Finally

Sitting at anchor for a couple of days after First Light was lowered into the water had us take on a couple of projects while we waited on weather. The teak rails got cleaned and oiled though, truth to tell, they didn't come out looking as good as I had hoped. Better, but not good. A St. Louis project will be to (gently) sand the rails and coat them with Awlgrip Awlwood. Some LED strip lights were wired into the salon which came out looking really good when night fell. We tracked a small fuel leak in the starboard side engine that we might have finally caught and banished. Deb did a deep cleaning of the bilge to remove some very tenacious mold. Ah, but this morning...

Bye Bye Oak Harbor Marina

This morning we crawled out of the berth early, ran our pre-departure checklists, fired up the engines, hauled up the anchor, and headed down the river. Though we are thousands of miles and months away, we were headed for home. A thought that made me smile. That home lay on the other side of a new adventure and new territory for us was good for another smile.

As we cleared the river into the Bay the smile faded a bit. The wreckage of the Key Bridge was off to our port side and barely a couple of miles away. The magnitude of that disaster is hard to grasp by looking only at pictures. But looking at the container ship with parts of the bridge still draped over its bow, seeing the expanse of the bridge that fell and the cranes, barges, and boats all assembled to handle the job? Whoever is in charge of the salvage operation, and the experts gathered together to get the job done, appear to be doing a remarkable job. But it was a somber reminder of just how bad things can go when things start to go bad.

Not a terrific picture but it was very foggy

We turned away from the bridge and got about the business of moving over the water. It was a perfect day for trawler travel. And overcast sky kept the temperatures comfortable and the sunshine bearable. The winds were basically calm. About the only waves we encountered were created by the racing power boats that were out playing. A lifetime pilot and long time high performance motorcycle rider, I certainly understand the need for speed. Yet I am tempted to say some less than friendly things about those boats and drivers. Still, I suspect I would just be repeating words once spoken about me by car drivers startled by my passing them at speeds double and triple the posted speed limit, and by others who were not expecting to get buzzed by a low flying airplane, sometimes inverted, sometimes much bigger than your average “puddle jumper.” What goes around comes around I guess, so I will not begrudge the boat racers their perfect day of making obnoxious amounts of noise while creating killer wakes. I hope they had fun.

Roughly eight hours after pulling the hook out of the river where we first started our adventures many years ago in Kintala, we dropped First Light's hook it in a place we have never been. It is a tiny anchorage in Chesapeake City. We are surrounded by boats flying “Looper Flags”. Except for our disaster of a training sail years ago around Long Island, this is as far North as we have ever been on a boat. From now on, virtually every place we visit will be a place we have never visited by water before.

So day one is in the books. There is no telling what happens next. After last year's aborted attempt to make this trip we make no assumptions. Instead we will just keep going and do the best we can to handle whatever comes up. Hundreds, thousands, of people have gone this way before us. In Kintala we were often just part of the migration of cruising boats making their way south in the winter and north in the summer. Now First Light appears to be just another boat in the “Looper” migration. Having some company is a good thing.

LED light install

MV Pipe Dream a gorgeous DeFever 44. This would have been our choice had money

been no object...

I loves me some Nebo

Next Day

Looking at the wind plus tide plus likely wave height forecast, we decided to spend another night in Chesapeake City, then move on to Delaware City to top off with fuel, water, get a pump out, and see what day looks best for the run down Delaware Bay to Cape May. So with a day to spare we dropped the Dink in the water and putted over to the Dingy Dock for a look around. After spending some time chatting with another couple doing the loop we took a walk around town. After stopping for a quick lunch, along with the best cup of Coffee I've ever had, we decided to go visit the C&D Canal Museum. It was located on the other side of the Back Creek anchorage from where we were standing so we decided to putt over to in the Dink. But the Yamaha 9.9 HP 4 stroke engine that started on the first pull after being silent for months, would not start. I pulled until a blister formed on my right hand and my wrist cried “Uncle!” No luck. So we rowed back to First Light.

After fumbling around poking at this and looking at that, I tried again. It fired on the first pull, ran just fine for a few minutes, then sputtered to a stop once again. In spite of all efforts, it wouldn't start again. There is clearly a fuel issue but the filter is clean and, so far as I can tell, the remote fuel tank and hook-up is as it should be. Carburetor and fuel pump are next on the suspect list but we are at anchor. Working over the water is an invitation to loosing things in the water. There are no parts available, and the maintenance manual we found on line is nigh on to useless. So, remember all those nice things I said about the Yamaha? Yeah, forget it. It is just another outboard frustration source. Since we are going onto the dock in Delaware City the hope is we can find some kind of support to get the thing running again. Personally I'd like to use it as a spare anchor and get a motor I can trust but, a) $$$ and time, b) it would actually make for a pretty poor anchor and, c) I seriously doubt any such an outboard motor actually exists. But to live and travel on a boat means to row with the punches, so we will likely figure something out.

Land Dink

For most people living and traveling on a boat requires some way to get back and forth to land without having to wrestle said boat onto and off of a dock. We had the Dink. It was bought used, dull gray, and powered by a tiny little outboard barely capable of pushing the thing across the water. I was never a big fan of the Dink, particularly when using it at night. But as the years rolled by I became a bit more comfortable in the thing.

Moving back to land meant finding a wheeled version of the Dink; some way to get back and forth to various places miles and miles apart. Since the primary reason for our sojourn back to the hard was to shore up a badly depleted cruising kitty, spending a ton of cash on a new Land Dink seemed counter productive. Instead we found a used one at a dealer of good repute. It had low milage for its years and was a “fully inspected pre-owned vehicle”. There was enough money left in the bank account for us to pay cash.

The radio, heat and air con worked. It kept me dry even when it rained. It had a cruise control, which was nice. And it had a remote starter, which became my new favorite toy. Aim the fob at it from the second story window of the shop’s Instructor hang-out, push a button, and it would start right up. By the time I got in, heat was pouring out of the vents and the ice was melting off the windows. Pretty cool. We were pleased to meet the transportation needs of our land sojourn at an acceptable cost.

A month or so after purchase, the new-to-us Land Dink began to shudder once in a while when pulling away from a light, particularly if it was going uphill. It felt very much like I had forgotten how to drive a clutch. Possible, I guess, but this was an automatic. Some days it would be better, other days worse. But the overall trend wasn’t positive. Having long ago learned to be pro-active when it comes to mechanical things going wrong with a Dink, we drove it the hour plus back to the Dealer Of Repute and dropped it off for repair. Two days later they called. There wasn’t anything wrong, or so they claimed. Test drives along with computer and visual checks were clean. 

Come again? I may not be a car guy, but I am pretty good at telling when something isn’t working. And it seemed highly unlikely that the seat of my pants were more sensitive than the various sensors built into a modern car. But what are you going to do? It is really hard to fix that which isn’t obviously broken. At least they didn’t charge us for not finding anything wrong, the rental dink being the only blow to the bank account.

A few weeks after the shop insisted that all was well, the shudder was joined by Traction Control warning light in the dash, and with that the cruise control went away. At first it seemed like a good sign. A traction control problem could, possibly, lead to such a shudder. Maybe a bad but hitherto intermittent sensor lay at the root of the problem? Though not likely, at least it seemed possible this would be a relatively painless fix. We made an appointment with a nearby dealer to look at the car. Before the appointment date arrived an engine warning light appeared as well. The traction control fault had shut down the cruise control. The engine fault shut down the remote start. The Land Dink was getting to be just as annoying as our water Dink had once been. But with lights glowing, there were clearly things broken that could be found and fixed.

The first thing the new shop did was download the fault history from the car’s memory file. There was a lot to read. Multiple failure codes associated with the Traction Control, piled on top of those that came from the engine’s oil pressure system. Add the whining noise that turned out to be a failing fuel pump, and front brake disks that were warped just enough to heat up and cause the steering wheel to shudder. Repair costs quickly added up to more than the car had cost in the first place, though the shop suggested it would probably run for a few weeks, maybe even months, as it was. We paid a modest troubleshooting fee and limped home.

The Land Dink was a dud. 

Several days of debate ensued. Go cheap again and hope lemons don’t fall in pairs? Buy more expensive but still used and get some lemon warranty as well as some modest retail value in a few years? Reliability was an issue that came to the fore as I limped back and forth to work. The schedule can cover odd hours of coming and going in the wee hours of the morning or deep into the night. The trek from home to shop traverses some parts of St. Louis that are places that one does not want to be stranded in the wee hours of the morning or deep into the night. Hem and haw, consider and debate, decide, un-decide, and decide something else.

The dull gray Land Dink went away. In its place is a brand new, shiny white Land Dink of good repute, complete with a bow to stern warranty. All decisions eventually get judged somewhere off in the future, where things not yet known are old hat. If a dull gray dud of a Land Dink is the worst decision I make while back here on land, I’ll think we did pretty well.

Motionless blues

It seems likely Kintala will ride out the rest of the hurricane season in Beaufort, SC. It isn’t really a plan, just the way life seems to be unfolding at the moment. There are days when I get restless to the point of distraction, but there is much to be said for being here. Blowin' In The Wind remains on the next ball over. Good friends Paul and Deb stopped by for a visit on the way to time with their own grandkids. Having just of few of the people you love most in the world nearby is far better than having none, though you are constantly reminded of those still far away. We are slowly getting around to boat projects that really need done, and there are writing projects in the works. Writing, for Deb and I, is a craft; something we do for the shear joy of word-smithing. Occasionally, we manage a project that other people appreciate, which still amazes me. On the rare occasion where the appreciation is expressed with a few shekels coming our way, well, that's okay too. Sitting leaves some time for writing.

When one is motionless like this, there is much good to be said about being tied to a dock. For the most part, the boat is as safe as it can be while still sitting in the water. Shore power is available so air conditioning is an option. Not only does it make for better sleeping at night, dry air in the boat helps in keeping an upper hand on the war of the mold. Keeping the water tanks full is easy and quick. There is often a long, hot shower just steps away, greatly easing the burden on the water tanks. And, most convenient, getting on and off the boat is almost as easy as walking through the front door of a dirt dwelling. But docks are expensive. Unlike our stays in the Tampa area, the money flow here is all one direction, out.

So we are in the mooring field. It is often just on the far side of being comfortable with the sun, heat, and humidity. Battle with the mold is, at best, a stalemate. Filling the water tanks will consume much of a day’s effort. And getting on and off the boat requires the Ding.

I don’t know much about horses and have certainly never relied on one as the primary mode of transportation. But it seems the Ding and a horse have a lot in common. The Ding needs constant care. To get going in the morning the fuel needs checked, the night’s rainfall needs pumped out, and some air will likely need pumped in. It has to be tied up whenever left to its own devices, otherwise it will wander off. Sadly, unlike a horse, it will never find its way back to the barn all by itself.

The Ding’s little motor is, at best, temperamental. I swear the thing has the equivalent of moods; best described as manic / depressive. Sometimes it starts on the first or second pull. Sometimes it doesn’t start until the last pull before you give up and start taking it apart. Sometimes it idles too fast to shift, requiring momentary use of the cut-off / safety switch to get into gear without a damage inducing “thud”. (Some really old airplanes used ignition interruption instead of a throttle, which is where the idea came from.) Sometimes it will not idle at all. And sometimes it will putter away as if it was the most well behaved engine human kind ever invented. (Okay, that doesn’t happen very often.) And when the Ding and motor need cleaned it is a smelly, dirty job.

The worst it's ever been - Stuart, FL  in 2015

In barely a month, the menagerie of critters, creatures, and botany that lurks in these waters will accumulate to where the little motor struggles, the Ding wallowing through the water like a small horse carrying a Sumo wrestler up a steep  hill. Worse, the critters are literally disassembling the Ding from below. They worm their way past the cement seams of repair and reinforcement patches, peeling them back so water leaks in and air leaks out.

I have serious concerns about the dingy davits on a lot of boats. But having them just to keep the little boat out of the water when one is on an extended stay is now on my list of “good things to have.” Kintala’s stern is far to narrow and crowded for such things. Once upon a time we tried to come up with a way to lift the Ding on a halyard every night, more out of deference to thieves than to critters. But we couldn’t come up with a system that worked very well, relying on a stout cable and hefty lock instead. We are going to give it another try lest the Ding be utterly destroyed before it is time to leave this place.

That doesn’t happen when one is on the move. The Ding stays in the water for a week or less at a time. Each time it comes up on deck in preparation for the next departure, what few critters and little slime has accumulated get wiped away, often in less than an hour. There is no damage done and we are on our way. Sometimes when we stop for a day or three, anchored in some remote place or waiting out some weather, the Ding never gets wet. Instead it is hoisted up like a breeze catcher, high enough to open the v-berth hatch while keeping the foredeck in the shade.

The Ding on its better days

Occasionally, when on the move, stops coincide with docks. For a night or two the boat will be plugged in. The water tanks will get filled regardless, the holding tank usually emptied as well. Getting off the boat is an easy step. A long, hot shower may be just steps away.

And the Ding stays safe on the deck.

Oh what a difference a letter makes

dingy

adjective din·gy \ˈdin-jē\

: dark and dirty : not fresh or clean

dinghy

noun din·ghy \ˈdiŋ-ē, -gē\

: a small boat that is often carried on or towed behind a larger boat

This is what was on the bottom of our dinghy this afternoon when we hauled it out of the water with our spare halyard. That would be after only 4 weeks in the water here at the dinghy dock. It was the most disgusting stuff we have ever had on the dinghy before and it took both of us 4-1/2 hours of scraping, brushing, scrubbing, rinsing and wiping to get it all off, not to mention the half hour it took to clean the deck of the slop afterwards. I was so tired that I forgot to take the after pics. This was absolutely the weirdest stuff we've ever had on the bottom as well. It highly resembled teddy bear fur when we first lifted it out of the water. It turned out, though, to be full of tiny little muscle-like shells. Almost no barnacles to speak of, but I gotta tell you that if I had my druthers, I'd much rather scrape off barnacles than this stuff. We reeked so bad after doing this all day that I had to make a special run up to the marina to wash our clothes. Cleaning the dink is one of those frequent duties that most of the cruising glossies forget to mention. Care to guess why?

Please....

...if you're a planning cruiser, please practice NOT doing this at the dinghy dock. We have enough trouble keeping our dinghies inflated without having them cut by a prop.

The fix is in ...

Fixing things is a good thing. Maybe not as good a thing as designing a new thing to handle a thing that needs handled, but fixing is a good thing. I like fixing things. I like it more when I know what I did to fix a thing.

The tale has been told how the Merc for the Dink wouldn't merc at all, and right when the need to get off the dock was getting urgent. Flogging it over the course of two days included taking the carburetor off three times. Each time said carb was disassembled, cleaned, and carefully reassembled. After the third time the Merc struggled back into the land of the functioning. It wasn't doing a full merc, but it would merc enough to move the Dink, and that was all that was required to get Kintala off the dock.

So off we went.

Here in Middle River the Dink dock is some 400 yards or more from where the anchor is set. The only way to traverse that 400 yards, particularly against a flowing tide, meant getting the Merc running. That was a witch's brew of full choke, pull 'till it fired, WAY too many revs, no choke, shift, half choke before it died, add throttle - just a  little to WFO - no telling what would be needed, and hold on. An average of three tries was needed to get it all mixed together just right and end up with motivation, and the motivation would come on in a rush. (The reason to hold on.) It was better than paddling and far more exciting, but clearly additional fixing would soon be required.

I put off taking it apart again by hoping that running a tank full of gas juiced up with Sea Foam would chase away what ever little gremlin was still swimming around in the fuel system. I've never actually fixed anything by adding the magic potion, in spite of the claims on thousands of magic potion bottles. (STP, Octane Boost, Bars Liquid Aluminum and - my personal favorite - Marvel Mystery Oil.)  Give the snake oil salesmen their due and besides, avoiding having much needed bits fall to the bottom is more challenging when bouncing around in the middle of Middle River than it is when tied securely to a dock on New River. And if you think about it, hacking away on a Dink motor while bouncing around in the middle of an anchorage is a bit like sawing away at the branch on which one sits. Screwing up too badly means swimming to the parts store. The magic potion couldn't hurt. Maybe it would work.

Things did improve slightly over the course of a couple of days. Sometimes one could get to a partial merc with only two tries at the witch's brew. Clearly half-fixed wasn't fixed enough. We needed a full merc and the magic potion wasn't going to get us there.

This morning the carburetor came off for the fourth time. Once on the bench the same things were seen that were seen the first three times. The same things were done that were done the first three times. And during assembly the same things were checked. I would have loved to have seen, done, or checked something different; but it is a tiny, simple little carburetor with only so many parts.

The Merc is running as well as it has ever run.

Beats the hell out of me what I did to fix the thing.

But I'm glad I did it.

Reluctance ...

As most know by now Kintala and I have one of the more dysfunctional relationships in the cruiser world. We normally battle our way through whichever maintenance / repair / system failure / design disaster is the current focus of our relationship, and reach some kind of uneasy truce. Just occasionally, in those rare moments when most major systems seem to be working, moments when I am not putting bandages on sliced hands or munching aspirin to soothe aching joints after taking another boat-work induced beating, I will admit that it isn't always her fault. When it comes to mechanicing (defined as taking a tool in one's hands and trying to actually make something work that wasn't working before) Kintala has suffered the ministrations of fools, imbeciles, lunatics, hacks, charlatans, con-men, and the occasional honest efforts of those too addled to know which end of a screw-driver one should hold – but giving it their best effort anyway. I have uncovered things so poorly executed they can't even be called “work”, being more like the wreckage one would expect from someone having a seizure while running a chain saw. And while horror stories of fellow cruisers abound, and I share their pain, deep in my own heart I always held Kintala as THE example of what the miscreants of the marine industry will do given the slightest chance. She is the screwed-up boat against which all other screwed-up boats can be measured. Their owners can take solace in the fact that, at least, their boat is not as screwed-up as this one.

But, as of tonight, I am reluctant to admit that Kintala may not be so bad. Those who twisted her mechanical soul into the diabolical mistress that hounds my working days are not, it turns out, the very worst of their breed. Indeed, there is one out there so utterly incompetent, so savagely incapable of rational thinking or an honest effort, that no device anywhere could survive the touch of his hand. It is a story I would not believe were it not told by Friend Bill, a true boat guru, and told in his own unique way. You can find the tale here:

http://veranda422.blogspot.com/

Kintala, by the way, is resting in one of those rare moments where most of the important stuff seems to be working. Her dink, on the other hand, is not. After a long day of cleaning, prodding, de-fueling, re-fueling, oil changing, and prodding some more, the Merc on the Dink refuses, once again, to run. This is a bit of a problem given that the hours are counting down to us leaving this dock and going back to the hook and the mooring ball life we love. Dinks are kind of important when land is a few hundred to a few thousand feet away. Tomorrow is a “must get it done” day … again. Fail and the hook and mooring ball life will be full of rowing and struggling against wind and current. And yes, I know it is the carburetor. It is always the carburetor. It is the carburetor for everyone, all the time, and the Internet is full of rants against these sorry excuses for engines. Engines offered by one of the “very best” of the marine industry giants. Engines that have to be nursed like the dying, susceptible to the slightest hint of a bad diet or coming cold. “Robust” was clearly not part of the design goal. Nor was reliability. But hell, slap some advertising on it and sell it.

We had go-carts when I was a young gear-head. The “bad boy” carts had 10HP engines. Most of us could only manage 5. Younger Brother and I ran a salvaged lawn mower engine bolted into a once-upon-a-time wrecked frame. The thing would hardly go in a straight line. It had marginal brakes, no suspension, and a single gear. But pull on the rope and the motor would start. It didn't matter if it had been sitting all winter. It didn't matter if the gas was old and smelled a little funny. Sure, sometimes we had to clean a spider web out of the vent line, or poke a pencil through the gas filter, but a couple of kids in a couple of minutes could usually coax the thing to life before Mom called us in for dinner.

I am damned sure that thing didn't have a Merc in it.

(Said Brother, by the way, turned out to be a truly gifted mechanic who has spent most of his life repairing some of the world's largest and most powerful mobile cranes. Pieces of equipment where the cost of down time is rung up in thousands of dollars per MINUTE. He is, and I am not kidding, a Wizard. I wish my hands held half the talent of his.)

In spite of the need to get the Dink Dinkable, this afternoon and evening were taken with another gathering of the little community that has formed here. Mizzy and Brian, Keith and Katrina, Ron and Marry Beth, Deb and I, and Craig, will all be leaving as soon as we can. Frank and Audrey, and James, will be staying. For them, this is “home”. For the rest of us “home” is “out there”. The gatherings reflect the tribe's reluctance to say that last “good-bye” to people who have become good friends.

This summer, and this first year, are nearly over.

Hollywood Florida hits the bottom of the list

As far as anchorages go, this one has been pretty nice. It's big, it's protected, the wake from the ICW traffic is manageable, the night views are beautiful. We've been very pleased, pulling in two days ago and dropping the dink into the water for future use, and planning on staying awhile and exploring. We chose this anchorage because the ones in Ft. Lauderdale involved navigating a bridge under construction and we arrived at the wrong time to wait for it. So today we decide to go exploring, beginning with finding a place to tie said dink to. We knew we couldn't use the small grocery store dock because our friends had tried the day before with no luck. Active Captain shows a public boat ramp just inside North Lake less than 1/4 mile from where we are so we loaded up and headed over there. Beautiful ramps and a dock for each ramp. Voila! We headed over to the adjacent Hollywood Marina to be sure we could leave the dink there and were promptly informed that  "there is no dinghy docking in Hollywood", and that is a direct quote from the manager. Now mind you, there are 6 empty docks there, along with a parking lot and a self-pay your parking station which could be ever so easily utilized to collect a $5 daily dinghy landing fee, but hey, why do that and make some money and encourage tourism in a bad economy?  So Hollywood, FL has descended to the bottom of our anchorage list because, well, it basically sucks. So while we can highly recommend it as an overnight, if you want to leave your boat for any reason other than to eat at one of the restaurants, we recommend you try somewhere else.

Learning things

Living on a sailboat is a thing. Traveling on a sailboat is a whole other thing. Adding the two things together makes for a third thing about as different from the one left in St. Louis as can be imagined. Like the case when we first started staying on Nomad; every noise makes its way into conscious thought, “What was that? (This is particularly true in the darkest parts of the night.) The answer is almost always trivial, a neighbor boat or passing power boat, the bridle hook grinding on the anchor chain, or flags slapping against the new stays. (Which, for reasons not understood, make a completely different noise than when the flags slapped against the old stays.) Kintala has always been a creaky boat, but she seems noisier then before; perhaps still fitting into her rigging and recovering from months on the hard. Even as I type, the wind is picking up and the noises tickle my thoughts.

In fifty miles of sailing we have managed about 10 miles of southing. Winds out of the South keep the ever encroaching cold at bay, but they either pin us down (today) or make for days like the first; 30 miles sailed to gain barely 3. We need west, even better northwest, winds to make some distance, but those will also put a chill in our bones and make the v-berth that much harder to abandon in the morning. The claim for tomorrow morning is that the winds will be from the west. We hope to make an early start (chill not withstanding) and make Solomons Island by tomorrow afternoon. Such conflict over the wind direction was never an issue living in the Central West End.

Once at Solomons Island we will likely be pinned again; partly by weather and partly by a reluctant outboard engine. “Reluctant”, as in “doesn’t work”. (I fear the dinghy and Kintala have been talking; and I’m thinking of naming the dinghy “Little Witch”.) About all I know of outboard engines is that everyone seems to hate theirs with varying degrees of passion. Still, a motor is a motor. The spark plug had a trace of oil on it when removed from the head, but spark it did when cleaned and checked. A full load of fresh gas made no difference. Jumping the “kill” switch didn’t bring life to the little motor, but blowing though the tiny air intake did; resulting in the engine firing up and running hard for about 5 seconds when I pulled the start string and then clearly running out of gas. That happened several times so our nearly new motor with an ever newer carburetor obviously has a carburetor problem. (Carburetors have always been a source of problems, which is why real motors are now fuel injected.) It will have to wait as weather windows take precedence over sick carburetors.)

Right up until I couldn’t get the engine to run it had been kind of a fun day. Stirring the whisker pole, halyards, some guy lines, harness, and Nomad’s old preventer together cooked up a boom-crane-like apparatus that plucks the dinghy off the foredeck and plops it in the water with little fuss. Lifting our tiny engine down and mounting it on the stern is not much of an issue and, after abandoning any hope that the thing might actually run today, lifting it back up to stow was much easier than imagined.

Our friends from zachaboard.com

After paddling over to meet an internet friend (who, it turns out, lives at a dock less than 100 yards from where we are anchored) we headed back to try our hand at picking the dinghy out of the water in the freshening breeze. (Another issue never encountered in the Central West End.) Our maiden dinghy lift went surprising well. We need a little practice yet, but the dinghy learning curve is now mostly behind us …

… including learning that dinghy motors are a royal pain kind of thing.

Work vs fun

The work to fun ration on Kintala has been badly out of whack. This isn’t to say working on the boat is all bad, though; as much as fixing things can have its own rewards, it isn’t always “fun”. But some things are starting to come together and the pressure, or at least the perceived pressure for me, is starting to ease.

The mast / hull joint is full of spar tight, the rig is taut and pins secure, the boat is happy to be all of a piece again and (they tell me) we can go sailing anytime we want. We “want” like, right now, but there are a few nits to pick. I know the holy grail of all cruising sail boaters is to be energy independent of the “green” kind. Word is that “green” means renewable and clean but in reality green means money, lots and lots of money. At the moment Kintala is semi-energy independent in a less green way. In the evening we fire up the Honda generator and burn about $3 worth of dinosaur juice to charge the boat, iPad, and smart phone batteries, heat water, etc. Guessing it would cost roughly 6K to turn Kintala really green, we have 5 and a half years to break even on the power situation. Not sure we have the best solution right now, but for right now it is the best we can do.

Yesterday Kintala’s new dinghy got a full load of air and then was dumped in the creek. Paddling around in that thing is a hoot; so long as the wind isn't blowing. Sometime in the next day or two we might actually try hanging the motor on it and see how it goes. Sometimes climbing up the learning curve is just a bunch of fun. We finished the mount to hang the dinghy motor on the stern rail (looks like a cruising boat). How to get it from there to the dinghy transom without dropping it to the bottom is a question we have yet to answer.

There is still a cabinet to rebuild so Deb can stop living out of a duffle bag. That has been at the top of the list for the last three days but each day something else elbowed its way to the front. Today is was dragging our hopelessly out-of-date life raft to town just to be told that there was no way to cert the thing as usable. Two thousand dollars will get us a nice shiny new one, though (the man admitted) 99 times out of 100 if one tossed an old one in the water it will work just fine. What to do, what to do?

Everyone has to make their own risk assessments. For now we are going to strap the old one back in front of the mast and drive on. Sure, if we had the pesos, Kintala would sport EPIRBs and personal locators, man overboard alarms, the best of AIS, a shiny new life raft (or two), the latest in Star Wars navigation gear, SSBs and Sat Phones and endless internet connections. She would also have a water maker and a washing machine and ICE CREAM … but if we had those kinds of resources Kintala probably wouldn't be a 1982 boat needing a ton of other work.

Still, we are in the water going on five days now, there is no water in the boat; and we have actually started to debate how we will head south; inside, outside, Dismal Swamp, Pamlico Sound… Just talking about it is kind of fun. We are going to meet some new friends tomorrow, and next week old friends from Carlyle will be around for the boat show. This is all good stuff. Slowly, oh so painfully slowly, the work to fun ratio on Kintala is starting to balance out once again.

More pics from the 66 foot 1903 Lawley as it left today.

Champagne and the Dog House

Sometimes encouragement comes from unexpected sources. Kintala hasn't made it to the water quite yet, but the work goes on. And so there I was under the boat cleaning water intake grids of excess bottom paint when a nice looking BMW motorcycle rolls up and drops the kickstand. The rider steps off and asks if I am Mr. Akey. Since I don't think anyone is looking to serve me with any kind of papers in MD, I allowed as I was.

"You don't know me," he says, "but my friend Craig Kleinlein from St. Louis asked me to drop this off for you." He then produced a bottle of champagne and a card from his rear trunk, explained that he and Craig used to work together, wishes us well, shakes our hands, congratulated us on our retirement, and heads off. Craig is our financial guru from Edward Jones and, without his help, we wouldn't be sitting on the edge of blue water, boat almost ready to splash. When people you hire turn into friends all is well with the world.

Later that day we borrowed nephew Matt's mini van (leaving him the Z in return - a fair trade) and drove across the Bay Bridge in search of a dinghy. A few hours later we returned, The Dog House (the dinghy's new name) and little outboard safely aboard. Sometime in the next few days we will launch it for a little practice. Neither Deb nor I have ever actually helmed a dinghy before; it is another of the items on our near vertical "learning curve".

This morning we took our coffee down to the porch to enjoy the view and get a start on the day. There are
still items to be addressed before the boat gets wet and we are hoping to get it wet tomorrow. Another long work day was, well, in the works. New friends Mike, Barbara, and Ollie were greeting the day as well. The conversation danced around sailing and racing on the Bay so Deb mentioned we might look to crew with someone for the Wednesday night club race, just to get a chance to know the place a little better before heading out. As it turned out Mike and Barbara were planning on spending the day out on their C & C and asked if we would be interested in going along. Let me see, on the one hand work on the boat more, on the other go sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. So I did a quick run to the boat parts store to be set for tomorrow and then we went sailing. No harm will be done if Kintala stays dry until Tuesday.


I don't know what sailing on the Chesapeake is like on most days, but on this day it was perfect. The WNW wind started out at 10 and built to 16 with gusts to 20. The sky was blue, the waves big enough to feel like "big water" without detracting from the ride, and the temperature was wind breaker cool without being cold. After motoring down the river and getting some good advice on how to stay in "good water" the head sail made its appearance. When the engine rumble died away Deb flashed me the biggest smile I have seen in a while. An hour or so later the Bridge hove into view off to the south as the eastern shore edged ever closer. A nest of crab pots seemed a good reason to tack back toward the west. There were comments on how ugly some of the big commercial boats can be, talk of sailing the Bay and things to watch for, and the general good natured banter that seems natural to new friends and sailboats on the move.

I, probably more than Deb, feel the sting of family far away. I occasionally glace skyward as the jets pass
overhead on final approach to BWI and know exactly what the crew is doing to prepare for arrival. I still think of riding the GSXR every time some outlaw winds his sport bike through the gears out in the night somewhere, teasing the cops and cage drivers with his antics. But today, out on the bay, I couldn't think of anything I would have rather been doing. There are things to learn, good people to meet, interesting places to know, and a new way of living to make our own. Encouragement comes from unexpected places, and we are just getting started.