2018 New Year's Resolution - the Blog

I am daring to resolve to resurrect the sailing blog. I intend to recall what happened in the 2016-2017 cruising season as well. Let's see how it goes.

Happy New Year finds us a week shy of a month into the 2017-2018 cruising season. We left the boat at the Hinckley Boat Yard in Thunderbolt (just outside Savannah, GA), May 22nd. The motor had been using oil (a quart every 12 hours!) so we had become a "Captain Ron" boat. In that classic movie, Captain Ron never started the engine without adding a quart of oil first. I left instructions with Hinckley that I wanted the bottom painted and the engine checked to see what was causing the excessive oil use.

In September,  since Hurricane Irma had just blown through the previous week, I wanted to check on the boat. Barb and Mary Addison-Lamb were attending their Dangerous Babes reunion on the Isle of Palms, SC, so I proposed that I drive us all. The women hopped out at Kathy's beach house and Mick Addison-Lamb and I went to Thunderbolt to check on the boat. The boat appeared to have been power washed by the storm! Squeeky clean! Inside, there were no leaks. Aside from the Windex wind direction indicator being missing from the top of the mast, everything appeared to be in order. Even the aluminum foil covering exposed plastic and rubber deck fittings and antennae; and the tee shirts I had tied over the opening coach roof ports were still in place. I renewed the Sun-Paks (mildewcide) and closed her up again. We would return in November.

I had booked a stay in an AirBnB while the women were having their reunion and this turned out to be a great experience. Nancy was our host. She has a wonderful old home in Isle of Hope with a fine garden, butterfly refuge and banty chickens. Mick and I had our own separate attic rooms. Nancy has many interests in common with us that made for pleasant conversation. We toured Savannah,

visited Tybee Island and went to the Pin Point Seafood Festival for an afternoon of fine local food and music.
http://www.pinpointseafoodfestival.net/about/

Mick, Nancy & Jay on Nancy's back porch

On our way back to the Addison-Lamb's in Kentucky, we stopped in Asheville, NC to do the tourist thing.

Taking a beer break after arduous shopping

Mick and Mary had the good fortune to find a dining table set that suited them and now it is featured often in their frequently documented celebrations.


Barb and I embarked in November, from the Black Forest, in our 1995 Dodge Grand Caravan (approaching 200k miles) full of boat gear on a marathon journey with several goals. We arrived in Thunderbolt after a 27 hour drive. We stayed with Nancy Tamarack at her Air-BnB and Barb came to understand why Mick and I enjoyed our stay with Nancy last September. Goal one accomplished. Goal two was to offload boat gear from the van onto the boat. The boat was on hard ground on stands so everything had to be either carried up a ladder or hoisted using the dinghy davits. 

The next day we went for goal three, drive to visit Mother in Springfield, VA for Thanksgiving. Mother is now 97 years of age and doing pretty well. We had a nice, albeit short visit, but winter was approaching and it was time to get the boat south, after we reached our next goal. We drove to Tampa to visit Christina and Larry and the "grandkids", Dorothy (6 y.o.) and John (2 y.o.). Goal four was partly finished. Goal five was to visit brother Tom and Vickie in Cortez and pick up our re-certified  and repacked life raft at the Winslow factory nearby. We returned to Tampa and rented a van, turning over the keys to our trusty van to the Gottschamer family. That completed goal four. Our final goal was to return to the boat in the rental van and get the boat moving south. Strangely, for the one-way rental, Tampa to Savannah, the van was the least expensive option over, even, a compact car. Checking in at the boat yard, the bottom had been painted and the engine had been checked. The compression was excellent and no other problems were apparent. Some parts had not arrived to get the engine running again to do a sea trial and it was expected to be a cold weekend. Thankfully, the yard crew went ahead and put the boat in the water and we were able to be aboard at their dock, plugged into power (heat) and able to make more preparations, while waiting for the parts to arrive and a sea trial. Being in the water was a big step toward our last goal.

We had frost on the dock for three mornings before the engine part arrived and was installed. The engine started up right away. I took the mechanic on the sea trial and we saw no excessive exhaust smoke. His assessment was that an oil ring or two had broken so oil was being burned even though there was no blue colored smoke to be noticed. Solution: keep feeding oil or remove the engine and repair it again.  On Dec 11th, I departed Hinckley's to run down the river for an hour to meet Barb at the Isle of Hope Marina (ICW mile 590) where we had better access to provisions (buy more oil) and a courtesy car. It felt good to be moving on the water again, finally. On December 15th, we departed to catch a favorable tidal current to motor on the ICW as far as possible in the shortening daylight hours. We covered 53 miles through the picturesque marshlands of Georgia and that evening at anchor, I felt we were finally on our way into Season Eleven.

The next morning, with a benign weather report we motored out of Sapelo Sound into the Atlantic. We covered 72 miles in 8.5 hours to anchor on the Florida/Georgia line in the St. Mary's River. Next day, out at sea again we covered 65 miles and took a mooring ball in St. Augustine. We stayed in St. Augustine for a couple of days before heading down the ICW with favorable tide and current conditions to travel a notoriously shallow section of the ICW at the Matanzas River. When we got there we discovered that the buoys had been moved and that this section had been dredged recently. That was nice!  A sailboat that we had passed earlier that morning radioed asking if we had any issues and we reported what we found back to S/V Freya. We have an Automatic Identification System unit on Jupiter's Smile that informs any boat that has an AIS receiver who we are. So the boat that could not see us still knew who we were and where we were and called us on the radio.

Along the way that day, we passed S/V Sea Star, an Island Packet 440, with Dan and Kathy aboard. We had sailed many, many miles along with them in past years. They were on their way north to Jacksonville for Christmas. They warned us of shoal water where they had to use their BoatUS privileges to get ungrounded at buoy "18A".  As we discussed our respective plans, they made us an offer I will discuss later.

All went well until Ponce de Leon Inlet. Here, the ICW southbound continues to starboard or to port, leads to the Atlantic Ocean. At this junction, at dead low tide, was a sailboat with a 6 foot draft aground on the shoal at the afore mentioned mark "18A".  A Towboat was assisting this vessel so we kept going, reporting our water depth as we passed in about 5.2 feet of water. I called back to Freya and reported the situation. They decided that they would continue following us. My intention was to get to the New Smyrna Yacht Club and anchor across from them just outside the ICW. We had to wait for a bridge opening, but made the anchorage with daylight to spare. Freya invited us over for sundowners, but that would have meant lowering the dinghy and then raising it again in the dark, so we declined. We chatted in the radio for a bit.

The next morning just at dawn I saw Freya's running lights as they had just pulled anchor heading for Titusville. We got underway about a half hour behind them and were cruising down the ICW when the engine alarm sounded. Unlike in the past, I pulled the throttle back into neutral, but did not shut off the engine before carefully checking the gauges. The temperature gauge showed overheating so I kept the engine at idle while the raw water pump sloooowly brought the water temperature down. Barb went to the anchor platform making ready to deploy the anchor. I put the engine in gear and that was enough power to get us out of the channel so Barb could drop the hook. With the temperature down enough, I turned off the engine to investigate. I found the problem immediately. The drive belt for the alternator and water pump had broken. I should say, disintegrated. I installed a new belt (cruisers have spares...of lots of things). and we were off and running again.

Along the way I decided that the little things that were happening with regard to this already rebuilt engine and the big issue of oil consumption would best be addressed by an engine replacement. The boat will be up for sale at the end of this season and I would think the prospects of a sale with an engine that consumes oil versus one that is new would be very different. Our cruising friends, Hayden and Radeen on S/V Island Spirit had worked with Colin Mack in Stuart, FL and since I trust Hayden and Radeen and they trust Colin, I trust Colin too. And we were heading that way. I called Colin to ask his advice. He said that he and his shop did not do "repowers", but recommended the Yanmar dealer, MarinePro, in Cocoa, 20 miles away from our intended Titusville anchorage. So the repower proce$$ is in the works with Bret at MarinePro.