Changing Themes

Posted on May 3, 2016 inStories and 'Fish' Stories

This blog is about to take a slightly different turn. I’ve finally gone and done it. I bought a new boat. The new girl is a 1996 Jeanneau 36.2. And that’s why, at this writing, there’s a link to a page to try to sell the old one. Much as I love her, I’m realistic enough to realize I can’t afford 2 boats.

So, time to put a few repairs into the old one and to get to know the new one.

But what do I write about the old one? Well, not much to hide; anyone who reads this blog can find all the good and bad about the CAL in these ‘pages’. So let’s see what I’ll be doing, and have done.

Well, first the upper lifelines had to be replaced. I’d already replaced the lower ones last year. But the upper ones were worn, too. I also replaced the harness line that went near the toe rail. Unfortunately, I misjudged the size. So now I need to find someone to shorten it. Ah well!

And this winter was *wet*! That led to mildew inside, which I hadn’t seen in quite awhile! So I scrubbed and scraped the inside and painted it. This time, too, I removed all the wood trim. It’s in the backyard, has been stripped, and is now getting a new coat of varnish.

But what else will help it to sell? I’ve got the price set at about $4K below what I’ve seen comparable boats selling for. Hopefully, that will incentivize someone to take her home. But we’ll see. I’m waiting until I get the wood back in before I put it on the market.

And that’s the other thing. Where to sell it? I figure Good Old Boat is a good place, since folks reading that magazine are lovers of older sailboats. Others have suggested putting it on Craig’s List. Since it’s free, I might as well. But my guess it those are going to be folks looking for a bargain, that don’t necessarily know sailboats. But who knows. I could be wrong. Another place I’ve found is Sailboat Data. I didn’t realize it, but when I was looking for information on my current boat for listing and boats I was looking at to purchase, I saw that they have listings for boats as well. Worth a try!

But it’s selling a prize possession. You want to make sure it gets a good home. Hmmmm…. wonder if the prospective buyer will allow me to do a background check. What experience do they have? What courses have they taken? Where will they keep the boat? Will they keep her maintained as she should be?

Well, I’ll just have to see…..

And for this year’s parade…..

Posted on December 5, 2015 inCompany

My favorite saying, that I made up, is that you can always have a good time, or a good story. Every Lighted Boat Parade that we have been in has been both. One year, I thought the lights could run off the batteries. Well, a few of them can. Not many. So we had few lights that year. There’s been the endless problems with generators. One year, I rented one and it worked out great. I could never find that size to rent again – they were always too big to use. There was the year I finally bought a generator, and it worked that year. But it had to be replaced the following year because it failed to work. That’s what I get for buying a cheap Harbor Freight generator, I guess. There were lights that wouldn’t light. Fog. Leaving late. If it could happen, it has.

This year, I put the lights up a week ahead of time so there would be no last minute rush. We got to the parade on time. We couldn’t go down Sara’s Creek, because I wasn’t sure where the channel was and I was seeing the depth keep getting lower. But we made it through the rest of the parade ok. At the end, the battery monitor still showed 57%, so I figured we had plenty to make it home.

Not so. We started home, and the boat kept slowing down. I pushed the throttle forward, and nothing. I finally plugged our destination into the GPS and it showed that it would take an hour to get not that far down the river.

So I called SeaTow. Doug, the marina owner, came on the radio and said he could help us out. SeaTow said they’d stand by. SeaTow, I guess, was furious. They called the boat captain that came to our rescue and chewed him out. He figured that he’d lost out on a tow. I found out that it was TowBoat I was supposed to call, not SeaTow. Those were the folks I had the insurance with through BoatUS. If SeaTow had come, I’d have been out several hundred dollars.

When we got to the marina, Jessica, the marina owner’s neice who sails with us, came by to invite us up to the ‘big house’ for food and drinks. I figured we’d eat what we had on the boat, then go socialize. So I poured the alcohol into the stove and lit it.

Well, I couldn’t see the alcohol going in and I apparently spilled more on the sides than I got into the receptacle. It caused quite a blaze. Not dangerous. But enough to melt parts on the stove. So I put it out with the fire extinguisher, which put powder all over the boat. Needless to say, we headed up for the other party, rather than stick around.

The party was great! Good people. Good food. Good conversation. Good drinks. Good music. We had a wonderful time.

So, a good time and a good story!

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Committee Boat Duty and Spring Squalls

Posted on April 28, 2015 inLearning My Lessons, Weather

After a first week with so little wind no one finished in time to make it official, the racers out for the Wednesday night York River sailboat races were hoping for a bit more wind. But it seems too much energy was going into that thought. What they ended up with was a squall which, at one point measured 40 mph.

The weather report earlier in the day was a bit iffy. Winds were to die down, but it wasn’t certain whether they would die down enough by the start of the race. The prediction, however, showed winds out of the southwest. So what would come in might be strong, but the waves should be minimal.

4 Degrees was the committee boat for the race. Arriving at the start of the course, we put down 2 anchors, just in case. Winds were strong, but nothing that the fleet couldn’t handle. The course was set to send the boats down to quick flash, back to R-24, then around the marks again.

The majority of both fleets crossed the starting line without a hitch and we commenced to relax. Jeff watched the boats the water. I started dinner prep, and Paul commenced to make drinks. But Paul and I didn’t get too far.

Jeff was keeping an eye on one craft that was starting late. And once over the starting line, they began to have difficulties maneuvering. Their mainsail appeared to be too tight and weather helm was kicking them. They finally were able to release their jib. But it tossed itself into the water and had to be retrieved.

About that time on the committee boat, the waves started picking up. Whitecaps were forming outside. The olive oil brought to saute vegetables dropped and broke in the cabin, spilling olive oil throughout. While Grant and I worked on cleaning up the mess, the other two reported that the boats near the first mark were heeled over quite a bit. About then, a call was received on the radio asking if the race would be cancelled. It was a hard call to make. It appeared that the water on the other side of the Coleman Bridge was calmer, but it was hard to tell. And there had already been one great gust with a calm afterwards. Would the same thing happen? Would it be worse?

The race was called. The participants worked their way home. And, of course, about that time, the weather calmed down to where we had hoped it would be when we started.

Calling the race is often a difficult decision. Yes, if conditions deteriorate to something dangerous, of course it is cancelled. But with grey areas, it’s hard to tell. Do you call the race to find that conditions improve after you do, as it did that night. Or do you ride it out, hoping they’ll improve to have them turn worse?

This race was followed by a disastrous situation in the Gulf, not days afterwards. Having faced something similar, but not quite as deadly, in this race, it’s easy to see why the folks were riding out what turned worse, not better for them.

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Drunks and Fools

Posted on September 15, 2014 inFixing It Up!, Learning My Lessons

The old saying goes that God always helps fools, lovers and drunkards. Well, someone was watching over me last night and this morning.

As scheduled, we towed the boat back home about 2 a.m. As we were motoring out there, the tow boat operator was suggesting that I might want to haul the boat out and take a look at the keel. It would also be good to call my insurance company, in case they wanted to have a surveyor look at it.

I did call them this morning and they added to the towing report the possibility of damage to the keel. They did ask that the repair work being done show the parts and labor separately. Apparently it would help increase what I might have covered.

So we hauled the boat out. And it looked fine. There was no damage to the keel.

Keel after grounding

Notice, though, that you can see how far it had sunk into the ground. Nevertheless, I came out lucky.

The fiberglass, however, will require repair:

Starboard bow cleat

That was the location of the starboard bow cleat.

I’m not sure how much the repair will be. But either my insurance or Tow Boat US will cover what my deductible doesn’t.

So, to save myself the cost of not hauling it out to clean it, I had to haul it out anyway.

Next time, I guess I’ll just rent a scuba tank.

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The Worst Mistakes Make the Best Stories

Posted on September 14, 2014 inLearning My Lessons, Stories and 'Fish' Stories

I needed to clean the bottom of my boat. I could see the green slime on it as it sat there in the water. And the prop was getting sluggish, so I knew it was getting covered in barnacles. But there’s several problems with trying to get the bottom clean: the marina is out of the way and I have yet to find a licensed, bonded diver willing to come there to do the work. I had an unlicensed friend who did it once for me, as a favor, and the owner threw a hissy fit. He said that, even though I wasn’t paying the person, he had to use a tank (he was using one of those shore air pumps) and there had to be a dive flag. Mind you, I’d seen folks do their boats before a race and no one seemed to be following those rules. But my friend was unwilling to take a chance after that.

There was the option of having the boat ‘quick pulled’, pulled out of the water long enough for me to clean it, then dropping it back in. But that was going to cost $145. If it’s not cold enough to warrant that (too cold to get in the water), I didn’t want the expense.

A friend at work suggested that what he’d done before was to beach his boat – purposely run it aground – west of the channel where it was sandy, then you could walk around the boat and clean it. That sounded like a splendid idea!

My daughter and son-in-law have just moved back to the area. And my son-in-law, anxious to get in the water around here, offered to give me a hand.

The smart way to do this, I figured, was to beach the boat during a rising tide. That way, there was more water when you were done, making it easier to leave.

There was a small problem with all of this: the kids had church in the morning, and high tide was at 2 p.m. No problem, I figured. We wouldn’t be in the water long enough to lose too much depth, so it should be ok.

So this afternoon, we headed out in the boat. I took a left turn out of the channel, as suggested, then went forward until I felt the keel stop us. Then we put out the anchor, just to be safe, put the swimming ladder on the back, and climbed out.

We used some lufas for the slime and scrapers for the barnacles. The paint is still working well and there wasn’t too much slime. But the prop was just as bad as I suspected it would be. We scraped and cleaned and I headed back on the boat. Junior, my son-in-law, wanted to swim a bit longer, so he did which I went aboard and changed out of my swimsuit. He followed shortly afterwards, we pulled up anchor and tried to move off the sand.

We seemed to be making progress. I could see us moving closer to the crab pots we’d passed on the way to our grounding. Then we stuck. The ground must have risen a bit, because we got to the point where we stopped moving. I had everyone move to one side of the boat and we tried again. We moved a bit, but not far. So we tried it on the other side. No good. After about 1/2 an hour of this, I gave up and called Tow Boat US.

Luckily, after my last experience of needing to be towed, which cost me about twice as much as the insurance would, I had towing insurance. So this was not going to cost me a thing.

The tow boat arrived about 45 minutes – 1 hour later. We tied on his line and he started pulling. At one point, the boat started to heel over a bit and I got nervous. But it didn’t go over too far, so no problem, I thought. Then there was a jerk! We were so stuck that the clean broke off the boat!

At that point, we gave up. The tow boat operator took us all back over to the marina.

We talked abou the next step. Next high tide is tomorrow at 2:30 a.m., meaning the following one will be tomorrow afternoon.

I’m home right now. I’m writing this, trying to stay awake until 12:30 a.m. At that point, I’ll drive back over to the marina. I’ll meet the tow boat operator, who’ll motor with me back over to my boat and we’ll try again.

Pictures to follow.

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