Delighted

More than a year ago Deb spotted a tiny pin hole in the metal exhaust pipe connected to the exhaust manifold. We were far from anywhere repairs could be made, so we wrapped it and clamped it and basically forgot about it. I noticed it again when I started to mount the new heat exchanger and decided this would be the perfect time to do a more permanent repair. The first thought was to replace the 5 inch bit of tube with one that didn't have a hole in it. That thought faded away when it was discovered that the shop didn’t have any such thing in stock. The offer was made to weld a patch over the bad spot, something that would take about an hour and leave me with the possibility of getting the boat done by dinner.

Sold.

Pipe welded, JJ, Christopher, and I set about reassembling the Beast. It went pretty well right up until we filled the new parts with coolant. When bright green liquid starting dripping past the newly installed flange gasket at the base of the exchanger, we set about disassembling the Beast. New new gaskets replaced the old new gaskets, different and more robust hardware in the form a larger washers replaced the original, and a layer of gasket sealer was added to the install. By then Grampy T was well and truly spent. The reassembled unit was left on the bench to be hung on the Beast the following day. My young crew was delighted at the prospect of having another day of “real engine work” to do.

Come morning the Beast was assembled once again. Part of the fun of this install is the four nuts that help support the exhaust manifold. The only way to get the them started on the studs is to uckum sticky them to a long thin screwdriver, hold them against the stud end, and try to get them started using the edge of another long, thin, screwdriver. It is actually a pretty standard technique for working around an engineering wonk, but not exactly “boat mechanics 101.” All was going well until the very last nut to go on got started a little cross ways, buggering up the stud threads. So we had to back up a bit, removing the manifold to reach and dress the stud. Count that as having to do half of a removal.

The boys were delighted.

Stud threads dressed, the manifold was set in place for the third time. The boys insisted that they could handle the screw driver trick and wanted to give it a try. I’m not sure you could call it a true solo flight, but they got most of the way around the pattern; much to my delight.

Engine buttoned up, this time with the coolant system full and not drooling, Deb prodded the Beast to life while the boys and I looked for leaks. Almost immediately water started flowing from a set of clamps at the tube that was welded. A quick shut-down and some additional torque would cure the minor glitch, no problem. On the second start the clamps held tight but, a few moments later, water and mist could be seen seeping enthusiastically out of the weld repair. Problem. We would have to back up and start all over.

The boys were delighted. Grampy T? Not so much.

For the third time on this repair, fluid was drained and hoses undone. For the fourth time on this repair, the exhaust manifold was unbolted and lifted off the Beast. The boys insisted on trying to remove the nuts and washers, employing a magnet to catch all the bits as they came off the stud, thus avoiding having them cascade down the engine and into the engine pan. A pretty standard technique but not exactly “boat mechanics 101.” Nine and five years old, they handled it with little trouble, and were delighted with their prowess.

The heat exchanger / exhaust manifold assembly is at the shop waiting on a new chunk of exhaust tube to be delivered and installed. Since I am no longer an official employee of the yard and it will likely take a blow torch to get the parts apart, I suspect no one’s insurance would be happy with a DIY. Besides, the boys would likely insist that they could handle the torch, so this is an “out” for Grampy T.

When it comes to puttting the thing on for the fourth time though, I may just sit back and let them have at it.

They would be delighted.

Young hands

Parts for the WesterBeast’s heat exchanger repair finally started to show up. It took a while to find the required gaskets, which were then shipped via the slowest boat to China ever commissioned. Or maybe the second slowest? The gasket arrived before the new heat exchanger, though the heat exchanger was ordered first. Both ended up being about a week late.

“Why a new heat exchanger” you ask?

The original one was, well, original. We have already had it repaired once. This time the yard's engine guru took a peek and told us that it had been repaired at least once before that. New seemed better. But a new factory bit proved hard to locate and was rumored to carry, should one actually be located somewhere, a price that bordered on astronomical. A new one "manufactured to the original specs” could be had at slightly less than a week’s wages. Yes, I had the same misgivings, but ordered it anyway. And yes, I wouldn't be surprised if we had ordered a "factory new",  they would have gone and bought the same one we did, stuck a factory price tag on it,  and then shipped it to me.

The heat exchanger showed up today, packaged professionally, glistening in a Westerbeke red, and looking good. All the fittings were in the right places and of the correct sizes. The new end cap is clearly superior to the original rubber one. And it had a certain amount of heft to it, a good thing with something that is a serious chunk of metal. Seeing as it was after lunch already, tomorrow seemed like a good time to start. Five year old grandson JJ, however, was of a different opinion. He wanted to help in the worst way, this being “engine work”. Grampy T bowed to the inevitable and changed into work clothes.

One might normally cringe at the idea of“marine diesel heat exchanger install” and, “five year old” being used in the same sentence. True maybe, if that five year old isn’t JJ. It didn’t take long to find a job needing done that he could do. This heat exchanger hangs off the exhaust manifold, requiring 3 new gaskets for the install. Old gasket bits needed to be throughly removed before the new ones are installed. JJ insisted that he could handle the task as long as I could find him a piece of ScotchBright. I did.

And he did.

New gasket installed, we went to place the heat exchanger in place and…remember that “original spec” claim? Apparently that did not include placing the slots for the mounting bolts exactly where they needed to be. Fortunately bronze is pretty easily worked, they were only off a few hundreds of an inch, and we own a Dremel tool. I really couldn’t explain to my five year old co-worker how the people building the heat exchanger managed to screw up the one measurement they really needed to get right to make the thing work. Dremel tool humming, I did get the chance to explain that taking off a little bit at a time, seeing if it was enough, then taking off a little more, is a far better option than taking too much off the first time around. He is a little too young for the sarcastic “I cut it off twice and it was STILL too short” quip. I’ll save that for when he is in his teens.

Mounting slots now properly located, we once again attempted to mate the heat exchanger to the exhaust manifold, and found a second place where the “original spec”, wasn’t. The body of the heat exchanger was fouling against the ends of the mounting studs, though the original one fit fine. I don’t know which original spec was off. Maybe the new one is of a slightly larger diameter than the old. Maybe the new mounting flange is slightly thinner. Either way the studs were too long.

The Dremel tool wouldn’t be much of a match for the hardened steel studs. But we also own an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel.

Even in Grampy T’s work shop five year old’s don’t tangle with angle grinders. Still, JJ stood near enough to see what was being done, and to remind me not to cut off too much. It is always fun to tell kids that the sparks flying off a grinder are hotter than the sun. JJ wanted to know how that was possible and so learned something about friction and heat…and not to touch the part just cut without gloves or a rag. No, I didn’t. I sent him to get a rag.

Mounting slots modified and mounting studs custom cut to size, the heat exchanger and exhaust manifold could be properly introduced and joined together in engine cooling bliss. The only hitch in the ceremony was the lack of space for slipping the two all the way together before installing the mounting washers and nuts. But with a pair of 5 year old hands working along side a pair of 62 year old hands, exchanger and manifold were ultimately torqued firmly together.

Tomorrow they will take up residence in their permanent home, the move likely to be aided by boat mechanic JJ.

Once again

If you can’t point to something and say, “this is the problem,” when trying to fix something, the chances are pretty good that the something isn’t fixed.

Ed Note: We did in fact get off the dock today
and had a really nice sail in Tampa Bay.
That's what that white thing is for...

And so it was with the head modification. The first configuration should have worked, did work, but did not seem to be working very well. So the configuration got changed. It also worked, seemed to work a little better, and was a decidedly more elegant solution to the hose runs than the first one had been. There is a certain amount of wisdom in the idea that, “If it looks right, it is right”. The new configuration certainly looked a lot more “right” than the old one. It was enough to stoke the hope that the problem had been solved. Still, the more thought that went into it, the less likely it seemed. This is a low pressure, low volume fluid system. The things that were changed were 99% cosmetic. From the point of view of fluid flowing through lines, the first configuration was as “right” as the second. Still, it had been a longish work day, the project had already taken two more days than planned, and yours truly was just getting tired of working on the boat. The system had worked before the modification, the new “look” was better than the old, and I really, really wanted the job to be done.

But 24 hours later it was clear that wishful thinking wasn’t enough to call a job finished. The system was still not working as well as it should. The main give-away was the amount of pressure that was building up at the diverter valve. A little bit of pressure was expected as it is at one end of the anti-syphon loop. Turn the valve and what fluid was in that half of the loop would flow into the holding tank. But, even after the configuration change, when the valve was turned, fluid was doing a soft kind of explosion into the holding tank. There was also more pressure on the flush pump handle than was usual. Clearly something was seriously restricting the flow somewhere, likely something we had disturbed during the mod. That didn’t help much since, during said mod, we had pretty much disturbed the entire black water / holding tank run from flush pump to thru hull.

There were several likely candidates. One was the diverter valve itself. During the work it was discovered that the valve had suffered an internal failure. One of the seals had torn and was partially jamming the thing. It had been completely disassembled, cleaned, all seals had been replaced with new, and the valve reassembled. Since it seemed impossible to put the bits back together wrong it wasn’t likely the home of the trouble. Still, it was easy to reach, another plus for the new configuration. Since the problem had not existed before we started, had existed after we finished, and the valve was the one thing that had been touched the most, it seemed the best place to start. Disassembly proved that it was, indeed, impossible to put it together wrong and that it was working exactly as it should.

The curved plastic tube at the top of the anti-syphon loop, the tube that holds the Micky-Moused little valve itself, was the next easiest place to reach. Since things tend to fall away from the top of something, there was faint hope that this would be the place to find “the fix”. On the other hand, if one skipped looking there, Mr. Murphy would suggest that was where one really needed to look. So we looked.

And found nothing to fix.

Least attractive and holding the most potential for disaster was something jammed up in or near the thru-hull. It was also the only place left where the trouble could lurk. So it was with some trepidation that the clamps were removed, the heat gun applied, and a sharp knife was taken to the hose attached to the thru-hull shut off valve. Mine wasn’t the only sigh of relief when the hose came free without water flooding into the boat. There was another sigh of relief when the valve was slowly opened and water did, indeed, flood into the boat. The hose itself? Ugly. And clogged. Clogged with sheets of calcified “stuff” clearly knocked free from the inside of the hoses as they were twisted and bent into various configurations. There was also a plain, old fashioned clog where it attached to the thru-hull, the inside diameter of the line less than half the original. Open enough that the pump still worked before we messed with the hoses. Blocked enough that the debris cascading down from the hoses being moved was enough to do it in.

Something that was clearly wrong that needed to be fixed. A new length of hose and some flushing of the thru-hull, and the head seemed (don't want to jinx it) to, once again, be working properly.

One of the most used pieces of equipment on board. A parts cleaner from
Harbor freight into which the Merc jets go for cleaning. The whole carb
body fits in there as well. Four or five cycles later the carb is sparkling
and the jets once again let the fuel flow. Best $20 we ever spent.

Kintala is buttoned up once again. The Merc, after throwing a second fit that left fuel running out of the bottom of the engine cowl, had hands laid upon it and is also docile and cooperative once again. So, as soon as this bit of weather decides what it is going to do, the hope is to get off of the dock for a good couple of days worth of shaking things out. And, in a week or two, to go cruising…once again. 

Bucket list

No, not that one. It seems a bit silly to have a list of things one wants to do before one dies for the simple reason that no one knows when that is going to be. Imagine working on “the list” and having a hammer fall from somewhere. Bang. There you are looking at the next world (whatever that may or may not be). Then The Greeter (whomever that may or may not be) asks what you were doing when the earthly lights went out.

“Working on my Bucket List.”

“Well, that was a waste of time, wasn’t it?”

The Bucket list I’m thinking of has to do with boat jobs. Even then it isn’t likely the kind of list first comes to mind. This list isn’t a string of jobs one would like see finished. That list stretches to infinity or, at least, will last as long as the boat exists. No, this list is more about the size and complexity of the job being contemplated for the day. My favorite kind of jobs are those where everything needed to do the job; parts, tools, materials, rags, etc., all fit into a single bucket. And not a 55 gallon sized “bucket,” either. Or even ten. Five gallons, max. Three gallons, preferably.

We have had a string of ten gallon bucket jobs; teak work, bottom job, fiberglass repairs. They stretched on for days, then weeks, then months. Many days started early, ended late, and had few breaks along the way. A concern was how sore the body would be come morning, when the next day’s tasks start demanding attention. The last of the ten gallon jobs waiting completion was finished yesterday when a newly installed pump started up and the level of (clean) water in the holding tank started down. Kintala is now configured so as to carry waste water in her holding tank out of a harbor or anchorage, out where the whales and dolphins deposit their own waste water, and then empty the tank without the aid of a shore side suction pump. Such shoreside aid is nigh on impossible to find in the Islands and, after Irma, not that easy to find in Florida either.

With that task done, 3 gallon bucket jobs come to the fore, and are much more enjoyable. Polishing the cabin ports is one. Each port takes about an hour to remove, 1500 wet sand, compound polish, polish, wax, and reinstall. As each one is finished, the interior of the boat gets just that little bit brighter, looks just that little bit newer. One can look out a port and actually see what is around the boat, even at night. It is an easy task as well, no contortions into constricted boat chasms, no muscle cramps, and no worm clamp slices.

Three gallon bucket jobs are often routine maintenance, usually done without chewing up an entire day. Around Kintiala we try to average out work time to about four hours a day, at least that is the goal when not in refit mode. It would be nice to keep weekends free but, honestly, we don’t always know what day of the week it is. (And often don’t see any real need to bother with it.) “Ten to Two” is the goal for the start and finish of a working day while out cruising. Ten in the morning gives us time to get up, get going, get coffee, and greet the day. Two in the afternoon leaves plenty of the rest of the day to play, get out of the heat, write, read, and just enjoy living this life we worked so hard to find. It isn’t “time clock” time. There is no need to punch in or out. Get going, get it done, call it done, relax.

NOTE: After 24 hours it has become clear that the new head plumbing is not working as advertised. The overboard pump pumps, and the water goes where the water needs to go, but there is too much pressure on the flush pump. There is something not right. Reach for the 10 gallon bucket.

NOTE to NOTE: After much ado we could not find a single reason why the system was acting as it was. Low pressure, low volume fluid was going where it was supposed to go, when it was supposed to go there. But it was going with much reluctance. So the system was reconfigured to send the water to the exact same places, using the exact same fittings, in the exact same diameter hoses. All that was done was to turn things around so one angle of flow is now slightly straighter and there is about 2 feet less hose in a configuration that likely still has more than 20 feet of stuff. As a result, and for reasons that are a complete mystery, the system now works much, much better. But I still have no clue as to why that is.

Some days I really hate boats. The good news is that fixing whatever it was that was wrong turned out to be a 3 gallon bucket job. Which, all things considered, is a pretty good day.

Mutually Exclusive Muses

                                            - - random political muse - -

It always seemed likely that it would be the women of the nation that would save us from ourselves. Wasn't it inevitable that, at some point, they would rebel at the assaults on their civil rights, on restricting their access to health care, to discrimination in the areas of equal pay and insurance coverage, and to the constant threats to the health and welfare of their kids? But it is starting to look like it will be the kids themselves who save us from ourselves. Or, more accurately, the kids are moving to save themselves from us while dragging society to a better place, one we should have found a couple of generations ago.

Works for me.

                        - - don’t really care what goes on in the world / boat muse - - 


The last batch of teak is finished. The first batch was the dorade boxes cockpit seats, floor grate, and entryway pad, ten individual bits plus the keyboard of slats that make up the seat at the helm. Slats screwed and sealed directly to the fiberglass…not the best idea anyone ever had. The next batch included the port, starboard, and aft toe rail, just three bits but a lot of area. Another batch was cockpit table, drink holder, and cabin top hand rails. The last batch was the companionway / hatch bits, six that came off the boat plus the one at the top of the companionway, and three more odd bits at the storage shelves and engine panel at the back of the cockpit.


That is a lot of bits. 

Each of those bits was sanded clean of old varnish using 80 grit, repaired as required, and then smoothed in steps of 120, 220, and 320 grit. About half also got the 400 grit wet-sand treatment. Then there was a coat of prime, eight coats of clear with at least one session of 320 or 400 wet-sanding in there somewhere, one last session of 320 or 400 wet-sanding, and a final clear coat to finish it off.

(Note to self - if there is "another boat" in the future, pick one with a little less wood, maybe a lot less. Or maybe no wood at all. One must admit it sure looks pretty but even some rich people can't afford to keep it looking at that way by paying someone else. Hundreds of hours at a hundred dollars - or more - per hour?  Two slips away from Kintala lies one of the biggest and certainly the  prettiest boat in the yard. It is owned by a friend who has oodles of "resources" beyond anything most people can imagine, and he has been working on his teak for several weeks now. The next time a big, teak-glowing-in-the-sunset sailing yacht appears in an anchorage, remember there is a good chance the owner's hands show the callouses of making that happen.)


While doing the companionway, there was a gelcoat repair needed where the hatch slides on the house top. Thirty plus years of sliding back and forth had ground through to raw fiberglass on both hatch and cabin top. It opens much easier now.


The day when the last of the big projects is done and Kintala becomes a cruising boat once again is tantalizingly close. A young friend from the yard went to the top of the mast to fix the topping lift / back stay woogle. As it turned out having the topping lift crossing the back stay wasn’t much of a deal. Apparently there is little motion up there, the topping lift line wasn’t damaged at all. What was an eye opener was that the pin holding the bracket that holds both the back stay and topping lift to the mast head was missing the cotter key that stops the pin from falling out. Nearly five years since the mast went up, thousands of miles covered, with some of those miles in rough, pitching seas that made the rig shudder. It is anyone’s guess as to why that pin stayed put.

A missing pin

There is still reconfiguring the holding tank system to finish. Getting it done requires moving Kintala to a pump out since modifying a full holding tank system is a thought too ugly to consider. There are two options. One is a few miles away at a place called Regatta Point. It is a tight fit for a 42 foot boat. Well, tight for a 42 foot wayward wondering modified full keel boat without a bow thruster and driven by the likes of yours truly. Depending on the tide it is also a bit thin for a five foot draft.

The other option is a day’s sail to the north-north-east away. Then, of course, it is another day’s sail to the south-south-west back. There is a three day window before the next front comes through. Sure enough the wind is going to back half way through, which will put it directly on the bow going both directions; and blowing 20 knots.

It looks like Regatta Point, tight fit an all, will get the nod.

It has been a while since daily tasks included making nice with Mother Earth before attempting something as simple as finding a pump out. It has been a while since the daily life included anticipating when the water would run out, when the batteries might need a little generator support, how much range remained in the fuel tank, and where would be a good place to toss a hook with regard to tide, wind, and incoming weather. All part and parcel of living the life of a boat gypsy.

A life that doesn’t really care about what goes on on land.

Another go

Kintala went back in the water the other day, drawing many a comment on how good she looks as the travel lift rumbled along. She does look pretty good. Even better is that the good is more than just skin deep. Her hull is buffed and polished. (Pay no attention to the battle scares on her starboard side, they are just cosmetic.) Her bottom is blemish free, barrier coated, and sporting new paint. A noticeable leak and weak point on the starboard toe rail is repaired. Cockpit wood and toe rails are protected with layers of hard finish. We know the rig is solid and some new running rigging is in place. (Replacing running rigging is an ongoing kind of thing. A traveler line here or running back blocks there. Wherever lines go on sale we tend to pick the oldest “something” and replace it.)

There are only two areas where the boat still lacks a bit. One is the WesterBeast. It runs okay but is old, tired, dirty, noisy and drips. To a mechanic an engine is like a bank account. There is only so much power saved up in those blocks, pistons, rods and bearings. Every time it runs some of that power is withdrawn and, one of these days, that 36 year old account will be empty. We try and stretch it out with meticulous maintenance and sailing as much as we can, even when it means going really slow rather than the sailboat normal slow. It helps that we really like sailing and don’t usually mind going slow.

Kintala’s other weak point is the auto-pilot. This old airplane driver longs for a fully integrated system with multiple modes and programable way-points. The wind vane is cool in a touchy feely “look at how natural and Mother Earth friendly we are” kind of way.

It is also a major pain in the ass even when it is working

The rest of the boat's "navigation suite" is modest, to say the least. We navigate on I-pads with an old Garmin 4 inch screen GPS at the helm for cross checking and reference. Which is the way we like it. I am a big fan of modern navigation insofar as it means instant knowledge of exact position, speed, and current track. But having that information shouldn't interfere with looking out and around for general position, changing weather, traffic conflicts, and channel information. Visibility from the the cockpit of a sailboat is poor enough without having some big screen chart plotter nesting in an obtuse instrument pod mounted over the helm, dominating an already compromised scan. 

Kintala and I have never had the kind of relationship that some people seem to have with their boats. For the most part I describe our time together as "dysfunctional". But I have to admit that, watching her settle into the water, the old girl is growing on me a little. She is a great sailing boat, but sailing is sailing. Pretty much any sailing boat will do for our purposes and this one is still soft in the bilges, too narrow aft, and lacking in storage space. But she is paid for, ours, and almost ready to go.

And that makes her pretty near to perfect.

The family in their sailing dinghy

We have been here a long time. It has been a good time with family nearby. (This will likely be the hardest of all the hard good-bys that are part and parcel of this life.) We have had the chance to get the boat up to speed once again. I have logged another year of boat tech work, expanding my own skill level to the point where I am pretty comfortable with the hardware/mechanical side of this world. 

On the operations side Deb and I will both be licensed Captains as soon as the paperwork works its way though the paperwork mill. Now, if I could just figure out how to make the boat go backwards with any kind of grace…

It has been10 years since we first started looking at living on a boat. Eight since we bought Ye ‘ol Tartan. Going on five since we first left Oak Harbor. So far our cruising life hasn’t had a lot of the “fair winds and following seas ” everyone wishes on you when you head out. But at this point it is hard to imagine living any other way. 

And it is near time to toss off the dock lines and give it another go.

Strange kind of day

Work on Kintala continues. The cockpit is looking good with teak gleaming.  The bottom of the hull is also looking good, the last coat of black going on today. The bottom took a bit longer because, when it comes to being a customer rather than an employee, I can  be a real pain. The first coat of red was done and my friend doing the bottom paint started opening up the rest can of black. I asked, “How much red is left in the can?”

“About half a gallon.”

“Half a gallon? I live on the boat. Where IN the boat am I going to put a half gallon of paint, and what do you think I’m going to do with it? I’ve already paid for it, put it ON the boat where it will do me some good. I don’t want to take this thing out of the water again for at least two years.”

He laughed, put the black away, and started to spread the left over red on the keel and waterline. The same will happen with the black. It is likely to cost a bit more but, as usual, this job lurched out of control a couple of weeks ago. There is no use worrying about digging out of a hole until you know how deep the hole is going to be.

But that isn’t what made it a strange kind of day. While the bottom paint was going on I was sanding on the board we use to secure jugs at the rail. It takes a real beating hanging out on the edge of the deck as it does. Not only was it looking bad, there were some cracks and small chunks missing that needed attention. As I was sanding away on the first coats of primer another friend, who was working on the boat on the hard next to us, walked over to see what I was doing.

Apropos to nothing, the boat he is working on is a one of those go fast powerboats with a forward leaning arch over the cockpit. Though that arch is only a couple of feet taller than someone sitting at the helm, the owner/driver still managed to smack a bridge with it…at some kind of serious speed no less. He didn’t manage to tear the thing completely off, but the damage was pretty extensive. The name of the boat? “Sudden Impact.” It just doesn’t pay to tempt fate.

Anyway, when he asked how it was going, I told him I was just sanding down the primer coat. He will be doing the same on a gel coat repair soon so he smiled and went back to work. Just then, out of nowhere, a memory from more than 50 years ago overwhelmed my workbench and nearly took my breath away. It was of my Grandfather. We were down in the wood shop in the basement of his house in Rockford where he was showing me how to run a sander and explaining that it wasn’t unusual to sand most of the first coat of primer off of a project. “Take your time” he told me. “Do it right, because the finished work can’t look any better than the base coat.

It was my first schooling in the art of finishing wood, floating up from the distant past. I think my Grandfather would find the work being done on Ye Ol Tartan acceptable, though I have no doubt that, in his day, he would have gotten it done both better and faster. When we were not working in his shop or garden, he had a classic wooden power boat that we would use to go fishing. It was pretty much my only exposure to boats when I was young. I suspect he would be surprised to know that I live on a boat now, as I doubt a liveaboard lifestyle was one that ever occurred to him. Rockford, IL is a long, long way from big salt water and I can’t say for sure that my Grandfather ever got further away from that town than Pittsburgh, when he traveled to visit us.

My grandfather, grandmother, and four of the five of us kids
in front of their house in Rockford, IL

From that memory flowed another, that of attending my Grandmother’s funeral now many decades ago. I don’t remember just how old I was then, late teens maybe early twenties. Nor do I remember many of the details. What I do remember is thinking that I had never seen a man as deeply hurt as was my Grandfather that day. He clung to my Dad like a person completely lost, and he never recovered. It was barely a year later when his broken heart gave up trying to heal. Up to then I had never suspected how deep love could go.

Oddly, right up until today I never thought about how important I might have been in his life. I can’t say for sure that I was. I can’t say for sure that I wasn’t. He lived a long way away and we didn’t see each other more than a few days a year. But I have my own grand kids now, ones that I only see a few times a year, Not a day goes by that I don’t think of each of them, wonder what they are doing, how well they are growing up. Was it the same for him?

An echo from his life has been hanging around all day. It is a good echo, even tinged as it is with a bit of sadness that the memories are so few and faded.

Maybe he would have liked big water after all.

All day, every day, working on the boat…

That isn’t literally true of course. We don’t work on the boat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It just feels that way sometimes.

We have been told that people follow along with us on this blog to see how our cruising life is working out. I hope they aren’t too disappointed. So far our “cruising life” has come is short spurts. Between those limited months of moving, exploring, and getting to know many new faces, have been far more months of sitting and working. For the first couple of years the sitting and working always involved family boats. Even before dropping the dock lines to go cruising we had to deal with the initial problems with the V-drive / transmission failure. When the jobs went away and we decided to call it quits on the “American way of life” there were more months of work. Even before Kintala went on the truck for the trip east; the wind vane install and a repair on the bottom faring chewed through many weeks of near constant labor.

Once in Oak Harbor we thought we were close, but then came the labor needed to get Ye Old Tartan in big water without taking on said water. Labor that included hauling the boat out of the water, dropping the rudder, and taking on a pretty ugly fiberglass repair in the tiny space under the cockpit. We threw in a rudder repair while at it, just because it seemed like a good time to fix a rudder that was split all the way across its bottom.

Our first trip south saw us holed in Oriental for a few weeks struggling with the failing fuel injection pump. We got some cruising in after that, including our first trip to the Islands with our friend John.

The summer working on the Bear came next. Months went by, working through the Florida heat. Little did I know that was a precursor of life soon to be. We did make it back to the Chesapeake, where Kintala went up on the hard and, yes, we spent many a week working on her once again. It was good work, bottom paint and some interior changes that made living on her much, much more comfortable. But it was still seemingly endless days of gazing out at the anchorage wondering when we would find our way out there again.

We did, eventually, making it to the Islands for many glorious weeks. But that cruise was followed by the first stint of being a professional boat mechanic. It was good experience, and helped revive a nearly exhausted cruising kitty. Plan all you like for “retirement,” but don’t bet on it working out that way. Issues can and will pop up, and one is left to deal with them as best as possible.

We got another stint good of cruising in after that, visiting our beloved Abaco Islands and, this time, sailing all the way around them and back to the States. Then it was back around the Keys for a second season of fixing other people’s boats. That season ended a couple of weeks ago but we are far from being on our way again. I suspect it will be at least another month before we can sail off, and I will not be surprised if that estimate proves too optimistic.

Cruising, at least in our case, is just doing the best you can to get by while living on a boat. In some ways it is a lot easier than living on land simply because it is far easier to “get by” when one isn’t burdened with cars, houses, insurances, and an endless array of “stuff” rarely used but still taking up space.  But boats are labor intensive devices. The older they get the more labor intensive they become. As a life long mechanic and tinkerer my way of making peace with that reality has been to regard Kintala as a hobby as much as she is a home. So what if it takes a few more weeks to make the teak pretty and the bottom smooth? Why fret over changing pumps and plumbing, adding accumulators and inverters if, in the long run, it makes our daily living a bit more enjoyable? I spent endless hours tweaking the GXSR, working on projects out in the shop, keeping little airplanes flying, and working on houses. It helps to think of boat work as more of the same.

If our history is to repeat itself we will get “out there” again before too long. It may take a bit of effort to scrape the rust off of our sailing skills, rust acquired after months of sitting in one place. The good news is we have all of Tampa Bay to warm up in, and can take all the time we like. Until then it is...

All day, every day, working on the boat.

Anchorage Sim

Kintala is out of the water once again, this time for a real bottom job. What looked to be about eight layers of old paint was sanded off down to the gel coat. There are some minor blemishes and a nick or two that need attention. Three barrier coats will go on, followed by a couple of coats of bottom paint. Given that the boat is some 35 years old, we are pretty happy with what we have found. This is the perfect place to get such work done. People I have worked with for nearly two years are attending to our hull. Friends. People I trust. People who make a living doing exactly this kind of work.

Other projects are underway as as well. Our little Merc outboard, a unit that has never been my favorite, came a bit of a cropper. The shift lever locked up in its housing leading to the wimpy plastic handle shedding its insides, stripping itself bare of any grip. We pulled the power unit off to gain access to the shift mechanism thus verifying that the interconnecting rod was frozen solid in the housing. Torque supplied by my largest pair of vice grips simply sheared the shaft, even after heating, liberal applications of penetrating oil, and light tapping with a ball peen hammer.

Fortunately, the shaft is aluminum so drilling it out only cost one broken bit. Still, with most of the core gone, what was left of the shaft still refused to budge. By then the sun was setting and it was time to call it a day. The next morning had us moving Kintala into the lifting well so we didn’t get back to the Merc until later in the afternoon. Maybe it was the chilly temperatures reached overnight. Maybe it was being soaked in penetrating oil. Whatever the cause, a punch and some gentle persuasion caused the trashed out bit of shaft to actually move a little. Persuasion of a less gentle nature was applied, and the trashed out bit moved a bit more. Yeah! A few more taps and we were home, the part free and, even better, the housing itself undamaged.

It is better to be lucky than good.

Primer coat curing

The new parts arrived and were installed. Added to the $100+ worth of fuel parts Deb installed earlier, the miserable little Merc should be about as good as it is going to get. Which isn't to say I expect it start on the first pull. My guess is it will take a few hours of nursing, cursing, and cleaning to get it chugging away once again. We are also doing all the bright work on the boat, a task that is at least a full year overdue. The good folks here at the yard have agreed to let us sit in the stands to put the finish on the toe rail.  Scaffolding is a lot easier and quicker to work from, easier than trying to wield a finishing brush while in the Ding. Sitting up here we also discovered an elusive fresh water system leak that has been lurking around the boat for a good while. It turned out the pump itself would drool water depending on just where the shaft stopped spinning. A new, and much (much) quieter pump was installed. An accumulator was added to the system as well, something we should have done long ago. (One could barely talk over the noise the old pump would make while running.)

Though it is all good stuff and Kintala will be in the best shape of her life when splashed, it feels like we are going backwards. Indeed, sitting on the hard, the boat in the usual state of disrepair that comes with sitting on the keel, the "to do" list far from being completed? Escaping the shore looks further away, not closer.

One nice thing is that being on the hard, at least around here, comes with a really excellent view. In the slip most of what we see are other boats really, really close, a wall, and a bit of water off the stern. On the hard we have an elevated view of the Manatee River all the way to Tampa Bay and out to the horizon. Sitting in the cockpit on a cool morning, sipping coffee?  It feels pretty good after nearly a year of working in the boat yard.

We are still working pretty hard, but at least we can pretend the scene is near that of riding to the anchor.

It helps.

Lucky man

Several years ago two of my grandsons sat alongside me under one of the picnic pavilions at the marina in Middle River, Ft Lauderdale. We were hand sanding a new part for Kintala’s interior, they being way too young for power tools. It remains one of my favorite “I am a grandpa” memories. Time rolls on, grandsons grow, and boats like Kintala always seem to have something that needs sanded and refinished. It is a kind of cosmic regenerating circle work, like the grass growing in the yard. Between that time and now they moved to Indiana, then Missouri, and now live on a boat just a few slips away from us. They have also grown up enough to tangle with palm sanders.

And they loved it.

Sanding in 2014

Fortunately we have three aboard. Yeah, I know. We have also moved all of my tools off of the work golf cart and back into our the aft cabin’s work bench area. Ye Old Tartan now lists about 3 degrees to starboard even in dead calm winds. We really should go through and “down size” the tool collection again.  We thought about it, then just found cubbies and holes to stash the ones we don’t use that often; like 3 or four of the 7 3/8’s drive ratchets we have aboard. There is the short one, the normal length one, the long one, the one with a swivel head, the one with a 3/8s on one side and 1/4 on the other side, the main one that is a Snap-on unit I have had since my days in tech school, and a cheap-assed one that serves mostly as a hammer. There is actually an eighth one that is part of a metric 3/8s set that rests in its own box. It stays with the set. (Along with the 3 and 8 inch extensions, of which we also have several floating around.) Going to sea with a retired mechanic has its challenges.

So the dock box at the end of the pier was turned into a work table for Grampy T and two sheets of wood were laid on the ground for the kids.  Extension cords were run and the five teak parts taken off the cockpit seats and companionway were parsed out to my “worker men.” There was a little trepidation to go along with their excitement since they hear constant warnings about how easy it is to get hurt with a power tool. Palm sanders are likely the least dangerous power tool of all, but still…these boys are nine and five respectively. A sanded finger would make me very unpopular with Mom.

Proper technique was reviewed. Sand the piece, don’t scrub at it. Keep the sander moving when it is touching on the wood. Go with the grain. And sand old varnish not newly exposed wood. They fired up, their little faces scrunched up in that particular way kids have when they are concentrating, and the dust started to fly.

It was pure magic for Grandpa.

I was an instructor for the first hour or so, watching carefully as they got to know the work. At times I would put my hand over theirs on the sander, adjusting the cadence and length of their stroke or letting them know that they didn’t need to lean so hard on the tool. They are quick learners and were soon flying solo.

It was a popular show for some of the other crews hanging around the boat yard, doing their own projects in preparation for heading out. One passer by made the comment, “You are a lucky man.”

I suspect he doesn't know just how right he is.

Third time's a charm...

Soon...

A common comment around many a maintenance shop, be it planes, bikes, or boats, is “Practice makes permanent”. The gist is the person who manages some odd ball or unpleasant task will, most likely, get to do it again the next time that one comes through the shop door. It makes for a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, any good technician wants the reputation of being able to fix about anything, figuring it out, coming up with a solution, making it work. After all, someone built or installed the thing in the first place. Who wants to admit to not being at least that capable or smart?

On the other hand, does one really want to be the “go to” expert when it comes to pulling holding tanks or rebuilding heads? How about being the person who can climb down into any ugly, dirty, tiny, sharp-edged filled hole toting tools and grinders? Even tasks that are normally kind of fun, like climbing a mast, are much less fun when it is the third one of the day or the wind is blowing and the waves are rocking the boat. (We use a climbing rig around here as moving the crane in place for a simple light repair chews up too much labor time. And no, this old guy wasn’t one of the “permanent” mast guys - though I did use the harness a couple of times on easy jobs just because I could.)

But being a boat tech was never on my list of "things I want to do for the rest of my life." And so it came to pass that Friday was my last official day of punching a time clock. My first “last day” was when we moved the boat to Oak Harbor, moved aboard, and headed south. Unexpected expenses made it necessary to refill the the cruising kitty and “retirement” was put on hold for a summer season. It went well, we retired again and headed off to the islands. Life lined up to have us back here and on the clock for a second stint of “filling the kitty”. That has worked out really well in ways completely unexpected. Still, we always knew that the time would come to work on throwing the dock lines once again.

This makes the third attempt at being retired and, in this case, “practice makes permanent” would be okay with me. Not sure how much confidence I have that it will work out that way, but we have managed pretty well so far. No reason not to keep giving it a try.

It will still be a while before Kintala rides to an anchor or mooring ball as she requires a bit of tender loving care of her own. Care that wasn’t as forthcoming this past summer as we had hoped, mostly because a whole tribe of grand kids were around to fill up the days. A real bottom job, all the way down to the gel coat for a barrier coat, is on the schedule. There are some plumbing mods to make (yes in the head system), a few rigging issues, brightwork, and an assortment of odds and ends we want to address. Estimated time of completion and departure sometime near the end of January.

I’m sure the enthusiasm for working on my own boat will return after the first few minutes of working on the first project. That will likely be replacing some of the running rigging, a low key way to get up and running on personal boat projects. Later we will have to work on the habits of living off the grid once again, conserving water and battery power, planning ahead for making stops to add fuel and stores, keeping an even closer eye on the weather.

But for now, just having the time clock out of my life feels pretty good.

Magic dust

Sometimes boats and tools feels a bit like Santa and the Magic Dust. First some tools for the project are carried onto the boat. Then a few more tools get carried onto the boat, then a few more tools… (and if you get that reference you are giving away your age.) A spark chaser’s tool bag has strippers, crimpers, and cutters, with a couple of screw drivers and nut drivers. (Listed that way, it sounds a lot more interesting than it really is.) Other things in the bag, slip joint pliers, vice grips, measuring stick (rule to the lay person) and some other odds and ends get toted along but not often used.

A magic dust of a morning at Snead Island Boat Works

Then the job gets going and, what’s this - a hot wire wrapped a time or two around a fuel line? What fool did that?  Though one must admit, finding a wiring harness zip tied to fuel lines is pretty standard fare. So it's back to the golf cart for a flare nut wrench, maybe two; it being easier to undo the fuel line than splitting open a slimy harness (slime being what is left of electrical tape after a few decades deep in the damp parts of a boat). Later some holes need poked and some screws need set, so the boat gets a little more in the tool department, sniffing up drills, bits, and countersinks. Eventually, of course, the wiring harness needs split open anyway, so the valve cover bolts holding the clamps that hold the harness have to come out. This takes a ratchet, a short extension, and a socket. Hard to tell which socket though, since my calibrated eyeballs aren’t as accurate as they used to be, particularly in the dim recesses of an engine box. The bolts look to have 7/16 heads, so grab the 3/8 and 1/2 inch sockets as well and tote them to the boat. Later, the bracket holding some electrical gizmos that make timed sparks for the spark plugs needs to come off. It has bigger bolts. Maybe 9/16. The 1/2 is already laying around somewhere, but better grab the 5/8 as well. Oh, and a longer extension might save a bruised knuckle.

This goes on for a couple of days, tools rarely making it back off the boat since whatever was needed to get something off will clearly be needed to put it back on. Come the time when the job is finished or the powers-that-be need efforts focused on some other project, it will be amazing just how much magic dust the boat needed to sniff up to get all the goodies working as they should. Usually, right about this time, my old life making a living in airplane hangers launches a bit of paranoia my way. If there is one thing that chills the bones of an aircraft tech, it is the thought of some accident investigator pulling one of his or her tools out of the smoking wreckage of an airplane that just left the hanger. It is the main reason aircraft hangars are filled with orderly, carefully maintained rolling tool boxes filled with racks and slots.

Boat yards don’t have any such things. A wooden box on the back of the golf cart is considered rather plush. Mine has attracted comments because it has a couple of racks for sockets. Wrench sets are sequestered in custom made holders. Zippered bags hold punches, chisels and picks. It isn’t as professional as my old Snap-On roll-around, a style known as the “Taco Stand". Still, when it comes time to move on, making sure everything that got toted up on the boat is toted off is easier than just hoping that the pile of tools on the cart looks tall enough.

Truth to tell though, I’m not really sure it matters that much, except for the cost of replacing tools. In a boat, all kinds of things are left lying around in all kinds of scary places. Engine compartments are stuffed with loose jugs of oil and coolant, spare parts and loose junk stashed on pretty much any flat surface. Want to look at the batteries or generator? Move stuff out of the way first. When the flat surfaces are full up, plastic milk cartons, open-topped and unsecured, are a popular option for additional storage. I have found deck chairs lying on top of engines and boxes of parts sliding around on top of fuel tanks. And batteries…apparently battery boxes have some kind of attracting power for pressurized cans of things that can go “boom” in the dark.

Cockpit lockers are often even more scary. Life jackets, coils of line, boat hooks, and fishing nets get jammed into the same holes that provide access to rudder posts, steering cables, and autopilot rams. How it is that things keep working while being tossed around in a rambunctious sea is beyond me, but a forgotten wrench or screw drivers isn’t much of an additional threat.

Then again, maybe a touch of the magic dust helps?

Get it to work

"Out There"

Years as a corporate and charter pilot gave me the opportunity to interact with very rich people way more than any normal person should be expected to endure. They were, by and large, pretty average folk. They didn’t work any harder than most, weren’t any smarter than most, didn’t speak with an elegance that would catch one’s attention, or exude any particular wisdom. The vast majority were second or third generation money; setting off on their adult journey with a nice head start in education, health care, and connections all bequeathed to them by parents or grand parents. It is a head start any of us would have provided for our kids and grand kids as well, so such is just an observation, not a criticism.

Most of them did have this aura of entitlement about them, as if they had somehow earned the privilege of their birth. And many of them, though they were pretty ordinary in most ways, also shared a trait not quite as common among the rest of us. Almost to a person, and regardless of the luxury of their cars, the size and number of their homes, the hangars and garages stuffed with various kinds of toys, the number of ex’s, and any current entourage of mistresses or boy toys, they eventually got around to boasting of how cheap they were. It was like a badge of honor they had to pull out and polish for all to see. I don’t know if they made the same claim to limo drivers, cooks, grounds keepers, or other hired help, but it was a claim I heard many a time while loading bags aboard some corporate jet or turbo-prop.

Oddly enough, and contrary to how they lived, it was a claim that was also, somehow, true. I remember a rich man (let’s call him…oh “John”) inviting some friends to ride along for a day trip from PA to FL. He was going to take his turbo-prop for a spin to “get some lunch”. A week later his friends were a bit incensed when they got billed for their share of the fuel burned. I wasn’t sure which was more amusing, that “John” would make such a demand, or that people rich enough to be his “friends” would balk at ponying up. It was long ago and one of my first introductions into the strange doings of the well-to-do, but similar stories became the norm as the years wore on. (Here is a free tip, if a rich person offers to “take you to lunch” for some reason, be sure to take your wallet. Unless it is a “date” they are offering to drive, not pay for your meal.)

Working as a mechanic in a boat yard has landed me at the edge of that world once again. Though I don’t talk directly to owners very often or for very long, this weird obsession with being known as “cheap” can pop up in odd little ways. One of our current projects is a brand of ‘hobby” boat; a smallish, old-school kind of power/fishing boat with lots of teak and classic “looks”. The amount of money being spent on the project must be massive; board feet of teak being refinished and a all new instrument panel. Nothing cheap about that, right?  But this is all stuff one can see. Things that can’t be seen, like the wiring disasters that lie in the bilge, those are fine. There is no VHF in the new panel, though the stereo is first class. I have been given “cart blanche” to wire the helm, but I’m not really sure what that means. We are using the old breaker panel and most of the wiring strung throughout the boat, rank as much of it is. I do have to admit that if “cheap” keeps me out of the grungy bilge and its equally grungy wiring, that will be fine with me.

“Looks” is a big part of what this project is about; ascetics more than function. Building up the new instrument panel will be an exercise in getting everything to fit as close to perfect as possible. Such is easy in a “new school” shop of C-n-C machines, laser cutters, and computer generated graphics. More challenging is getting close to perfection using only a jig saw, the odd assortment of hole saws, a barrel sander, and a measuring tape. I cheated a bit with that last one, digging out my old sheet metal mechanic’s 12 inch rule marked in hundreds of an inch. I laughed, remembering an old ditty tossed around many a fabrication shop….

“Measure with a micrometer, cut with an ax, install with a hammer, paint it to match.”

It makes, in an “old-school” kind of way, for an interesting bit of work. The boat is on the hard though, out in the open and siting in the sun. The teak work means the bimini is removed; so “interesting” includes trying to not melt in the Florida summer.

A couple of other projects I played a part in have been finished, and I was tasked with doing the sea trials, a new and pleasant experience for me. Another tech and I did two trips in the boat that got a whole new autopilot system. The first trip was a bust, the auto pilot refusing to helm the boat even though the set-ups at the dock had been completed. A reset of the rudder position indicator, even though all indications were that it was indexed correctly, and a restart of the set-up procedures from scratch, got the auto pilot up to speed. It was a fun boat to helm, though the diminutive cockpit put the end of the boom right in one’s face when standing at the wheel. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to back up compared to Kintala.

A day or so later the same tech and I took a Catalina out to set up its auto pilot. This boat had been struck by lightning, virtually every single electrical component on the boat has been replaced. Once again it took a couple of tries to get the thing working but, this time, we didn’t bother coming back to the dock. Instead we just put the boat in neutral and let it drift while doing the “dock side” pre-sets. A couple of slow circles after that aligned the compass. That last step was a thing called “auto-learn”. One turns the boat over to the auto pilot and watches it slalom the boat down the waterway. I’m not sure what the thing is learning and it makes for a weird ride while the boat slews port and starboard a total of 15 times. It took three tries to get through this step as the electronic driver kept turning the boat toward shallow water. Eventually we figured out just how much room was needed and what general direction the boat would end up going; in this case a slow arc to starboard. After the third try we got a “COMPLETE” on the MFD. A few minutes trying the various auto pilot modes confirmed that all was copacetic and we headed back in.

It was good to be back out on more open water again. The life I was hoping to live is out there. Even though this time at the dock is necessary for a lot of reasons, and I am utterly (and gladly) under the spell of grandsons (2) and grand daughter (youngest), “out there” is still the goal. Short visits out there are fun, even if they are just to get something to work.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Ed Note:

And totally unrelated, here's a shameless plug for the brightwork that my son-in-law is doing here at Snead Island. He's an artist by trade and it shows in the quality of his work

Some Monday mornings...

Some Monday mornings are harder to take than others. This Monday morning dawned gray and wet after a night of little sleep, mostly due to the bursts of hard rain that kept hammering the boat. We had been watching a small area of storms forming out in the Gulf of Mexico during the weekend. All of the weather gurus were nonchalant about the possibility of it turning into anything more than a bunch of rain, so splashing off to work seemed like the thing to do. People were talking about the weather though, and just an hour or so into the morning’s work Deb came by to let me know that the little area of rain had become a tropical storm aimed pretty much our way. We have grandkids around and, maybe, it would be best to get them somewhere safer than on a boat in a tropical storm. On the other hand, it is Florida in the summer time; rain and a little wind are part of the life. Besides, how big can a storm grow in 50 miles and a couple of hours? Deb settled the little ones into the v-berth and cranked some cartoons up on the iPad.

The history of Emily as seen on weather.com

During first break, there was a lot of talk about the incoming weather. Some of the guys had already bailed out as nearly all outside work had ground to a halt. My project for the day was in the paint shed, which isn’t really a shed - two stories of fabric stretched over an aluminum lattice that hums in the wind. But it does help keep the rain off of one’s bald head. Still, the sky looked dark with fast moving, low level clouds racing overhead. Word soon spread that our little batch of storms, now tropical storm Emily, was picking up speed and about to crash our Monday morning work party. Not ten minutes after break had ended, the winds picked up, waves started breaking over the sea wall, and the rain could be seen boiling up over the barrier islands. So I took a few minutes off to check on Kintala and her crew of Daughter Eldest and grand kids (3).

I got there just as Deb was about to walk the two boys over to the head. Once the weather arrived it seemed a good bet they would be boat bound for a good part of the day, so a preemptive potty strike seemed like a good idea. The shower house is about 200 feet from Kintala’s dock. About 100’ into the trip the leading edger of Emily arrived. Two little kids in 60 knot winds and driving, sheeting rain. That will be a story they tell for many a year. Deb and I hustled them inside than I went back to the boat to check on the remaining crew of Daughter Eldest and grand daughter youngest.

Even in the lee of the boat house Kintala was heeled over enough to send glasses and dishes cascading off of counters and onto the cabin sole. The rain was horizontal in straight line winds that must have been over 60 knots.  Every phone on the boat started to blare, a tornado warning was issued and we were being advised to “take cover immediately”. Daughter Eldest was a bit beside herself as the last she had seen of her parents and her two boys was all of us being swallowed up in the onslaught and disappearing from sight. I let her know that all were fine but we needed to get them back on the boat, the bath house being the last place one would want to be in a tornado. Two hundred feet can bet a long way in that kind of weather, but the four of us held hands and made it back to the boat without a problem.

Just as we got back aboard, Son-in-Law and new coworker at the boat yard, who had been helping me with the project in the paint shed, showed up. He had been inside when one side of the shed had failed under the pressure, all but the two corner posts buckling in and threatening to bring the whole thing down on the three boats parked inside. As he told the story, Deb and I adjusted the lines to keep Kintala off the pilings in the shifting winds. With our boat as safe as it could be and everyone accounted for, I headed back out to the yard to help do whatever it was that needed done.

There was some scrambling going on. The wind had ripped the headsail open on a boat whose mast had gone up late last week. Its rigging had yet to be tuned, so a team of five was tightening up the rig and wrestling with the wayward sail. The sail could not be saved, but the tight rig held the mast in place. Such was not the case out in storage A. Just a few hundred feet from Kintala a mast sheared off at its base, crashing down across the next two downwind boats. Storage C saw boats lose their canvas, and just on the other side of the fence several large trees are down. A Couple of large dock boxes were, literally, blown apart, the tiny bits scattered to the winds.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, a couple of us  grabbed a length of heavy line to shore up the paint shed the best we could, using a couple of well placed trees. Two of the boats threatened by the shed were on trailers. They got pulled clear, chocked and blocked.

Power went down throughout the boatyard and isn’t back yet. The sky is still heavily overcast but the winds have died away and the water is settled. My guess is that those who live on land will be berating NOAA for being slow, then being alarmist by “naming” the weather on a typical Florida day. Those of us who live on boats, much closer to the weather, will have a slightly different take. Sure, it was a small storm. But it came basically came out of nowhere. At 0700 it was a tropical depression. By 1030 a tropical storm was pounding its way on shore, likely dragging something along that, if it wasn’t a tornado, was certainly close enough for my taste. By noon it was over and people were assessing the damage.

Some Monday mornings are harder to take than others.