Full Moon and Tunes

I posted this video on our Facebook page and it got such a good response that I decided to include it here as a post for those of you who don't do the Facebook thing. Enjoy!

No Name Harbor Pics and Vids

 Since we're leaving for the Bahamas in the morning I thought I'd use up some of our data to give you full size pics from the last two days and a video. Enjoy!

Miami in the rear view mirror after leaving the Miami Marine Stadium

The little kid sailing class. It was howling 24 kts and these little kids were out in the middle of Biscayne Bay

We tacked back and forth across this charter Beneteau Sense 55. Tim was in love.

The Key Biscayne Yacht Club had their annual gala today. The boats were rafted up 5 deep on the wall at some point.

In all the times we've come to No-Name this is the first time we ever tied up to the wall for a day.

More party pics

Instead of the view from my galley window in a picture, tonight you get a video.

Puttering

put·ter³

ˈpədər/

verb

North American

gerund or present participle: puttering

1. occupy oneself in a desultory but pleasant manner, doing a number of small tasks or not concentrating on anything particular.

   "early morning is the best time of the day to putter around in the garden"

   • move or go in a casual, unhurried way.

     "the duck putters on the surface of the pond"

And such a day it was. When you're stuck on the anchor waiting for a weather window and it's the kind of day you don't have any big plans, it frees up time for those smallish projects that just sort of pop up. You know, the "hey wouldn't that be nice to do..."

Yesterday the plastic Command Strip phone holders that we had on the bulkhead by the companionway stairs finally gave up the ghost and had to be taken down. They had already cracked once upon a time when I was coming down the steps and happened to bump into them. I pulled them off the wall (thank you Command Strips for the lack of markings on the wall), and sat there looking at the space. A design began to form for a teak replacement, much classier than its predecessor. After peering into various cubbies where we store bits and pieces of leftover teak, I came up with enough to craft the new phone rack. A few hours of cutting, sanding, gluing, and polishing and we now have a pretty class act holder.

Part of installing the new phone rack was drilling holes through the bulkhead for the mounting screws. On the back of the bulkhead is a mirror behind the door into the aft cabin. I've always wondered why they put it there since you can't really ever see in it and I figured it would go a long way toward brightening the aft cabin if it was moved around to the wall inside. Five minutes and four screws later, it was done.

A few weeks ago Tim had removed the box that used to house the old instruments and used it to house the new solar controller. He was able to leave the glass from the instrument holder in place to act as a sun port to help brighten the aft cabin. We weren't sure what we were going to do with the edges of the aluminum tubes that held the glass but, after some thought, decided on edging it with some very nautical looking nylon rope tied with very proper reefing knots.

After a suggestion made in passing to Tim a couple days ago about moving the control lines for Henry, our wind vane, I came home from doing laundry to find he had already done it.

The control lines used to go down to the coaming, making a 90° through a padeye and then to the blocks. It was difficult to set the vane because of that 90° turn.  It also involved moving any cushion you happened to be comfortably resting against so I had made the suggestion that we move them up to the stern pulpit and it really will help tremendously when we're under sail.

It's little things like these that make such a difference in the daily living on a boat. We're putterers, for sure, and will always be doing some little thing, but this was a particularly productive bunch. Kintala is smiling tonight.

Miscellaneous pics

An awesome oyster boat from 1884 that used to be a sailboat and was converted to steam and now diesel. The guy brought it all the way from Mystic, CT down the ICW.

There was an influx of Man-of-War jelly fish into the harbor yesterday. It was bad enough that they had a warning posted at the gate of the park.

This guy (girl?) is here in the harbor all by his lonesome. He sleeps in the tree right next to our boat.

This last one was from Dinner Key right before we left.

View from my galley window

This catamaran is a custom design modeled after the gunboat hull but there the resemblance stops. The bridgedeck is completely custom as is the interior. Completely breathtaking. And it's for sale: 1.3 million. Anybody want to donate to The Retirement Project?

The Bear floats away ...

The Floating Bear has found a new home. Daughter Eldest and Family did all they could to find their way back to a life on the water, but it just isn't to be … for now. Regardless of what their future might hold, the idea of The Bear sitting alone on the mooring doing a slow decline to “abandoned boat” status, was too sad. The Bear deserved better and Daughter Eldest figured out how to make that happen. So today Deb and I helped the new owner find his way around the boat.

He is a young licensed Captain who works here in Dinner Key, and The Bear is his first boat. He went out of his way to help Daughter Eldest and Family the months they lived here and is a good friend of the clan. All said and done the Family can face a future that does not include the constant financial drain of owning a boat, and a young Captain has his own piece of life on the water. Not the desired outcome, but not a bad one either. The next time you are sitting in the cockpit, sundowner glass cold in hand, have a good thought for The Bear and her Captains, both old and new. May they all find the wind at their backs and following seas.

Living on the water has taught me that we are much more like flotsam and much less “The Captain of My Fate” than we, particularly us strutting Americans, like to admit. Daughter Eldest and Family are safe and warm while awaiting the arrival of Grand Child Newest sometime in May. The Bear is in the hands of an enthusiastic new owner. All is well with the world. Except I'm not there yet. For me a lingering sense of failure surrounds the Saga of The Floating Bear. By any rationale I can manage, two parts of my family have taken nothing short of a massive flogging. Floggings that, no matter how many insist otherwise, happened on my watch. My best efforts only managed to make things worse. When the family needed at least a marginally competent Captain, I managed flotsam. The Universe was playing Master Level Chess. I came to the board sucking my thumb and clutching my Blankie.

Still, there is a thing about flotsam that most of us miss. Regardless of how rough the sea, flotsam just keeps on floating. Towering waves? No matter. Giant breakers rolling massive ships on their ear? Passes almost unnoticed. Sink a bit of flotsam deep as you like, it pops to the surface ready to go on as far as the wind blows or current runs. Indeed, flotsam goes on long after the Captain has met his match and taken up residence in Mr. Jones' Water Side Hotel.

I doubt I'll ever be flotsam enough to shrug The Bear off completely. There will always be this nagging feeling that I got that one wrong. But maybe I'll be flotsam enough to keep going anyway.
 

A good day ...

The intention was to spend most of this month sailing around Biscayne Bay. Not to be too blunt, I need the practice. Even after 2000 nm Kintala still gives hints that she isn't always happy with the way she is being handled. But Sister Sky had different ideas about the things that might go on during November this year in southern Fl. So, instead of sailing, our old Tartan collected bottom barnacles in Middle River, Miami Stadium, and then in No Name Harbor. After weeks of constant F5 winds we finally left No Name this morning and got in a good day … in steady F5 winds. (In addition No Name has a 2 week limit per visit. Don't tell anyone but today was day 13 for us. I like No Name, but it was time to move on.)

It is about 5 miles from No Name to the Dinner Key mooring field. Kintala covered a bit more than 20 today. We were having so much fun out romping that we kind of went the long way around. We practiced different sail sets, hove to, and generally tried to get a little better at making the boat go. One thing we pretty much verified is that, often, we simply don't drive the boat hard enough. With the jib alone we were doing a solid 5+ in mid teens winds with gusts in the low 20s. Going south we found a bit more wind and decided to roll up the jib and fly the stay sail. Kintala did not approve. Speed fell to the high 3s as the boat wallowed around and generally misbehaved. The stay sail was rolled back in and about two-thirds of the jib went back out. The speed picked up to the mid to high 5s and flirted with 6. The boat danced happily through the waves. Lesson learned. When the winds blow, fly enough canvas to keep the speed well above 5, but not so much as to set the boat on its ear.

Somewhere in all of our tacking and jibing the jib leach line tore out and the sumbrella got a couple of rips in it. Not sure how that happened but, it must be admitted, Kintala's suit of sails is a bit weary. The only real party dress she has in her closet is the nearly new main sail. To keep from doing any more damage, the jib got benched and the stay sail went back in play. That is not enough horsepower on a broad reach unless the wind is flat howling. Force 5 is short of howling so we put up a double reefed main in an attempt to balance the boat with the small head sail. It worked pretty well. This was the first time we flew two reefs with a purpose and getting all the rigging squared away took the deck monkey a few tries. The top batten got caught in the lazy jacks and, being on a reach rather than close hauled, the leeward running back was in the way. (Tight on the wind - which is when we usually fly the stay sail - we normally leave both the running backs set as the boom never gets that far from the center of the boat.)

Adding to the fun, just when we were set to drop the main and enter the channel into the marina and on to the mooring field, a sneaky little storm slapped us with heavy rains and wind gusts into the 30s. Visibility went into the dumpster and, soaking wet in the cold wind, so did the crew body temperatures. It was a busy couple of uncomfortable minutes but the main fell cleanly into the lazy jacks, the stay sail went - not so cleanly - onto its furler, and the WesterBeast picked up the traces. Once in the mooring field Deb made a perfect pass at the ball but I missed the catch, forcing her to go around through the clutch of boats to give me another shot. This with more rain and the winds gusting into the 20s again. One of the reasons we get along so well is that she never makes much of my mistakes. I will do the same as soon as she makes one.

Photo courtesy of Leave Happier Photography

So we have joined the rest of the crowd getting bounced around in the mooring field this evening. Winds are still a solid F5 running to F6 when the storms pass nearby. There is still some deck work to do and the dink needs launched, but it will have to wait until morning. The constant work of the day has set my forearms on fire, though a cold Coke & Vodka is helping to damp the flames. (Kintala is suffering a lack of Rum at the moment … not sure how I let that happen.) Tomorrow we go into full project mode and in a couple of weeks we will make the trip to meet New Grand Daughter Edie and see family not hugged for more than a year.

Since Kintala will not move again until we stage for the Islands, it was good to get this day of sailing in; rain, wind, torn sail, and all.

Whether you go or Weather you don't

As many of you know, Tim and I have been working on writing a book together. We're writing the book we wish we had had in our hands before we bought Kintala. As I've been working on it this past week, one thing that has hit home hard is this issue of the weather. I can't say it loud enough. I can't say it often enough. If you're going to go cruising, your life will be ruled by the weather. So get comfortable with it, learn to read it, surround yourself with all sorts of ways to monitor and predict it, and fill your Kindle up with lots of books for when it laughs at you.

We've been stuck in No-Name Harbor for 13 days now waiting on the weather. We had wanted to sail down to Key Largo or at least Elliot Key before we take a mooring ball at Dinner Key for the month of December. It's a longish day's sail down there so we would really need 3-4 days to sail down, spend some time snorkeling, and sail back. The longest window we've had in the 13 days since we got here was 1-1/2 days. Both Elliot Key and Key Largo are only good if the wind is from the East. They are too exposed for any other direction. The forecasters had predicted 8 + days of N-NE winds at 15-20 but suddenly it changed to East so we thought, "OK now we can go!". We got the boat ready to leave the following morning and, on one of my middle-of-the-night bathroom visits I peeked out the porthole only to discover we were faced due South. South. Exactly where we wanted to sail. Having no interest in motoring 8 hours to Key Largo we decided to stay put. Weather gods rule. Now where is my Kindle???

Thanksgiving II

Our first cruising Thanksgiving on Kintala was in Oriental. We had been out barely six weeks. Four of those six had been spent during a long month of being tied to the dock while we struggled through cold temperatures and ugly storms, both weather and broken-engine related. Looking back it seems an even worse start to our cruising life than it felt at the time, and it felt pretty grim at the time. It was also the first Thanksgiving spent without any of the family nearby. I was as unsure of myself as I have even been, desperately missed my girls and their families, and was not the least convinced I had the skills necessary to make things better. But there was no choice other than going on and hoping that things wouldn't get any worse. Yet that Thanksgiving day was still a good day. We were thankful that we had made it out at all as many people never get a chance to even try to live their dreams. We were thankful that we had managed as many miles as we had; that the engine and other maintenance tasks appeared to be under control. And, not to put too fine a point on it, I was thankful that I had not manged to kill us both and/or sink the boat ... at least so far.

A year later Kintala is floating easy in No Name Harbor. People ask me for advice about many things cruising, about our “experience” in the Islands, on how to safely get across the Gulf Stream.  They ask about fixing their boats and judging the weather, and that is something that still surprises me. On the other hand the attrition rate during the first year of cruising seems much higher than I would have expected. Being a cruiser is not the same as planning to be a cruiser and, for some, the difference becomes crushingly obvious very quickly. Anyone who is looking forward to a second year has climbed an enormous learning and experience curve. One that is very much behind us on this Thanksgiving II.

We still have much to learn (and I still desperately miss my girls and their families), but this is our life now and we have gone a long way into settling into it. A large part of that has been setting aside what we thought cruising meant to us, and accepting what we it does mean to us. We are not "blue water adventurers" but rather a middle-aged couple who managed to retire a bit early to go exploring in nearby waters. I admire friends who have sailed around the world and who plan to keep going, but there is no chance I will be following in their wake. I like sailing. I like that we have put in some 2000 nm while using - maybe - 200 gallons of fuel, including motoring down the ICW. I like being out on the open ocean with no land in sight. I even like sailing at night, so long as it is one night at a time. But I really like sitting out unruly weather snug and comfortable in a pretty place, puttering around on my boat, meeting different people, and exploring different places.

Good friends, good food

In that mellow light, Friends Mizzy and Brian (of sailing about half way around the world fame) and Friend Bill (of Airline driving fame) joined us for Thanksgiving dinner on Kintala. Deb worked galley magic and our feast had all of the fixings. Sailing and flying memories filled the cabin. The combination of friends, food, and sitting quietly at anchor while the remnants of the latest cold front brought perfect weather, made for a day so fine as to take one's breath away. It doesn't always work out this way, but on this day we managed to be among the Royalty of the world. We have family who loves us in spite of our wandering ways. Deb still trusts that I will manage to not sink the boat or kill us both, and keep our Tartan as a functioning home at the same time. Friends sail waters nearby and far away. Being an accepted member of that tribe is an honor bestowed on the few and the lucky. 

This was a thanks giving day, indeed.

A small No-Name Harbor Photo Essay

The lighthouse in Bill Baggs State Park

A slightly damaged Great Blue Heron. Wonder who took a chunk out of him?

An awesome cat boat. Spent some time talking to the Captain who is from Spanish Wells.
Neat guy. He took it there today.

There are some amazing and very weird trees in the park

A gorgeous Hylas 54 headed out of No-Name

Fishing at sunset

A manatee came to visit us at the pumpout dock.
He was easily eight feet and HUGE.
He also had very bad breath.

Tim got to pet him while Kintala looks on. It doesn't get much better than this.

Can't top this ...

Teresia Benedicta (aka Edie) arrives! Photo courtesy of her mom.

For the most part America's corporate world is built around morning people, with 0800 being the magic start time of many working days. It is a poor fit for my night owl schedule. Left to myself 0200 – 0300 would be a normal bedtime, with 0900 – 1100 being “first thing in the morning”. Combine that with night breezes running in the F5 to F6 range for days, boats all around, and tales of questionable holding here in No Name, and I have tended to roll out of the v-berth hours after Deb for most of this last week.

This morning a bright sun burned its way through my eyelids. Sun? Then I realized that the boat wasn't moving much and the snubber lines weren't groaning under the load of holding against the wind. Furled up sails weren't rattling. The Bimini top wasn't flapping. Could it be that Florida weather had finally returned to Florida? A bleary-eyed gaze down the length of the boat found Deb in an animated phone conversation while sitting at the top of the companionway. It was all the look I needed to know that Daughter Middle had welcomed our Grand Baby VIII into the world. Though a couple of weeks early, Daughter and her new Daughter are both doing fine. Go ahead, try to think of a better way to start a day.

A few hours later Friend Bill, he of DHS helicopter driver fame, called. (That would be a different Friend Bill than he of American Airline driver fame.) DHS helicopter Bill and his fiance were going to be in No Name Harbor and wanted to know if we would join them for lunch. They were waiting seawall side as we rowed our way through the throng of powerboats out celebrating the break in the weather. It was our fist chance to meet Sunne, who instantly became number one on my Charming Ladies Met Recently List. Who would have thought DHS helicopter drivers rated so high?

Photo courtesy of Sunne

Over lunch we heard about their plans to do some cruising of their own. The advantages of trying out different boats by chartering were debated, interspersed with stories from the nearly a year that has passed since we saw Bill last. Among the tales was one of Bill and Sunne, running his 33' trimaran all out at the head of a race, getting caught fleet-footed in a micro burst and turning in the thing over on its side. No one was hurt and no damage was done, well, except for that laid on Bill's wallet for the price of being “salvaged” by Tow Boat US. Apparently throwing a line around an ama and tugging a tri back up on its training wheels is a multi-thousand dollar “big deal”. In any case I was glad that our first year of cruising had left us with no story of daring-do to rival. The best I could come up with was a short night swim to haul a drunk girl out of the water. (Dead last on my Charming Ladies Met Recently List.)

After lunch they joined us on Kintala, giving Sunne a chance to poke around an honest-to-real cruising boat doing an honest-to-real cruise. Bill inspected my deck repair and allowed as it looked pretty good. The fact is I can see where the repair was done now, since filler and paint have shrunk some. Still, it was kind of a fellow aviator / mechanic / inspector (ATP, A&P, I A in airplane speak) to give it a passing grade. They hung around until the sun started sinking close to the horizon and we certainly hope to spend some more time with them before too long.

All in all a string of days not the kind you write home about, was broken by a day that will be hard to beat. Teresia Benedicta Rennier, welcome to the world. DeMa and Grampy-T love you already, and in just a few weeks will be cooing stories of sailing to you while you sleep.