Header 2021
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Guest Picture Post
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| Charlotte to Nassau |
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| Charlotte to Nassau |
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| Nassau Harbor Club Marina |
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| Kintala at Nassau Harbour Club Marina. The East Channel Anchorage is in the background |
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| Nassau Harbour Club Marina |
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| Nassau Harbour East Channel Anchorage |
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| Kintala in Nassau Harbour Club Marina |
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| Captain hard at work |
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| All kinds of unique boats in Nassau |
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| The Paradise Island bridges in Nassau Harbour |
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| Wooo Hooooo! 72 feet clearance finally! |
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| Some of the many unique houses that line the Nassau Harbour |
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| Departing Nassau 4-27-14 |
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| One of the casinos on Paradise Island |
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| Cruise anyone? |
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| Off Watch |
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| There are many restaurants along the harbour. They love to take American money. |
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| The perfect boat for our friend Bill and Pam and Spiro |
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| A floating house along the shores of Nassau Harbour |
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| Another boat anchored with us in Chub Cay |
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| One of many ubiquitous lighthouses in the Bahama |
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| Sapona wreck. A great place to snorkel |
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| A stormy sunset at Bimini |
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| The scifi sunset at Bimini |
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| We both took literally hundreds of pictures of this sunset. It was one of the most amazing ones we've ever seen. |
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| Looking from Brown's Marina out into the Bimini Harbour Channel |
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| Money money everywhere |
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Sharks and a cure for the winter time blues
(Ed note: Pictures will be forthcoming. We just don't have enough bandwidth for pictures here at Chub.)
Friend Kacey was scheduled to join us in Nassau, so Kintala took to a dock early yesterday morning at the Nassau Harbor Club Hotel & Marina. It was okay with a nice pool, good service, solid docks, and the price wasn't extortion level highway robbery. There were a handful of mega-yachts that, if you didn't think about what a thoughtful person could do with that kind of money, were pretty amazing bits of engineering. (One went by that rents for – I kid you not - $200,000.00 a WEEK!) But the bathrooms in the marina left much to be desired. I'm sure the mega yacht folks don't bother with them.
Taking a dock seemed the easiest way to get provisions, gas, water, booze, more data for the phone, do some laundry, and generally get ready for a guest. (Our first since departing Oak Harbor.) Kacey arrived without drama, we stopped at the Poop Deck for dinner, (nice place, good service, food was fine, not sure why I wasn't more impressed) then settled in for the night.
Deb and I debated the weather for a bit. This was to be Kacey's first open water experience and we were hoping to make a good introduction. (Not sure why he chose going with me for his first foray into the Big Blue; he has been reading the blog ...) Nassau to Chub Cay at the bottom of the Berry Islands is a nice, 40 nm run in deep, deep water; like 9770 feet deep under part of our track today. That makes for an ocean of color that just soaks into the soul and makes all well with the world. Especially so when the Water Goddess grants a day like today; a gentle Force 4 deep reach and run with waves of barely a foot riding a placid, 3 foot swell on something like an 11 second period. It just doesn't get any better and 7+50 later the hook landed on yet another perfect white sand bottom. It was the longest, best sail of the trip so far.
Deb served up a dinner of pork chops, corn on the cob, and sweet potatoes; after which Kacey hit the water for a tropical swim. He endured the mid-western season of subzero temperatures, howling winds, snow, and storm after storm. A day in the sunshine and sparkling turquoise water rolling up on a sugar white beach was a dream come true for a winter refugee, an opportunity not to be missed. A few minutes later he was back on board having caught sight of 6 feet worth of shark checking out the anchorage. Shortly thereafter it cruised under Kintala's cockpit giving Kacey and Deb a good look from a more comfortable perspective. (I was below pecking out this entry and so missed the first shark sighting of the trip.) Midwestern lake sailors and sharks are not well acquainted, and I think Kacey aims to keep it that way.
The plan for tomorrow is an oh-so-dark-thirty anchor up to make a 75 mile run toward Cat or Gun Cay. The edge of the Bahama Bank is about a 3 hour sail west and we hope to get there just as the sun comes up. Thirteen hours of daylight will then be ours in which to find a place to park for tomorrow night. I'm sure hundreds of boats have passed over the Banks on overnight passages in just the last couple of weeks, but Kintala isn't going to be one of them this year. On our three night runs since leaving the States we have taken three various kinds of beatings; cold and sick, cold and rough, rough and sick. I'm sure there is more of the same in our future, but I would like to hold off for a while before having another night like Hope Town to Egg Cay.
The intent is to send Kacey home thinking days like today are normal for full-time, live-a-board, curisers wandering the western edge of the mid-Atlantic. Someone else can spoil the illusion for him.
Friend Kacey was scheduled to join us in Nassau, so Kintala took to a dock early yesterday morning at the Nassau Harbor Club Hotel & Marina. It was okay with a nice pool, good service, solid docks, and the price wasn't extortion level highway robbery. There were a handful of mega-yachts that, if you didn't think about what a thoughtful person could do with that kind of money, were pretty amazing bits of engineering. (One went by that rents for – I kid you not - $200,000.00 a WEEK!) But the bathrooms in the marina left much to be desired. I'm sure the mega yacht folks don't bother with them.
Taking a dock seemed the easiest way to get provisions, gas, water, booze, more data for the phone, do some laundry, and generally get ready for a guest. (Our first since departing Oak Harbor.) Kacey arrived without drama, we stopped at the Poop Deck for dinner, (nice place, good service, food was fine, not sure why I wasn't more impressed) then settled in for the night.
Deb and I debated the weather for a bit. This was to be Kacey's first open water experience and we were hoping to make a good introduction. (Not sure why he chose going with me for his first foray into the Big Blue; he has been reading the blog ...) Nassau to Chub Cay at the bottom of the Berry Islands is a nice, 40 nm run in deep, deep water; like 9770 feet deep under part of our track today. That makes for an ocean of color that just soaks into the soul and makes all well with the world. Especially so when the Water Goddess grants a day like today; a gentle Force 4 deep reach and run with waves of barely a foot riding a placid, 3 foot swell on something like an 11 second period. It just doesn't get any better and 7+50 later the hook landed on yet another perfect white sand bottom. It was the longest, best sail of the trip so far.
Deb served up a dinner of pork chops, corn on the cob, and sweet potatoes; after which Kacey hit the water for a tropical swim. He endured the mid-western season of subzero temperatures, howling winds, snow, and storm after storm. A day in the sunshine and sparkling turquoise water rolling up on a sugar white beach was a dream come true for a winter refugee, an opportunity not to be missed. A few minutes later he was back on board having caught sight of 6 feet worth of shark checking out the anchorage. Shortly thereafter it cruised under Kintala's cockpit giving Kacey and Deb a good look from a more comfortable perspective. (I was below pecking out this entry and so missed the first shark sighting of the trip.) Midwestern lake sailors and sharks are not well acquainted, and I think Kacey aims to keep it that way.
The plan for tomorrow is an oh-so-dark-thirty anchor up to make a 75 mile run toward Cat or Gun Cay. The edge of the Bahama Bank is about a 3 hour sail west and we hope to get there just as the sun comes up. Thirteen hours of daylight will then be ours in which to find a place to park for tomorrow night. I'm sure hundreds of boats have passed over the Banks on overnight passages in just the last couple of weeks, but Kintala isn't going to be one of them this year. On our three night runs since leaving the States we have taken three various kinds of beatings; cold and sick, cold and rough, rough and sick. I'm sure there is more of the same in our future, but I would like to hold off for a while before having another night like Hope Town to Egg Cay.
The intent is to send Kacey home thinking days like today are normal for full-time, live-a-board, curisers wandering the western edge of the mid-Atlantic. Someone else can spoil the illusion for him.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Newly Salted Final Version - Kintala at 6 months
A few days ago we posted our questions for the Newly Salted Interview site and asked you to help us pare them down to the "around 10" that they require. Instead of comments, most of you emailed and after tallying the emails here is the final version that is being submitted. Thanks for the input!
For those of you who might not know us, we're Tim and Deb of the Tartan 42 Kintala and of The Retirement Project site. After nearly 7 years of planning, of which 4 years was on a learner boat and 3 years refitting our current cruiser, we cut the dock lines on October 19th of 2013. We decided to go cruising for two major reasons: because we wanted to retire early and we didn't have sufficient funds to do that in a land-based retirement, and because we've been becoming increasingly disenchanted with the political and economical status quo in the US. Today is our 6 month anniversary so it seemed appropriate to review and evaluate. Having used both the Interview With a Cruiser and Newly Salted sites for some of our pre-departure knowledge, we thought it particularly appropriate to use that venue for our evaluation. We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to our preparation. Websites, blogs, friends, all became an intimate part of our readiness. Hopefully we have paid it forward to those who are still stuck in cubicle land and dreaming. We're here to say that the dream is definitely worth pursuing.
Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
Deb: Solar Panels. Since Tim's company closed his department before we were quite done with the boat, some things had to wait due to limited funds and the solar panels was one of them. We do OK with the Honda generator, but it would be nice to have a quiet source of power that would allow sitting in the cockpit without the generator noise. Don't get me wrong – as far as generators go, the Honda is the best and the quietest, but I'd still rather have less noise.
Tim: Inverter and WiFi extender. Being “off the grid” is better when it is a choice of just hitting the “off” switch and using “cruising” as the excuse for not bothering with email.
How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Deb: We've had a couple days of 5+ft waves and not quite 30 knots of wind which isn't much, but it's still more than I would like to have on a routine basis. Most of our bad experiences have been due to a lack of planning.
Tim: We have tried to be very conservative with weather so “bad” is a relative term. Still, as careful as we try to be we have taken a couple of serious poundings to windward with apparent winds of 30+ knots in steep and short period waves. Weather forecasting is often not specific or detailed enough to know exactly what is lurking “out there”. Two similar weather forecasts can lead to two very different experiences depending on the direction of the boat, the sail set, and just the emotional state of the crew at that particular moment. Also, turning around (except for bailing out of a Gulf Stream passage early) is usually not much of an option. Once gone one simply has to take whatever weather comes along. For us it has often been worse than expected.
What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn’t find to be true?
Deb: I was worried about the culture of excess drinking. We drink, but not as much as a lot of people, and never to the point of being drunk. I was worried that we wouldn't fit in if we didn't drink as much as everyone else. We haven't been to any of the big hotspots yet like Georgetown or Marathon which might be different, but so far I've found the cruisers we've met to be careful, attentive, dedicated sailors that limit their intake. In six months I have yet to see a drunk cruiser.
Tim: This is not, ultimately, a more relaxed way to live than on land. It can be some of the time, but one is very exposed to the weather on a boat. Wind and rain barely noticed on land will make for long days on the water, and even longer nights. Everything takes more effort, shopping, laundry, routine maintenance, launching the dink, keeping track of consumables. Cruisers don't often work for anyone else, but keeping this little floating house livable is a full time job.
What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Deb: The SSB. We bought a used one from a friend but it will never be installed. It's a very large and complex piece of equipment that would require major installation dollars on our boat and everyone I know who owns one has a terrible time with it. We will be buying a small, portable SSB receiver so we can listen to the weather and do weather faxes. With the new HF Weather Fax app on the iPad, and the Delorme InReach for emergency communication, we just don't see any reason to have it on the boat.
Tim: We brought too many sails (6) and have yet to make a sail change. A perfect rig to me would be jib and stay sail on rollers, a main with 3 reef points (We only have two.) and a bullet proof storm stay sail that would go over the inner stay sail.
What do you dislike about cruising that surprised you?
Deb: I've been struggling with seasickness a lot more than I expected. Our boat rolls a lot at anchorages and that pendulum motion just does me in. I never get nauseated, I'm just tired and have a headache and feel dizzy a lot.
Tim: A lack of creature comforts; a comfortable chair, an occasional movie on a big screen, a bit of AC once in a while. Some heat now and then would sure be nice as well.
What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?
Deb: That you will motor more than you think. We still motor way less than most people because we're rarely in a hurry to get anywhere but we motored almost the whole way down the ICW which I hated.
Tim: Cruisers spend way more time sitting still than we do moving.
What gear do you love the most?
Deb: Our iPads hands down. We use the for our primary navigation with both the Garmin Bluechart Mobile and the Navionics apps on both iPads. We also have Sailgrib and Weather Bug and Marine Weather on both of them. We keep one in the cockpit and the other one plugged in charging at all times. We still have the chart plotter on the helm, a GPS down below, and backup GPS navigation on both our phones as well as on both our laptops. A very close tie for best gear though is our Honda generator. It's our main source of charging and we simply love it!
Tim: Navigation on iPads.
Tell me your favorite and least favorite thing about your boat.
Deb: My favorite thing is the way the light plays off the teak inside in the morning sunshine. I love the inside of our boat. It feels like our home, something that's important to me since it's our full time home. I also love my galley. It fits me and everything is in the right place (bet you don't hear that often!) My least favorite is the cockpit. Our boat has a very narrow stern which is a good thing for large following seas, but it limits the cockpit storage and the size of the seats. We only have one locker in the cockpit which is taken up with cushions, cords, hoses, etc., and there's no room for sails. This means the aft berth is full of sails and I hate clutter so it bugs me. We also do not have any seat long enough to stretch out on which is a problem on overnight passages because we like to stay in the cockpit together, even when off watch.
Tim: Favorite? It sails well, and looks good. (Life is too short to live on an ugly boat.) My least favorite is the 30 year old WesterBeast motor. The boat is underpowered and the engine hard to service.
What is your biggest lesson learned?
Deb: I'm conflicted on this one. I want to say buy the boat for coastal cruising and living aboard at anchor because you will do that more than 99% of the time, but we listened to the experts and bought a bluewater cruiser and the 1% of the time that we end up offshore in bad weather I'll be glad we did. We do compromise on comfort and utility because we're in a bluewater cruiser. When we did our offshore training passages I loved being out there, but I've found I like it less now. I've been thinking a lot about why this is and I think the reason for the difference is that we had many hands to help on those passages and now we only have the two of us. Extra hands to spread the work makes a huge difference. Had I the chance to do it again, I would probably buy a coastal cruiser and not plan on any passages more than one night.
Tim: That this was probably not the best choice of a boat.
How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?
Deb: This is something we did right. Being in aviation, we're over-planners. Since we had no sailing experience prior to deciding on our retirement plans, we took ASA 101, 103, 104, 105, 114 sailing classes and bought a Compac 27 early on to practice on our home lake, Carlyle Lake in Illinois outside of St. Louis. We learned about living on a boat and maintaining a boat the four years we sailed the Compac. When we realize we were ready to begin to look for our cruising boat, we took the summer/fall of 2010 and scheduled 3 training voyages to help us decide what boat to buy. We did a circumnavigation of Long Island in a Pearson 35 leaving Tom's River, NJ and sailing around Block Island, down Long Island Sound, through the city of New York, past Sandy Hook and back to Tom's River in 7 days. We chose that one because we felt a 35 footer was the smallest boat we could live on full time without killing each other. Next we took our ASA 114 catamaran course in Pensacola Beach, FL because we still hadn't resolved the monohull-catamaran debate. We found out that we love catamarans but simply can't afford one. Last we took a training voyage with John Kretschmer on Quetzal, a Kaufman 47, because we thought that would be about the largest boat we could comfortably handle with just the two of us. Those three trips were expensive for us, but they were priceless in the knowledge we gained.
Tim: Charter – charter
– then charter some more. It is a bit counterproductive in that
charter money is money not available for buying a boat. But there is
no substitute for living on different kinds of boats in all kinds of
conditions for discovering what you need to know to make decisions
that will work for you. Pay very little attention to what the “Old
Salts” say. For the most part they have been wrong about
everything. Old boats, small boats, simple boats, diminuitive
cockpits, basic navigation gear, “blue water” boats (near
complete B.S.), pilot berths, narrow hulls, this or that
manufacturer, sloop or cutter or ketch, center cockpit, aft cockpit,
… don't listen to any of it. They don't sail like you sail, go
where you go, or know what you like. Your best hope, after
chartering, is to find someone who is out there right now, with a
kind of boat you can afford, sailing in the places you might want to
sail, who will share what they have learned.
In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how?
Deb: I would say categorically no. Our relationship is a little different because the cruising thing was my dream and Tim was willing to go along, but I've met a lot of women who were reluctant spouses and they are pretty unhappy. I guess if you had a spouse that was sensitive to your needs it might work, but my experience is that it's just not worth it if both members of the couple are not eager to succeed. It's just too hard of a change unless you're 100% behind it.
Tim: You can, but both will likely regret it.
Deb: That anchorages everywhere are little communities. I've found that unless I get in the dinghy and go to meet other people, we won't meet. For the most part I find people stay to themselves on their own boats unless they're traveling with someone. When we do go introduce ourselves they're always glad that we came, but it's as if everyone is sitting there waiting for someone else to go first.
Tim: That
going from land living to cruising will take anything less than all
of your effort, most of your money, and rank as one of the hardest
transitions you will ever make.
Kintala at 6 months
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| Photo courtesy of our good friend and fellow cruiser, John Dakins |
Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
Deb: Solar Panels. Since Tim's company closed his department before we were quite done with the boat, some things had to wait due to limited funds and the solar panels was one of them. We do OK with the Honda generator, but it would be nice to have a quiet source of power that would allow sitting in the cockpit without the generator noise. Don't get me wrong – as far as generators go, the Honda is the best and the quietest, but I'd still rather have less noise.
Tim: Inverter and WiFi extender. Being “off the grid” is better when it is a choice of just hitting the “off” switch and using “cruising” as the excuse for not bothering with email.
How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Deb: We've had a couple days of 5+ft waves and not quite 30 knots of wind which isn't much, but it's still more than I would like to have on a routine basis. Most of our bad experiences have been due to a lack of planning.
Tim: We have tried to be very conservative with weather so “bad” is a relative term. Still, as careful as we try to be we have taken a couple of serious poundings to windward with apparent winds of 30+ knots in steep and short period waves. Weather forecasting is often not specific or detailed enough to know exactly what is lurking “out there”. Two similar weather forecasts can lead to two very different experiences depending on the direction of the boat, the sail set, and just the emotional state of the crew at that particular moment. Also, turning around (except for bailing out of a Gulf Stream passage early) is usually not much of an option. Once gone one simply has to take whatever weather comes along. For us it has often been worse than expected.
What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn’t find to be true?
Deb: I was worried about the culture of excess drinking. We drink, but not as much as a lot of people, and never to the point of being drunk. I was worried that we wouldn't fit in if we didn't drink as much as everyone else. We haven't been to any of the big hotspots yet like Georgetown or Marathon which might be different, but so far I've found the cruisers we've met to be careful, attentive, dedicated sailors that limit their intake. In six months I have yet to see a drunk cruiser.
Tim: This is not, ultimately, a more relaxed way to live than on land. It can be some of the time, but one is very exposed to the weather on a boat. Wind and rain barely noticed on land will make for long days on the water, and even longer nights. Everything takes more effort, shopping, laundry, routine maintenance, launching the dink, keeping track of consumables. Cruisers don't often work for anyone else, but keeping this little floating house livable is a full time job.
What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Deb: The SSB. We bought a used one from a friend but it will never be installed. It's a very large and complex piece of equipment that would require major installation dollars on our boat and everyone I know who owns one has a terrible time with it. We will be buying a small, portable SSB receiver so we can listen to the weather and do weather faxes. With the new HF Weather Fax app on the iPad, and the Delorme InReach for emergency communication, we just don't see any reason to have it on the boat.
Tim: We brought too many sails (6) and have yet to make a sail change. A perfect rig to me would be jib and stay sail on rollers, a main with 3 reef points (We only have two.) and a bullet proof storm stay sail that would go over the inner stay sail.
What do you dislike about cruising that surprised you?
Deb: I've been struggling with seasickness a lot more than I expected. Our boat rolls a lot at anchorages and that pendulum motion just does me in. I never get nauseated, I'm just tired and have a headache and feel dizzy a lot.
Tim: A lack of creature comforts; a comfortable chair, an occasional movie on a big screen, a bit of AC once in a while. Some heat now and then would sure be nice as well.
What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?
Deb: That you will motor more than you think. We still motor way less than most people because we're rarely in a hurry to get anywhere but we motored almost the whole way down the ICW which I hated.
Tim: Cruisers spend way more time sitting still than we do moving.
What gear do you love the most?
Deb: Our iPads hands down. We use the for our primary navigation with both the Garmin Bluechart Mobile and the Navionics apps on both iPads. We also have Sailgrib and Weather Bug and Marine Weather on both of them. We keep one in the cockpit and the other one plugged in charging at all times. We still have the chart plotter on the helm, a GPS down below, and backup GPS navigation on both our phones as well as on both our laptops. A very close tie for best gear though is our Honda generator. It's our main source of charging and we simply love it!
Tim: Navigation on iPads.
Tell me your favorite and least favorite thing about your boat.
Deb: My favorite thing is the way the light plays off the teak inside in the morning sunshine. I love the inside of our boat. It feels like our home, something that's important to me since it's our full time home. I also love my galley. It fits me and everything is in the right place (bet you don't hear that often!) My least favorite is the cockpit. Our boat has a very narrow stern which is a good thing for large following seas, but it limits the cockpit storage and the size of the seats. We only have one locker in the cockpit which is taken up with cushions, cords, hoses, etc., and there's no room for sails. This means the aft berth is full of sails and I hate clutter so it bugs me. We also do not have any seat long enough to stretch out on which is a problem on overnight passages because we like to stay in the cockpit together, even when off watch.
Tim: Favorite? It sails well, and looks good. (Life is too short to live on an ugly boat.) My least favorite is the 30 year old WesterBeast motor. The boat is underpowered and the engine hard to service.
What is your biggest lesson learned?
Deb: I'm conflicted on this one. I want to say buy the boat for coastal cruising and living aboard at anchor because you will do that more than 99% of the time, but we listened to the experts and bought a bluewater cruiser and the 1% of the time that we end up offshore in bad weather I'll be glad we did. We do compromise on comfort and utility because we're in a bluewater cruiser. When we did our offshore training passages I loved being out there, but I've found I like it less now. I've been thinking a lot about why this is and I think the reason for the difference is that we had many hands to help on those passages and now we only have the two of us. Extra hands to spread the work makes a huge difference. Had I the chance to do it again, I would probably buy a coastal cruiser and not plan on any passages more than one night.
Tim: That this was probably not the best choice of a boat.
How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?
Deb: This is something we did right. Being in aviation, we're over-planners. Since we had no sailing experience prior to deciding on our retirement plans, we took ASA 101, 103, 104, 105, 114 sailing classes and bought a Compac 27 early on to practice on our home lake, Carlyle Lake in Illinois outside of St. Louis. We learned about living on a boat and maintaining a boat the four years we sailed the Compac. When we realize we were ready to begin to look for our cruising boat, we took the summer/fall of 2010 and scheduled 3 training voyages to help us decide what boat to buy. We did a circumnavigation of Long Island in a Pearson 35 leaving Tom's River, NJ and sailing around Block Island, down Long Island Sound, through the city of New York, past Sandy Hook and back to Tom's River in 7 days. We chose that one because we felt a 35 footer was the smallest boat we could live on full time without killing each other. Next we took our ASA 114 catamaran course in Pensacola Beach, FL because we still hadn't resolved the monohull-catamaran debate. We found out that we love catamarans but simply can't afford one. Last we took a training voyage with John Kretschmer on Quetzal, a Kaufman 47, because we thought that would be about the largest boat we could comfortably handle with just the two of us. Those three trips were expensive for us, but they were priceless in the knowledge we gained.
In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how?
Deb: I would say categorically no. Our relationship is a little different because the cruising thing was my dream and Tim was willing to go along, but I've met a lot of women who were reluctant spouses and they are pretty unhappy. I guess if you had a spouse that was sensitive to your needs it might work, but my experience is that it's just not worth it if both members of the couple are not eager to succeed. It's just too hard of a change unless you're 100% behind it.
Tim: You can, but both will likely regret it.
What do you think is a common cruising myth?
Deb: That anchorages everywhere are little communities. I've found that unless I get in the dinghy and go to meet other people, we won't meet. For the most part I find people stay to themselves on their own boats unless they're traveling with someone. When we do go introduce ourselves they're always glad that we came, but it's as if everyone is sitting there waiting for someone else to go first.
Nassau
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| The calm sunset lured us into staying another night... |
With the sun up we skipped both breakfast and coffee (yep, it was that bad) and were still number four for departure; three other boats having already made their escape. It was slow work on the pitching deck, but soon enough the anchor was secure and Deb was steering us toward Nassau Harbor's East entrance. Harbor Control blessed our intentions and then we were settled in the East anchorage, just off the marina we will visit tomorrow for a night, with coffee in hand and feeling much better about our world.
Nassau gets mixed reviews from cruisers that have come this way before us. It is late afternoon now and I have to admit to a tiny bit of disappointment. Until today, our experience with the Bahamian people has been nothing but positive. They are a friendly, courteous, helpful, kind people ... right up until they get to Nassau and fire up a jet ski or overpowered fishing skiff. Then, for reasons completely beyond rational thinking, they go blasting through the middle of the anchored assembled, apparently collecting extra points for cutting it as close as they can, double if they are towing – again as fast as they can go - an empty jet ski behind them on a bit of twine. (Three such have gone past us in the last couple of hours and they have been trashing the place 15 - 20 times an hour since we got here.) Acts of idiocy equaling anything ever witnessed on Lake Carlyle during a holiday weekend. Apparently power craft stupid is an international disease, with Jet ski stupid being the most virulent form of the virus.
Other than that, I kind of like this place. It isn't protected like Treasure Cay or Spanish Wells, and it certainly isn't the in-a-foreign-country experience that was Hatchet Bay. (The line of cruise ship behemoths on the other side of the bridge might have something to do with that.) It is, for us, just a place to pick up a friend, put on some provisions, and head off again. But it is still something other than the US of A, and I'll just take it as it is, thank you.
Though it would be much improved without the jackass powered jet skis.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Thanks, we needed that ...
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| Dawn at Hatchet Bay |
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| Not too many people leaving this morning |
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| Bye Bye best dinghy dock ever... |
And I remembered, THIS is why we came this way!
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| Leaving the 90ft cut in much more settled weather than we came in! |
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| Sunset over Nassau from Rose Island |
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| Sunset over Nassau from Rose Island |
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Exploring Bahamas Communication
Long Disclaimer: Communication and connectivity while cruising
the Bahamas is a challenge at best. Before we left to come over here
I spent a lot of time trying to collect information, and while I was
able to get a good bit from the Women Who Sail Facebook group through
various posts, there was some information not included so I decided
to do this post on our own experience. Your communication and
connectivity needs might be different so please understand that this
is what works for us and while you might glean some useful
information from it, it also largely depends on who your US carrier
is. We have Verizon, and before you groan, we have been with Verizon
since the very first cell phones came out and have never had a
complaint. We have found their tech and customer service to be of the
highest quality, although to be fair, we have attained VIP status on
their customer list since we've been with them continuously for so
long so we tend to get a little more prioritized service. While I
have had varying degrees of satisfaction with certain physical
equipment, that's a manufacturer issue. The Verizon network has been
good for us with excellent coverage and speed. As a result, the
information in this post is geared toward having a Verizon account
and I have no idea how that differs with any other carrier. If you do
have first hand information, please comment.
Being "off the grid" is a highly modified term in our cruising dictionary. If we didn't have 7-soon-to-be-8 grand kids back in the States it would be a non-issue, but since we do, we like our connectivity. What can I say? If I'm less of a cruiser for that, then so be it, but the expression on my grandson's face when we Skyped with him while going under a bridge on the ICW ("Dema you're going to hit the bridge!! No way are you going to fit!") was worth it all. So the communications challenges here in the Bahamas are a very personal thing to this grandma. After two months we've sort of made peace with it and here's what we found out.
If you're going to cruise the Bahamas with Verizon and you want internet, the first thing to find out is whether your phone is 1) global ready and 2) if it's unlocked and 3) if it has a sim card. My Droid Razr Maxx HD was all of those three, butTim's Droid X was not so we've been using only my phone. If you have a global ready phone that's not unlocked, you can get an unlock code from a lot of websites that are out there expressly for that purpose. Buyer beware though: a lot of times they'll sell you a code for a phone that can't be unlocked, and Verizon has very few unlocked phones. Needless to say, there's no refund. If you have a Verizon locked phone, the chance of getting it unlocked is pretty slim. If you don't have a global ready phone at all, you either have to get a new one via the internet or wait till you get to the Bahamas and buy one from them. Their prices are quite reasonable so I would recommend the latter. I saw a good selection of smart phones for under $100 outright in their display case.
Given that we had a global ready phone that was already unlocked, we were able to move onto the next choice in our journey toward connectivity which was the choice of 1) just continuing to pay our normal bill while we were gone even though we weren't using it 2) suspending the account for the two months and continuing to pay or 3) suspending the account for the two months and not receiving a bill to pay. We chose to just continue to pay our normal bill because I still have a contract on my phone and it would have extended two months if we had suspended the account without payment. We were also worried about Tim's phone if we suspended the account because he's grandfathered into the unlimited internet and we didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize that. Verizon assured us that it would not affect it, but I lost my grandfathered unlimited over a communication snafu and we didn't want to risk that.
We used my phone even 30 miles offshore sometimes for weather. Verizon's coverage is pretty amazing. We did have a dead zone between that offshore limit and acquiring a sim in the Bahamas but as soon as we got to a place that had a Batelco, we bought a Bahamian sim card. If you see a Batelco tower on an island, there is an office either directly beneath it or very near by. All of them have sims, but if your phone takes the micro sim (which mine does) it will have to be cut. The Bahamian cards are the SD size. Most but not all Batelco offices in the Bahamas have the sim card cutter which is like a hole punch, but the one we went to in Green Turtle Cay did not. You can get a template to cut the card online and it might be a good idea to print one out before you leave just in case. I had to cut mine, which I did with a good, sharp pair of scissors and then sanded the edges to fit with an emery board. It's not difficult but you do need to be precise and if you screw it up you're out the $15 for the sim. Be sure to keep your original Verizon sim in a safe place free of moisture so you can reinstall it when approaching the US. With your sim card you will be assigned a Bahamian phone number which will be yours as long as you have that sim. Once you get the sim installed, you're on to the next step.
This next step was the most confusing part of the whole Bahamian phone/internet thing for me because no one explained it to me and I had to figure it out by trial and error. If you want actual phone voice capabilities other than Skype, you have to buy a separate card for phone time. I bought just a $5.00 card so if I wanted to call a Bahamian business I could. We sometimes call ahead for mooring reservations. If you're calling in the Bahamas to another Bahama number the prices are reasonable, I believe it's $.27 per minute but don't be tempted to use this for calls to the US because it's expensive, I think somewhere around $.47 a minute. It's less than using Verizon ($2.00 per minute for calls originating from the Bahamas), but it's still better to use Skype for voice calls. I found that I can buy a monthly subscription on Skype for voice calls to land line phones and mobiles for $6.99 per month. Since my daughters are most easily reached on land line or mobile phones, I did that. One caveat: I did find that I can't call them on Skype when I'm using my phone as a USB internet tether. I have to do it on wifi. I can use Skype to do voice calls to other Skype users or video calls to other Skype users while tethered, just not voice to landlines or mobiles. As a point of information, we use the PdaNet Android app for tethering because it works with Tim's unlimited data plan. It works really well, well enough in fact to stream Netflix.
Another feature we recently discovered works well here in the Bahamas, once you get your internet card up and working, is the Facebook Messenger app. You can text through it as well as voice calls if the person on the other end is also on a smart phone with the app installed. Just look for the small phone icon in the window where you write the message. If it's there then you can call that person. The quality is good and it's free the same as Skype.
For internet access on your phone, you have to purchase separate internet datacards at a Batelco office or a designated outlet, of which there are many all over the islands. A lot of grocery store and gift shops and even some restaurants have them. Just look for the ever so visible “Top it Up” banners at your favorite retailer. During the season they cost $30 for 2 gigs, a price that is even lower than a lot of data in the US. In March we got them for $20 for 2 gigs, and now in April they're $15 for 2 gigs. As long as you don't activate them, they last till the expiration date printed on the cards. As an example, our cards purchased in April of 2014 had a July 2015 expiration date on them. Stock up at the end of the season, and bring them back the following year. If you register on their site for an account you can also top up online, although the two times I tried to do it the system was down and the outlets for the cards are so ubiquitous that it's really not difficult to buy another card.
Activating these cards is a two-fold process. You first must apply them to your account by dialing *202# and hitting send and following the menu. You will have to choose the Data option and then input your pin number which is under a scratch-off strip on the back of the data card you're activating. After you finish that portion, it will show you have $30 applied to your account and they will send you a text to let you know it was successful. OK here's the part no one seemed to find necessary to mention. After you have applied the $30 to your account, that total amount is good for 90 days, but you must put all or part of that into your “data wallet” to actually use it. You dial *205# and follow the menu to apply however much of the 2 gigs you want to use. Whatever you apply is only good for 30 days so if you're nearing the end of your time in the Bahamas but you're going to be back within the 90 days, you might only want to activate 1 gig or even less. Once it's in your data wallet it expires within 30 days. You can dial *201# to check your balance, but it will only show the balance on your account that you haven't applied to your data wallet, not the balance of what you've already put in your data wallet. They will send you a text to let you know when you have used 75% of your data in your data wallet, but they will not tell you when you've used it all so you have to keep track of it in your settings on your phone. If you run out of data but have phone time in your account, you'll see a strong phone signal in your status bar but no internet icon. That's one way you can know if you're out of data. Are you confused yet? Good because I was and I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. If you have any trouble with your phone accepting the data balance (which I did), you may have to manually set your Mobile Network settings to Global and you may have to manually enter the Access Point Name which is internet.btcbahamas.com (which I did). You will also have to have the Mobile Data checked as on and roaming as off. If you need any help with this, find the nearest 8-year old or go to the nearest Batelco store and hope you get a good customer service rep.
In the beginning we were trying to find good wifi and were even paying mooring fees or going to restaurants and coffee shops and buying things just so we could be online. I generally find that the connectivity is at least as good and available on the Batelco card as it is on most wifi here, if not much faster. Most of the wifi in public places is slower than mud because there are so many people trying to use it at the same time. Here are a just a few of the wifi providers we used and our evaluation of them. Keep in mind that we don't have a wifi extender, but even without it we have rarely not been able to get online. There have been times we can't upoad a lot of pictures or video or Skype, but we were almost always able to get our emails and weather. The only main frustration was not being able to download new gribs on the iPads, but I understand if you can find someone to unlock your iPad you can get another Bahamian sim to put in there.
Marsh Harbour:
We found we had the fastest wifi at the Java Coffee Shop in Marsh Harbour, as well as the best quality, most reasonably priced coffee anywhere. The wifi there is fast enough that at one point we had 3 people on Skype at the same time with no problem. The owner, Kim, is very agreeable and supportive of cruisers.
We tried the internet at the Lofty Fig, at Snappa's Bar, at Mangoe's, all of which were too slow to be useful.
Batelco was good in the harbor as long as you were in the cockpit. With an extender and router it would have been fine inside the boat.
Treasure Cay:
We tried the internet at the resort at the main dinghy dock and it was only fair strength when it came in at all, and it was “down” more than it was up. It was extremely frustrating until we discovered that the internet at La Florance Cafe and Bakery in the strip right by the dock was exceedingly fast and you could eat a cinnamon roll that feeds a family of 4 for $5 and tastes much better than Cinnabon. Florence also makes a fantastic sandwich that was big enough for us to split. She has shaded seating outside the cafe and small tables inside. She also sells the best ice cream of anywhere in the islands and the socio-political discussions with her husband, the Captain, are not to be missed. Connectivity in the islands is often a social event like this because everywhere you go to get wifi there are people sitting around engaging in something that the US has lost – the ability to have long, intelligent, non-threatening discussions about issues with people who have differing opinions.
Green Turtle Cay:
Batelco was OK in the harbour, but not great. You had to be out in the cockpit to use it.
Royal Harbour:
I was really surprised with the remoteness of this harbour that we got such a strong Batelco signal. I think maybe they had installed the tower for the development that was supposed to go in there and left the tower even though the development failed.
Spanish Wells:
You can get free wifi with no password at the smoothie shop on the main drag. The speed varies with the time of day and how many customers but it's almost always fast enough to Skype.
Batelco is very strong on the mooring field.Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera:Wifi at the Spot bar is very good and free. The bartender will put the password on your device for you. The only difficulty is that it's usually too loud to Skype unless you get there very early in the day.
Batelco is very strong in the bay.
The Long and Short of It:
It's a lot to digest, but for us the Batelco data cards are our primary source of online connectivity along with whatever free wifi we can come across at bars and restaurants. I find that I use the Facebook Messenger app the most, but that's because I tended to text in the US more than talk, and the Messenger texting is exactly like texting on Verizon in the States. It has a good, loud chime to notify you that a message has arrived, so it's easy to hear pretty much anywhere on the boat. It also allows attached pictures. Probably the biggest issue for us has been the lack of video capabilities. Video just uses too much data to indulge, and Tim is suffering because he can't watch his Moto GP races. We do miss the occasional Netflix movie on rainy days as well, but it just means we read more on our Kindles. The Kindles require wifi to download, but we just tend to download a bunch of books when we're on strong signal so that we have them later.
Hope this has been helpful. If you have any specific questions or experiences that are relevant, don't hesitate to post them here.
Being "off the grid" is a highly modified term in our cruising dictionary. If we didn't have 7-soon-to-be-8 grand kids back in the States it would be a non-issue, but since we do, we like our connectivity. What can I say? If I'm less of a cruiser for that, then so be it, but the expression on my grandson's face when we Skyped with him while going under a bridge on the ICW ("Dema you're going to hit the bridge!! No way are you going to fit!") was worth it all. So the communications challenges here in the Bahamas are a very personal thing to this grandma. After two months we've sort of made peace with it and here's what we found out.
If you're going to cruise the Bahamas with Verizon and you want internet, the first thing to find out is whether your phone is 1) global ready and 2) if it's unlocked and 3) if it has a sim card. My Droid Razr Maxx HD was all of those three, butTim's Droid X was not so we've been using only my phone. If you have a global ready phone that's not unlocked, you can get an unlock code from a lot of websites that are out there expressly for that purpose. Buyer beware though: a lot of times they'll sell you a code for a phone that can't be unlocked, and Verizon has very few unlocked phones. Needless to say, there's no refund. If you have a Verizon locked phone, the chance of getting it unlocked is pretty slim. If you don't have a global ready phone at all, you either have to get a new one via the internet or wait till you get to the Bahamas and buy one from them. Their prices are quite reasonable so I would recommend the latter. I saw a good selection of smart phones for under $100 outright in their display case.
Given that we had a global ready phone that was already unlocked, we were able to move onto the next choice in our journey toward connectivity which was the choice of 1) just continuing to pay our normal bill while we were gone even though we weren't using it 2) suspending the account for the two months and continuing to pay or 3) suspending the account for the two months and not receiving a bill to pay. We chose to just continue to pay our normal bill because I still have a contract on my phone and it would have extended two months if we had suspended the account without payment. We were also worried about Tim's phone if we suspended the account because he's grandfathered into the unlimited internet and we didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize that. Verizon assured us that it would not affect it, but I lost my grandfathered unlimited over a communication snafu and we didn't want to risk that.
We used my phone even 30 miles offshore sometimes for weather. Verizon's coverage is pretty amazing. We did have a dead zone between that offshore limit and acquiring a sim in the Bahamas but as soon as we got to a place that had a Batelco, we bought a Bahamian sim card. If you see a Batelco tower on an island, there is an office either directly beneath it or very near by. All of them have sims, but if your phone takes the micro sim (which mine does) it will have to be cut. The Bahamian cards are the SD size. Most but not all Batelco offices in the Bahamas have the sim card cutter which is like a hole punch, but the one we went to in Green Turtle Cay did not. You can get a template to cut the card online and it might be a good idea to print one out before you leave just in case. I had to cut mine, which I did with a good, sharp pair of scissors and then sanded the edges to fit with an emery board. It's not difficult but you do need to be precise and if you screw it up you're out the $15 for the sim. Be sure to keep your original Verizon sim in a safe place free of moisture so you can reinstall it when approaching the US. With your sim card you will be assigned a Bahamian phone number which will be yours as long as you have that sim. Once you get the sim installed, you're on to the next step.
This next step was the most confusing part of the whole Bahamian phone/internet thing for me because no one explained it to me and I had to figure it out by trial and error. If you want actual phone voice capabilities other than Skype, you have to buy a separate card for phone time. I bought just a $5.00 card so if I wanted to call a Bahamian business I could. We sometimes call ahead for mooring reservations. If you're calling in the Bahamas to another Bahama number the prices are reasonable, I believe it's $.27 per minute but don't be tempted to use this for calls to the US because it's expensive, I think somewhere around $.47 a minute. It's less than using Verizon ($2.00 per minute for calls originating from the Bahamas), but it's still better to use Skype for voice calls. I found that I can buy a monthly subscription on Skype for voice calls to land line phones and mobiles for $6.99 per month. Since my daughters are most easily reached on land line or mobile phones, I did that. One caveat: I did find that I can't call them on Skype when I'm using my phone as a USB internet tether. I have to do it on wifi. I can use Skype to do voice calls to other Skype users or video calls to other Skype users while tethered, just not voice to landlines or mobiles. As a point of information, we use the PdaNet Android app for tethering because it works with Tim's unlimited data plan. It works really well, well enough in fact to stream Netflix.
Another feature we recently discovered works well here in the Bahamas, once you get your internet card up and working, is the Facebook Messenger app. You can text through it as well as voice calls if the person on the other end is also on a smart phone with the app installed. Just look for the small phone icon in the window where you write the message. If it's there then you can call that person. The quality is good and it's free the same as Skype.
For internet access on your phone, you have to purchase separate internet datacards at a Batelco office or a designated outlet, of which there are many all over the islands. A lot of grocery store and gift shops and even some restaurants have them. Just look for the ever so visible “Top it Up” banners at your favorite retailer. During the season they cost $30 for 2 gigs, a price that is even lower than a lot of data in the US. In March we got them for $20 for 2 gigs, and now in April they're $15 for 2 gigs. As long as you don't activate them, they last till the expiration date printed on the cards. As an example, our cards purchased in April of 2014 had a July 2015 expiration date on them. Stock up at the end of the season, and bring them back the following year. If you register on their site for an account you can also top up online, although the two times I tried to do it the system was down and the outlets for the cards are so ubiquitous that it's really not difficult to buy another card.
Activating these cards is a two-fold process. You first must apply them to your account by dialing *202# and hitting send and following the menu. You will have to choose the Data option and then input your pin number which is under a scratch-off strip on the back of the data card you're activating. After you finish that portion, it will show you have $30 applied to your account and they will send you a text to let you know it was successful. OK here's the part no one seemed to find necessary to mention. After you have applied the $30 to your account, that total amount is good for 90 days, but you must put all or part of that into your “data wallet” to actually use it. You dial *205# and follow the menu to apply however much of the 2 gigs you want to use. Whatever you apply is only good for 30 days so if you're nearing the end of your time in the Bahamas but you're going to be back within the 90 days, you might only want to activate 1 gig or even less. Once it's in your data wallet it expires within 30 days. You can dial *201# to check your balance, but it will only show the balance on your account that you haven't applied to your data wallet, not the balance of what you've already put in your data wallet. They will send you a text to let you know when you have used 75% of your data in your data wallet, but they will not tell you when you've used it all so you have to keep track of it in your settings on your phone. If you run out of data but have phone time in your account, you'll see a strong phone signal in your status bar but no internet icon. That's one way you can know if you're out of data. Are you confused yet? Good because I was and I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. If you have any trouble with your phone accepting the data balance (which I did), you may have to manually set your Mobile Network settings to Global and you may have to manually enter the Access Point Name which is internet.btcbahamas.com (which I did). You will also have to have the Mobile Data checked as on and roaming as off. If you need any help with this, find the nearest 8-year old or go to the nearest Batelco store and hope you get a good customer service rep.
In the beginning we were trying to find good wifi and were even paying mooring fees or going to restaurants and coffee shops and buying things just so we could be online. I generally find that the connectivity is at least as good and available on the Batelco card as it is on most wifi here, if not much faster. Most of the wifi in public places is slower than mud because there are so many people trying to use it at the same time. Here are a just a few of the wifi providers we used and our evaluation of them. Keep in mind that we don't have a wifi extender, but even without it we have rarely not been able to get online. There have been times we can't upoad a lot of pictures or video or Skype, but we were almost always able to get our emails and weather. The only main frustration was not being able to download new gribs on the iPads, but I understand if you can find someone to unlock your iPad you can get another Bahamian sim to put in there.
Marsh Harbour:
We found we had the fastest wifi at the Java Coffee Shop in Marsh Harbour, as well as the best quality, most reasonably priced coffee anywhere. The wifi there is fast enough that at one point we had 3 people on Skype at the same time with no problem. The owner, Kim, is very agreeable and supportive of cruisers.
We tried the internet at the Lofty Fig, at Snappa's Bar, at Mangoe's, all of which were too slow to be useful.
Batelco was good in the harbor as long as you were in the cockpit. With an extender and router it would have been fine inside the boat.
Treasure Cay:
We tried the internet at the resort at the main dinghy dock and it was only fair strength when it came in at all, and it was “down” more than it was up. It was extremely frustrating until we discovered that the internet at La Florance Cafe and Bakery in the strip right by the dock was exceedingly fast and you could eat a cinnamon roll that feeds a family of 4 for $5 and tastes much better than Cinnabon. Florence also makes a fantastic sandwich that was big enough for us to split. She has shaded seating outside the cafe and small tables inside. She also sells the best ice cream of anywhere in the islands and the socio-political discussions with her husband, the Captain, are not to be missed. Connectivity in the islands is often a social event like this because everywhere you go to get wifi there are people sitting around engaging in something that the US has lost – the ability to have long, intelligent, non-threatening discussions about issues with people who have differing opinions.
Green Turtle Cay:
Batelco was OK in the harbour, but not great. You had to be out in the cockpit to use it.
Royal Harbour:
I was really surprised with the remoteness of this harbour that we got such a strong Batelco signal. I think maybe they had installed the tower for the development that was supposed to go in there and left the tower even though the development failed.
Spanish Wells:
You can get free wifi with no password at the smoothie shop on the main drag. The speed varies with the time of day and how many customers but it's almost always fast enough to Skype.
Batelco is very strong on the mooring field.Hatchet Bay, Eleuthera:Wifi at the Spot bar is very good and free. The bartender will put the password on your device for you. The only difficulty is that it's usually too loud to Skype unless you get there very early in the day.
Batelco is very strong in the bay.
The Long and Short of It:
It's a lot to digest, but for us the Batelco data cards are our primary source of online connectivity along with whatever free wifi we can come across at bars and restaurants. I find that I use the Facebook Messenger app the most, but that's because I tended to text in the US more than talk, and the Messenger texting is exactly like texting on Verizon in the States. It has a good, loud chime to notify you that a message has arrived, so it's easy to hear pretty much anywhere on the boat. It also allows attached pictures. Probably the biggest issue for us has been the lack of video capabilities. Video just uses too much data to indulge, and Tim is suffering because he can't watch his Moto GP races. We do miss the occasional Netflix movie on rainy days as well, but it just means we read more on our Kindles. The Kindles require wifi to download, but we just tend to download a bunch of books when we're on strong signal so that we have them later.
Hope this has been helpful. If you have any specific questions or experiences that are relevant, don't hesitate to post them here.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Newly Salted Interview - Kintala at 6 months
We've decided to participate in the Newly Salted interview process on our blog here. Instead of conducting individual interviews, what they do now is to have you pick 10 or so of their questions in their question bank and answer them on your blog. Then you send them the link and they post it on their site. You include a summary of who you are and why you went cruising, along with a picture. I've chosen a picture that our friend John took of our boat which is the most awesome picture we have of Kintala and I intend to put it on our home page as soon as I have reliable enough wifi to be fiddling with blogger's template, which for any of you who have a blogger blog know is a huge pain in the derrière.
Answering the questions was good for me. It helped me to probe my feelings about cruising on this, our 6 month anniversary of leaving, so we answered many more than the 10 questions they allow. I thought we would post the ones we answered here and then let you, the reader, pick the 10 you like best and would like to see posted on the Newly Salted website. When we settle on 10 or so then we'll submit. Just list your 10 picks in a comment and we'll decide within the next few days. Have at it!
For those of you who might not know us, we're Tim and Deb of the Tartan 42 Kintala and of The Retirement Project site. After nearly 7 years of planning, of which 4 years was on a learner boat and 3 years refitting our current cruiser, we cut the dock lines on October 19th of 2013. We decided to go cruising for two major reasons: because we wanted to retire early and we didn't have sufficient funds to do that in a land-based retirement, and because we've been becoming increasingly disenchanted with the political and economical status quo in the US. Today is our 6 month anniversary so it seemed appropriate to review and evaluate. Having used both the Interview With a Cruiser and Newly Salted sites for some of our pre-departure knowledge, we thought it particularly appropriate to use that venue for our evaluation. We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to our preparation. Websites, blogs, friends, all became an intimate part of our readiness. Hopefully we have paid it forward to those who are still stuck in cubicle land and dreaming. We're here to say that the dream is definitely worth pursuing.
1. Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
Deb: Solar Panels. Since Tim's company closed his department before we were quite done with the boat, some things had to wait due to limited funds and the solar panels was one of them. We do OK with the Honda generator, but it would be nice to have a quiet source of power that would allow sitting in the cockpit without the generator noise. Don't get me wrong – as far as generators go, the Honda is the best and the quietest, but I'd still rather have less noise.
Tim: Inverter and WiFi extender. Being “off the grid” is better when it is a choice of just hitting the “off” switch and using “cruising” as the excuse for not bothering with email.
2. Is there a place you visited that you wish you could have stayed longer?
Deb: I wish we could have spent some time in Coinjock. We were in such a hurry coming down the ICW because of the cold that we didn't have time to stop. I also wish we had stopped in Allen's Pensacola in the Abacos but we were traveling with a friend who had a deadline to meet and then later, when we had time, the wind was from the wrong direction. We'll get back there for sure.
Tim: We have been many places I want to visit again but, so far, we haven't sailed away from anywhere when I really wanted to stay.
3. When you are offshore, what keeps you awake at night (that is, what worries you most)?
Deb: One of us falling off the boat. We wear our life jackets and we're tethered in after dark (an unbreakable rule) so it's a totally irrational fear, but it's there just the same.
Tim: Weather. Which probably means I should add “Satellite WX” the list of things I wish we had installed
4. Tell me what is your favorite thing is about about the boat.
Deb: The way the light plays off the teak inside in the morning sunshine. I love the inside of our boat. It feels like our home, something that's important to me since it's our full time home. I also love my galley. It fits me and everything is in the right place (bet you don't hear that often!)
Tim: It sails well, and looks good. (Life is too short to live on an ugly boat.)
5. How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Deb: We've had a couple days of 5+ft waves and not quite 30 knots of wind which isn't much, but it's still more than I would like to have on a routine basis. Most of our bad experiences have been due to a lack of planning.
Tim: We have tried to be very conservative with weather so “bad” is a relative term. Still, as careful as we try to be we have taken a couple of serious poundings to windward with apparent winds of 30+ knots in steep and short period waves. Weather forecasting is often not specific or detailed enough to know exactly what is lurking “out there”. Two similar weather forecasts can lead to two very different experiences depending on the direction of the boat, the sail set, and just the emotional state of the crew at that particular moment. Also, turning around (except for bailing out of a Gulf Stream passage early) is usually not much of an option. Once gone one simply has to take whatever weather comes along. For us it has often been worse than expected.
6. What is your most common sail combination on passage?
Deb: Either the 130° genoa by itself on any wind aft of the beam, or the staysail and the main for higher winds forward of the beam.
Tim: Full jib alone. Ours is a head sail boat and the main is often left tied to the boom.
7. What piece of gear seems to break the most often?
Deb: Engine accessories.
Tim: Engine
8. As you started cruising, what transitions did you find the most difficult?
Deb: Being too far away from the kids and grand kids and not having the best communication capabilities.
Tim: Being away from Daughters(3) and Grand Kids (7 soon to be 8).
9. What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn’t find to be true?
Deb: I was worried about the culture of excess drinking. We drink, but not as much as a lot of people, and never to the point of being drunk. I was worried that we wouldn't fit in if we didn't drink as much as everyone else. We haven't been to any of the big hotspots yet like Georgetown or Marathon which might be different, but so far I've found the cruisers we've met to be careful, attentive, dedicated sailors that limit their intake. In six months I have yet to see a drunk cruiser.
Tim: This is not, ultimately, a more relaxed way to live than on land. It can be some of the time, but one is very exposed to the weather on a boat. Wind and rain barely noticed on land will make for long days on the water, and even longer nights. Everything takes more effort, shopping, laundry, routine maintenance, launching the dink, keeping track of consumables. Cruisers don't often work for anyone else, but keeping this little floating house livable is a full time job.
10. What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Deb: We did so much research before we left that I honestly can't think of anything.
Tim: Stay off docks and away from mooring balls. Both eat up money like crazy.
11. What mistakes did you make as you started cruising?
Deb: I'm sure we made a ton but right now I honestly can't think of any. Selective memory?
Tim: We shipped the boat to Annapolis to be a “cruiser at the Boat Show”. We should have shipped the boat to FL or the Gulf Coast to start. The initial trip down the ICW was miserable.
12. What do you find the most exciting about your cruising life?
Deb: Being in so many beautiful places that do not in any way resemble a cubicle and meeting so many interesting people.
Tim: Meeting new people who are not Americans is the most interesting. I have had enough excitement after a career in aviation and try to avoid it as much as possible.
13. What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Deb: The SSB. We bought a used one from a friend but it will never be installed. It's a very large and complex piece of equipment that would require major installation dollars on our boat and everyone I know who owns one has a terrible time with it. We will be buying a small, portable SSB receiver so we can listen to the weather and do weather faxes. With the new HF Weather Fax app on the iPad, and the Delorme InReach for emergency communication, we just don't see any reason to have it on the boat.
Tim: We brought too many sails (6) and have yet to make a sail change. A perfect rig to me would be jib and stay sail on rollers, a main with 3 reef points (We only have two.) and a bullet proof storm stay sail that would go over the inner stay sail.
14. What do you dislike about cruising that surprised you?
Deb: I've been struggling with seasickness a lot more than I expected. Our boat rolls a lot at anchorages and that pendulum motion just does me in. I never get nauseated, I'm just tired and have a headache and feel dizzy a lot.
Tim: A lack of creature comforts; a comfortable chair, an occasional movie on a big screen, a bit of AC once in a while. Some heat now and then would sure be nice as well.
15. What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?
Deb: That you will motor more than you think. We still motor way less than most people because we're rarely in a hurry to get anywhere but we motored almost the whole way down the ICW which I hated.
Tim: Cruisers spend way more time sitting still than we do moving.
16. What gear do you love the most?
Deb: Our iPads hands down. We use the for our primary navigation with both the Garmin Bluechart Mobile and the Navionics apps on both iPads. We also have Sailgrib and Weather Bug and Marine Weather on both of them. We keep one in the cockpit and the other one plugged in charging at all times. We still have the chart plotter on the helm, a GPS down below, and backup GPS navigation on both our phones as well as on both our laptops.
Tim: Navigation on iPads.
17. Tell me your least favorite thing about your boat.
Deb: The cockpit. Our boat has a very narrow stern which is a good thing for large following seas, but it limits the cockpit storage and the size of the seats. We only have one locker in the cockpit which is taken up with cushions, cords, hoses, etc., and there's no room for sails. This means the aft berth is full of sails and I hate clutter so it bugs me. We also do not have any seat long enough to stretch out on which is a problem on overnight passages because we like to stay in the cockpit together, even when off watch.
Tim: The 30 year old WesterBeast motor. The boat is underpowered and the engine hard to service.
18. What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?
Deb: We don't really have a schedule. This works for us, but it wouldn't work for a lot of people. Also, we haven't done any passages more than one night so I'm sure we'd have to adjust for that. At the moment, on one night passages, we both stay in the cockpit. I usually do the first stint from sunset to about 11:00 while Tim naps in the cockpit, and then he does the main overnight part. I pick up in the early morning again. We like to stay in the cockpit together at this point, although that might change in the future.
Tim: The least tired (or least sick) person takes the helm.
19. What is your biggest lesson learned?
Deb: I'm conflicted on this one. I want to say buy the boat for coastal cruising and living aboard at anchor because you will do that more than 99% of the time, but we listened to the experts and bought a bluewater cruiser and the 1% of the time that we end up offshore in bad weather I'll be glad we did. We do compromise on comfort and utility because we're in a bluewater cruiser. When we did our offshore training passages I loved being out there, but I've found I like it less now. I've been thinking a lot about why this is and I think the reason for the difference is that we had many hands to help on those passages and now we only have the two of us. Extra hands to spread the work makes a huge difference. Had I the chance to do it again, I would probably buy a coastal cruiser and not plan on any passages more than one night.
Tim: That this was probably not the best choice of a boat.
20. What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?
Deb: I love the almost instant camaraderie between people, like you've known them your whole lives. I haven't really found anything I didn't like.
Tim: I really like that cruisers so easily become friends that you often meet over and over again in unlikely places. I've always been a wanderer and belonging to this tribe of gypsies is like coming home.
21. What is the key to make the cruising life enjoyable?
Deb: No question. A sense of humor.
Tim: One has to do whatever it takes to feel safe.
22. How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?
Deb: This is something we did right. Being in aviation, we're over-planners. Since we had no sailing experience prior to deciding on our retirement plans, we took ASA 101, 103, 104, 105, 114 sailing classes and bought a Compac 27 early on to practice on our home lake, Carlyle Lake in Illinois outside of St. Louis. We learned about living on a boat and maintaining a boat the four years we sailed the Compac. When we realize we were ready to begin to look for our cruising boat, we took the summer/fall of 2010 and scheduled 3 training voyages to help us decide what boat to buy. We did a circumnavigation of Long Island in a Pearson 35 leaving Tom's River, NJ and sailing around Block Island, down Long Island Sound, through the city of New York, past Sandy Hook and back to Tom's River in 7 days. We chose that one because we felt a 35 footer was the smallest boat we could live on full time without killing each other. Next we took our ASA 114 catamaran course in Pensacola Beach, FL because we still hadn't resolved the monohull-catamaran debate. We found out that we love catamarans but simply can't afford one. Last we took a training voyage with John Kretschmer on Quetzal, a Kaufman 47, because we thought that would be about the largest boat we could comfortably handle with just the two of us. Those three trips were expensive for us, but they were priceless in the knowledge we gained.
Tim: Charter – charter
– then charter some more. It is a bit counterproductive in that
charter money is money not available for buying a boat. But there is
no substitute for living on different kinds of boats in all kinds of
conditions for discovering what you need to know to make decisions
that will work for you. Pay very little attention to what the “Old
Salts” say. For the most part they have been wrong about
everything. Old boats, small boats, simple boats, diminuitive
cockpits, basic navigation gear, “blue water” boats (near
complete B.S.), pilot berths, narrow hulls, this or that
manufacturer, sloop or cutter or ketch, center cockpit, aft cockpit,
… don't listen to any of it. They don't sail like you sail, go
where you go, or know what you like. Your best hope, after
chartering, is to find someone who is out there right now, with a
kind of boat you can afford, sailing in the places you might want to
sail, who will share what they have learned.
23. In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how?
Deb: I would say categorically no. Our relationship is a little different because the cruising thing was my dream and Tim was willing to go along, but I've met a lot of women who were reluctant spouses and they are pretty unhappy. I guess if you had a spouse that was sensitive to your needs it might work, but my experience is that it's just not worth it if both members of the couple are not eager to succeed. It's just too hard of a change unless you're 100% behind it.
Tim: You can, but both will likely regret it.
24. What do you miss about living on land?
Deb: My kids and grand kids, obviously, so the only thing I miss from land life is fast, reliable internet connections. Cruisers talk about being “off the grid”, but my experience is that I want to be able to share what we're experiencing with our kids and grand kids.
Tim: Full nights of sleep in a quiet bed.
25. What do you think is a common cruising myth?
Deb: That anchorages everywhere are little communities. I've found that unless I get in the dinghy and go to meet other people, we won't meet. For the most part I find people stay to themselves on their own boats unless they're traveling with someone. When we do go introduce ourselves they're always glad that we came, but it's as if everyone is sitting there waiting for someone else to go first.
Tim: That
going from land living to cruising will take anything less than all
of your effort, most of your money, and rank as one of the hardest
transitions you will ever make.
Answering the questions was good for me. It helped me to probe my feelings about cruising on this, our 6 month anniversary of leaving, so we answered many more than the 10 questions they allow. I thought we would post the ones we answered here and then let you, the reader, pick the 10 you like best and would like to see posted on the Newly Salted website. When we settle on 10 or so then we'll submit. Just list your 10 picks in a comment and we'll decide within the next few days. Have at it!
Kintala at 6 months
|
| Photo courtesy of our good friend and fellow cruiser, John Dakins |
1. Is there something you wish you had bought or installed before starting cruising?
Deb: Solar Panels. Since Tim's company closed his department before we were quite done with the boat, some things had to wait due to limited funds and the solar panels was one of them. We do OK with the Honda generator, but it would be nice to have a quiet source of power that would allow sitting in the cockpit without the generator noise. Don't get me wrong – as far as generators go, the Honda is the best and the quietest, but I'd still rather have less noise.
Tim: Inverter and WiFi extender. Being “off the grid” is better when it is a choice of just hitting the “off” switch and using “cruising” as the excuse for not bothering with email.
2. Is there a place you visited that you wish you could have stayed longer?
Deb: I wish we could have spent some time in Coinjock. We were in such a hurry coming down the ICW because of the cold that we didn't have time to stop. I also wish we had stopped in Allen's Pensacola in the Abacos but we were traveling with a friend who had a deadline to meet and then later, when we had time, the wind was from the wrong direction. We'll get back there for sure.
Tim: We have been many places I want to visit again but, so far, we haven't sailed away from anywhere when I really wanted to stay.
3. When you are offshore, what keeps you awake at night (that is, what worries you most)?
Deb: One of us falling off the boat. We wear our life jackets and we're tethered in after dark (an unbreakable rule) so it's a totally irrational fear, but it's there just the same.
Tim: Weather. Which probably means I should add “Satellite WX” the list of things I wish we had installed
4. Tell me what is your favorite thing is about about the boat.
Deb: The way the light plays off the teak inside in the morning sunshine. I love the inside of our boat. It feels like our home, something that's important to me since it's our full time home. I also love my galley. It fits me and everything is in the right place (bet you don't hear that often!)
Tim: It sails well, and looks good. (Life is too short to live on an ugly boat.)
5. How often have you faced bad weather in your cruising? How bad?
Deb: We've had a couple days of 5+ft waves and not quite 30 knots of wind which isn't much, but it's still more than I would like to have on a routine basis. Most of our bad experiences have been due to a lack of planning.
Tim: We have tried to be very conservative with weather so “bad” is a relative term. Still, as careful as we try to be we have taken a couple of serious poundings to windward with apparent winds of 30+ knots in steep and short period waves. Weather forecasting is often not specific or detailed enough to know exactly what is lurking “out there”. Two similar weather forecasts can lead to two very different experiences depending on the direction of the boat, the sail set, and just the emotional state of the crew at that particular moment. Also, turning around (except for bailing out of a Gulf Stream passage early) is usually not much of an option. Once gone one simply has to take whatever weather comes along. For us it has often been worse than expected.
6. What is your most common sail combination on passage?
Deb: Either the 130° genoa by itself on any wind aft of the beam, or the staysail and the main for higher winds forward of the beam.
Tim: Full jib alone. Ours is a head sail boat and the main is often left tied to the boom.
7. What piece of gear seems to break the most often?
Deb: Engine accessories.
8. As you started cruising, what transitions did you find the most difficult?
Deb: Being too far away from the kids and grand kids and not having the best communication capabilities.
Tim: Being away from Daughters(3) and Grand Kids (7 soon to be 8).
9. What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn’t find to be true?
Deb: I was worried about the culture of excess drinking. We drink, but not as much as a lot of people, and never to the point of being drunk. I was worried that we wouldn't fit in if we didn't drink as much as everyone else. We haven't been to any of the big hotspots yet like Georgetown or Marathon which might be different, but so far I've found the cruisers we've met to be careful, attentive, dedicated sailors that limit their intake. In six months I have yet to see a drunk cruiser.
Tim: This is not, ultimately, a more relaxed way to live than on land. It can be some of the time, but one is very exposed to the weather on a boat. Wind and rain barely noticed on land will make for long days on the water, and even longer nights. Everything takes more effort, shopping, laundry, routine maintenance, launching the dink, keeping track of consumables. Cruisers don't often work for anyone else, but keeping this little floating house livable is a full time job.
10. What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
Deb: We did so much research before we left that I honestly can't think of anything.
Tim: Stay off docks and away from mooring balls. Both eat up money like crazy.
Deb: I'm sure we made a ton but right now I honestly can't think of any. Selective memory?
Tim: We shipped the boat to Annapolis to be a “cruiser at the Boat Show”. We should have shipped the boat to FL or the Gulf Coast to start. The initial trip down the ICW was miserable.
12. What do you find the most exciting about your cruising life?
Deb: Being in so many beautiful places that do not in any way resemble a cubicle and meeting so many interesting people.
Tim: Meeting new people who are not Americans is the most interesting. I have had enough excitement after a career in aviation and try to avoid it as much as possible.
13. What piece(s) of gear would you leave on the dock next time? Why?
Deb: The SSB. We bought a used one from a friend but it will never be installed. It's a very large and complex piece of equipment that would require major installation dollars on our boat and everyone I know who owns one has a terrible time with it. We will be buying a small, portable SSB receiver so we can listen to the weather and do weather faxes. With the new HF Weather Fax app on the iPad, and the Delorme InReach for emergency communication, we just don't see any reason to have it on the boat.
Tim: We brought too many sails (6) and have yet to make a sail change. A perfect rig to me would be jib and stay sail on rollers, a main with 3 reef points (We only have two.) and a bullet proof storm stay sail that would go over the inner stay sail.
14. What do you dislike about cruising that surprised you?
Deb: I've been struggling with seasickness a lot more than I expected. Our boat rolls a lot at anchorages and that pendulum motion just does me in. I never get nauseated, I'm just tired and have a headache and feel dizzy a lot.
Tim: A lack of creature comforts; a comfortable chair, an occasional movie on a big screen, a bit of AC once in a while. Some heat now and then would sure be nice as well.
15. What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you found particularly accurate?
Deb: That you will motor more than you think. We still motor way less than most people because we're rarely in a hurry to get anywhere but we motored almost the whole way down the ICW which I hated.
Tim: Cruisers spend way more time sitting still than we do moving.
16. What gear do you love the most?
Deb: Our iPads hands down. We use the for our primary navigation with both the Garmin Bluechart Mobile and the Navionics apps on both iPads. We also have Sailgrib and Weather Bug and Marine Weather on both of them. We keep one in the cockpit and the other one plugged in charging at all times. We still have the chart plotter on the helm, a GPS down below, and backup GPS navigation on both our phones as well as on both our laptops.
Tim: Navigation on iPads.
17. Tell me your least favorite thing about your boat.
Deb: The cockpit. Our boat has a very narrow stern which is a good thing for large following seas, but it limits the cockpit storage and the size of the seats. We only have one locker in the cockpit which is taken up with cushions, cords, hoses, etc., and there's no room for sails. This means the aft berth is full of sails and I hate clutter so it bugs me. We also do not have any seat long enough to stretch out on which is a problem on overnight passages because we like to stay in the cockpit together, even when off watch.
Tim: The 30 year old WesterBeast motor. The boat is underpowered and the engine hard to service.
18. What type of watch schedule do you normally use while offshore?
Deb: We don't really have a schedule. This works for us, but it wouldn't work for a lot of people. Also, we haven't done any passages more than one night so I'm sure we'd have to adjust for that. At the moment, on one night passages, we both stay in the cockpit. I usually do the first stint from sunset to about 11:00 while Tim naps in the cockpit, and then he does the main overnight part. I pick up in the early morning again. We like to stay in the cockpit together at this point, although that might change in the future.
Tim: The least tired (or least sick) person takes the helm.
19. What is your biggest lesson learned?
Deb: I'm conflicted on this one. I want to say buy the boat for coastal cruising and living aboard at anchor because you will do that more than 99% of the time, but we listened to the experts and bought a bluewater cruiser and the 1% of the time that we end up offshore in bad weather I'll be glad we did. We do compromise on comfort and utility because we're in a bluewater cruiser. When we did our offshore training passages I loved being out there, but I've found I like it less now. I've been thinking a lot about why this is and I think the reason for the difference is that we had many hands to help on those passages and now we only have the two of us. Extra hands to spread the work makes a huge difference. Had I the chance to do it again, I would probably buy a coastal cruiser and not plan on any passages more than one night.
Tim: That this was probably not the best choice of a boat.
20. What is something about the cruising culture you like and what is something you dislike?
Deb: I love the almost instant camaraderie between people, like you've known them your whole lives. I haven't really found anything I didn't like.
Tim: I really like that cruisers so easily become friends that you often meet over and over again in unlikely places. I've always been a wanderer and belonging to this tribe of gypsies is like coming home.
On the other hand the marine industry
is far worse than anything I imagined but is intimately a part of our
“culture”. The industry is (with some exceptions) best regarded
as the worst collection of used car hustlers and con men ever
assembled. Every cruiser I have ever talked with has been burned by
a manufacturer, survey, installer, technician, supplier, or broker.
And I mean burned to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars.
(I completely understand when cruisers trade the boat for an RV, but
I don't like the land that much.)
21. What is the key to make the cruising life enjoyable?
Deb: No question. A sense of humor.
Tim: One has to do whatever it takes to feel safe.
22. How would you recommend that someone prepares to cruise?
Deb: This is something we did right. Being in aviation, we're over-planners. Since we had no sailing experience prior to deciding on our retirement plans, we took ASA 101, 103, 104, 105, 114 sailing classes and bought a Compac 27 early on to practice on our home lake, Carlyle Lake in Illinois outside of St. Louis. We learned about living on a boat and maintaining a boat the four years we sailed the Compac. When we realize we were ready to begin to look for our cruising boat, we took the summer/fall of 2010 and scheduled 3 training voyages to help us decide what boat to buy. We did a circumnavigation of Long Island in a Pearson 35 leaving Tom's River, NJ and sailing around Block Island, down Long Island Sound, through the city of New York, past Sandy Hook and back to Tom's River in 7 days. We chose that one because we felt a 35 footer was the smallest boat we could live on full time without killing each other. Next we took our ASA 114 catamaran course in Pensacola Beach, FL because we still hadn't resolved the monohull-catamaran debate. We found out that we love catamarans but simply can't afford one. Last we took a training voyage with John Kretschmer on Quetzal, a Kaufman 47, because we thought that would be about the largest boat we could comfortably handle with just the two of us. Those three trips were expensive for us, but they were priceless in the knowledge we gained.
23. In your own experience and your experience meeting cruising couples, can you convince a reluctant partner to go cruising and if so, how?
Deb: I would say categorically no. Our relationship is a little different because the cruising thing was my dream and Tim was willing to go along, but I've met a lot of women who were reluctant spouses and they are pretty unhappy. I guess if you had a spouse that was sensitive to your needs it might work, but my experience is that it's just not worth it if both members of the couple are not eager to succeed. It's just too hard of a change unless you're 100% behind it.
Tim: You can, but both will likely regret it.
24. What do you miss about living on land?
Deb: My kids and grand kids, obviously, so the only thing I miss from land life is fast, reliable internet connections. Cruisers talk about being “off the grid”, but my experience is that I want to be able to share what we're experiencing with our kids and grand kids.
Tim: Full nights of sleep in a quiet bed.
25. What do you think is a common cruising myth?
Deb: That anchorages everywhere are little communities. I've found that unless I get in the dinghy and go to meet other people, we won't meet. For the most part I find people stay to themselves on their own boats unless they're traveling with someone. When we do go introduce ourselves they're always glad that we came, but it's as if everyone is sitting there waiting for someone else to go first.
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