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.
 

Garage Sail

As many of you who have visited the boat know, more often than not our aft cabin is referred to as "The Garage". There is a rather nice-sized double bed in there on the port side, but its proximity to the rather very nice workshop on the starboard side means that everything gets put on the double berth. Since the modification of The Floating Bear from sail to powerboat, the sails from The Bear landed - you guessed it - in the aft cabin. They had 5 sails, we had 4 extra sails, and something had to be done.

All of the sails hanging up and the ones on the floor were in our aft cabin. Good thing nobody wanted to visit! The biggest one there is the reacher folded in half. It's huge!

The original plan was to sell them on Craigslist, but time constraints and the lack of energy levels from what we can only assume has been a case of pneumonia have severely limited our desire to spend months selling used sails. We needed the room. We and the kids both needed the money.  We decided to keep one spare jib for our boat just in case we happened to blow ours out. A friend decided he wanted the hank on staysail that we took off when we converted to roller furling. Another friend declined on the huge reacher because, even as huge as it was, it was 6 feet too short for their 46 foot Hylas. We borrowed a van from a very good friend and off we headed to Second Wind Sails, with 8 sails: 3 jibs, 2 mains and a spinnaker from The Bear, a staysail and a reacher from ours. While selling used sails to a wholesaler is never a good way to make much money, it is a good way to empty out one's aft cabin in a hurry and end up with some cash and a new roller furler sail for the staysail on trade. Even though the day seemed wasted with heat exchanger errands, in the end we did make some progress toward The Deadline.

Our really huge reacher folded in half

Deadlines

Four nuts. Four hose connections. Four hours.

Working on things used to be enjoyable and rewarding; though it did help that someone was usually writing me a pretty big check to work on their thing. Working on most things is still often enjoyable and rewarding even though, these days, there are only outgoing checks for parts and materials, and no incoming checks. But when the thing being worked on is the WesterBeast shoehorned into our Tartan 42, it isn't likely that enjoyable or rewarding is going to be part of the equation. Today was no exception.

This engine has always run hotter than normal, and never seems to make much water. Two months ago we limped into Ft. Lauderdale nursing the temp gauge once again while dodging ugly weather, just to keep things interesting. Determined to get the thing running right once and for all (yeah, yeah, I know) we decided to pull the heat exchanger and have it checked, serviced or, depending on what the shop finds, replaced.

Four nuts. Four hose connections. Four hours.

And that's just to get it off the engine and out of the boat. Experience suggests that removing anything from anything is way less than half the job. So I am already feeling hard pressed to get Kintala ready to vacate this dock by the end of the month.

Part of going cruising was to get away from schedules and dead lines. So far it has not seemed to work that way. Some kind of deadline always seems poised just above our heads. We had to get the boat ready to go before the truck arrived. We had to get the boat ready to go into the water before the boat show; just barely made that one. We had to get the boat ready to head south before the ugly weather hit; didn't really make that one. Then the engine broke down in Oriental and shoved us way past the weather deadline. We paid the price by shivering our way down the ICW in a seemingly endless parade of long, cold, dark days.

Once south things got easier and, for a few weeks anyway, no schedules drove our decisions. But then we went to the Islands. While still deep in the north part of the Sea of Abaco, the day we needed to be back in the US started to press our decisions. Weeks out and we started thinking of when we needed to be through the Whale and into the southern part of the Abacos; then when we needed to be in Eleuthrea, then Nassau, Bimini, and the States. Once in the US we faced the hurricane deadline, one we missed because of The Thing and The Bear. The penalty was doubling our insurance premiums and spending the summer here, where the dock fees are way more than they would have been in Lady's Island. Now the impending 100% increase in dock fees is driving the need to move regardless of where we are on “the list”. So we are still working pretty close to full time days, seven days a week, driven by a deadline we can't afford to miss. (This deadline is due to cost, but the cost is going up because of the season change. So I am blaming it on the weather in a kind of indirect way. My blog, my rules.)

So far cruising deadlines have proved to be serious things and missing them costly. It is impossible to ignore them and “live without a schedule”. I think our problem with deadlines is the result of two conflicting needs. The first is one everyone faces, living with the weather. North in a hard winter or south in a hurricane is no one's idea of “cruising” or, at least, not my idea. Living on a boat means following the good stuff. Weather deadlines simply can't be ignored. Mother Earth will flat kick your ass.

The second serious thing is, simply, the boat. Nearly four years after buying this thing and there are still struggles with the engine, still adjustments being made to the rig so we feel comfortable as a short handed crew on big, open water. For example the roller went on the inner forestay. But we still have to find a sail that will work on the shortened foil and fit our deck. Another task that has to been done in the face of the impending deadline. The autopilot isn't installed, there are no solar panels, and the Bimini has yet to be touched. Some of this is simply not going to get done before the deadline forces us on our way.

That could be seen as a good thing, I guess. People keep telling me no boat is ever “done”. Waiting until it is would mean never leaving the dock. And I see their point. On the other hand, if there never comes a time when I don't have to balance out the cost and hazards of missing a deadline against the cost and hazards of heading out with the boat not “done” …? Sooner or later “not done” needs to be some bright work or dock lines needing spliced, not the autopilot or electrical system.

I can live with one set of deadlines. Living with two conflicting sets is getting old.

No more "BOOM"

Champaigne on the bow and in the water for Neptune

Around 0900 this morning we officially notified King Neptune that S/V Obsession had passed into history to be replaced by H/V (Hybrid Vessel) The Floating Bear. His forbearance on new ship and crew was requested with the proper sacrifice of bubbly offered.  At 0915 Husband to Daughter Eldest tickled The Bear's engine to life, and at 0930 we eased away from Cooley's landing, did a pirouette in the New River and headed outbound. With a new air draft of less than 10 feet we didn't bother the 7^th Street bridge tender as we coasted under his domain with air to spare.

Searching for a bit to find an engine RPM that felt "right", The Bear settled into a 2100 RPM cruise making about 4.5 knots, even pulling the 12' hard bottomed tender, Eeyore, on a short tether. Roughly 938,700 revolutions later we nosed up to mooring ball No. 34 at Dinner Key, secured a couple of lines, and The Floating Bear was home.

Given all the work that we did, the trip was a mechanical snoozer. I think the engine is making a little too much smoke and a little too little water. By the end of the day my ear was picking up a little more exhaust noise, so there are some things that still need a good look. Minutes after securing the engine one of the two brand new, properly wired and "ARMED" bilge pumps kicked on. The new stuffing box needed a bit of a snug, not unexpected after 7 hours of continuous running.  I made a late day visit to the lazarette to shut off the drip.  Rudder bearings are a bit snug, and there are still a couple of minor interior leaks.

"How," you might ask, "would you know that?"

Well, though the trip was a mechanical snooze, weather wise it was a different issue. Half way down the ICW, somewhere around Bakers Haulover Inlet, we were watching the sky get darker and the lightning flash.  A storm thundered by one side, another passed by the other side, but the third caught us just as we cleared the Venetian Causeway Bridge. From there until we were well clear of the Rickenbacker Causeway the rains pounded The Bear as if to test her ability to stay afloat. The winds howled and visibility dropped to a couple of hundred yards. It was easily some of the hardest rain I have ever seen.  The Bear was mostly dry inside, didn't seem to mind the winds much, shrugged off the waves, and just kept muttering along.

Daughter Eldest and Grand Sons two had taken the car south to do some pre-school preparations and avoiding having two young ones on board for what was nothing short of a sea-trail. They were waiting for us when we arrived.  So, after waiting out some more rain, Deb and I made like normal people and borrowed their car to get back to Kintala. We will head back down to Coconut Grove tomorrow ... sometime ... likely not very early ... to finish up a bit of wiring that was left undone and return their wheels. Public transport will get us home and there is a pretty good chance we are going to take a few days off.

On the one hand it is a huge relief to have The Bear back to where she needs to be for the reasons she needs to be there. Deb and I can now focus on salvaging our cruising plans, figuring out where we want to be in a year and how we can get there. The work list for Kintala, now somewhat truncated by budget and time constraints, can be addressed. These have been some stormy seas since Kintala returned to the States. The stress of the voyage is showing.

On the other hand – well - during the official Name Changing Ceremony this morning Grampy T got choked up around the part of watching over the newly renamed boat and crew as they set sail. Dema had to take over. It reminded me that this was yet another "cruiser good-by".  Christopher and little JJ will not be clambering around Kintala like they have been for the last several months. Daughter Eldest and Husband will be concentrating on other things a day's sail away (though only an hour by car). That part of my heart isn't as far away as those in St. Louis, but they aren't just down the dock anymore either.

Tough as these past couple of months have been, I am going to miss singing "BOOM" at the sky. It isn't nearly as much fun without little voices joining in.

Try keeping a toddler still for a cellphone picture...

Peeking out through the mosquito netting - the first night back on the boat.

A few days ago - the Bear starting to look a bit more like home again.

Home Sweet Home. The end of the channel at Dinner Key

Boats and Bears and Trains ... oh my

The crew of The Floating Bear moved back aboard a couple of days ago. Alas, that has not led to any appreciable easing of the work load. The DC electrical system is still a work in progress even though the batteries have found their way to a new home in the starboard side lazarette.  Switch panels are held in place with tape and wiring runs are still being unscrambled.  A whole heap of zip-ties are about to be sacrificed in order to bring order, but at least the lights are working.

There are solar panels to hang and wire, and the water system is not cooperating for reasons as yet to be determined. Massive leaks in the cabin windows are being addressed by actually re-bedding them. By all appearances others have made at least four attempts to stop the leaks. That is the number of different kinds of sealer found piled one on top of another. Needless to say the efforts proved fruitless and the windows leak like screen doors with the first drizzle of rain. It must be admitted that trying to remove said layers is nearly fruitless as well.  One long day of effort is required for each of the four windows.  That task has fallen mostly to Deb as I have been banished to spending my days in the lazarette, tied in a knot of wiring.  There is also a debate raging about the new holding tank install.

The fitting for sucking the nasty away is located at the top of the tank. When I asked about it needing a tube reaching near the bottom of the tank for the system to work properly I was assured by a guru of all things nautical that it would not be necessary. I admit to having doubts. Nomad was - and Kintala is - plumbed with that fitting at the bottom of the holding tank. Normal pump type sucking gets the desired results without the need of enthusiastic vacuum / weight lifting type sucking. If a suck pipe needs installed I would rather do it now than after the tank is full of smelly brown stuff. An internet search did not shed much light on the subject of holding tank sucking in sailboats, and far be it from me to question the sage wisdom of a guru of all things nautical based on my scant experienced with just two such systems.  But I still wonder if that tank needs a pipe stuck in it for a proper sucking to take place. (Advice based on the cumulative wisdom of the gurus of all things nautical who find their way to these musings will not be ignored.)

Other challenges go beyond that of just trying to repair the boat and get the systems working properly. The budget burden has escalated to the point of being crushing. Searching for income to offset the outflow is now solidly in the short term future. (Anyone who could use an pretty accomplished airplane driver in the Miami / Ft Lauderdale area should feel free to speak up. I know where one can be found.) The schedule burden has become impossible. The boat was supposed to leave yesterday for a mooring field near to where Grandson Eldest will be starting school scant days from now. I think he is going to need a note from his boat doctor.


At the moment we have no real clue as to what to do other than get up each morning and struggle on. This is family, those for whom all of us would step in front of a train, if necessary, to keep them safe and whole. What is a Bear in comparison to a train?  And, at least with a Bear, one might actually live to tell the tale.

The light at the end of the tunnel ...

... we can see it, but we can't seem to get there. For the last several days we were sure that the family would start putting some stuff back on The Floating Bear, and soon after move onto their newly refurbished little floating home. But the first day such was anticipated it was discovered that the companionway steps / engine cover had to be repaired before any moving would commence. The little ones, in particular, could not be expected to move back on the boat if they couldn't actually get down into the boat.

The floor, you see, is back where the floor was when the boat came out of the factory. The stairs, on the other hand, had been hacked to fit the floor that had been laid over the original floor when that original floor rotted. When the second floor rotted and was covered with a cheap, cardboard faux wood cover, the steps had been hacked again. Un-hacking them, and fixing related engine bay items, took longer than expected.

Move the light back a day.

The next day Daughter Eldest was first to the boat, excited to be moving stuff and perhaps a bit preoccupied. She slipped on the cockpit floor which, truth to tell, is very slippery under normal conditions. Throw in a thin layer of sawdust from all the woodworking going on and it gets down-right ice rinky. Her foot gave way, momentum carried said foot the short distance across the cockpit followed by her full weight. Her full weight, by the way, is barely 100 pounds. But it was enough to cause loud crunching noises when toes crashed into fiberglass. She is still using a crutch but moving around better.

Move the light back a day.

That day it was decided the head plumbing should really be finished before starting to stuff things into every available locker. Good thought, and there were only four hoses needing run, along with a couple of 90 degree fittings. How long could it take?

Move the light back a day.

This day would be THE day. Just a quick repair of an easily accessible water tank needed to be done first. And it was a pretty quick repair. Removing the old repair however; completely different story. That repair -honest, I am not making this up - included a blue paper towel being fiberglassed over the open, six inch crack in the top of the tank. The other six inch crack in the top of the tank was spooged over with white goop. Some of the white goop had been reinforced with its own coat of fiberglass resin while the rest had been left to fend for itself.  Grinding all that foolishness away without adding additional holes in the top of the plastic tank took a while.

Move the light back a day.

Once upon an idiot's dream someone installed a hatch in the port side quarter berth wrong-side-out. It hung dogging handles and hatch in the cockpit sidewall, down around shin height and just aft of the companionway. Honest – I am not making this up, it opened OUT to the cockpit where it has caused many a bruise. It wasn't a stellar day. I tangled with the hatch, got fed up, chewed that thing out with my teeth and spat it into the New River ... okay, I might have made that bit up. But that hatch is GONE and the hole sealed tight with a new pane of Plexiglas
.
The light had already been moved back another day so, what the hell. Get another thing done to undo a thing that should never have been done in the first place. Just like the water tank, floor, headliner, compression post, mast step, chain-plates and rudder; that hatch install was about the dumbest bit of butt sorry maintenance imaginable.

Well, I can't imagine it, but someone did.  Anyway, I can still see the light. Maybe we will get there tomorrow.

One year in ... sort of

Yesterday was one of those days where being far away from the family still living in St. Louis made my heart hurt. I sat in the chaos that is The Floating Bear and remembered Michael Jr's head butts, reading Kali to sleep for naps (though Grampy T often faded first) little Gussie's final good-by cuddle, Catherine and Mary's missing tooth smiles and questions about us leaving and the teary final hugs from Amber and Melanie ...

... then, sight still a little blurry, I went back to work. My Ft. Lauderdale / Miami family remains in a bit of a bind. It is good to be here helping them over a bump in the road, giving them a chance to get their own journey back under control and part of my heart is here as well.  Waking up to little JJ peaking under the covers of my current sleeping spot on the starboard side settee and calling out "I see you!" isn't a bad way to start any day.

Getting Kintala's journey back under control should probably be higher on the list of things I worry about. But it isn't. When the smoke clears from this current brush fire Deb and I will assess the damage, inventory the available resources, make some decisions, and do what we have always done; keep going.

It occurred to me that it was just over a year ago that our old Tartan put Boulder behind her and headed for the haul-out pit across the lake. Though I didn't start the count of our cruising days until we set sail from Oak Harbor (274 as of today), the day we left the sailing family at Boulder is the day we set out to go cruising.

The boat and her crew have come a ways since then. We are still a long way from being master craftsmen in the sailing / cruising world, but we have certainly reached journeymen status. (Though I am still surprised when someone asks my advice on anything cruising related.) It should be fun, being back underway without everyday being full of "firsts". New things are exciting, but there is a lot to be said for having a clue.

There is also a curiosity as to the shape our cruising life will take now that the first steps are in the log. This past year has been lurching from crisis to crisis: the hull repair at Tradewinds; rudder, rig, and near sinking at Oak Harbor; the endless beating at the hand of cold fronts coming down the ICW; storms and tornadoes in Oriental and Charleston; the engine break-down in Oriental.

Then there was the triumph of our time in the Islands. We got there and back all of a piece and all on our own. Kintala crossed the fearsome Gulfstream twice. We made some good decisions and fell in love with a good place in the world. Then Deb and I sailed back to the States and headlong into the storms of The Thing in PA and then The Bear. Perhaps the longest continuous stretch of bad weather we have experienced in the four decades plus we have traveled together.

When they say cruiser's plans are written in sand at low tide, they are not kidding.

What this next year will bring is anyone's guess. Which is true for all of us, everywhere, cruiser or land's man. The only sure thing is that Kintala, even burdened with the occasional day of a hurting heart, has started her second year by holding her bow to the waves to see what comes next.

Land life and Cruising

I belong to a couple of the sailing groups on Facebook. My favorite by far is Women Who Sail because, since it's a closed group, women feel safe to confide their fears and concerns about sailing and cruising, and they are many. Sometimes someone will become particularly down or frustrated about some aspect of cruising, most of which either involves the space constraints, or their significant other, or their significant other in constrained space.

Today I was working on rebedding two fixed skylights on The Floating Bear, each of which was about 5 x 7 inches and should have taken maybe 2 hours apiece. That would be on any normal boat but, this being The Bear, it of course took all day since there were 4 different sealants involved, stacked on top of each other, the bottom one of which was Liquid Nails. For those of you who do not already realize that you never, ever use Liquid Nails on a sailboat, the reason is because after a few years Liquid Nails becomes highly brittle and crumbles away. Not a good choice for skylight rebedding anywhere, but particularly so in South Florida, the land of the daily thunderstorm. So as I spent hours on end digging out the old sealant, I had a lot of time to think.

I was rehashing in my mind some of the posts I had read the night before on Women Who Sail and it occurred to me that many new cruisers have forgotten that just because you're living on a sailboat doesn't mean that the normal problems associated with living and relationships on land have been left behind. There is still the issue of finances, wet towels still get left on the floor, you still get tired after a day at work (and every day on a boat is a day at work), toilets leak, the dinghy/family car still doesn't run on occasion, and it rains at the most inconvenient times. And don't forget to add to that the stress of being on unfamiliar territory while possibly missing some required skills to cope and missing family.  If you go cruising thinking that these things won't happen because you're living the dream, you will be horribly disappointed.

Early on in our cruising preparations, Brittany from windtraveler.net wrote a piece on having realistic expectations. It was a short, simple post, but one that really hit home. I think it's done us a world of good because, in light of our recent cruising derailment, had we not had realistic expectations we might have quit. As it is, we've learned to have a little thicker skin, to take things in stride, and always to find something to laugh about.

My grandson Julian peeking around the corner of my galley. This is his favorite place.

So, if you're in the preparation stage of the cruising dream, remember that you can't run away from your problems. You will be taking them with you, and dealing with them in a much smaller space under much more stressful conditions. Dream your dream large, but temper it with realistic expectations and your cruising time will be much the better for it.

Time and space and The Floating Bear ...

Today was day 18 of working on resurrecting The Floating Bear. She is going together slowly, as one would expect from this kind of project. There is hardly a straight line or square corner anywhere to be found. A new age Feng Shui type would say it is all organic and flowing, a space befitting the spiritual alignment of ocean and wind. For all I know they might even be right. For a craftsman trying to puzzle it all back in place though, would an occasional clean fit be too much to ask?

The budget restraint adds to the fun. The working hardware stash is literally the bucket full of bolts (and nuts, screws, and washers) that came out when The Bear was gutted. One paws through it looking for, say, a matched set of screws and nuts to rehang the head door. And no, before you ask, it wasn't a matched set when it came down. It will take a sharp eye to see the difference in the set of 6 nuts, and a Dremel tool will even up the screw lengths perfectly, thank you very much.

Too much new wood would be a budget buster as well, though some just had to be. A sheet of marine ply went into the floor. A length of new 4 x 4 was cut and fit to replace the corroded chunk of pipe that was the compression post. True, The Bear no longer sports a mast, but one must still hold the cabin roof up as little ones tramp over it. In addition a few small gel coat failures in the cabin roof revealed the glass underneath to be completely dry – no resin soak at all. I wouldn't bet 10 cents on the structural integrity of the cabin top without some kind of support, but it will keep the rain out. (Four of the six chain plates were bolted directly to the cabin as well. It is amazing that this thing survived sailing loads at all.) The new post not only looks much better, it also bolts solidly to the main bulkhead, stiffening it up and probably making the boat stronger than it was when it came from the factory.  Though, in this case, "better than factory" isn't much to boast about.

There are some bits of other new wood here and there but, like the hardware, the working stash for what goes back in is what came out.  That means a lot of repair, sanding, and filling is going on.  A chunk of teak that once held a chain plate gets reworked into a bulkhead support.  An old bit of trim becomes a fillet for a new bit of floor.  It may not get the interior looking shipshape and Bristol fashioned, but at least it will not appear to be hacked out of raw lumber by a Neanderthal using a stone ax.

Some things just can't be done "right" with the budget and time restraints. The hole for the starboard side port (the one rain delayed) was so badly butchered that no amount of Dow Corning 795 could be counted on to seal it. Honestly, it looked like that same Neanderthal chopped it out while suffering a hang-over. (Actually, maybe a hung over Neanderthal with a stone ax might have done a better job.)  I tack screwed the port in place and glassed it in.  If there is a hint of justice in the Universe the low rent, soulless bit of pig dung that sold the kids this boat will – somehow – be the person who has to get that port out next. He is about the only person I can think of who actually deserves such a fate.

Other things are just a mystery. There is a place where the compression post, bulkhead, head insert, door jam, floor, and a support board should all, more or less, end up in the same general location of space and time. Instead its like some kind of Fifth dimension has warped euclidean space all out of whack, where length, width, and breadth are only half of the things needing to be measured. A clean spatula and a fresh can of fairing compound will force things back into the normal, three dimensional, universe.

There is a reasonable chance that plumbing runs for the new head and holding tank have been plotted. "Ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag" is the actual task at hand. (Where did that Fifth dimension get off to?)

Hope right now is that the kids can move back aboard early next week.  After we get The Bear dock side livable the DC electrical system will be the arena of interest with, it looks like, some AC gremlins to be exterminated as well.  Then the REAL fun will begin.

Rain delay

(Admiral and Co-owner of The Floating Bear, and my Daughter Eldest, has absolutely forbidden me working on the boat today. So I thought I would see if this computer still worked and maybe scribble a few words born of yesterday's efforts.)

Florida can be a difficult place to get work done, and someone should do a serious investigation on how it got the name, "The Sunshine State". Pure marketing propaganda would be my guess. The rain came again this morning. It was that special kind of Florida rain that thunders straight down in torrents that would near drown anyone foolish enough to look up and try to take a breath. Which meant trying to rebed the missing port in The Floating Bear had to be abandoned. In fact all work had to stop since the tarp had to go back over the cabin to cover the myriad of other open holes yet to be addressed after all of the sailing hardware was removed. Trying to do major boat work in a Florida summer is to take a graduate class in patience and adaptability.

For a while Grand Son JJ and I, both already soaked to the bone, sat on the cabin top under the sun cover and sang "BOOM" back to the sky whenever it sang "BOOM" to us first. We watched the occasional mega-yacht go by, windshield wipers slapping back and forth, and called out "Big Boat" to the ducks paddling around the pier. Ducks don't care about the rain. Fine for them, they don't have ports needing to be installed.

After a time it became clear that the forecast for a sunny day with a slight chance of rain was more marketing propaganda. The Floating Bear was buttoned up and the crew dispersed for lunch and hair cuts. I still hope to get the cabin mostly sealed today with the hope of getting the boat "dock side livable". (Ed note: didn't happen.) She has shore power and one battery bank. The rest of the electrical work can wait. Plumbing needs plumbed and the glass work in the cabin has priority. There are still weeks of work to do, and Kintala is waiting in the wings for her own projects to get started.

It would seem that, after a short taste of the cruising life last winter in the Abaco Islands, Kintala's journey has taken an unexpected turn. She has moved just once in the last three months and isn't likely to move again for at least three more. Our friends in lake Carlyle will do far more cruising this summer than will we. Basically we have taken up residence in a hurricane hole on the New River, just at the end of the Ft. Lauderdale River Walk, and become journeymen shipwrights. Work is now an all day, daily affair; but one that is depleting the cruising kitty rather than adding to it. The future is a little uncertain.

As much as we all hate to admit it, the future is always a little uncertain. We are not cruising in the usual sense, but we are still on a journey. We still live on the boat, relaxing by sitting in the cockpit and watching the water world go by. Though, according to Blue Chart, the far bank is about 180 feet away. This is a pretty small water world for a blue water cruising boat. We are working far harder than our old land jobs used to demand, and the toll on my 59-year-old body (Thank you all for the good Birthday Wishes!) is higher than it used to be. Kintala's interior is a bit of a wreck; now home to six people, two of which radiate the endless energy of young boys. That is also a harder on my 59-year-old body than it used to be.

But I get to sit on a sailboat cabin top, laughing at the ducks with my two-year-old grandson, cuddling to stay warm in the cool rain, and sing "BOOM" back at the sky.  

Long Days

Sometimes you just have to take your smiles wherever you can get them.

Yin and Yang

Photo courtesy of Brian Prugh

The repair / modification / refit of The Floating Bear has flung me into a yin / yang world. Taking this abused, neglected, poorly built Papa Oscar Sierra of a sailboat and turning it into a safe, more comfortable home for Daughter Eldest and Family is a really worthwhile project. It is also kind of fun, and more than a bit of a challenge.

Then again, we did not go cruising to spend 10 – 12 hours a day of a Southern Florida summer trying to salvage a disaster boat and turn it into something useful. Killer restraints on budgets and time don't add anything to the experience. Every dime spent has to be squeezed out of an already thin account somewhere. Until The Floating Bear is habitable some of the people I love most in the world are basically homeless.

So sometimes I can be found humming and content as I tear up rotten floorboards and tear down equally rotten headliners. Just hours later I can be found groaning in pain as badly fiberglass burned arms torture me through yet another sleepless night. The dink commute to work is normally the hardest part of the day with me at my lowest. There is so much to do and so many disasters to avoid. Glass work outside in Florida heat and humidity, grinding and laying, fairing and sanding, in full tyvek gear and full face breathing mask, ranks near the top of the miserable job list. Crawling down into a sun-baked lazarette to work on a totally screwed up drive train may rank even higher. Florida thunderstorms pop up and undo hours of prep work. It is hard to look forward to a day like that.


The dink ride home is the highlight of the day. Decisions got made. Work got done. The Floating Bear is just a little bit less of a disaster. (Though that would be hard to tell from looking at her unless one has been involved in projects like this before.) My old body is sore, hands chafed and often bleeding at bit, but that is what happens when one wrangles bad stuff into good. And I have to admit I enjoy the camaraderie of tough men doing hard work, something completely lost to the white collar, air conditioned crowd.

Dennis Carter is from Nicaragua. He laughs at my Spanish and lays down some of the prettiest glass work you will ever see. Freddy is rumored to be a crack addict trying to keep it together. But he would work any CEO in the country into the cardiac ICU if they tried to match him grinder for grinder. He doesn't talk much and is surprised that I treat him as an equal.

For it seems I have become a bit of a story. This is a yard of mega yachts and 80' sport fishing boats. Owners step out of air conditioned BMW's and Mercedes to complain to managers. The skilled people actually doing the work rate hardly a glance. Then there is me. The word is out that I used to fly jets, that this is my "other" boat, and that I am paying serious bucks to sweat and grind.
Which, to the skilled, makes me either bat-shit crazy or just plain stupid. They haven't decided which yet and, truth be told, neither have I. But this is a thing that has to be done and maybe being a little of both is the secret to making it to the end.

For now though, it doesn't feel like there is an end. Just another day, another task, a dink ride in and a dink ride home when the day finally ends. Each day has some yin and some yang. Some tasks go well. The keel repair is nearly done, the rudder work is forging ahead with parts arriving, old thru hulls are sealed, the compression post step is repaired. The old floor is gone and most of a new one is fitted.

Other tasks are still an uphill slog. Removing the worn shaft coupler was a monster and the new stuffing box is going to be a couple of days late. We still await word on the usability of the old shaft. No decision has been made on the new prop. Work has yet to commence on the wiring / bilge pumps / gray water tank / new head and holding tank install. Only half the cabin overhead is ground and ready for paint. There is still some deck hardware to remove, one exterior grab rail broke and will have to be repaired; there is soft and rotten wood everywhere. The spot where the old mast step folded down the cabin top is going to be more of a task than hoped.

 Another dink ride. Another day  Yin and yang.

Sellers Beware

I'm probably the least violent person you will ever meet. I'm pretty thick skinned and if you piss me off you had to work at it really hard. I hate anything to do with guns, I abhor war in any form, and I generally back off from confrontation in general unless I, or someone I love, have been wronged. So you can imagine just how much it would take me to get to the point of telling you that I want to do physical harm to the guy who sold The Floating Bear to my kids.

The Bear's original name was Obsession. The previous owner was clearly not obsessed with anything but getting out of what was even more clearly a bad purchase he had made. Along come two newbies, and he saw his chance. The only problem? Those two newbies were putting two small children on the boat. My grandchildren.

You want to believe that things are different in the boating community.  After cruising for a year we've found that to be true in the cruising community and we certainly had the background of a fantastic group of people in our home marina in Carlyle, IL, but something happens to people when they sell their boat. All of a sudden they develop a severe case of selective memory.

Brad (name not changed to protect the innocent) willingly sold my kids a boat with serious, nearly fatal faults. And yes, before you leave a hundred comments about it, it was definitely their responsibility to have the boat inspected. Unfortunately, their mechanic father was otherwise indisposed in the islands. They were broke, needed a place to live, it was an inexpensive boat, it was where they needed it to be when they needed it to be there and did I say they were broke? They made many mistakes, the biggest of which was trusting a boat owner that said he "fixed the rudder", but you still find yourself hoping that any human being looking at those two toddlers could not find it in themselves to sell a boat with these chainplate mounts.

Did I mention that this pissed me off?

Dashed Dreams and Pooh-isms

It starts as a thought. Sometimes it's as nebulous as a fleeting image amid the shifting colors and shapes that frequent our closed eyes, those ones in that few moments between the sigh of stretching out in bed after a long day and the blessed descent into deep sleep. Sometimes it's a nagging poke in our busy, workaday consciousness demanding attention when we have little to give, plaguing us like a fly at which we swat, irritated.

The Thought falls on fertile ground. The thought lurks in the darkness of the fertile soil, tenuous little shoots breaking through the hard shell of the seed to take root, small ones at first that will grow with water and sunshine.


The Thought becomes an idea. The Idea can't be ignored. It's a force to be reckoned with, pushing aside meetings, appointments, to-do lists, and schedules. You begin to hear musings like, “What if?” and “Maybe we could...” and “I'll look on yachtworld.com, you know, just to see what's out there...”


The Idea becomes a dream. The Dream is all-encompassing. It involves your desire to live with less: less of a carbon footprint, less money, less “stuff” as an encumbrance, less stress. It might involve looking to travel. It might involve looking to escape. It might mean looking for a place to live with a view. You look at big boats you can't possibly ever hope to afford. You look at boats with all the comforts of home. You look at staunch blue water sailboats because you aspire to be Joshua Slocum. You pour over maps and glossy magazines with pictures of white, sandy beaches and aquamarine waters. Your umbrella drink is already in your hand as you swing in the hammock in the shade of a coconut palm.


The Dream becomes a plan. The Plan is usually the oft-intoned 5-year plan. Five years to look for and buy a boat, to take sailing classes, to purge yourselves of “stuff”, finish out your employment, move aboard, and cast off the dock lines. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Yes.


In the same way as the seedling, this process is fragile and fraught with opportunities to fail. The process requires a mind open to new possibilities, to adventure, to change. It requires constant care. It requires thoughtful and careful choices, and it requires a tremendous amount of luck. Remove any of these and the beauty of a dream can fall by the wayside like so much refuse.

Our kids came dangerously close to this cliff yesterday. We hauled The Floating Bear out at a local marina in Ft. Lauderdale where they had made arrangements with a local mechanic to fix some of the more pressing issues so they could get on their way to their lives in Coconut Grove. The news was bad. In fact, the news was about as bad as it gets. The boat needs much more work than they anticipated, much more work than they have the financial resources to pay for, and even the mechanic who would be the beneficiary of the large check advised that our money would be better spent on another boat rather than the current money pit that is The Floating Bear. The Dream spiraled downward ever faster as the afternoon turned into evening and conversations became less hopeful.


Right around this time, as Tim and I walked back from the marina lounge, we happened to stop to chat with our friend Gillis, a full-time resident at the marina. Not being financially or emotionally involved in the drama of the Bear, he was able to offer some rather sage advice. He asked what their goal was.


Epiphany. We had lost site of the goal. The kids' goal was to find a sustainable, affordable way of living that would allow them to pursue their dream of writing and painting. While they love the idea of a sailboat and its way of fitting into nature in such a way as to compliment it rather than destroy it, they don't need a sailboat right now. They need a place to live. The Floating Bear didn't need to be The Sailing Bear.Very nearly all of the major repairs were related to The Bear's ability to ply the waters elegantly with canvas. Desirable? Yes. Necessary to reach the goal? No.


Discussions picked up this morning. Ideas were flung around, modified, tested, held up to the light, and some discarded. A hint of hope sifted through the conversation. The Dream began to be restored and a new Plan evolved. Tomorrow the Bear will begin the transformation from sailing boat to floating home and, as it is the home of an artist, a writer, and two small Pooh fans, it will undoubtedly be as creative as the original Floating Bear.  The Bear's days of sailing are over, but like its namesake, I think The Bear will carry her family safely through the floods that have been threatening, and when passersby exclaim that something (the mast) is missing from The Bear, they will have Pooh's words handy for retort: "I ought to say," explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, "that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat."

Summer work

The summer project list on the boat started with a modest little task. The "cup holder" at the helm is really a beer-can-in-a-cozy holder. Fine if one drinks beer from a can in a cozy. We don't drink anything from a can but Coke and Ginger Ale, and even those normally make it into a glass with ice and rum before needing a holder. Under way the helm is usually stocked with cold or hot drinks, as appropriate, in stainless steel thermoses that are tall and skinny. When Kintala heels over they fall sideways, threatening to tumble over and make it all the way to the deck with a crash.

In addition, our little Garmin Chart Plotter is mounted on a ratty looking articulating arm clamped to the binnacle tubing and blocking the handhold at the top. It has always been awkward and, during a helm change while banging around in 6 foot seas the other day waiting out the thunderstorms, Deb got caught in a lurch and very nearly suffered a nasty fall grasping for the non-existent handhold. (I always wondered where the phrase "caught in a lurch" came from. Now I know.) Why not get into "project" mode with an easy, one day modification we have been talking about for months?

A project which actually started yesterday, consumed all of today, and may get finished by noon tomorrow. When completed the drink holder will have been disassembled and deepened enough to hold a thermos secure even when heeled. It will also sport a shelf to mount the GPS lower and to starboard. There it will be easier to see, easier to tilt and twist when the person at the helm sits outboard, and with the control buttons an easy reach for us right-handed drivers. And though the relentless heat and humidity make varnish work a hit-and-mostly-miss affair, it will still look way more "shippy" than a wonked-up articulating arm backed up with zip ties. Best of all the the top of the binnacle will once again be a secure place to grab a hold when moving about the aft part of the cockpit.

And though I have to admit Cooley's Landing has (so far anyway) fallen far short of the customer service bar set by the staff of the Dinner Key mooring field, this place has a lot of serious work going on. A couple of slips down the diamond plate is coming off the bow of one boat to repair a soft deck. Palm sanders sing during the day from other slips, and various bangings and clankings echo out across the New River pretty much all day long. Kind of a surprise given the ritzy digs surrounding the place. It seems a bit like a hobo village nestled in the middle of Wall Street.

Three different people have introduced themselves as marine techs, including one who has agreed to help get The Floating Bear back in something nearer to ship-shape. He seems like a good guy, introducing himself by saying, "My friends call me Camper".

I had to tell him that, while we might be friends some day, right now he is a "marine professional" working on a family boat. I will make pretty near an instant and good friend with anyone who has shared the suffering of dealing with the marine industry's technical side. And indeed, the folks at Oak Harbor are friends I am looking forward to working with again next year. But so far they have been the exception that makes the rule. I will be really happy if we manage to survive both hurricanes and "marine professionals" during our summer in Florida.

This place is a popular "hurricane hole" so I think our chances are pretty good of getting through unscathed. Not guaranteed, but pretty good. Getting through unscathed by a "marine professional" is a whole other matter. But we are going to give it a shot.

North again ... sort of

Quetzal as we found her November 2010 at Cooley's Landing

Back in late November of 2010 Deb and I joined John Kretschmer on his good ship Quetzal for a week trip to the Bahamas and back. Before we left we were still debating if going cruising was something we were really going to do. We sat on a bench in the marina where Quetzal was berthed and began debating just how quickly we could make going cruising a reality if, in fact, this trip made it clear that's what we wanted to do. And I'm sure we talked about what a cool thing it would be to, someday, sail our own boat back to that very same place.

Leaving through the 7th Avenue bridge on that first trip nearly 4 years ago

Friday evening I was completely surprised to find myself standing in that very same place as Daughter Eldest and I looked over the slip that was to be The Floating Bear's home for part of the summer. Neither Deb nor I remembered that Cooley's Landing, the place we had picked for getting some boat work done this summer, was the same place we boarded Quetzal for that memorable Bahamas Bash.  The 7th Avenue Bridge looked vaguely familiar when Daughter and I walked under it, but I couldn't imagine why.  Then I saw the bench where Deb and I had sat and talked and I remembered.  The one thought that never crossed either Deb's or my mind back in 2010, was that we would be stopping by the very same place in our boat, with Daughter Eldest, Son-in-Law, and two of soon-to-be-eight grand kids living in a nearby slip in their own boat.

I'm still a little astonished that things are working out that way.

The reason Daughter Eldest and I were standing looking at the slip was that The Floating Bear was still tied to the public floating dock on the other side of the bridge.  We were waiting for slack tide to avoid trying to slip between the pilings at Cooley's with a nasty cross current. Deciding that the water was tame enough to make the attempt, we headed back down the River Walk, got everyone on board, and hit the starter button. The Floating Bear chuffed to life, chocked, shut-down, and absolutely refused to start again.

Rats. So, so close. Yet so far away.

We had been underway all day, motoring up the ICW. It had been a fun trip and mostly new to me since that bit of the ICW is off limits to Kintala. (She doesn't fit under the Julia Tuttle bridge.) It is actually a beautiful stretch of water running through the heart of the metropolis area. As we motored passed South Lake a manatee took up position in our wake and nosed along behind us, snuffling up air every couple of minutes so close that the two grand sons could almost touch its snout; something that thrilled them to no end. Then we worked our way through Port Everglades, crossing the end of the channel headed toward the 17^th Street bridge just ahead of an inbound, fully loaded, container ship. This thrilled the grand kids to no end as well, though it didn't thrill Grampy T near as much. The tiny Volvo was pushing as hard as it could and I wasn't sure what we would have done had the timing been just the slightest bit different. Oh well, better to be lucky than good.

After working our way though the tight and boat-busy New River then tying up to the floating dock to wait on the tide, we thought we had it made. Case Closed. Trip from Dinner Key to Cooley's landing for a couple of weeks of intensive boat work accomplished. So, so close.

Dead at the public dock, much deliberation ensued, including a call to Tow Boat US.  That's when I learned my Tow Boat US Unlimited Gold policy does not, in fact, cover the boat I am driving if the owners of that boat are on board. (I wish they had pointed that out when we sent them a check.) Estimated cost for moving  The Floating Bear approximately 300 yards came to somewhere in the vicinity of $700. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen.  For $700 I'd take a rope in my teeth and try to drag the thing through the 7th avenue bridge swimming against the tide.  What do they think I am, a rich boat owner or something?

In the end Friend Bill drove up from Dinner Key and picked up Daughter Eldest and grand sons 2, taking them back to Kintala and Deb. Son-in-Law and yours truly were left to figure out a better way to end the trip than with me going swimming. By that time it was nearly midnight and after 12 hours of motoring in the bright FL sunshine and the aborted attempt from the day before, we just didn't have the energy to try and make something happen before morning. Brian and I set up a "drunk watch". It was Friday night on the Ft. Lauderdale River Walk. We saw various smiling and glassy-eyed people swerve down the walkway, bounce off the curb and come precariously close to stumbling into the New River. We wanted to make sure none decided The Floating Bear was their destination for the evening. (I might have been tempted to rent the V-berth to the cute couple that settled in on the dock just off our bow. They looked like they needed a room.) We watched people stumble their way onto other boats tied at the floating dock, fire up and motor away.  Boats with on board parties clearly in full swing moved past, some more-or-less in line with the "no wake" limit, others ... not so much. More than one power boat Captain toasted me with beer in fist while passing by.  It was quite a scene but not conducive to getting much sleep.

Saturday morning Brian headed off to find coffee while I tried to conjure up a good idea for getting The Floating Bear underway. The best I could come up with was that, after a full day of pushing up the ICW, the little Volvo had worked up a major sweat. Shutting down for a couple of hours on the floating dock left all that heat with no where to go. The engine had fired on the cool fuel left in the injector lines, but the fuel in the injector pump, located way too near the exhaust manifold to my way of thinking, had been boiled into mist. Blaming the night's delay to a vapor lock seemed like a reach, but the fact was turning the engine over did not result in fuel squirting out of the injector line. Clearly there was an air lock in there somewhere.

When in doubt, do the simple things first. Backing down the fuel system one fitting at a time showed no fuel at the injector pump bleed ports, but fuel at the injector pump inlet. (Which was good news as it suggested the lift pump was still lifting.) We bled the system (Brian having long since returned with a much needed cup of caffeine), got fuel flowing to the forward injector port and, with the last dying amps left in the Bear's questionable batteries turning the starter, our efforts were rewarded. The Floating Bear was ready to finish her inaugural trip.

Forty-nine hours and thirty-seven minutes after the trip was started for the first time, 25 hours and seventeen minutes after the trip was started for the second time, and 20 minutes after the engine shuddered its way to life at the floating dock, The Floating Bear was snug at her new pier. Deb and the rest of the crew joined Brian and I in the afternoon and we all spent the rest of the day relaxing while grand kids (2) explored their new digs and the adults talked of tasks to come.  The long days soon caught up to us all though, and early enough everyone found their way into a berth for some much needed sleep, with Deb and I settling for a cool night in the cockpit.

This morning we went for a walk, searching for coffee and just enjoying being together again. We marveled some more about being back where our cruising plans became a true goal, a goal that is now an accomplishment for us and an unexpected new adventure for part of our family. Then, after a few more hours spent with the kids, we hopped the public transit back to Dinner Key.

The plan is for Kintala to drop her mooring ball tomorrow and head for No Name Harbor. There we will enjoy being on the hook for the first time in what feels like months while waiting out some expected storms in a less exposed place. Later in the week we hope to catch a weather window for our own trip north to join The Floating Bear and crew.

North ... sort of

Floating Bear (still Obsession till the official name change) dropped her Dinner Key mooring ball this morning and headed for a place north, sporting a full crew of Daughter Eldest and Family, plus Grampy T. (That would be me.) It was the first time the boat has moved with the intent of ending the day someplace else, and the first time she had been sailed by her new owners. It was also the first time her new owners had sailed anything, which is why Grampy T was tagging along.

What little wind troubled the surface waters was blowing directly out of the direction we needed to go. Brian set the little 13 HP Volvo to a friendly sounding RPM and we set off at a sedate 4.2 knots. It kind of reminded me of little Nomad, though a US 30 is a much sleeker looking boat than is the ComPac 27.

I think Julian may never forgive me for posting this pic...

Once clearing the channel we took up a heading toward the Rickenbacker Causeway, an imposing looking structure that spans Biscayne Bay from Coral Gables to Virginia Key. As we closed in on the bit boats go under, a really nice looking Mini-Mega-Yacht pulled up behind us. We moved to starboard to let him by, but the Captain waved us on from the flying bridge, which looked to be nearly as far off the water as the top of Floating Bear's mast. Once clear the Yacht turned off the ICW heading toward what looked like a Mega Yacht landing zone, Rickenbacker Marina maybe? As he pulled away he shouted out that he didn't see any water coming out our exhaust. I took a quick glance at the temp gauge. Yikes! He was right.

Brian pulled the throttle back to idle while I scrambled forward to drop the hook. There was plenty of space and not much traffic. We coasted to a stop a couple of hundred feet from the Green 67 marker, grabbed a piece of the bottom and put the Volvo to sleep before it could hurt itself. It seemed to me that, years ago on one of our first attempts at sailing Nomad, something similar happened. Hot engine, drop a hook, figure it out. Of course this time was on Biscayne Bay instead of Lake Carlyle.

We have a Tow Boat US Gold card, and we talked about giving them a call. But I consider them an emergency service, someone you call when the boat is at risk. The sun was shining, the boat was floating, and the wind was picking up just a little. Hardly an emergency. We picked up the hook, spun out the head sail, eased our way back under the bridge, and headed for Dinner Key. After a bit we added the main, trundled along to a spot outside the mooring field where we could drop the hook, rolled up the head sail, spun up into the wind, booting the anchor off the deck, and dropped the main.

Sailing onto the hook after the engine packed it in. Pretty much any thoughts of seriously considering a trawler died right there. Deb dinked out to meet us with some gear so Brian could dive on the boat and see if the inlet was clogged. It didn't appear to be. After some more discussion of calling for a tow we decided to try for the mooring field. We motored up to the channel inlet markers, spun out the jib once more as we turned the corner, rested the hot motor and sailed down the channel. At the marina inlet the sail came in, the motor came on for one more short stretch to the ball, Deb handed the line up from the dink, and Floating Bear was back where she started.

All we could find wrong was what appeared to be a kinked line between the water pump and the engine block. Water flowed from the through-hull to the impeller. The impeller looked brand new. We changed the line and ran the engine for a while with the temps never going above 150. I'm not very confident that we found the problem, but we are going to give it another try in the morning anyway.

After all, what's the worst that can happen? Sail off the hook, have a pleasant downhill run back to the Key, sail onto the hook, poke around, sail down the channel, pick up a mooring, get a cold one? That's actually a pretty good day ...

... and lets see a trawler do that.