Allergic to Landlubbing

I've decided I'm allergic to landlubbing. The day we got home from the boat show in October I got sick with a really bad cold/flu that may have been a version of the piggy flu. It took me all of the way to the middle of December to declare I was over it. That would be my first mistake.

We traveled to Pittsburgh to visit the various branches of our family over the New Year's weekend and I managed to bring home a virulent version of the cold that was pervasive throughout the Pittsburgh area. It's now 5 degrees outside (not including the wind chill which is taking it to -20) and I am spending the weekend on the sofa bed doing absolutely nothing till Monday morning so I can try to beat this thing. I'm well stocked with Constant Comment tea, Puffs lotion tissues, Vicks vapo rub, a large pump dispenser of Germ-X and the best blessing of the century, a husband who knows how to build a terrific fire and folds a mean load of laundry.

For the next 48 hours I'm going to sit here looking at boats and reading Cruising World magazines, and wishing desperately for some fresh air and sunshine to blow this virus away.

New Year

So 2010 finally arrived. When this last trip to visit family ends on Monday we will start settling into the winter routine. "What," one might ask "is the winter routine?" Mostly it consists of waiting for spring and the new sailing season it will bring.

I do hope to start making it out to Nomad starting this next week. A couple of big projects loom before she splashes so there is probably some "working in the cold" lurking in my future. This is the first winter we have owned Nomad that she has been out of the water, so this is the first winter I will be working on the boat on the hard. I can't say I am looking forward to the prospect with a lot of enthusiasm. Still, cold or no I'll be working on a boat, our boat, so how bad can that be?

Of course some might wonder something similar about this next near...how bad can it be? A fair question given the one that just past, and the couple that passed before it. A lot of people have had a pretty rough go. But on the other hand, maybe it can't get much worse? Either way Deb and I will work toward this being a year that gets us 12 months closer to living on a boat.

Aerial View

I went past the lake this morning...at about 500 mph and 4 miles in the sky. The Gateway Four departure out of the St. Louis area runs just about over the north end of Lake Carlyle. I could pick out the Marina but was a bit too high to see individual boats on the parking lot, though I assume little Nomad is resting fine in her metal cradle. It has been nearly a month since I sat in her cockpit, travel and illness keeping me away from the lake. And I can't say that I like it much.

For those of you wondering...no, our little "near jet" doesn't normally climb while doing better than 500 MPH over the ground. But a tailwind of nearly 130 MPH sure helps. Level at 37,0000 feet, a TAS of 465 MPH and a tailwind of 160 MPH, had us hauling the mail eastbound just at 625 MPH. We made St. Louis to New Bedford, MA in less than 2 hours. Sadly we are due out of here in an hour or so, heading to the Baltimore area for the night. Otherwise I would be visiting Daughters, Sons-in-Law, and grand kids today!

Flying over the coast into the New Bedford airport was a blast. We passed over two aircraft carriers sitting at a dock a few miles east of here. The multiple islands fanning out into the open ocean, the marinas, the towns nestled right up to the shores, this is a place I am looking forward to seeing from the deck of a sailboat someday soon.



Here's what it looks like from around 30,000 feet! Kind of hard to pick out the details.

Depth of Field

I spend a good bit of my week at work doing graphics for marketing materials for the aviation parts company that I work for. I was working on some pictures this past week of a group of long hoses that our hose shop sells and my manager chose the picture he wanted for a brochure but made the comment that he wanted a longer depth of field on the hoses. "You need to get these fully in focus, Deb." he said.

It's funny how very small, simple statements like that can have a profound impact. Later that evening I began reading the copy of The Voyager's Hanbdook by Beth Leonard that had just arrived courtesy of Amazon. She spends a good deal of time in the early chapters talking about the cost of cruising and encourages her readers to honestly evaluate their financial readiness to embark on the path to the fulfillment of their dreams. After completing the chapter I opened a new Excel file and began to jot some figures down.

Somewhere between "Current Savings" and "Annual Income - Post Retirement" a remarkable shift began to take place. Until this point, my dream of retiring to a sailboat has been something akin to sailing along in New England fog...a vague image of a boat and shores unknown, with no clear picture of the details. In fact, the "dream boat" has been some odd conglomerate of catamaran and monohull, the journey somewhere between Cape Cod and the "Islands", and the time frame somewhere between now and "I've fallen and I can't get up...the companionway". Thanks to Beth Leonard's countless hours of research and personal cruising experience, and the volunteered information from so many of her cruising friends, out of the fog sailed a mid to late 80's 36-40 foot, cutter-rigged monohull firmly in the middle of my figures. Depth of field is still a little shallow, the boat isn't fully in focus yet, but my dream has gone from maybe...possibly...want it to be...to a budget in my spreadsheet. A budget that I can make work. A budget that can buy a real blue-water crusing boat. But what boat, you say? Hmmmmmmm I'm focusing...stay tuned.

Downsizing

Downsizing. It is a constant theme among those who are working on moving off the land. Deb and I did a little downsizing this past week. I drove the truck nearly 2600 miles last week, from St. Louis to Pittsburgh to Cape Code and back to St. Louis. Once home I cleaned it up, ran it through the car wash, drove it over to a dealer and traded it in on a Nissan 350Z. We hope this is the last car we ever buy and that it will be the one that we drive to the boat. I'm pretty sure this doesn't fit most people's idea of "downsizing" since the car cost about the same per month as the truck, the insurance is a little more, and we used up some savings to make the deal happen. But the Z will fit in the garage and, when we do head for the boat, it will get us there faster!

The main purpose of the truck trip was to deliver the last of Kristin and Brian's belongings to their new home in Cape Cod. Scheduling pressures kept my time there to barely 36 hours but it was an excellent visit. Saying good-by to Amber, Kristin, Mike, Brian, Catherine, May-may and Christopher, so much of my heart living in one place, was pretty hard. The idea of having a boat anchored not far off their shore for summers, of having various "crew visits" in warm waters during winters, is quickly becoming less of an idea and goal and more of an...obsession maybe?

Our plans for a summer "open water" excursion in the Gulf, using a 38 foot mono-hull, is looming as a kind of turning point. We have very little experience in salt water, virtually no experience in open water, have never done an overnight sail, never been on a sailboat that was out of sight of land, and haven't spent more than a few days in a row living in a mono-hull. In fact, when I list it that way, it seems like we might have a long way to go and that there is much waiting to be discovered in our little jaunt around the Gulf. Still, if the $$ was there I think we would leave tomorrow and figure out a way to make it work. Which, I'm pretty sure, meets the definition of "obsession."

Land Legs

I don't like them, land legs that is. This is the first weekend since March that we stayed home and did house things instead of being on the boat. I was the dutiful homeowner, raking leaves, cleaning out our backyard fountain, doing laundry, sweeping the garage, picking up a load of firewood for the winter...

...and counting the days till March. I've been reading John Kretschmer's Flirting with Mermaids this week and I can completely identify with his description of himself. After a few short days of being landlocked he's chomping at the bit, ready to be at sea again. Carlyle Lake may not be "the sea" in any sense of the word, but it's good enough for now and I'm ready enough to be on it again.

Defining adventure

According to Goggle earth, it is 2266 NM miles from Cape Cod to the Bahamas to Charleston, SC and back to Cape Cod. According to Flighttrak (The flight scheduling software we use at work.) we did 2115 NM on Friday, not quite the same distance but pretty close.

We racked up those miles going from St. Louis to Gulfport, MS then to Ft. Lauderdale, FL on to Freeport in the Bahamas, back to Ft. Lauderdale and finally back to St. Louis. Five legs, a pass through Customs in Freeport and and Ft. Lauderdale, a bumpy passage off the coast of FL though some building cue's, 1 night landing and 7 hours 42 minutes spent sitting in the cockpit during a 13 hour duty day. By the time we coasted to a stop at home base I felt like I had swum those miles.

For some reason, while taking a year to sail up and down the East Coast seems a huge adventure, flying SUS - GPT - FXE - MYGF - FXE - SUS? Not so much. I guess it is all a matter of what you are used to. And maybe its a matter of time spent as well. A year of sailing would include innumerable small events, strange sights, new places, multiple anchorages, storms, calm days, broken equipment, and many new stories to tell. A day slinging around around the bottom right corner of the country? Well...there were some big boats in the waters between FL and Freeport, my coworker managed two near perfect landings vs my three, kind of average, thunkers and clearing Customs? Even the office at Ft. Lauderdale, (the bane of my customs encounters over the years) was a pleasant, quick affair. Hard to label Friday's travels as much of an adventure.

Still, it beats sitting in an office all day long.

Naked Nomad

Nomad came out of the water today. It was a wet and somewhat chilly enterprise since it rained most of the day. Schmitty backed the travel lift down the ramp while I tossed the lines and got ready to sail, single hand, all the way across the marina. (Kidding, but it was the first and only time so far that Nomad and I have been out on the water alone.) There was only a tiny bit of wind so the little boat just coasted to a stop in the center of the lift and waited patiently while we set the slings and lifted her clear of the lake. A few minutes later she was sitting on her keel in the middle of the cradle, her mast just another stick in the forest that used to be the marina parking lot.

I was going to take a bunch of pictures of the boat shorn of Bimini, sails, and sheets and sitting contently on the hard, but I wasn't sure which would get me in deeper trouble, dropping Nomad out of the travel lift or ruining Deb's camera in the rain. Since Nomad settled into her cradle with no drama I figured I would err on the side of caution...the camera stayed tucked away and safe in the truck. I'm sure there will be pictures later, she isn't going anywhere for a while!

You know the season is truly over now. Not only is the boat dry, (except for the incessant rain) winterized and without canvas, but she is also empty of Rum, Coke and beer! I know, 'cause I went looking for a little sustenance to fend off the wet and chill after the first couple of hours of work and came up empty. Ah well, I was about to start the drive home anyway.

Really it's the last sail (really)

I can tell you that because the sails are in their bags in my garage. We took Nomad out Saturday morning with our friend Kort. He had just finished pulling off his bowsprit that got damaged in one of the races this past season and, being boatless, was looking for a ride. It was pretty cool so the very low wind speeds didn't bother any of us. We just drifted along at 2 knots across the lake and back and had a great time telling and listening to stories.



As far as we could tell we were the only boat out there besides Patriot.



The rest of the day was spent helping various people get their boats ready to pull and telling and listening to more stories. (In case you haven't figured it out yet from reading this blog, telling and listening to stories is probably the number one past time of sailors.) We finished the day off with a good dinner shared with our friend Barry and a spectacular sunset.



Sunday morning dawned foggy, cool, and still. The promised 10-15 knots wasn't materializing but there was enough breeze to go. Our friends Bill and Pam agreed to go along, their first sail on Nomad. The wind was out of the north and quite a bit chillier than Saturday. It was good to have a thermos of coffee and some freshly delivered Girl Scout cookies we bought from Kort's daughter.

When we came back to the marina we began the long job of removing the sails and the bimini and all of the extra lines for the winter and packing them into the truck.

There's a bittersweet mood hanging over the marina these last few weeks of the season. It's some of the best sailing of the year with good wind, no bugs, little traffic on the lake...but ever present the knowledge that this is the last sailing of the season followed by months of gray and cold and slush and early dark and long hard hours of catching up on all of the house repairs and work projects that have been ignored for the sailing season.

As I walk the dock toward the truck pushing the dock cart full of our summer life, I keep asking myself why it is that I don't live somewhere that I can do this full time. Can't find an answer. Guess I'll have all winter to come up with a good one.

Still an airplane driver...

Sailors approach their DC electrical systems with a laid back, caviler attitude that has always bothered me for some reason. Most of them understand DC systems a lot better than your average shade-tree car mechanic. They talk about house banks, charging systems, starting batteries and electrical load with the easy familiarity of people who know of what they speak. There is absolutely nothing "wrong" with what they say or how they operate their boats. And yet, as soon as I shut off the engine on any sailboat, this little voice echos in my head, "we are draining the batteries!" It bugs me to no end.

Then, last week, I checked out in a new kind of little single engine airplane. (New to me anyway.) It had an all glass panel and autopilot but only one generator and one battery. And I remember thinking there was no way I would take that thing into a night, cloud-filled, sky. It simply didn’t have enough DC system for all those fancy electronics. Aha!

My internal pilot warning system flashes code red at even the thought of running on battery power only. The first item on the check list for a full DC generator failure in the jet is to switch to “EMERGENCY POWER.” That action severely limits the amount of electrical load on the battery by shutting down all but the most important systems on the airplane. The check list then notes that even with a fully charged battery, there is but 30 minutes remaining before the battery is dead. Given the wrong set of circumstances (see below) everyone on board may well end up the same. "Batteries only” ranks high on the aviator's “up the creek without a paddle” list, topped only by being on fire or having a wing break off. (I did a one engine inoperative, full DC failure in night, IFR skies with an approach to minimums, during my last training session in the simulator. It took me two tries to get it right and yes, that means I crashed on the first try. I owed my training partner a beer that night…for killing him.)

A sailor treats his or her batteries like the driver of a car does a gas tank. Fill it (them) up with petrol (electrical potential) and head off. When it gets close to empty (or they get close to dead) stop and fill it up again (or bring some system online to top them off). A sail boat will run for days and days on battery power only. That is the normal state of affairs. Screw up and run the batteries dead (or the tank empty for that matter) and it will probably be nothing but a bit of an embarrassment. It may be a minor inconvenience. Shoot, it might even be a major pain in the butt. But only in the rarest of circumstances would it put one’s life in immanent danger.

In airplanes battery power (And gas of course!) are life and death consumables.

So I guess I am still an airplane driver pretending to be a sailor. Now that I figured it out though, maybe it won't bug me so much?

Last, last sail

Really...well maybe, and maybe not. Deb and I are planning on spending next weekend on the boat and then pulling her on that Monday. Maybe that will be the last, last, last sail. But today was winds of F-4, clear blue skies, and 70 degree temps...in November no less! How could we miss a day like this? So Kristin, Brian, Christoper, Deb and I piled into the truck this morning and headed to the (very, very full) lake. The marina was a busy place today. Lots of people were pulling boats, others were getting boats ready to pull, and a couple of us were lucky enough to go sailing and worry about pulling boats later.

There was only 5 feet or so of breakwater showing above the waves and Nomad had 15 feet of water under her keel sitting in the slip. There is so much water in the lake that the channel buoys were actually useful. Once clear we set a reef in the main (in deference to having little Christopher aboard once again) and flew the working jib. Nomad headed out at 4+ knots. For some reason that probably has to do with winds v shores v the shape of the lake, it was hard to find an outbound point of sail that wasn't in the trough. As a result it wasn't the best ride, Nomad rolling side to side as she shouldered though the waves.

Deb and I enjoyed the ride but I think it was a little harder one or two of our guests. Besides, though the temperatures weren't November temperatures, the sun is still a November, after the time change, sun. By early afternoon we were back in, various crew members lounging in various places; Brian in the hammock, Deb below, and Christopher curled up in Kristin's arms. Eventually we closed up the boat and head off though both Grandpa-T and Christopher pouted a bit at having to leave.

Shop visit

So it came to pass that we needed to take the jet over to the shop to get an engine ice protection system fixed. (This will lead to something about boats, promise.) I did some preliminary troubleshooting from the cockpit and decided that, for whatever reason, a bleed valve was not opening. This was obvious since the engine temperature wasn't climbing like it normally would with some hot bleed air being siphoned off the compressor stack. I know it sounds backwards but trust me, that's the way turbine engines work.

I am an ex-director of maintenance and a long time wrench, which makes me a major pain for a shop mechanic. Knowing that, I try to hang out in the pilot lounge where I belong, letting the full time techs work on the airplane without me being underfoot. But this problem had me curious and so I had to jump in. It turns out there was a bleed valve failing to open, but it wasn't the valve's fault. There is a relay controlled by a switch that holds the valve shut as long as the engine is running at less than 61% power; this whole system being a second power path running parallel to the primary ice control with its switch in the cockpit. That relay had failed keeping power on the valve all the time. I know that sounds backwards as well, but this system is powered off. This way, should the electrics fail for some reason on a dark and icy night, the engine ice protection system (which uses hot bleed air to melt the ice) will automatically come "on." (Smart folks, those airplane engineers.)

It has been a long time since I have been that deep into a system repair and I have to admit it was fun. I like figuring out how systems are supposed to work and then hunting down the reason that they don't. And I like doing this best on integrated systems; i.e. an ice protection system that uses DC electric power to control air valves that shunt compressor air to various parts of an airframe.

And that's how we get to the boat part. A boat may have DC power, AC circuits, electronics, winches, sails, generators (sometimes), water storage and distribution systems, ground tackle deploy and retract capabilities, and a diesel engine (or two) all integrated together into one big mobile machine that allows for both travel and living at the same time. How cool is that? Keeping one going just has to be the kind of thing an old wrench hand will find both challenging and (sometimes anyway) enjoyable.