Out of Florida

I guess if you're not peeing on it you may as well sleep on it. Multi-tasking or just being a stinker, I'm not sure.

I know there are some people who move north to south and then south to north via the ICW every year. But how or why they do it is beyond me. To me, it's just a slog of a run and I don't think the Knotty Cat cares for it either.

 

Crab trap. It was caught in our rudder and we dragged this sucker for over 30 miles. After Wilbur gave it a thorough inspection we dumped it (full of sea sick crabs I might add) beside a bunch of other pots.

I told Hans we need to get a list going of all the things we really need to have looked at once we get settled in our new 'home'.

Right out of the chute our electric anchor windlass died. I admit we were a bit smug (just short of tongue sticking outing neener neener neener kind of smug) about having an electric windlass and now we don't. Actually we do; it's name is Hans. Of course Hans had to bruise his ribs trying to repair it but for now we've rigged up a bit of a system. When it's time to bring up the anchor, I'm at the helm keeping the boat over the chain as Hans hauls it up and then using a halyard (that's at the ready) he clips it to the last of the chain and winches the anchor up. Our very first night at anchor during our trip north involved a lot of wind and current and we were very happy to find this maneuver worked. So far so good.

But we would still like to have it in working order.

A sod farm? No, it's our dinghy after being in the water for three months.

We've discovered the starboard engine does not like to start unless the port engine is already fired up.

The day after we each took showers in our respective heads Hans found the port side engine room was covered in droplets of fresh water. By process of elimination we found that the shower pump hose fitting has broken free of the hull and when you run the shower pump it gushes soapy water all over the engine. No problem, we said, we can shower over on the starboard side. Except for some reason the starboard shower pump vibrates like crazy but doesn't pump. Shower water now gets scooped up with a bucket and dumped into the potties which really isn't such a bad thing.

Our charger/inverter still charges our batteries while underway but the inverter (that had an expensive peek from an electrician two years ago) still refuses to invert which means the outlets do not work unless we have shore power or the Honda 2000 is fired up. We have but one 12v plug that allows us to charge our phones while underway (Hans uses the iSailor app on his iPhone) but add two guests each with their own phones to the mix and things become interesting.

Our water pump has become testy lately and it's not unusual for me, in the middle of brushing my teeth, to go over to the port side engine room, reach in, and poke the damn thing with a ruler. By golly she jumps to attention then. Luckily she lasted this trip. We have a spare pump but who knows where the hell it is. Probably in the forward locker that we have the dinghy lying upside down and lashed on. On the positive side, six years ago something like this would have had me in hysterics.

We were excited to depart Florida and transited Georgia (with her wicked 8 foot tides) with no mishaps. We forgot how much coastline South Carolina has and unfortunately the tides and currents were still very strong. As we sat in our little anchorages it appeared that every six hours someone pulled the plug on our tub, very nearly leaving us high and dry, and six hours later they turned on the faucet and added that eight feet of water right back in. We were sorry to find that the huge deer flies of Georgia had kin in South Carolina where Hans literally had blood running down his legs most days, and even more kin in North Carolina where they torture him on his daily walks with Wilbur.

Those Georgia tides. Check out the piling with all the barnacles growing on it. This was a floating dock at low tide in Savannah.

Same piling at high tide. Those barnacles are now below the dock. Creepy!

So why didn't we go 'outside' and skip the ICW? Well, we did, and it didn't go very well. The forecasts had promised such benign winds and waves, we were worried we'd have to motor instead of sail our 72 hour trip from Jacksonville, FL to hopefully North Carolina. We finally got out of the inlet into the ocean, and while it was windier than expected we were sailing nicely with our brand new main and newly repaired jib. For a while. Then the wind kicked up and the seas got all confused, stuff started flying about the salon and I got grumpy. So back into port we headed bucking waves the whole way. When we finally picked up a mooring ball amid the lovely backdrop of sunken boat masts (thanks to Hurricane Mathew 2016) sticking out of the water in Fernandina Beach, we'd gone a total of 31 miles (we'd've gone a lot farther if we'd just stuck to the ICW). And might I add, that in this protected area the wind was whistling around us at 30 plus knots.

We had two friends come along as crew for this 'outside jaunt that didn't quite happen' but the upside is at least they were on the water, and instead of puking for two days I was able to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

As for things that need to be fixed; at our very last anchorage before arriving at our new home, Hans was in the process of asking me if I'd looked up at the radar mount lately when I handed him a bolt that I'd picked up from the foredeck. Another trip up the mast for me is now in order. While the starboard side of the mount appears to be in order there is but one bolt remaining on the port side.

 

This time around I made note of each anchorage and marina we used and I intend to add a page to our blog for reference.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Living as a Couple on a Boat Part III

This installment is about fixing the many things that go wrong on a boat...as a couple. And if you think that boat you just bought won't need repairs in the near future, we have some swampland in Florida for sale (actually we really do!!!)

(Note the band-aid in this picture. I'm thinking of buying stock in the company)

But, the big question is, even if the boat survives, can the same thing be said for the couple?

Once again, I'm very thankful that Hans MacGyver is a very calm and rational man who actually enjoys a challenge. And after each and every disaster we've encountered with this boat; instead of throwing every tool he owns at me and cursing all Gods known to man, he has actually been heard to say, "I think I learned a lot from that."

And for any ladies out there who find this to be a very desirable trait in a man; Hands off! I saw him first!

However, I do remember the time the muffler fell off my car, and after I reattached it with a wire hanger and Duct tape (while flat on my back on my cold garage floor at 7 o'clock in the morning so I could get to work on time), Hans, who was still in his robe, inspected my work and commented that perhaps he would have done it differently.

Obviously, I didn't kill him.

When we found our port locker full of water and ended up replacing this hose ourselves, we were told not to use an elbow. Most likely because this particular hose 'bends' as a result of the wire that's spiralled around its whole.














Here are the leaky hoses we ripped out of the locker and replaced in October.

We threw them into the cockpit and even though they were already dead and rendered useless I thought they looked slightly evil, and was very happy to toss them into a dumpster.













We found out the starboard side locker hoses had already been replaced, and just this week we dug out our original survey and discovered that the work was completed shortly after we bought the boat.


Honestly, we don't even remember having it done!


Notice here that they used an elbow.









Together, Hans and I have discovered a lot of interesting things on the Knotty Cat and I'm not kidding when I say it took us two years to figure out the how the two water tanks worked as the original owners had them re-routed, and left no information behind.

But this fall found us performing our biggest repair yet as a couple and it involved our GPS antenna.

'Fritz' the GPS, decided to act up on a fairly nasty voyage in the Chesapeake and insisted upon showing us on shore a good bit of the time. Fritz became rather emboldened with his brazen ways and threatened to start up a union amongst our other electronics. I, however, who once belonged to a union, knew that if we didn't nip Fritz in the bud right now, he'd become a boil on our backside forever!

I want it on record to all union members that we gave Fritz many opportunities to mend his ways but he chose to ignore us.

So it gave me great pleasure the day West Marine personally delivered a new GPS antenna to us while we were on the hard at the Charleston City Marina.

"Well, this should be easy." Hans and I said to each other after examining the directions, and then after about eight hours of rewiring that big stinker we realized why boat yards charge so much for their work

We still have no idea why the many, many wires, deemed necessary to keep a boat running, need to be secured every three inches or so with tightly cinched tie wraps and then run deep into the bowels of the boat. After trying to fish our new antenna wire (taped to the old wire) through this myriad of craziness, we finally said the hell with it and bypassed most of them.

This was only after we realized that we forgot to thread the wire through the nut on the outside of the boat first, and then had to pull it out and start all over again.

Another problem was the fact that a running fan in the engine room (where all the fun wiring stuff was taking place) made it necessary for me (in the cockpit) to shout very loudly to Hans (in the engine room) in order to be heard.

After yanking (and swearing), pulling (and swearing), ripping (and swearing), we lost the new antenna wire in a very tight conduit (and yes there was a lot of swearing).

We figured out a way to bypass most of the tie wraps, along with the nasty conduit, and finally got the new wire through. Our joy was short lived however when we realized it still wouldn't work and an hour later found that a blown fuse was the culprit.

We walked into the boat yard's part's store at closing time, just as all the employees were getting ready to quit for the day. While they found a fuse for us I proudly explained that we'd spent the day replacing the antenna to our GPS. "Yeah, we know." remarked one of the mechanics who'd been working on our boat, and everyone laughed. "Really? How'd you know that?" I asked.

And he happily answered, "Oh, we all heard you."

Never let it be said I don't exercise my vocabulary any chance I can.