Things I used to do

We are back to the “living in a mooring field” routine. We have just about decided, whenever Kintala runs out of water, to drop the mooring lines and head to the dock. It doesn’t take any more time than repeated runs in the Ding hauling water jugs, is easier on the back, warms up the oil in the Beast, and wakes all the accessory gear out of its slumber to make sure it all still works. It is also some practice for one part of running a boat where I could use some practice, getting on and off a dock. Not serious practice since the fuel dock here is really easy, an open face dock that sits parallel to the current flow. The only trick is to wait for something other than peak for that current, and not go in on a weekend. I’m pretty shy about the current, it can peak out at near two knots here, and I don’t want to push my luck.

It didn’t used to be that way.

Once upon a long, long time ago Deb and I owned a little Cessna 150 airplane. It was equipped with an engine having 50% more horsepower than the original, and modified wings. All which added up to impressive short take off and landing capabilities. (STOL in pilot speak.) It could also fly at very low indicated airspeeds. (And do a pretty decent loop and barrel roll, though don’t tell anyone I told you that.) One day I didn’t have much to do and the wind at the airport where we based was howling directly down the runway at something like 40 knots. So I went out to fly, doing repeated take offs and landings just for fun. (Touch and goes in pilot speak.)

Normally one flies a rectangle pattern around an airport. But that day launching into that wind was almost a vertical take off. Accelerating to near cruise speed while in a slight climb would bring the far end of the runway underneath.  Then the 150 could be slowed and flown at a low enough airspeed for it to drift backward down the runway at about 20 knots, still nose into the wind and under full control. When the approach end of the runway passed below, putting the nose down and accelerating would get the wheels over the runway, then, if the power was played just right, they would touch down and barely spin. I don’t recall having managed a perfect hover landing, but I got pretty close. It was a hoot. But now I can’t imagine what I was thinking or why I would try such a thing. And yes (for those who know a bit about little airplanes and big winds) taxiing to the runway and then back to the hanger was, by far, the most difficult part of the flight. Forty knots worth of wind is enough to put a 150 on its back if one taxis without paying attention.

These days I would not even try to bring Kintala to a dock in a 3 knot current, even with a clear approach path. It should work. Drive up close at a shallow angle, use the Beast just enough to equal the boat speed to the current, and hand a line over without comment. But back in my Cessna 150 days I was too young to know better, too sure of myself to think of all the things that could have gone wrong, and was a far better airplane driver (then) than I am boat pilot (now).

We’ll wait to near slack current to go fill the water tanks.

Too much TV

It was 7 nights on the run, staying in 4 different hotels, before we were back onboard Kintala. For all practical purposes Florence never made an appearance in Beaufort. A day or so of rain and wind, less than usually comes with a batch of thunderstorms, was about it. As for all of the work prepping the boats, and the expense of being on the road for a week, we have not a single complaint. The best anyone can do is make decisions based on what is known at that moment. We came through a close brush with a hurricane without a scratch…again. No matter what the storm might have done, we were never in a position where it could threaten anything but the boats. And boats can be replaced.

Even the boat mascot, Bean had his bag packed

Florence, in fact, jostled me out of a bit of a funk when it came to keeping up with Kintala’s maintenance needs. When sitting like this it takes some discipline to keep things ship shape and ready for action. Putting things back together after the storm has gotten me back in the swing of spending part of every day just keeping up. Deb did a bunch of repair work on the dodger before it went up. I cleaned places that have long been hidden, chased petty corrosion back into its corners, worked on some minor modifications, and addressed shoddy looking lines. There is always something that needs done on a boat. Setting aside a few hours every day to keep up seems reasonable.Ten to two, most days…we’ll see.

Once the boats are prepped and the rental car loaded, there isn’t much to do when running from a hurricane. Drive a few hours, carry some bags up to a room, and wait. Hotels with pools are good when there are little ones around. Unfortunately about half the group, including Deb, is now struggling with ear infections. Food is always an issue. The best description I can find for most restaurant food is “mundane” and “expensive.” We tend to eat sandwiches in the room for dinner, scarfing whatever is edible at the hotel breakfast in the morning. It being hard to concentrate on serious reading or writing when a hurricane lurks nearby, TV becomes a major distraction to help get through the day, particularly when one doesn’t watch TV in normal life.

The roads were pretty empty because we left early this time.

It was a weird week for watching TV. I don’t think most news is “fake,” but it is getting surreal. The hurricane hysterics of TWC were entertaining.  I was running from the storm with, for a while, everything I own at risk. I wasn’t near as cranked up about it as was Jim and crew. All they really had to say was “A big assed hurricane is coming. If you can, get the hell out of the way. If you can’t, good luck.”

That would have covered about 99% of the “reporting.” The rest was put out there just to keep people tuned in to watch the commercials. Though I did enjoy the bit of flying through the storm on a Hurricane Hunter…the first time I saw it. After a while we switched away from TWC and found the storm overage on other news channels to be just as good, and not quite as cartoonish.

Which is how we became privy to the big political news of the week. All they really had to say was, “Paul Manafort, onetime Campaign Chair for the Trump organization, pled guilty to multiple federal and state crimes. Here is the list. He has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in the hopes of not spending the rest of his life in jail. What happens next is anyone’s guess. When it happens, we’ll let you know.”

But, of course, they couldn't let it rest at that. Hours were filled with expert lawyers, the opinions of the various talking heads, and "panels" debating what would happen next. It was just like TWC's hurricane "news," put out there to keep me watching the commercials. Since I didn’t have much else to do, except watch the hurricane and swim with the kids, that actually worked. I hung around to see what they had to say. But watching the fill didn’t teach me anything about Mr. Trump and his administration I didn't already know.

Speaking of commercials, late one night I was watching a movie. A few scenes would be played, followed by 20 commercials (yes, I counted). A few more scenes, than 20 more commercials, mostly the same as before but in a slightly different order. The movie wasn’t that interesting, so I turned it off. Whatever the advertisers were paying to air those commercials was wasted money on me. I don’t remember a word of it or a single item being pitched. And I saw the commercials twice.

Back to the boats, both completely unharmed.

Fortunately just one week of TV was all that was needed to wait out the storm and get back to living on the mooring. I'm really not sure why people still watch TV, but it is still a free country and they can do what they like. The good news is I have a lot to do to keep me busy. The bad news is the National Hurricane Center is already watching another system, and early indications are that it could well be heading this way. I don't need to be THAT busy.

Tales from the refugee road…

Life would be a whole lot easier if hurricanes would make up their minds earlier, then let all the social media outlets know what’s going on. Our little family caravan has been in three different hotels the last three nights, scooting along hither and yon based on where the latest guess of where Florence will dump the huge load of water she has dragged across the Atlantic these last couple of weeks. We didn’t have a reservation at the first hotel we stopped at in Augusta, GA; having left a half day early to be on the leading edge of the refugee wave. We know what it's like to worry about the gas gauge nudging empty, crawling along with thousands of others on bumper to bumper four-lane highways, short tempers and crazy people in the driver’s seats. Once in a lifetime was enough.

The decision to leave early was a good call, and we landed in a nice hotel after an easy drive. But it cost well over $100 / night. The next night we moved to the hotel where we had reservations for a week, one where the cost was modest. Unfortunately, the accommodations were far more modest than the price suggested, and when the forecast put Augusta well within the flooding and tropical force winds it didn’t seem a good place to stay. There was no inside hallway so the door faced the outdoors. Even closed air, sunlight, and insects had easy access around the edges. Rain would surely just pour into the room when the weather folded, and the families would either be jammed into one small area for the duration or isolated from each other with no inside access. The windows were paper thin and not well mounted. It wasn’t hard to imagine a wind gust driving them right across the room. We decided to bail and head further inland.

The new destination was Chattanooga, about a 4 hour drive away. But the youngest member of the crew, the 8-month-old, went into full volume protest the minute we left the parking lot. She has no clue what is going on; all she knows is that her routine is upset so, so is she. She didn’t settle down even after nearly two hours on the road, Mom and baby both needed to stop. The next exit was Madison, and that’s where we landed.

This hotel has inside access, it also has a toilet that runs continuously, the phone is broken, there is no elevator to our second floor, the ice machines don’t work, there was no toilet paper on the roll or in the room, and the advertised internet connection isn’t. All ours for just shy of $100 / night after taxes and fees. Normally I would bail on such a place, but the little ones don’t really care about any of those things and they are just not up to making four moves in four days. So we will ride out the storm here.

How long that will be is still an open question. It looks like the brunt of the impact will be north and west of Beaufort, SC. There seems a pretty good chance that the boats will come through, so we will have homes when we return. Power, flooding, and road access will determine when we head back. Until then we will settle in here and make the best of it.

I was an airplane driver for decades, and put about a quarter of a million miles on motorcycles while wondering around the country. I have spent more than my share of time in hotels. There have been good ones, bad ones, and average ones uncounted. But it seems to me that, on the whole, “average” has dropped several notches in the hotel industry, while the price of “average” has gone way, way up. I would love to list names and addresses' of the hotels in question with the idea that if no one complains nothing gets fixed. But I don't have that much faith in the "customer service" side of America's economic system any more. I would love to believe that companies have some commitment to providing the best service they can at a fair price. But what I know is that their main, perhaps only, concern is how much profit they can make. I fear the cost of fixing things, if they were fixed at all, would fall on the people who work here instead. Costs to fix the facility would be found by reducing the workforce, cutting pay, cutting benefits (assuming there are any), while increasing the work load. That was my experience even in the high end world of aviation operations. I can't imagine hotel workers are fairing any better.

All and all I would much rather be on the boat. I just wish the hurricanes would cooperate a little more.

C Sharp, not B Flat

Almost all of the forecasts suggest that the Beaufort Area is going to be in the preferred southeast quadrant of Florence, with the eye of the hurricane far enough north that tropical storm force winds will be about the worst we can expect. We were about all set to go, with the plan to pick up the cars Monday and get them mostly packed, finish up the prep work Tuesday morning, and head off. We picked up the cars and were gliding along getting things done, me in the cockpit thinking about just when I should start pulling the solar panels. It was around 3 PM, with good amps still flowing into the batteries. I wanted them stuffed full before we closed up Kintala and left her to her own devices. Deb came up from below,

“The Governor of SC just issued a mandatory evacuation order, and we are in it.”

We looked at each other for about 10 seconds, thoughts dancing back and forth between us as often happens with people who have been together for a long time. Then we shifted into full tilt boogie mode. Having shuffled out of FL a year ago, one among millions with a killer storm closing in on our heels, getting out of dodge ASAP was the new plan.

It took about 7 hours of relentless effort. At 10:30 PM the kids were buckled in and we pulled out of the parking lot, the rest of the crew of Blowin' In The Wind following in their own car.  Getting away from Beaufort by auto is mostly done on 2 lane roads, roads that were still mostly empty. It isn’t hard to imagine what they will look like over then next 48 hours, but it will be two cars less thanks to the Governor's declaration.

Hotel mirrors are infinitely fascinating.

So we sit this morning in a hotel room, watching Mother Nature do her thing out in the Atlantic, and wondering what it will mean to us. We know a lot of people are going to get hurt, a lot of others will mark Florence as a, perhaps the, major event of their lives. And the amount of physical damage is almost sure to be astonishing. When we sat through this with Irma, just a year ago, the thought was we were likely to lose everything. At the last moment the storm turned away. This time around it appears Florence will land just far enough to the north that Beaufort will seen nothing but a small storm surge and 30 knot winds.

On the one hand, I have little confidence that it will work out that way. This is a big storm and (in my humble opinion) there is way too much confidence being put into one set of models, with only passing mention being made of those models that show the eye of Florence landing further to the South. On the other hand, we had the resources necessary to move out of harm’s way, and now sit in an air conditioned hotel room, dry, comfortable, food and shelter assured for some of those we love most in the world.

There is a homeless man who lives in the waterfront park in Beaufort. We often see his bed made up on one of the swings when taking an evening stroll before heading back to Kintala for the night. I’ve talked with him a few times. His name, he told me, is “C Sharp” not “B Flat.” I didn’t get the story behind the name but, having recently taken up learning music, I had to smile. (I suspect "C-sharp not D-flat was what he meant but, he made up the name, not me.) Like most of the homeless people I have met, he clings to a fierce independence as one of the tools he needs to survive.

We didn’t see him during our hurried prep to get going. I have no idea how he will fare if Florence moves his way, but I know there are thousands of people who can’t make the choice that we did. That is enough to know that we can count ourselves as among some of the most fortunate people the world has ever known. Sure, we have made some good choices. But they were also choices that were within our reach, but were not within the reach of others.  Something Florence, and Irma before her, has taught me to never, ever, forget.

On the Run, again

It was exactly one year ago to the day that hurricane Irma turned us into weather refugees. We weren't sure when we made the run to Atlanta that there would be anything left of our cruising life when Irma was done. At the last moment she wiggled just a bit to the east and we came through unscathed. Tomorrow we will start stripping Kintala and Blowin' In the Wind, prepping for the arrival of hurricane Florence.

Florence isn't near the monster that Irma was, but all indications are she will be making landfall near here. Like Irma, a track difference of just a few tens of miles will likely tell the tale. Unlike Irma, the boats will be riding out the storms on the water. There is simply no where to run, no boat yard close enough that has room to get them hauled. We are pretty far up the Beaufort River, 10 miles in from the coast line, with trees, low hills, and marsh lands all around. It could be worse.

We will take all the precautions available to us over the next two days, pick up the cars Monday afternoon, and beat feet inland first thing Tuesday morning; with Wednesday / Thursday being the estimated time of impact. I would have liked to put another 24 hours of buffer in there given the mad rush we experienced of millions of people trying to get out of the way of Irma. But this time we are running straight inland rather than trying to get off a peninsula, and likely 50 miles would be enough to be safe. The hotel is 120 miles away.

There is, as usual, some chance that someone else will bear the brunt of the hit and we are going to a lot of effort for no real reason. The problem is that we can't know that until it is too late. So we will prep, get to safety, and see what happens.

I don't know if this is the "new normal". If it is, it needs to be part of the calculations for those thinking of living this way. Five years we have been out, and this is the third serious threat we have faced from hurricanes on the east coast. One has to wonder if sooner or later the odds just have to catch up. But I'm not sure there are any options better. Gordon basically bashed its way up the Mississippi River, surely a rough ride for at least a few "Loopers." Land dwellers have fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, and a daily exposure to driving cars, to reach out and rattle their world. We have hurricanes.

So this weekend we will prepare. Then we will be on the run once again.

Internal Calendar

One of the things I stumble over when sitting for a long time is forgetting just how special it is to live on the water like we do. When moving, my internal calendar logs days of resting at anchor after a day’s travel, watching the sun set over a new horizon. There are days of exploring new places and other days of visiting favorite places not seen for a while. We will have flown sails, gotten on and off of docks never seen, worked navigation details, fussed over the weather, and been enchanted by the antics of wildlife. All things that are special to this life.

It is different when sitting. The internal calendar logs days we ran out of water, that we needed to provision, that the Ding needed its bottom scrubbed, and that diver came to clean the bottom of Kintala. We do all these things while underway of course, but they pass mostly noticed, just part of the traveling. When sitting they become the major event of the day.

Days sitting also amplify the feeling being vulnerable. I doubt that we are any less vulnerable sitting secure on a mooring ball than when out wandering. When out wandering it feels like we are, at least, a moving target rather than sitting ducks. It is hard to cling to the illusion that one is the “Captain of one’s fate” when one’s boat is collecting barnacles on the bottom far faster than miles in the log.

It doesn’t help that the hurricane train in the Atlantic is starting to crank up. Nothing kicks up that vulnerable feeling like having an ocean full of storms.  Hurricane Florence which, until this morning, was expected to struggle to just make hurricane status, is now a major hurricane. Even more fun? The National Hurricane Center has all but admitted they have no clue what this storm is going to do next. I extrapolated a course based on its actual (rather than forecast ) course from the last few days. Should it decide to just keep going the way it is going, which is supposedly highly unlikely, it will show up on our door step in about 10 days. There is at least one spaghetti track floating around that shows it doing exactly that. By the end of next week there looks to be a good chance there will be three named storms out there dancing around. The end of hurricane season suddenly seems like a long, long way off.

For all of that, come every evening after the sun goes down the cockpit calls. The air is warm bordering on comfortable, insect assaults are infrequent and easily ignored, dolphins often puff and snort, cavorting around the mooring field, and all is well in our watery world. That makes for a pretty good day to log on that internal calendar.

Plans, and the lack thereof...

Kintala is well into her second month of riding to the same mooring ball in Beaufort, SC. This wasn’t really part of the plan when we left Tampa Bay. Then again, the only real plan we had when we left Tampa Bay was to rendezvous with Blowin’ In The Wind and keep going north. It took longer than anticipated to meet up and we didn’t really manage that until we got here, already a good bit north of where we started. And, from here, we had a plan to visit St. Louis for a couple of weeks. It was a great trip full of fun and laughter, including a day spent in a climbing gym belaying grand kids up and down a 50 foot climbing wall. How cool is that? Deb and I even made a couple of our own climbs, belaying each other. The people who run the gym went out of their way to make it a good day.

When we left Tampa Bay I had thoughts of aiming for the Chesapeake Bay.  It has been a while since we cruised those waters and I like the place. And though not perfectly safe from hurricanes, it is still far less likely to get blasted than places further south. I used to think, compared to places south, that it was cooler up there as well, And it is, for part of the year anyway. Right now spot checks of the weather suggest this summer in Baltimore has not been appreciably more bearable in the heat department than Beaufort. In fact the rumors are that the Chesapeake is a bit of a rough go at the moment. Constant rainfall, a flood of debris, and a bumper crop of biting insects have taken some of the fun out of living on the water there.

It is impossible to say what the hurricane season will turn out to be like. So far the Atlantic has been quiet. The Pacific, on the other hand, appears to running a hurricane production line at full speed. I can’t decide if that is a good omen for this coast, or a bad one. But Beaufort, SC might not be a bad place to be either way. We are miles up the river from the sound and more than 10 miles inland from the coast. We asked the people at the marina where the locals take their boats when a hurricane comes. We were told they bring them here, to this marina. Apparently they have never lost a boat off of one of the mooring balls or at the dock. Our hurricane plan might consist of nothing more than stripping the boats, adding multiple lines to secure them to the balls come what may, and getting inland another 50 miles or so. Better, perhaps, than we could do if caught flat-footed at the mouth of the Chesapeake.

Blowin' in the Wind on the ball to our stern

So maybe this is a far north as we are going to get this year. The weather is bearable and, on some days, down right pleasant. The thunderstorms have been far less threatening than those in Biscayne Bay and often come late in the afternoon. Giant air conditioning systems that cool the boats and the air, hide the sun for the worst part of the afternoon, and offer up a good night’s sleep. Surprisingly, though there are marshes all around, insects have been a non issue on the boat. Expect to get nibbled on a bit if in the park as the sun goes down, but that is about it.

One downside to this place is just how fast stuff grows on anything that sits in the water. The Ding really needs cleaned about every two weeks. I cringe at the thought of laying to an anchor and 100 feet of chain. What a mess that would be to get on board when it comes time to move on. The cost of the mooring ball is (almost) worth not having to deal with that. The good news is that the dive service that works the marina and mooring field is a first rate operation. They charge by the hour which sounds a bit scary at first. But they are honest about the time it takes to do the job right. The charge is less for those on the dock. (There is a long waiting list for a full time dock.)

Another downside is the current that flows though here, first one way, then the other, for most of the day. New and Full moon tidal ranges are impressive. If yours is a rowing dink, expect a good workout. Blowin’ In The Wind has a sailing dink. The other day Grandson Eldest and I took it out in light winds and full current. At first we made couple of hundred feet of headway against the flow. The winds eased just a bit and the best we could do was hold station. The winds eased a bit more and we needed to call the Mother Ship to tow us away from the marina docks. The Merc had its little, 3.5 horsepower hands full, pulling both boats home.\



For now we are less cruisers and more live-a-boards…again. That will likely change…again. We just don’t have a plan for when.