Tag Archives: Small boat cruising

May 3, 2020 · 9:34 am

A Journey Begun

Three years ago, today, May, 3, 2017, I set out from Ft. Lauderdale, FL., on my little Venture22 sailboat and eventually ended up anchored at the southern end of Anna Maria Island over on the Gulf side of the peninsula.

first day

 

The original destination was to be Breton Island, Louisiana, where I’d worked running a crew boat in the Kerr-McGee oil production field back in ’77/’78. I actually LIVED on the island for nearly a year…working 7 days on and 7 days at home.

Back then the island was about a half mile long and, perhaps, a quarter mile wide at its widest. But over the intervening years hurricanes had reduced it to a sand spit a couple of hundred yards long. I wanted to see it.

breton

I made it as far as Carrabelle in the eastern panhandle of the state.That’s where, 18 miles off the coast, on July 6, 2017, a Coast Guard-dispatched boat took me aboard their boat and dropped me off at the dock in Panacea, Florida where an ambulance was waiting to take me to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital suffering from total kidney shutdown due to severe dehydration. I spent 17 days at TMH and Health South, a rehab facility, until I’d regained enough strength before returning to the boat to continue my voyage. I decided to head south.

rescued

I made it to Bradenton Beach and Anna Maria Island where I’ve been ever since with one excursion, last year, to Cayo Costa to the south. About a 200 mile round trip.

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March 1, 2018 · 11:13 am

COPD Can’t Beat Me!

https://www.gofundme.com/copd-can039t-beat-me

I have started a Go Fund Me campaign. All contributions gratefully accepted…

Hi! I’m Richard, a 75 year old sailor with COPD and I need your help to write my SECOND book.

THE BACK STORY

In my early working life I was a newspaper reporter, a magazine editor and published many freelance magazine articles. But I’d always dreamed of being on a boat. I never wanted to sail around the world, though. I wanted more attainable goals…like doing The Great Loop, a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States. Sailing across the Atlantic Ocean had been a childhood dream.

A quote that changed my life came from Richard MacCullough’s book Viking’s Wake. He wrote: “And the bright horizon calls! Many a thing will keep till the world’s work is done, and youth is only a memory. When the old enchanter came to my door laden with dreams, I reached out with both hands. For I knew that he would not be lured with the gold that I might later offer, when age had come upon me.” So, at age thirty, I left a good-paying job as assistant PR Director at a large hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and became a minimum-wage deckhand on a dinner cruise boat I knew I could take up writing again at any age. I became a U.S. Coast Guard licensed captain of yachts and small commercial craft and spent the rest of my working life on boats. I did The Loop. I sailed across the Atlantic. I transited the Panama Canal. I lived out the dreams of my childhood.

In 2009 I retired and moved to the mountains of western Panama where I wrote my first book: “Adversity’s Wake: The Calamitous Fourth Voyage of Christopher Columbus.” The book was translated into Spanish by two girls at the Universidad Latina in David (dahVEED). I combined both versions into a dual-language book  available at Amazon.com.

In April, 2017, with my lung capacity down to only 34% of normal, I repatriated to the U.S. In spite of struggling for breath after even simple chores like making my bed, I knew I couldn’t let the COPD dominate my life. (Yes! I gave up smoking about six years ago.)

THE PAST YEAR

Back in the states I bought a small, 22-foot sailboat
on the “One Easy Payment Plan,” and cruised from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, across the state and up the shallow waters of the state’s Gulf Coast. I made it to Carrabelle in the eastern panhandle when total renal shut down caused by severe dehydration put me in Tallahassee hospitals for nearly three weeks. When I recovered enough to return to my boat I made my way back down the coast to the anchorage at Bradenton Beach, FL, a little ways south of Tampa Bay. In all the trip was around 800 miles.

I blogged about the trip and posted updates on Facebook as I cruised, but, wintering here at anchor in Bradenton Beach, an idea for a non-fiction, book has been germinating. It has a working title of: “Four Feet or Less: A cruising guide for gunkholers.” Gunkholing is a boater’s term for wandering from place to place in shallow water and spending nights at anchor rather than in a marina. The name comes from the gunk, or mud, in creeks, coves, marshes, and rivers. “Boondocking” is the term used by RVers for a similar “off the grid” experience on land.

MOVING AHEAD

In order to finish researching the book I need to revisit many of the places I anchored before to gather more detailed information. To do this successfully I need some extra equipment. Subsisting entirely on Social Security alone it’s nearly impossible to put much aside after paying for dumb stuff like, oh, FOOD, meds, phone. What I need, in order of necessity, are: 1) a reliable, second outboard motor 2) a Go Pro-style action camera 3) a small drone so I can take aerial photos of many of the anchorages.

I need the outboard because I can’t sail anymore. My hands are too painfully gnarled from arthritis to haul on halyards and wrestling with flapping sails leaves me on my hands and knees gasping for air. In the roughly 800 miles I traveled in the past year I only actually sailed the boat about 4 times. Either there was NO wind, there was TOO MUCH wind for a 22 foot boat, or the wind was on the nose and it would have taken too long to tack my way to the next anchorage.

Since many of the places I need to return to are often out of cell phone range and far from the rescue services of Boat US or Sea Tow, a reliable second engine is a safety factor, not a luxury. I’m NOT looking to buy a NEW outboard. A second hand 6 to 9.9 hp two-stroke engine will do just fine. Good USED outboards run about $800 to $1,000. I already have a second outboard bracket on the transom.

I need an action camera because they’re waterproof. I took a lot of photos on my last trip but used it sparingly so it wouldn’t get it wet and be ruined. Again, I’m NOT looking for a top of the line model, just one that will take reasonably sharp photos under all conditions. These cost around $250.

A drone that can carry that action camera aloft for photos of the anchorages would be fantastic! I have photo editing programs I can use to mark routes to the anchorages. A decent drone would cost about $250.

ADDING IT UP

Altogether I should be able to purchase the equipment I need for around $2,000.

Donations of $25 or more will receive a free electronic edition of Adversity’s Wake: The Calamitous Fourth Voyage of Christopher Columbus.

Donations received above and beyond what is needed for buying the equipment will be donated to the American Lung Association.

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January 9, 2018 · 10:09 am

What You Need To Make A Voyage

Recently in one of the Facebook groups I run someone asked me if it was possible to go from New Jersey to Florida in a twenty-two foot boat.  Well, you could do it in an inner tube I suppose, but having been up and down the east coast from Cape Cod to Key West a half dozen times I said it shouldn’t be a problem. I said I would run up and down the two big bays, Delaware and Chesapeake and then down the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) and would avoid going “outside” at all costs. I don’t know exactly where he’s starting from in New Jersey and I’ve always run outside along the coast, there, but if one chose their weather with care it’s only a couple of hundred miles and there are inlets along the way to duck into when things turn yucky.

I should have said, and I’m going to post this to the group when I’m done, is that I just made a voyage from Fort Lauderdale, across the state via the Okeechobee Waterway and all the way up to Carrabelle in the eastern end of the panhandle and then back down to Bradenton Beach, FL where I am wintering at anchor on a 22-foot sailboat. These are some of the things that made it possible.

A GPS. I bought a Dual GPS for a hundred bucks.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pro-charts-marine-navigation/id451093694?mt=8

It’s small. About 2 inches square and works via blue tooth onto my iPad. It also works on Android tablets as well.

I then purchased the Pro Charts navigation system. It has electronic charts that cover all of the U.S. I bought the premium package because it updates the charts weekly though you could easily get away with just the free download.

 

http://www.miratrex.com/procharts/

Then, I got the electronic version of Waterway Guide. I found this to be extremely valuable for finding places selling fuel; free anchorages, although with a shallow draft boat with a swing keel very few places are inaccessible; bridges and their heights, marinas, if you’re so inclined. Don’t leave home without this.

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December 31, 2017 · 5:11 pm

Back Again for 2018

I have been horribly neglectful in maintaining this blog. Last post was back around April. It isn’t that I haven’t been writing about what’s been happening, I simply have been posting on, gasp, shame, Facebook instead of here.

It would be impossible to explain all that’s happened since the last post so I’ll try and do it succinctly.

Because of deteriorating health problems with my COPD and the fact that Medicare doesn’t pay a penny once you step outside the boundaries of the country I was forced to leave my beloved Boquerón, Chiriqui, Panama and repatriate last April.

The only way I could afford to live in the states just having Social Security to depend was to buy a boa. It’s a small one, a Venture 22, and after fitting it out with my friend Stephen, I left Fort Lauderdale and headed north on the Intracoastal Waterway giving the Tangerine Twatwaffle’s Mar a Lago the finger as I passed.

earlier photo

The boat came with a 25hp Yamaha outboard. It was just all wrong for this boat. Over powered, overly heavy and the damned thing quit on me three times between Fort Lauderdale and Stuart. While there I exchanged it for a 9.9 Mercury which is the max recommended for the boat. Never a moment’s problem with it. It took me across the Okeechobee Waterway to the Gulf of Mexico and then all the way up into the panhandle of the state to Carrabelle. I had been planning on going all the way to Louisiana to look at what little was left of Breton Island where I’d run crew boats in the Kerr-McGee oil production field for a couple of years. With all the hurricanes since 1978 what was once an island about a half mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide where we actually lived at night has been reduced to a couple of hundred square yards total. I just wanted to see it once more.

But the dream died in Carrabelle. I’d had a complete loss of appetite for a couple of weeks. It wasn’t that I was sickly. I just lost interest in eating. I collapsed in the office of the marina there on the 4th of July. On the 5th I departed and headed toward Bradenton Beach, a few miles below Tampa Bay. I knew a couple of people there; a lady I’d met in Panama and her sons. I thought I’d go there to spend the winter months.

Some 15 miles out in the Gulf at about 2 a.m. I could barely breath and was unable to sit up. I dug out my little 6-watt handheld VHF radio and called “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” The Coast Guard station in Mobile, Alabama, heard my call and after determining my GPS position they sent a boat that evacuated me to shore where an ambulance waited and took me to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. I’d planned on having a nice lobster dinner for my 75th birthday on the 9th but ended up eating hospital fare instead.

In all I spent 17 days in either Tallahassee Memorial or Health South Rehab Hospital before getting back on my boat which had been towed into Panacea harbor and heading down to Bradenton Beach.

Why Bradenton Beach?

  • It has a great free anchorage and dinghy dock. There are a number of other smaller anchorages nearby.

anchored here

  • Access to good public transportation that makes owning a car unnecessary. On Anna Maria Island, of which Bradenton Beach is but one of three towns, there is a FREE “trolley” service that runs every 20 minutes from 6 a.m.to 10 p.m. Okay, they aren’t really trolleys; just buses made to look sort of like New Orleans street cars or San Francisco cable cars. They run past Walgreens and CVS pharmacies, Publix supermarket, Ace and True Value hardware stores, and, as it happens, one of the stops is half a block away from my new doctor’s office.

TROLLEY

  • If I need to go over to the mainland there are two Manatee County Transit buses. They go by Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s, Winn-Dixie supermarket, West Marine and tons of restaurants and fast food emporiums. The #6 bus also ruAftns by Blake Memorial Medical Center, one of the two hospitals close by. The cost for old timers like me is 75¢ but I buy an “unlimited” fare card for $20. The only problem with this is it’s only once an hour but I know know when I need to get to the bus stop to catch one. Also learning when it passes other places I go to like Wally World, etc.
  • The #6 bus runs right past the Y that I’ve enrolled in. Gives me use of their indoor heated swimming pool, a fantastic spa with ultra-modern exercise equipment and, best of all, HOT SHOWERS. There are no showers on 22-foot sailboats.
  • I know a couple of people here. One is a lady I actually met down in Panama who is a native of Bradenton and moved back here just after I did and lives with her two adult sons.

I’d been in Bradenton Beach for about a month when I developed severe chest pains. Not a heart attack, wrong side of the chest and having already HAD a heart attack it wasn’t the same kind of pain. I got myself ashore, got a cab and went to Blake’s emergency room where I was admitted for a four-day stay. Underwent several CAT scans, ultra sounds, X-rays and an endoscopy to discover I had a “very large” duodenal ulcer. Meds have brought that under control.

A month and a half ago my new doctor gave me a sample of something called Breo Ellipta for my breathing. This is a totally unsolicited endorsement of the product. It has literally changed the quality of my life for the better.

It’s expensive even after my insurance discount (I’ll pay $265 a month until my med costs have reached $600 then I can apply to the manufacturer for help). It doesn’t stop me from getting short of breath but those times aren’t nearly as severe as without the Breo.

I still need the Ventolin inhaler but since starting on the Breo a month ago I’m using it A LOT LESS THAN BEFORE. I had been buying an inhaler about every two weeks. Today I stopped by the pharmacy and bought another one to have in reserve. My insurance knocked off a whopping $6 (welcome to America, Richard) off the cost so what cost me $9.35 over the counter in Panama is now costing me $53.01 here) BUT I still have 58 puffs left from the 200 each inhaler starts with AND the pharmacist checked and I bought this last one on November 23. A MONTH AGO!!

Let me fill you in on some of the places I stopped at on my cruise in no particular order:

  • Indian Town. It’s on the Okeechobee waterway east of the lake itself and has a nice little marina. There’s very little to the town except for a few restaurants, a couple of banks, a hardware store and a road OUT! There was a resident alligator at the marina.

Indiantown Marina

  • Cedar Key. I’d read a lot of good things about events that go on there on Facebook. Place was a total disappointment. On the way north I didn’t even stopped. Looked around and the continued on to…
  • Suwannee River. Yes, Virginia, there is such a place. It’s hauntingly beautiful, too. On the Gulf side it’s very reminiscent of the Cajun Country marshlands. The river, itself, reminded me a lot of the Atchafalaya River with it’s huge stands of cypress trees. The town of Suwannee is nearly nonexistent. Desolation might be an improvement. There are two marinas where you can get fuel and basic marine supplies. One of them has a restaurant that’s open for breakfast and lunch and is famous for serving the WORLD’S WORST MEATLOAF! There’s a small store about a half mile away from that marina with a limited amount of groceries for which they rip your eyeballs out on prices but it’s the ONLY store around. In all I spend TWO WEEKS anchored around in the river, a week going north and then coming south. I had to wait on the weather because I wasn’t about to go out in the open Gulf of Mexico in 25 mph winds in a 22 foot boat.

Suwannee River

  • Oh, and once I left Bradenton Beach on the run north I also ran out of phone contact and had no internet connection. One of my readers, not having seen me publish anything on Facebook for almost two weeks called the Coast Guard and reported me “missing and over due.” When I finally found out the Coasties were trying to find me and contacted them by radio they said they were within a couple of hours of actually sending out planes to search for me!!!
  • Carrabelle. Easternmost panhandle port. Nice run up the river past several small marinas to the large Moorings Marina. Docks are a bit shabby, but the free breakfast every morning more than makes up for that. The Moorings is a convenient place for cruisers to stop. Restaurants within easy walking distance. Fairly decently stocked IGA grocery store across the street. Ace Hardware a block away.
  • Panacea. In the panhandle. Well protected harbor. One dry stack marina but with gas and a restaurant. Nothing town.

Panacea Harbor entrance

  • Econfina River. Good anchorage inside the river but a long way from anything. Just a scenic overnight spot if you’re coast-crawling through the big bend. Spent two nights there coming and going.

Sunrise on Econfina River, FL

  • Keyton Beach. There is absolutely NO REASON for a cruising boat to stop here! No town. No fuel. Shallow anchorage.
  • Steinhatchee. (Pronounced STEEN hatchee). It’s a LONG HAUL from the Gulf into the river where there are two marinas usually full up. Restaurants are available with wifi. Dozens of sailboats anchored along the river above the marinas. It’s an endless boat parade as people pour down from the launch ramps north of the anchorage and on out to the open water. August is scallop season and it’s absolutely nutso. There’s one small combo gas station/food store there about a quarter mile walk from Hungry Howie’s restaurant. They have a small floating dock and if you buy a little something from them they’ll let you tie up for a bit to go shopping.
  • Crystal River. A couple of marinas. Limited good anchorages where you don’t get bounced around on the wakes from the endless parade of boats, especially on the weekend. No shopping available. One marina has a brilliant marketing ploy. They are at the very end of the river selling gas. You have to motor about 10 miles in from the Gulf to get to it and then back of course so you burn up a lot of fuel. As you run up the river you notice hundreds of palm tree trunks without tops that were torn off from various storms and hurricanes.

Crystal River Sand Island 2

  • Port Richie. There’s a NEW Port Richie but you get to this long before you get to that. Coming in the long entrance (they’re ALL long along the shallow Gulf coast north of Dunedin) you pass what the charts euphemistically call “Shacks” but they’re pretty grand retreats built out on the water on pilings. Very reminiscent of “Stiltsville” that was located in Biscayne Bay near Miami but succumbed to numerous hurricanes. There’s a nice little marine store and gas dock up towards the end of the river. There are a couple of restaurants, including a Hooters with free wifi and off to the left there’s a good-sized pond, Miller’s Bayou, that’s an excellent anchorage. All together I spent about five days anchored there going and coming because of the weather.

Miller's Bayou 2

  • Tarpon Springs. Go if you must. I wasn’t impressed. There are a couple of places to go get fuel. A small anchorage not too far in from the Gulf near a public park and boat ramp.

Sunrise over Tarpon Springs

  • Hernando Beach. There is only ONE reason for a cruising sailor to stop at this place and you have to have a very shallow draft vessel to do it. That is if you’re sleepy and the next anchorage is too far for your physical condition. If you go up a long, long, winding, narrow channel and come to the town you’ll find absolutely NOTHING for you. No marinas, no fuel, no shopping no place to anchor. But, back down, not too far from the channel entrance, on the north side of the channel there’s a series of rocky spoil islands and inside that a rather large bay with a low water depth of a little more than 3 feet. I anchored in their just behind the seaward-most island. It gave me excellent protection from the vicious wakes of the power boaters and commercial fishing boats that pass by in a constant stream. Otherwise, avoid the place.
  • A little ways north of Tampa Bay, and just south of the Welsh Causeway bridge, over on the northeast side of the waterway in the shadow of the Veteran’s Hospital there is an excellent anchorage with decent protection all around. And one of the best shantyboats I’ve ever seen…

Then there was Hurricane Irma to contend with. Early on all of the “spaghetti” models, save one, had the storm tracking up the east coast of Florida. That one had it traveling right up here over Bradenton Beach! While everyone was saying it looked like we were going to be in the clear I kept saying, “You watch, that bitch is coming up the single, solitary path on all the forecasts. Guess who was right?!?

I struck the mast and then headed out of the anchorage as most of the boats did, but I went where none of the others did. I went across the ICW and under a little bridge and up a narrow canal. After the canal turned 90  degrees to the right I found another narrow canal that seemed like a good place to check out. It was so narrow in there that I’d be unable to turn around so I backed down into it. A couple of hundred yards in I found an indentation in the mangroves that lined both banks and headed into it. It was perfect! Two thirds of my port side was covered by thick mangroves and half of my starboard side was. Ahead of me was a jungle of trees and astern, across the sliver of canal there were three, two-story, cinder block houses and, more mangroves.

I got half a dozen lines into the trees and hunkered down for the storm. That was the worst of it. The anticipation. Then, two days after I secured myself the storm started picking up. The wind literally blew the water out of Tampa Bay, only a couple of miles north of me, and I ended up with 2/3rds of the boat sitting on the mucky bottom. Fortunately the Venture 22 has a swing keel and a flat bottom and will float in just a foot of water. I was actually looking UP at the ground level from my cockpit!

As the winds increased they simply blew right over my head. In fact, before the eye neared us I went to bed. In the morning the winds were replaced with rain and when I was able to stick my head out into the open I found that the worst thing I’d suffered from the hurricane was about a gazillion mangrove leaves covering nearly every inch of the deck. I stayed put for another day before returning back over to the anchorage. Some of the boats that hadn’t moved to safer shelter were still doing well, but looking around the whole anchorage area seven boats had sunk.

hidden

mangroves2

I decided to leave the mast down. In the several hundred miles I covered from Fort Lauderdale, across the state on the Okeechobee Waterway and then up to Carrabelle in the Panhandle and back down to Bradenton Beach I actually only sailed four times. The rest of the time it was a combination of things…too much wind, not enough wind, or the wind was coming from the wrong direction.

Having the mast lying down on deck as it was for the hurricane was unacceptable and a nuisance. So I made a “gallows” for it out of PVC piping. It now sits up in the air, low enough that I’d be able to get under any bridge with at least 10 vertical clearance and yet I can stand upright under it back by the tiller. It also makes a wonderful anchor for a tarp to protect the cockpit and over the hatchway.

MAST VERTICLE.jpg

There have been some nice days here at the anchorage…

Rainbow central.jpg

SUNSET 2

Some were downright scary!!! This is less than a quarter mile from where I’m anchored.

spout 1

Well, that wraps it up. I’m not promising that I’ll be a LOT better than I have been, but I will be SOMEWHAT better.

Happy 2018!

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April 5, 2017 · 10:00 am

Counting Down…

Yesterday, April 4, I bought my airline ticket to the States. The countdown begins on the time I have left here in Panamá…Twenty days.

It”s also a countdown on how much longer THIS blog will continue. It’s mainly been about my life as an expatriate. (I hate it when people call it expatriot! That implies that a person was once patriotic but no longer is. The key part of the word is patriate,  from the Latin Patria,  or homeland).

When I return to the states I’ll be moving onto a small sailboat…

and, hopefully, making my way along the entire littoral of the Gulf of Mexico from Fort Myers, Florida to Brownsville, Texas.

Starting a new chapter in my life means I need to start a new blog to document it. I’ll provide a link later, but it’s going to be called “Another Good Adventure.”

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April 3, 2017 · 6:18 pm

Butterflies

Sent off a wire transfer of funds to my friend in Ft, Lauderdale  to buy the MacGregor sailboat in Miami.

Also sent a bit extra to pay for marina space for the rest of April rather than have it “on the hook” until I get up there….

And about THAT!

Went on line to see what it’s going to cost to get up to Ft. Lauderdale.

Spirit Airlines is supposed to be the cheapest, but they want $199 for a one way ticket from PTY (Tocumen). And then they CHARGE for every bag INCLUDING carry ons. Adding it up it came to $306 for what I plan on taking with me. PLUS, the flight doesn’t leave Panama until TWO IN THE MORNING!!! That’s A.M. folks. PLUS their seats don’t recline!

So, I went online again and looked at what it would cost to fly COPA which also flies into Ft. Lauderdale. Their price was $299. $7 cheaper than Spirit AND no charge for carry ons or the first two checked bags, AND their seats recline. Their flight leaves at 11:45 IN THE MORNING for the three hour flight!

Supposedly if you have “Jubilado” status   (Jubilado roughly translates as “old fart”) you’re eligible for a discount on travel. I went on line and found a travel agent, Jose Palm, in David. Talked to him and explained what I was looking for and asked if there was a “Jubilado” discount.. It does, and he quoted me a ticket price of $241.14. I’m going to go to his office tomorrow morning.

Will be returning to the States either April 19th or the 26th. Don’t know which. Need to get rid of some stuff here like my bicycle and clothes washer, etc. What I’ll do is take the midnight bus from David to Panama. It gets in to Panama around 4:30 or 5. Take a cab out to Tocumen and wing my way back to Trumplandia….also known as “Murika”

So I’ve had butterflies in my stomach all day long. I’ve been talking about repatriating to the States for over a year. I’d hoped to be there last July, but the dentures delayed that, and then it moved from summer into fall and then into winter and I WASN’T going to go back up there in the winter even if it was to Ft. Lauderdale. Hell, back in ’76 when I was helping bring a big sailboat up from Key West it EFFIN’ SNOWED!!! Now the reality of picking up sticks and actually doing this thing has me a bit on edge. As they say, Talk’s Cheap. I think, well, I haven’t paid for the ticket yet and I suppose I could tell Stef not to pay Fernando and then the six yapping dogs at the house 30-feet away start going nuts and I try and picture how tranquil it will be anchored up at some small island off the coast of Florida or the barrier islands of the panhandle and I know I’m doing the right thing.

 

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April 1, 2017 · 8:25 pm

New Boat?

Okay, this is the boat my friend went to look at in Miami this morning.

It’s a MacGregor 25 with a pop top and a swing keel. When the pop top is raised there’s 6-foot headroom in the after part of the cabin. The swing keel raises and lowers. With the keel down the boat draws nearly five and a half feet. With the keel fully raised it needs less than two feet of water to float, perfect for the shallows of the Gulf Intracoastal waterway and the Florida Keys. The boat can be taken right up to the beach.

This is what a pop top does

There are canvas attachments that enclose the pop top when it’s up but I don’t think this boat has one. I was thinking that a modification could be made with thin plywood and plexiglass, though. And the boat also has a Bimini top…

Cosmetically it needs work as you can see, but it’s nothing that bothers me. Four or five short days and all that blue non-skid can be made right. I’d paint it a sand/beige using a one-part polyurethane paint. I used Interlux Brightside in the cockpit of my Kaiser 26 and it held up remarkably well. Very resistant to abrasion and it retained most of its gloss over six years. Of course when painting the topsides you want to use a non-gloss paint to cut down on reflection.

The cushions are all in good shape which is rare for these older boats. The outboard motor needs to be tuned up. One of the major problems is that non-boaters shut the things off and the gasoline sits in the carburetors and evaporates leaving gummy residue. What needs to be done if the boat isn’t going to be used for a while is to disconnect the fuel and let all the fuel burn out leaving the carb dry. Also when outboards, or any boat that uses circulating water to cool the engine,  sit for a long time the rubber impellers that pump the cooling water deform so they need to be replaced.

None of that is a problem. Stef is a first-class mechanic and when we had out repair business in Fort Lauderdale years ago I can’t even begin to tell you how many times we did this kind of work.

As the French author, Blaise Pascal, famously said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Here’s how I found out what kind of a mechanic Stef was. When I got back from France and cruising down to Guatemala back in ’92 I was at loose ends and needed some kind of work. Stef had a ski boat on a trailer in his car port and I said, “Why don’t we paint that up and sell it?” He said that the engine, a Ford V8, wasn’t working. A minute later he said, “Listen, come back around 8 in the morning and we’ll get this thing together.”

When I showed up he had a hydraulic motor lifter

and an engine stand.

That’s something you bolt the engine block to and you can move the engine around to reach all parts of it without having to bend over. It took us less than an hour to get the engine out of the boat and onto the stand. Then Stef started disassembling the motor and throwing parts into a couple of 5-gallon buckets. All I could think of was that he was a fucking mad man. The only thing he did that seemed at all normal was he placed the pistons carefully on a work bench in the order that they came out of the block. When everything was off the engine he said, “I’m going to go to ‘Engine Rebuilder’s Warehouse’ and get what we need. While I’m gone you take all those bolts that are in that bucket and clean them up with this wire wheel on the electric motor.”

When he returned he showed me how to hone the cylinders with a special tool on a drill motor

 

and while I was doing that he laid the bolts out on the work bench according to size. With that done he started putting the engine together. New bearings and guides and all that good stuff. We broke for a quick lunch and then finished up. The ONLY time he consulted a manual was when he was looking at the torque specs for the piston ends and the head bolts. The engine was back in the boat in a flash, and at around 4 o’clock in the afternoon he turned the key and BRRRRRRROOOOOM, the damned thing started right up. TO ME that was like MAGIC!!! Over the next several years we probably rebuilt a couple of dozen engines. With a manual at hand I wouldn’t be afraid to tackle a rebuild on my own. I later found out that he used to have a xmall chain of engine rebuilding shops in New York for VW engines. The deal was, get it in by 8 in the morning and you could drive home with a rebuilt engine after five in the afternoon.

So, anyway, there’s a nearby marina where we can store the boat for $300/month (that’s TWO MONTHS apartment rent here in Boquerón). Stef says the engine is practically brand new, it’s just been sitting. He can take it up to his warehouse in Ft. Lauderdale and do the tune up there.

The asking price is $1,300 for the boat and $1,300 for the motor. Stef told him that was a bit too much for condition of things and Fernando agreed. The way Stef left it was he was going to send me the pictures and see what I wanted to do. As I told him, there’s nothing I can’t take care of. Sure, the life line stanchions were removed, but they’re on board and it’s only a matter of drilling 16 holes to get them reattached. Certainly no biggie there.

There will be a lot of things that I’ll need to buy to make the boat what I’d really like it to be, but it doesn’t have to all be done at once. That’s one thing a lot of people never understand. They aren’t comfortable with the “that’s good enough philosophy.” For them everything has to be exactly “just so” before they feel they can cast the lines of the dock. That’s why so few people actually GO SOMEPLACE on their boats. And, too, a lot of the stuff I’ll need, like the paint, etc., I can get wholesale through Stef’s account at Lewis Marine, one of the largest marine supply companies in the country. They ship worldwide, so things won’t be as bad as they might be for some people of limited means.

Stef’s going to call Fernando tomorrow and offer him $2,500 for the whole shebang. He’ll probably take it. I told Stef that if he balks go for $2,700 which is $500 off the asking price. I can certainly live with that. I’ve talked with Fernando via Skype and Stef, of course, in person, and Fernando is an anxious seller. He’s had the boat up for quite some time though he stopped advertising it a while back.

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November 9, 2016 · 3:23 pm

Gentle Reminder…

an-adventure

https://www.gofundme.com/one-more-good-adventure

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June 4, 2016 · 9:30 am

Masts

No matter what boat I end up buying I’m going to modify the mast. Make it shorter and make it easy to lay down and raise easily so I duck under bridges as I cruise the inland waterways. For example, the mast of a Catalina 22 is 29’1″. It would be scary trying to creep under a 30-foot bridge with less than a foot of clearance. A breezy chop or the wake from a slow-moving nearby boat could easily have you nailing the underside of the bridge.

Between Ft. Lauderdale’s inlet and the one in West Palm Beach, roughly 40 miles, there are 19 bridges. There are only two that don’t present a problem: Lauderdale’s 17th Street bridge at 55′ and the Lake Worth Bascule Bridge at 35-feet. The Linton Blvd. Bascule Bridge in Boca Raton has a clearance of 30-feet and you’d have your heart in your throat trying to creep under it.

It’s not so bad going down the 24 miles to Government Cut in Miami. There are only 11 bridges. Two of them, N.E. 192nd Street Bridge at 65-feet and the Julia Tuttle at 55-feet are no problem. The Sunny Isles bridge at 30-feet is one of the “iffy” ones. So that means there are eight bridges you have to wait to have opened for you and ALL of them have specific opening times. Of the 30 bridges between Government Cut in Miami and West Palm Beach Inlet that 22-foot sailboat you’d have to wait for 26 of them to open so you could continue on your journey. And if you weren’t at the bridge for a scheduled opening time you’d have to circle around for up to a half hour to get through. So, if you’re planning to take a trip to Peanut Island in WPB from Ft. Lauderdale in a boat that’s going to plod along at about 6 mph, at best, even if you hit every bridge opening perfectly, an impossibility, you’re looking at a VERY long day.

The solution, of course is being able to raise and lower your mast so you can creep under almost all the bridges you’re ever going to encounter. But raising and lowering the mast of a even a Catalina 22 and similar boats that have shrouds is NOT an easy thing to do no matter HOW MUCH the builders tout the simplicity of THEIR boats.

Does this look simple to you?

Not only that, but I don’t want to have a mast that’s longer than the boat itself…

masts too big

My idea is to build a mast tabernacle. I’d want it high enough so that when the mast is lowered the mast would clear the pilot house I’d eventually like to build.

From a Facebook response to a previous mention of this people have written saying, “MY boat has a tabernacle” and then they send a picture of something like THIS…

autoimage-165544_BoatPic_Extra1

Well, technically they’re correct, it IS a tabernacle but THIS is more along the lines of what I’m thinking of…

hinged_tarbenacle_mast_3_20121030_1586766886

Lowered it would look like this…

Pedistal

AND I’d want to add some weight to the bottom of the mast, like this one, to counterbalance the whole lot and make raising and lowering an easy one-man task.

Good tabernacle pic

With an arrangement like the two boats above you’d be able to clear nearly every bridge you meet. And think about this…during thunderstorms lightning strikes the highest thing around, and if you’re on a sailboat the highest thing around is YOUR MAST! Wouldn’t it be great if you could quickly and easily lower the mast making you less of a target? You might say, “But I’m out sailing, I CAN’T lower my mast.” But I’m generally going to be on inland waterways so as a storm approaches I can duck into shallower water somewhere, drop anchor, lower the mast, wait it out in the comfort of the cabin.

I want an unstayed mast and will go for either a junk rig or a balanced lug. I won’t be carrying as much square footage, that’s for sure, but when I am using the sails it will be with the wind abeam, on the quarter or dead astern. No more beating into the wind.  God invented engines to allow boats to do that. The “auxiliary power” on MY boat will be the sails, NOT the engine.

 

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May 23, 2016 · 4:28 pm

The Boat I Want and Why

About a year ago when my friend Stephen suggested I move back to the States and that we’d look for a boat for me to buy and live on I wasn’t ready to pick up sticks and leave Panama. But the kernel had been planted and I started mentally masturbating about what kind of boat I’d look for if I did make the move. The exercise begins by figuring out HOW the boat would be used.

If I were to return to the States I wouldn’t want to live on a boat stuck in a marina. Been there, done that. But I had a reason I was living like that…I needed to work to make money and survive. I survived but I didn’t make much money. I always had something going where I paid little to no rent at all for nearly five years. (Then I fell in love, moved ashore, and now both the bitch and the boat are gone…) Now, having retired and getting a Social Security deposit every month I don’t have to worry about survival any more.

So, if I was going to be on the move, where would I be going? Well, it’s something I’ve named The Great U.S. Inland Waterway Challenge. You don’t have to cross oceans to have nautical adventures. In fact, you don’t even have to go very far to have them, either. Unfortunately most people thing that “cruising” means traversing large bodies of water while fighting gale-force winds. Not so! Taking your boat to a lake or estuary and investigating parts of it you’ve never seen before is just as valid a nautical adventure as sailing single-handed around the world in a 10-foot boat.

There’s a ton of water-born adventuring to be done inside the boundaries of the United States. For instance there’s the “Great Loop.” That’s a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the United States by water.

loop

There are clubs, Facebook pages and internet groups devoted to this enterprise. They even have a website and burgee…http://www.greatloop.org

burgee

Well, I’ve got that one under my belt. In ’74, my first captain’s job I took a 43-foot Hatteras tri-cabin from Burnham Park in Chicago, went the lengths of lakes Michigan, Huron and Erie, out the Erie Canal, down the Hudson River and then did the entire 1,100-mile Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway single-handed. (Ive since run the Atlantic ICW four more times. Three times south and once south to north.) In ’75 I left Burnham Harbor with a couple on their 51-foot sailboat and we went down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans and then happened to end up at Bahia Mar marina in Fort Lauderdale, FL where I’d ended the voyage the year before.

What else is left? Lots. There’s the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway for an additional 1,000 miles. I’ve done a couple of little segments from Destin, FL to New Orleans and little parts of it in Louisiana when I was running inland crew boats around Morgan City, New Iberia and a few other sections.

Then, I thought, if I had a small enough boat that was easily trailerable I’d haul it up to Minneapolis and come down the Mississippi all the way to the Tennessee river, veer off there and take the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway to Mobile. Already done that segment of the Mississippi from the confluence of the Tennessee to New Orleans in ’75. Coming down the river I’d have to stop a couple of days at Lock and Dam #20 in Canton, Missouri. It’s 30 miles or so north of Hannibal and the home of Culver-Stockton College that I attended for three years.

How about pulling the boat up to Pittsburgh, PA and going down the Ohio in the wake of those great shantyboat inspirations Harlan and Anna Hubbard? At least as far as the Mississippi once more. From there I could have it trailered to Sioux City, Iowa and run the 735 miles of the Missouri River.

So, what kind of boat would I need to do that sort of thing? Well, first of all it couldn’t be too big. It would have to be a “Trailer Sailer” with a retractable keel or centerboard so it would be easy to move around the great distances between, say, New Orleans and Minneapolis cause I’m not going to be able to sail against the current all that way, All along the Gulf ICW in Florida and Texas it’s SHALLOW so draft is a big consideration. My beloved Nancy Dawson drew four feet and so needed  five feet or better under her keel to do well. Many trailer-sailer have drafts as little as a foot and some even less than that.

Roaming around on Craigslist and other boat for sale sites I see that there’s a slew of trailer-sailer boats in the 23-foot range that can be picked up for under $2,000. When I brought this up to my friend Stephen he said, “Yeah, but wouldn’t you be more comfortable on something around 30-feet?” Well, probably! I’d also be a lot more comfortable on the 85-foot Jolie Aire that I ran over in France for three years, too. What’s your point?

I’ve mentioned in other posts about building a pilot house onto a small hull to give standing headroom in the cabin. I DO WANT to stand up when I’m cooking, at least, and to put on my pants.

But the best thing about a small boat in the 23-foot range is that it’s a LOT cheaper than a 30-foot boat.

In and around Fort Lauderdale dock rates are $1.50 to $2.00 per foot per day. So, for a 30-foot boat it would cost $60/night @ $2 and $45/night @ $1.50. For a 23-foot boat it would be $46/night @ $2 or $34.50/night. A difference of $15 or $10.50 at the buck and a half rate. Some of the marinas, though, charge on a minimum of a 30-foot boat no matter how much under that it actually is. Others charge at a 25-foot rate. Even that way it’s $50 a night @ $2 or $37.50.

So, let’s take the lower rate and assume, in all these numbers, that I’ll have to spend one week a month at a marina. The 30-footer would cost me $315/month. The 23-footer would be $241.50 a month, a $73.50 a month savings. Even at the 25-foot minimum rate the $262.50 is a $52.50 savings on my $1,100/month SS check and equals 17.5 gallons of gas @ $3.00/gal. Assuming I can get 12/miles per gallon that one month savings at the lowest amount will get me roughly 210 miles further up the river.

Of course I wouldn’t be spending much time at a dock in Fort Lauderdale to begin with. So let’s take a look at an out-of-the-way place like Steinhatchee up in the Big Bend area of Florida…

At Riverhaven marina in Steinhatchee, FL, up in the Big Bend area of the Gulf Coast, the cost for an uncovered slip is 50¢/foot a day. So, easy-peasy, a 30-footer would go for $15/day. The 23-footer would be $11.50/day or $3.50/day savings. No big deal. But the weekly difference would be $24.50 or, over a year that’s $294. That would be 98 gallons of gas @ $3 gal. or 1,176 miles under the crank-up keel.

Let’s say I wanted to spend the winter months up there. The monthly rate is quoted at $149.50 and for a four-month stay it would set me back just under $600. Not bad when you consider that my half of the duplex rent when I lived in Fort Lauderdale six years ago was $600/month.  In fact, the monthly rate at this marina would be just half a buck short of what I’m paying for rent in Boquerón.

So, let’s go over to Texas since I plan on running the ICW all the way to Brownsville…

In Corpus Christi, at the Corpus Christi Marina short term slip rates are $1.50/ft. = $34.50/night for 23-footer and $45 for the 30-footer.

Across the way at Islands Moorings in Port Aransas doesn’t matter if it’s 23-foot or $30 the rate is $35 per night for vessels up to 32 feet and then they’re gonna nick ya $7 to hook up to 30 amp electricity. At the end of the line in Brownsville and South Padre Island there are several marinas but most don’t list their rates. It’s sort of a “Surprise, you can’t afford to be here…” situation. The one place that DID list a rate for transient dockage is the Sea Ranch Marina at South Padre Island and 23’ or 30’ or any feet it’s $65/night though they’re generous and throw in the electricity at that price. And people wonder why I’m so inclined to say TUCK FEXAS!!! But if I want to complete The Great U.S. Inland Waterway Challenge gotta go there.

In 11 days I find out if my new choppers are going to fit. If they do, I’ll give it a month to make sure they don’t need to be adjusted and if all’s good to go then I’ll be having my 74th birthday party in Fort Lauderdale. (July 9th)

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