time we did have.

We also needed to get the engine off the boat. If it had not been in the cabin for the last two months then we could have been working on other projects, any and all of them. But as we were we could do nothing but wait for the engine to go back in. We probably should have moved to the docks day one and powered through the other than engine projects. But you live and learn. AJ called his boss and asked if we could use his engine hoist and take it to his shop for the rebuild. He said sure, so we went straight to the marina office to inquire about getting a spot on the dock. And to find out if they would tow us to it. Yes and yes. They had one spot left on D dock. We woke up depressed and hopeless and went to bed with the boat ready to be docked in the morning. Ready to whip the boat into shape. It was December 11^th.

Wham Bam we are almost up to speed.

Some pretty Pics of November:

Dinghies Sparrow and Sunshine sailing at sunset

Bird on our Mooring Ball

Batten Down the Hatches a Storm's a'Brewin'

It was now October.  We had made a friend at the marina who was our age and living on a Choey Lee Bermuda 30 on anchor. He  would disappear for weeks at a time to do cruise ship renovations or First Mate a Mega Motor Yacht. He would come back and dump his earnings into prepping his boat for voyaging.   It was nice to have a friend who was doing the same thing in life.  The latest job he had landed was a yacht delivery.  He was to take it from Stuart, around the entire peninsula of Florida and up the West coast to Venice.   He asked AJ if he would like to do the delivery with him, for the experience and even a little pay.  AJ jumped at the opportunity. 

He felt bad leaving me on a boat alone on the ball with no power or water and a greasy engine in the middle of everything. But I assured him I'd be fine and he should not pass up the opportunity.  I really didn't mind, and was actually wanting to spend some time alone on the boat anyway for a lot of reasons.   I really wanted to be by myself so I could get to know the boat better and have the responsibility to myself. His absence was going to more than double the amount of labor required to carry out daily life activities.  AJ always motored or rowed us to the docks for instance. Men drive, it's what they do. They always get in the drivers seat without question or discussion.  So the only time I rowed was when I wanted to run to shore or back for something and AJ didn't, which wasn't often. Now, wanting to get to land, grocery shop, take out the trash, do the laundry, or anything at all would require me hauling everything on and off the dinghy by myself, and rowing back and forth. Not to mention maneuvering heavy bags and myself through the booby traps of my hatch and cockpit.

They set sail on a Friday. Darrin was against leaving on a Friday. Starting a passage on a Friday is like saying MacBeth in a theater. Superstitious or not, you just don't do it. Also there was a storm that could blow in in a few days and he thought it more prudent to wait it out. But the new yacht owners were typically impatient and insisted. So on Friday the 14^th of October they set out and headed South.

The first three days were calm and hot. I spent a lot of time in the lounge, as there was really nothing to do on the boat in it's condition. The cockpit was piled high with tools and rusty engine parts. We had laid a tarp under the engine, and it was now covered in oil and grease. So suffice to say I packed up a bag and the net book and rowed to shore for part of the day and the evenings.

Around the third day the weather started to take a turn. It became gray and dark. The wind picked up and the rain started.

If the wind is too strong or the chop too high or the rain too heavy I can't row to shore. For two days I remained boat bound and I tried to protect things in the cockpit from the rain best I could, but it was really a futile effort. It was all just getting rustier. I stuffed rags under the leaky windows and kept a close watch on the bilge. Since the power was disconnected so was the automatic bilge pump, I had to pump it manually. On the afternoon of the third day of rain it finally became calm.  I took the opportunity to bail the dinghy's, then rowed ashore.

That calm afternoon was unfortunately not the end of the rain but the calm before the storm. A couple hours after I got to shore it got nasty. White out rain came pelting down with wind that made the boats in the mooring field bounce around like plastic toys. I stared out the lounge windows and tried to see the details of my boat. We were on mooring ball 1 so we were on the row closest to shore, even still it was hard to make out much through the water and darkness. The dinghy was bouncing around like a ping pong ball. Later it looked as though our dinghy may have gotten swept under the wind-vane. But I could not tell for sure. The rain did not let up for hours, and I was getting anxious. Around midnight not knowing was driving me crazy and I had to go see what I could see. I put on my rain coat and rolled up my pants and walked down the dock barefoot to the closest point I could get to my boat. I walked bent over to stay balanced against the wind. When I reached the closest spot to our boat I tried to shield myself against the rain to see. The dinghy had gotten sucked under the wind-vane and was still bouncing and slamming around with the wind-vane beating against it the inside of it. I feared for the dinghy and the wind vane. Being so close and feeling like you can almost reach out and touch it only compounds the feeling of helplessness.  I also was trying to make out the water line. I was freaked about the bilge filling up and had no idea how much water had gotten in. Not being on the boat was driving me crazy. The waterline line is dark blue so it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the blue line began in the blackness but it looked to be floating high enough. I could not help but just stand there, staring, stumbling in the wind and replanting my feet over and over and over again. I could not take my eyes off it.  With lighter rain I felt a little better about the boat not sinking and started back to the marina.

Around 1 am the rain had calmed to a heavy drizzle and many of the other stranded folks to start motoring back to their boats. I was offered a ride. Once I was aboard I sqeezed between the engine and the counter pulled back the tarp and awkwardly removed a floor board from under the swinging engine so I could see into the bilge. It had a lot of water in it, but we were not sinking yet. It is hard to see the bilge in daylight as it is 4 feet deep and 10 inches wide.  All I had was the shittiest of flashlights that gave a dim flicker and had to be shaken every 10 seconds; "luckily" the water was high enough to see easily...  I climbed back out into the cockpit and pulled off the bronze lid to the manual bilge pump in the cockpit bench. The first pull was met with great resistance. Thank god it did not have to be primed this time. Pulling on the handle feels like lifting wights at the gym. It takes 1-3 seconds to pull it up.  I began pumping it as fast as I could with my right arm, but soon it become a two handed job with a foot braced on the bench to muster up every ounce if strength even from my toes. Pulling up up up, and slam back down. Curses to my 100 lb frame and puny wire arms. My curses were sucked up by the wind as quickly as they left my mouth. If i had been lifting weights there is no way I could have lasted that long. But in such a crisis adrenalin says it can be done. The labor of the pumping the bilge became my existence.   I had no other function or independent thoughts of a self to distract me. I was a bilge pumping machine. Nothing else.

Once it started sounding empty I slid back inside and shined the light into the deep dark narrow bilge. I could not see the bottom, but I saw a lot of hoses and pumps on the way down that were underwater before. It was time for bed. I used the rain to get the grease off my feet and tried to make it to the V berth unscathed. I laid in bed exhausted but hyper-vigilant from the adrenalin. I listened to the rain and bangs and creaks caused by the wind and wondered what they were and if I should be concerned about it.

The forward hatch is 3 feet above your head in the V berth. It's view is straight up the mast to the stars.  The rain and wind are sometimes so loud it is hard to sleep, but generally I find it peaceful. The clanks and taps and thumps and creaks can be trying but if the noises are random I can sleep through it. But sometimes the noises conspire and get on a rhythm. The rope on the mast slaps the top at a high pitch then slaps the bottom at a lower pitch in even time. Thwack thwack, Thwack thwack. Then the dinghy reveals it's treachery when it joins in with a Thud, th th th th th thud. then unidentified menaces finish the percussion symphony clang-idy clangs and tap tap taps. This makes me scream in my pillow. Luckily that night it was a chaos of bangs and creaks and howling of the wind.

AJ and Darrin were stuck in Miami through the storm. The delivery was delayed by 3 days anyway as Darrin had predicted. The 5-7 day delivery was already 6 days in and they had not made it past Miami. They ran into more trouble and delays every day. Guess they should not have left on a Friday after all. The boat was not as in as good as condition as stated on the survey. They had engine trouble and got stuck waiting for parts. By day 10 they had only made it to Marathon in the Keys. And they were going to have to be there a while getting work done. Darin told AJ he could jump ship since he didn't know how long it was going to take, and he had already been gone longer than planned. I drove to Marathon to pick him up.

The farther south I went the better the radio stations got. Stuart's stations play what my hometown played. The top 20 of yesterday and today. The songs you know all the words to but are not even sure who sings because you never bought the album and never listened to it on purpose. It's like you have known these songs from birth. Programmed into your brain. I hate these songs. But the closer I got to Miami those songs were replaced with songs I did not know and genres I'd never heard on the radio. I hadn't experienced such ear candy since Germany where the stations had no theme and the song progression would go something like: Nirvana, Meatloaf ballad, 50's BeeBop, Lady GaGa, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Bon Jovi, The Ramones, Abba, Sinatra, German Rap, DEVO, U2, German Pop, Patsy Cline. Anything from the last 50 years could come next. Anything.

I arrived in Marathon late that night and spent the night on the boat they were delivering. The next morning we drove back to Stuart.  I proudly showed AJ that we still had a boat, and then it was time to tackle the filth of engine and engine room and try to salvage the weather damaged parts.