'Til the butter melts

It’s blowing. Again. Just for curiosity we tuned in the the local reports of marine weather, and sure enough, winds at Vero Beach are 15-20 mph, gusting to 35.

So we’re glad we’re tucked in here for a couple days, chillin’ out, cooking (Nicki made bread, and I did an experimental dish using sweet potato and Cristophene. Call it “Scalloped Christophene & Sweet Potato” and you’ll have the idea.

What’s that, you don’t know what Christophene is? Poor you! It’s a Caribbean/Mexican veggie, considered a squash. In Mexico they call it Chayote Squash. Crispy-crunchy fresh, still a bit of tooth cooked, not a lot of flavor of it’s own but fun to eat, and no waste – the single seed is eaten along with the rest, and you needn’t peal it, plus they keep very well un-refrigerated on the boat.

And we have neighbors, too. In Vero Beach, you share moorings.

In this case, we’re sharing with the boat Katy, and wonder-of-wonders, they’re from Maine too!

Steve & Judy have been fine company – we handed over some fresh bread, and Judy sent over some of her wicked (as we say in Maine) Lentil curry. And to make the day complete, I pulled the plug in the bottom of Sionna and

ALMOST SANK THE BOAT…

Well no, actually I didn’t. But it’s ratings week on the blog, and since we don’t have any pictures of me cavorting nearly naked in the surf like most sailing blogs, I thought just a wee bit of drama induction would help us in the ratings. And I really did pull the plug in the bottom. Our speed log sensor is mounted through the belly, and it stopped working on our way up here Thursday, so I pulled it out to clean it, replacing it with the replacement plug provided for the purpose. We’ve never pulled it when we were in the water, so I wasn’t actually sure how much water would come in during the exchange, but it turns out the maker thought of that, and there’s a little valve-thingy in the hole that stops all but a trickle of water while you do the deed. Total anti-climax, but a relief to we-who-hate-sinking. And now we should have a speed/distance log again.

Plus some mighty good lentils and bread.

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Weather.

Really, everybody talks about it, but nobody ever DOES anything about it! So here we are, waiting for it.

When we arrived here in Tarpon Basin, off Key Largo, we’d chosen it specifically for shelter from the strong cold front that was expected to come through Florida, and sure enough, it was a doozy of a “Norther”, as we call them. Characteristically, Northers come with a major wind shift, often nearly 180 degrees, and such things are hard on anchored boats. When you set your anchor for, lets say, a southern wind, and then the wind suddenly starts blowing hard out of the north, the anchor has to either turn around (unlikely) or pull out of the ground and re-set in the opposite direction. And it’s that re-set that’s often the problem.

In the case of last Wednesday, about 11:30 pm, Sionna had no problem. Our “old fashioned” CQR anchor either turned or reset and we never moved from our spot.

Not so, one of our anchorage neighbors. (Sorry we have no photos of the exciting part – we were kinda busy.)

I never did get the boat name, but it was white with a red stripe, and missed us by MAYBE 3 feet as it slipped by, anchor dragging merrily across the bottom. And that was a worry too, because if his anchor had dragged over our chain, he would have hooked us loose too, and then there would be two boats drifting through the anchorage.

The term “Fuster-cluck” comes to mind, and it’s happened many times in many anchorages – though never to us. Yet. (Never say never!)

It’s also interesting and pleasing to me that Nicki answered the sub-conscious call from a sound sleep, suddenly waking with an uneasy feeling, and she got up to take a look around, in time to see the dragging boat headed our way, but still a ways off. She called me to put another eye on the situation, we confirmed he was getting closer, and then the drill kicked in: I dove below for warm clothes while Nicki started the engine and began trying to move us out of his direct path, pulling our anchor chain along the bottom a bit without disturbing the anchor itself. Soon as I was back she jumped below for clothing, turned on the GPS chart, depth sounder and radio and got out the spotlight and binoculars (surprisingly useful in the dark, actually), while I sounded the “Danger” sound signal (five blasts on the air horn) to alert the rest of the anchorage to the situation, and kept Sionna moving away from his path.

As for the dragger, it took those poor folks over an hour to get things cleaned up and get anchored again – this time way back downwind of everyone else. In the dark of a new moon, that is not a fun job, let me tell you. We sat in the cockpit the whole time, watching the boats around us, of course, but especially the three that were upwind of us, but nobody else budged as far as we could see.

So now it’s Friday morning, we’ve been here almost two days, and it feels like time to move along a bit. North is the goal, and north we shall go. Sunday the winds are forecast to go south and southeast, which will be our opportunity to cross the very wide and very shallow (which combination can stir up some wicked chop in a north wind) Biscayne Bay toward Miami.

Now our original plan had been to go around the Miami-Ft.Lauderdale area completely, go outside on the Atlantic for a night run up to Lake Worth, FL, and skip about 30 draw bridges. But looking at the forecast, there just isn’t a weather window to do that with any hope of a reasonable ride, so we’ve resigned ourselves to doing the bridge dance for a few days as we work our way slowly north. Here’s hoping we can hold on to our sanity for the next week while we get this stretch behind us!

Meanwhile, here’s our destination for today, which, with a name like “Long Arsenicker Island”, has a lot to live up to. And it’s depiction on the chart is, honestly, a giggle waiting to happen. Sometimes it’s the little things!

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Because a boat is never done.

Or perhaps more accurately, a boat never STAYS done. Anyway, we’re in Marathon, Florida, enjoying some time with friends Russell and Lynn from “Blue Highway” who have so generously opened their home-dock to us for a few days. The weather has been blowing stink for two days, news on the VHF radio is mostly about boats dragging anchor out in Boot Key Harbor, but we’re safe and snug and last night had a preliminary rum beverage unveiling to introduce Nicki’s latest masterpiece – the “Keys Breeze”

It. Was. Awesome. And will be featured in the official “Rum-Off”, scheduled for tomorrow evening. She’s looking to repeat her first win, back in 2017, which would make her record a solid 2-out-of-three against the home court contestant, Lynn. Tune in for the results next week!

So people ask us “Don’t you get bored with just hanging out on the boat?

Maybe we would – if we had more opportunity to just hang out. But as I’ve mentioned, boats are just entropy looking for a place to happen. The last couple of days have included the following:

Completely disassemble, clean, and reassemble the carburetor for the dinghy motor.

Cut down the head of the dinghy’s rudder so it fits under the boom of the sailing rig.

Move 250-plus pounds of trim ballast out of the stern of Sionna and find places for it somewhat forward of mid-ship.

ABOVE: See those pretty gray trapezoidal shaped blocks in the photo? Those are 50# (plus of minus) blocks of lead, which used to be under the berth in the aft cabin.

Back before we added the davits and began hanging the dinghy off the stern, Sionna needed that weight back there to make her float level fore-and-aft – what’s called “on her lines”. But when we added all that extra weight aft, she became distinctly tail heavy (“Down at the stern” – don’t you just love marine terms? I do!). Not only did that make her look a bit odd, it also effected how she responds to waves, making her more prone to Hobby-horsing (there’s another one!), or pitching nose up- nose down repeatedly. It’s a really uncomfortable motion, and potentially risky as she could bury her bow into a wave and cause damage.

A close-up of some of that lead – these three blocks add up to a little over 150#, moved from well behind her center of gravity to slightly forward of it, and about 2 feet lower in the boat. The other 100-some pounds is slightly farther forward.

Meanwhile Nicki has been busily replacing and re-attaching our fine mesh no-see-um screens throughout the boat. We are mighty tired of getting chewed up every night by Florida’s copious insect life, and have high hopes this will make us less of a main course for the little buggers!

So that’s life at the moment – a little here, a little there and we’re getting Sionna back in shape for the next 1300 miles up the eastern seaboard. See you there!

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I just realized that we’ve been back to the boat for a month now, and I’ve yet to share a single sunset picture.

Shocking – my reputation hangs by a thread…

It’s not that there haven’t been any sunsets. There have actually been several of note. The problem is that sunsets from a boat yard just don’t do the process of day’s ending justice.

Now that we’re underway, though (we’re anchored in San Carlos Bay, off Sanibel Island near Ft. Myers Beach) we have the opportunity to do some sunset-catchup.

So here you go!

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Cruising is often described (by cruisers) as “Fixing your boat in exotic places”.

That’s a joke. Hear me laughing?

Well, as I’ve mentioned before, we left Sionna alone in the storage yard for a lot longer than we intended, and boats really don’t like to be stored. Strange as it seems, they seem to deteriorate faster when they’re NOT being used than when they are.

Certainly that’s what we’ve found as we’ve worked like servants the last three weeks, getting Sionna ready to launch. Leak repairs, failed fasteners, epoxy and paint, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning… That’s been our lives.

But the boat always bats last. When we launched on Tuesday, we really felt like we’d done all that was needed, and had her well prepared for the season and trip home to Maine, right down to the shiny paint on her pretty little bottom.

But Sionna had one more trick up her sleeve, and she waited until we were in the water to show her hand.

Boats like Sionna cool their engines by pumping sea water through a heat exchanger. It’s the same principal as a car radiator, except using water instead of air. Trouble is, sea water is salty, and therefore corrosive. After the water has cooled the engine, it’s injected into the exhaust to cool that, and the device that does the injecting is called a “Mixing Elbow” – and mixing elbows are troublesome.

See the big black hose? That’s the outlet for exhaust and water leaving the elbow, and the small black hose near the top of the silver elbow is the water injection line from the engine block into the exhaust. Right there – where the water is supposed to meet the exhaust gasses – is where Sionna’s system was plugged when we started the engine, just minutes after launch. It’s a common problem, but one we’ve never encountered before.

Internet to the rescue! I tried several “easy” solutions, but the blockage was just too complete, and ultimately I removed the whole assembly (see the lead photo), laid it on the dock, and poured Muriatic Acid into the water inlet port repeatedly, rinsing with water in between, until finally the acid foamed out green and sulfur-smelling and opened the water passage again.

Sionna now has better cooling water flow than she’s had since we took over her care, the engine is happy, and we spent only $11.00 (and about 6 hours of our labor!) on the fix – a bargain!

Pink bubbly all around, including a drop for the good ship Sionna!

Right now we’re anchored off Cattle Dock Point, Near Port Charlotte, FL, and tomorrow plan to make our way to Cayo Costa Island, maybe for a couple days before we continue south. We’re moving, but we’re also recovering from the intensity of launching our Old Fat Boat. We’re taking it slow.

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Many blogs these days are what they call ” Monitized” – that is, they’ve been turned into a way to make money.

I’ve resisted that idea since I began this one, and I still have no interest in doing so. I write because I enjoy it, and I blog because friends and family expressed an interest in following along on our cruising adventures. To add a “business” flavor to it would somehow sully the process for me.

But that said, even I can be bought if the price is right. If you’ve followed us for a while, you’ll know that one of our weaknesses is good coffee. Not just “coffee”, but really exceptional coffee. That’s my price.

And it just so happens that one of the friends who follows us has been roasting his own beans for a couple of decades, first because he couldn’t get a good cup of joe in the Navy, and then because he became just a little bit obsessed with the hobby.

That obsession is paying off. “Jed” (John is his name, but his initials are JED, so that’s what we call his products) roasts the finest coffees Nicki and I have found anywhere between Maine and Key West Florida, and he’s become our one and only Patron, sending us samples of his roasts, asking for feedback, helping us brew it right to bring out the potential of his art…

An artist he is, and a fine, generous friend besides. And today a new shipment arrived, to get us started north in proper form. Last I heard he was offering small batches of his coffee for sale, and I hope that little sideline takes off for him.

There will be a few mighty happy coffee drinkers in the world if it does.

Thanks John!

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Sionna is as ready as we can make her right now – And that’s ready enough.

The work list for launching has been staggeringly long this time, and it’s all due to that sun that we love so much, that we yearn for when those northern nights get long and the temperature drops. Sun is hard on a boat.

Paint that looked fine 2 years ago is coming off in patches, and – as I’ve previously posted – there are signs of interior damage to the fiberglass deck, corrosion of hidden fasteners, leaks where rainwater can seep in below, etc. Sionna is still structurally sound, yes: no worries there right now. But it’s also clear that the work we’ve done this last two weeks – while enough to make us safe and comfortable – is only the beginning of what we’ll need to tackle in the near future. It’s time our 57-year-old darling had a refit.

“What’s a refit?”, you ask?

Basically it’s an overhaul. An inspection and reworking of anything you see – or can’t see – that might effect her long-term soundness and servicability. In our case, we’ve identified several areas that we need to address, but chief among those is the joint between hull and the deck. This is a critical join in any boat, and we see evidence in several areas that the bronze screws that hold that seam together are becoming weaker with age. That’s no surprise, in a boat that’s seen over a half-century of service, but it is also a big deal to address. From here, I’d say that Sionna will likely miss an entire sailing season once we get her home.

But in the meantime we’ve just finished moving all our gear back aboard (above is but one of several loads!), and just yesterday we had our first meal in the cockpit! Granted the ambiance of the boatyard lacks a certain “something”, but at was a step in the right direction, at least.

Our launching has been delayed twice: First due to the need for a little extra time with family (which thankfully took the pressure off the boat work), and the second – today – because of high winds, which made transporting the boat overland, and then lifting her in slings, seem like a risky proposition. So now we’re scheduled to hang in the slings on Monday afternoon, and splash on Tuesday morning.

If all goes as planned! But of course this is cruising, so we’re not holding our breaths.

Fingers crossed for a launching on Tuesday! This boatyard living really is the blues…

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“Inside every simple boat project is a big problem, waiting to get out”. (Mike & Lori, ex s/v Cheshire)

Yup!

Since we arrived back at Sionna on January 16th, we’ve been hard at it pretty much continuously, moving from one task to the next, sometimes, and sometimes from one aspect of a task to something else, then back to the first project, and then…

Where epoxy and paint are concerned, you have to allow time for things to set and dry, of course. But more importantly you sometimes need to protect your mental and physical health by changing tasks for a bit. Get up and stretch, go think about something else for a while, then come back later, refreshed and comfortable, to continue where you left off.

One of the first things we noticed on arrival was the stains on the deck that seemed to have no source. Closer examination showed that we have a problem – those stains are actually from a corroded screw buried in the fiberglass, and the closer we looked, the more we found.

To date, I’ve drilled 20 holes in the deck, each 1/2″ diameter, and then filled the hole with epoxy. Where an old fastener was we fill and fair, then nearby we drill for a new screw, install that, then epoxy over the hole and paint the whole area. It’s labor intensive, but should result in the same strength as the original construction which – after all – lasted for over 50 years.

While I’ve been drilling holes in the boat, Nicki has been a cleaning-white-tornado. The boat kept pretty well, all things considered, but still there’s a layer of grime on everything, and in some corners and overhead surfaces there’s a bit of mold, so she’s been over absolutely the whole boat interior with a fine-toothed brush-and-rag, and the difference is stunning. Sionna looks like a home again – she’s even started polishing and waxing the topsides!

And it finally feels like we’re getting ahead of our work list. What started out as 10 items (compiled before we left Maine) naturally expanded to a full page-plus when we arrived.

Then for about a week we were regularly checking things off, but we added even more items as we noticed them – including a couple of leaks, as I mentioned – so it was hard to see much progress there for a while.

But now we’re winding down. Saturday I re-finished and reinstalled the deck box (above, with our secondary anchor in place), and yesterday Nicki cleaned in the aft cabin, then waxed part of the prow while I re-coated the inside of the fridge with epoxy, filled holes in the deck, and scrubbed the entire bottom in preparation for repainting with anti-fouling – a big nasty job. I was streaked and spotted blue by the time I escaped and Nicki’s arms were turning to jelly, but the bottom looks good and the hull is beginning to sparkle.

It won’t be long now…

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