03/18/2010, Outside No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne
We were all a bit bored this morning and after school we decided to motor out of the Marine Stadium anchorage, under the Rickenbacker causeway bridge and into Biscayne Bay.
The bridge had clearance of 75 feet according to the charts but as we went under it things sure looked dicey to me. I was half expecting a huge collisions and the mast to come toppling down but we sailed right under no sweat.
We came down to No Name Harbor planning to anchor up inside and stay until late Friday night when we hope to cross the Gulf Stream. This did not work out however as the harbor was full of boats. This "harbor" is part of Bill Baggs national park and the number of boats that attempt to anchor up inside what is really a very small place is pretty silly. There were approximately double the number of boats in there than there is room for and if the winds pipe up to blow its going to be a game of bumper-boat-o-rama in there. In 10 feet of water in there boats cannot have more than 30 feet of rode out and even at that they will still be banging into each other.
So we opted to anchor outside the harbor entrance in 8 feet of water. There is plenty of room here and only one other boat anchored near by. The wind is blowing hard from the west southwest, ranging between 15 and 20 knots and with all of Biscayne bay for fetch there is a lot of chop so the boat bucks about a bit but I still prefer having 100+ feet of chain out and be out here than to have 30 feet out and parked right next to everyone inside. I hope I am still singing the same song in the morning.
Michele was griping today about being bored but some new friends fixed that this afternoon. As I was sitting in the cockpit watching a pretty boat under full sail head south out in the bay about 1/2 mile away it suddenly dawned on me that while he was flying full sail and the sail were all drawing hard the boat was not moving. It was very strange... the boat looked like it was sailing along great but it was definitely not moving at all.
After I watched for a few minutes through our Fujinon gyro stabilized binoculars (great toy... boat can be rocking and your view is like its on a tripod) I knew 2 things for sure: the boat was a late model Hunter 460 sailboat and they were indeed aground.l
I got on the VHF radio and hailed the "sailboat aground about 1/2 miles west of No Name Harbor". After a couple of attempts they answered back. I asked if they would like me to dinghy over and use our dinghy to help them kedge off an anchor and try to winch themselves back into deep water. They were grateful for the offer and off I went, but no before the Coast Guard got involved in asking lots of questions and monitoring the situation.
The boat, the "Banana Wind", had 3 guys from Philadelphia aboard and they had been trying to get to Biscayne channel so they could head out to Bimini in the Bahamas. They just about made it, but strayed too far east and ran aground in sand just up from the channel marker.
I drove the dinghy around and they were aground in sand in about 4.5ft of water, their boat has a wing keel and draws 5.5 feet. I took their 65lb anchor aboard the dinghy along with one of their crew and as they played out 50ft of chain and 100ft of nylon rode we ran it out as far as it would go. When the ground tackle was all in place they used their windlass to pull it tight. VERY Tight. So tight everyone feared for pulling it any tighter. With the engine pushing as hard as they could, even with the kedge out and pulling they were stuck hard.
When we were trying however it was right at low tide. Their only option (other than a very expensive tow boat bill) was to just sit tight and let the tide come in. With the kedge out and tight as the tide comes in I am sure they will be pulled off. I told them to tighten it if any slack showed and to be ready to use the engine to help but that they were likely stuck until slack flood at 11pm or so this evening. As I type this they are still out there.... I hope they are gone by morning and have a good crossing.
It was a bit of excitement at least. Michele got to watch through the binoculars so she had something to do. I got wet in the dinghy in the rough water, oh well. The coast guard kept track of everything and is monitoring the Banana Wind to make sure all is well and they thanked me for my help.
The photo above is the kids swimming yesterday afternoon and playing with the paddle board. They have on their wetsuits.... the water is about 68 degrees.
It supposedly got up to over 70 degrees here today but it sure does not feel like it with the wind blowing so hard. Its the same old story and it goes for everyone we meet as well as us. Sunny and warm Florida is simply NOT. I have no idea why anyone would want to "winter" here. Sure, its not Philly and there is not snow everywhere but it sure is not what I would call warm.
Here, you think it is going to be warm so you dress accordingly. You put on shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. Then you freeze your butt off. At least up north you know its going to be freezing cold so you dress appropriately. All we know is that we will never spend another winter in Florida with expectations of warm weather. If we are still cruising next winter, the absolute furthest north we will even consider is the Virgin Islands and we would hope to be a good bit further south than that.
We plan to go ashore in No Name Harbor tomorrow and visit Bill Baggs State Park. It has a lighthouse we can tour, a great beach and lots of walking trails and such. It is supposed to be fun. We also have a boat surveyor coming to do a new survey on the boat late tomorrow so I can get different insurance.
The insurance policy we have now is up for renewal. I spoke to our agent about trying to get more coverage after all the work we have done to the boat and she shopped around a bit. We CAN get a much better policy. The biggest difference is that the new policy "is from a carrier who will actually pay a claim". It seems our existing insurance is with a company that does not actually pay claims out for the most part. Great...... I love that sort of thing.
We listened to Chris Parkers SSB weather net this morning and it seems very late Friday night looks good for crossing the Gulf Stream.
We want to cross the 60 miles or so to our waypoint north of Bimini at night so we can arrive in the daylight. Crossing the ocean where it is thousands of feet deep is not a worry, crossing onto the Bahamas banks where it can be only 1 foot deep IS a problem. We need daylight to be able to gauge the water depth. From where we will cross onto the banks to where we will exit the banks just northwest of the Berry Islands is about 70 miles and we would like to make it all the way across in daylight. So that means we need to enter the banks around dawn so we have as much daylight for the crossing as possible. Thus the leaving here very late at night.
If we can get all the way across the banks during daylight hours we will proceed down the Northwest Providence channel in deep water overnight to Nassau. It is only about 50 miles so we will have to go slow or loiter about so we enter Nassau harbor in daylight but this strategy gets all the way from Key Biscayne to Nassau in a single passage which we prefer. I do not want to anchor out on the banks nor do I prefer to anchor up around Gun Cay. We want to be in Nassau before Monday as Chris Parker says a front will be moving through Monday night.
Terry
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03/17/2010, Marine Stadium anchorage, Miami
We now have a machine that turns ocean salt water into sweet tasting fresh water. It buzzes and hums and makes a bit of a racket and great tasting fresh water flows out into our water tanks at 14 gallons per hour. No more having to plan which marina to stop at next to refill our tanks.
So the engine stuff is good to go and our water maker is finished. While the "boat list" is of course never done.... It would appear our refit tasks and mandatory list of stuff that had to be complete before we cross the gulf stream is finished. (it helps that I took a couple of pages of this list and fed them to the fish)
Surreal, can it be that we are ready to cross? It seems like we have been stuck in boat hell limbo for a lifetime and the reality that we may be crossing to the Bahamas in a matter of days is a little tough to grasp. Nobody is really accepting it, we all half expect some new and ever more disastrous boat malfunction to delay our fun and further rape our cruising kitty.
That does seem to have been our cruising story so far. The brand new water maker I installed of course had problems when we first tested it yesterday. JT Halden who is a Spectra water makers dealer and who sold me my unit (at a great price btw...) came out to the boat yesterday to double check my installation and walk me through all the procedures of running this machine. JT is a super nice guy, we all enjoyed having him on the boat and his knowledge of this stuff is pretty stunning. He is the MAN when it comes to water makers. (contact JT at 954-515-7077. If your looking for a water maker.... Call him. Period. Just do it. You will not be sorry).
We fired the new unit up and it leaked. Not from any of the fittings I installed but from the main end cap on the membrane housing. This is a spot JT has never seen a leak from before. So he pulled the thing apart and removed the membrane and we found it clogged up with funky looking crap. It looked like some sort of algae growth or something. This was a brand new unit, never run and supposedly pickled with preservative at the factory yet it was so clogged up that water would not flow properly through it and the increased pressure was causing the leak past a large "O" ring. JT was very surprised at this and has never seen anything like it, ever.
That just made me chuckle. A new sort of mechanical failure in a part that "never fails"..... yup, sounds like the "Lillie Mae" all right!
Anyhow it was really no big deal as JT came back out to the boat early this morning with a brand new membrane, installed it and we tested everything just fine. It really is nice to work with someone who does not give any excuses but just makes things right. I can tell you better than most anyone.... That is a VERY rare thing in the marine field. Thanks JT!
The "Marine Stadium" anchorage has really not been as great as we hoped. There is pretty much no place to go ashore here. The marina right next door has a small dinghy dock but they have giant signs everywhere making it clear that this dock is for marina customers only and the marina employee who was there when I puttered by made it pretty clear we were not welcome. I did motor away before he opened fire, which I think disappointed him.
The "Manatee Scam" is going on down here too. They have lots of the slow speed zone signs in various apparently randomly chosen places and the authorities track down manatee terrorists and ticket them. Maybe the Miami Manatees can read and this strategy works better down here but I doubt it. I still think the Manatee school idea is worthy of Obama funding. Illiterate manatees deserve to read too !
I have also been told that the authorities around here do not like folks anchoring out in certain places. It seems lots of very wealthy and famous people live around here and they enjoy their views of the water sans sailboats with semi-naked fat guys hanging out on the stern belching or worse. Now, the Florida supreme court recently ruled that municipalities cannot outlaw anchoring out or put restrictions on anchoring UNLESS they provide a regulated and managed mooring field. I am sure cities are scrambling like mad to get these new "tax the feller behind the tree" mooring fields in place but in the meantime they are not supposed to hassle folks anchoring out.
Well, apparently they do anyhow. I guess when a guy with a gun and a badge comes to your boat and orders to you to move it now the fact that some court somewhere is in your corner takes a back seat to not getting shot. That's the way I see it anyhow. If Madonna asks me to move.... I have no problem with that.
My solution to this sort of stuff is very easy however: Leave. Go somewhere that welcomes boaters and is setup to cater to them rather than view them as a sort of non- local voting tax source. The Bahamas is this place!
I am still dealing with some property management issue with our rental properties. A couple are not occupied and are getting repairs but this should all be moving forward without needing me by the weekend. This has been one area of the "grand plan" that has not gone as I anticipated.
Wait a minute..... NONE of the "Grand Plan" has gone as I anticipated.
But the rental properties thing has been a bit of a mess. It seems I am a poor judge of how good a tenant will be or not be. I had one guy who waved a big wad of cash in my face for the deposit and first months rent and he told a good story so I signed him up. Less than a year later, after missing 2 months rent and after I have eviction legal proceedings well under way he calls me from jail. Turns out its hard to pay rent when your in jail.... But of course none of it was his fault! He did finally manage to get his stuff out of the house and when we got in we discovered a scene worthy of a Steven King novel. New forms of life were evolving rapidly in the primordial slime left behind in the basement. Rats could not even survive there, as proven by the rat carcasses rotting and stinking up the place. It really amazes me how some people live. Anyhow, like most problems its all solved with enough money!
I have learned a lesson from that stuff: pay a professional to do full background checks and ensure that I get good tenants. That is what I am doing now.
Tomorrow we hope to motor out of here, go under the Rickenbacker causeway bridge and head into Biscayne Bay. We will motor around to the other side of Virginia Key and anchor so we can take the dinghy in to see the big Miami Seaquarium. Its apparently a pretty impressive facility and has lots to keep the kids engaged. Plus, I am sure we can spend a ton of money there and since its been several days since we spent any money we are suffering deep withdrawal symptoms. Michele was chewing on a quarter earlier today and Taylor was planning some sort of Nigerian email scam so I think we need to get off the boat and blow a few bucks.
If the weather plays out as forecast and if I can get all my paperwork T's crossed and I's crossed we hope to cross to the Bahamas on Saturday morning. We would plan to stage down Biscayne Bay near No Name Harbor and motor out around 2am. We would then cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. There are MANY possible routes and I am still researching exactly which way we will go. At this point.... I am leaning toward crossing to Gun Cay and anchoring up. We would then leave out early the next day to cross the Great Bahama Bank to Northwest Channel light and go south a mile or so and anchor OR if we still have enough daylight continue on toward Chubb Cay. We shall see. Regardless our goal is to get toward the Exumas and George Town as quickly as we can.
The photo is of the kids helping to polish the deck back in Riviera Beach. Jackson REALLY wanted the new Pokemon game for his Nintendo DS thingy and so he had to earn it. And he did! He really busted his butt working on the boat for most of the day. Taylor helped too.
I also posted a few new pictures in a gallery. This includes a couple of shots of our view of Miami, the sail down from West Palm Beach and our tour of the HMS Bounty. Not the real one... (burned at Pitcairn Island by Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers) but the tall ship built for the 1961 movie starring Marlon Brando and used in lots of other movies like Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean. It was tied up at Peanut Island and we had fun checking it out.
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03/15/2010, Miami, FL
Its been a crazy few days but we are finally once again on the move. Yesterday we did tons of boat cleaning and final packing and we left Riviera Beach Municipal Marina this morning about 7:30am.
We had a great sail down, stayed about 2 miles offshore with the winds blowing from the west southwest between 15 and 20 knots with gusts to 25. When we first left the winds were light and we motored for an hour or so. When I went to the aft cabin to check the stuffing box and ensure it was not hot or allowing too much of a leak I noticed that we had a great deal more vibration that what we should. During sea trials we stayed in the cockpit so I guess we did not notice. Anyhow, now I get to learn how to work on getting the engine aligned further to reduce this vibration. Oh joy.
We are anchored up in a tiny bay in less than 8 feet of water with a stunning view of downtown Miami. This place is referred to as "Marine Stadium anchorage" as there is a sort of abandoned amphitheater overlooking the water. I think this once was used for a marine animal show but it was damaged in Hurricane Andrew. Anyway, its a protected anchorage and we will probably be here a few days.
Getting ready to go was huge work. I made the mistake of taking some 3M polish and wax and trying it out on a section of the boats deck. It transformed the faded, chalky and generally nasty looking deck section into a shiny, glossy and brilliant area. Now we have to do the entire boat. How stupid am I?
We saw tons of folks fishing on the way down and in general the amount of boat traffic was the most we have seen. The beach was also packed which is surprising because it is still cold here with the wind blowing so hard.
Al Gore owes me. Where is my global warming? Everyone we have met in south Florida has the same gripe, this has been the coldest winter in over 30 years. Normally, the winds during the winter blow from the southeast to south. Over the past 30 days I think it has blown from the southeast for one 12 hour period when it rained like crazy. Other than that its been from the northwest or north.
Michele's knee seems to be getting better finally. Oh, perhaps I did not mention that she injured her knee a few weeks back and its been swollen and painful since. Yuck. How did I fall in love with such a klutz? She is hot though. :)
We are beat and plan to sleep in late tomorrow....
Terry
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03/09/2010, Riviera Beach Municipal Marina
I just spent about 45 minutes writing a detailed and good blog update.... and my stupid computer had an error that caused me to lose the entire thing.
Anyway.... the engine is done, the water maker is 95% done and we are finishing up lots of junk this week and look for weather to allow us to head south this weekend.
The photo is of the new engine.
Terry
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Sorry for the bad luck.
03/07/2010, Riviera Beach Municipal Marina
We are still in the marina, trapped like fish in a bowl.
But we do have an escape plan! This is plan Z-1, get the heck out of dodge and we hope to move on it within the week!
The new engine is fully installed and it runs great. NO SMOKE! She does into forward and reverse and everything seems great. So we have a brand new engine, transmission and main gauge panel plus all new engine wiring and it looks great in the engine room. We have not run a sea trial yet but she does great in gear in the slip. We plan to conduct sea trials tomorrow and if all goes well the engine mess will finally be done. Hey, its only been over 2 full months and more money than I care to think about so what the heck!
I have also just about completed the installation of our watermaker. We went with a Spectra Cape Horn Extreme system that should produce 14 gallons per hour and runs off our batteries. This system is very energy efficient, has no computer controls or electronics and it is very straight forward to service and maintain. I had bolted all of the major components into place before we left Jacksonville but needed to complete all the wiring and plumbing. It was a very big job as it turned out, I had the boat seriously torn apart to gain access to all the lockers and spaces required to run the wires and such. Only some minor finish plumbing is needed and I will finish and test the unit when we reach Miami.
The photo above is of Taylor sitting the aft lazarette helping me by vacuuming. She really is "my little helper" and its amazing how she soaks up all the information. She can tell you how hose clamps work, what an alternator does, how electricity flows with positive and negative and she really gets a kick out of helping me when I am working on the boat. Sometimes it is really nice having someone who is small and can crawl into tight spaces to help with projects!
With all the major projects finally coming to a close, we are looking toward finally... FINALLY getting down to doing some real cruising. That means getting our cold and tired butts to the Bahamas!
We hope to head south to Miami / Key Biscayne by middle to late this week. Before we clear out of the marina here we have a ton of boat cleaning to do as all the projects have left things a huge mess. When we get to Miami we will test the watermaker, get a few minor things attended too and then see about heading out to the Bahamas. Hopefully we can be there as soon as this time next week. We really hope so.... Lobster season ends March 31st and I have really been looking forward to spearing some bugs!
I am also looking forward to trying out our new stand up paddle board. This is a new twist to the whole surfing thing that has really caught on. Rather than lay down on the board and paddle with your hands, you stand up and paddle with a paddle. The boards are longer and thicker thus making them more buoyant. They are not as maneuverable as a regular surf board but I am no Kelly Slater so I really do not care. The board we got also came with a sailing rig so we can wind surf on it as well.
Terry
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03/01/2010, Riviera Beach Municipal Marina
We are currently tied up in a slip at Riviera Beach Municipal Marina pushing hard to get the engine repower project wrapped up. Hopefully.... Knock on wood and all that.... The new engine should be running tomorrow and we should be ready to head back out to the anchorage on Wednesday. We HATE being in a slip!
It has been some time since I last posted and we have been having some fun along with all the work. On Saturday the 20th we took the boat to downtown West Palm Beach and tried to get a place at the new free city docks for the big festivities they were throwing to celebrate the grand opening of the $30 million water front renovation and new park. Well, the water at the city docks was a bit too shallow as we ran aground 3-4 times trying to get into a spot. So I gave up and we went next door back to Palm Harbor Marina and got a slip. Its only money after all... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
We all had a great time walking around downtown, going to the green market and checking out the new park. We even met the Mayor of WPB (you can always tell a politician by that funny smell... you know, the faint smell of burning money) who was running around hyping the new park and gardens. We manage to escape from this encounter with wallets intact.
We had my uncle Mickey and his wife Dot out to the boat to visit in the afternoon and while they may think we are a bit crazy (and who am I to argue that? ) they were extremely nice and complimentary toward the Lillie Mae.
Later in the evening Noel along with Clint and Reina came to the boat for drinks and to walk over to the huge party going on at the super nice new downtown park and waterfront. They had a Pirate Zone party area for kids, a bunch of Cirque Magic street shows going on and a center stage with a band playing. It was very impressive but with over 80,000 people showing up things were just too crazy so we all opted to go back to the fancy lounge at the marina and order pizza and make our own drinks. We watched the massive fireworks show from the Marina and the kids were impressed.
After a couple of very windy days at anchor, on Tuesday the 23d we motored up to the Marina here to start the process of swapping out the engine. We rented a car and got a Motel 8 room for a couple of nights as the boat was REALLY torn apart during this process.
John Straus from JAS Marine and I got the old engine fully disconnected and using a come-along with a strap around the mast along with a large piece of plywood for the engine to slide up on we pulled the old engine out of the engine room and half way into the main salon.
The next day we moved the boat out of the slip and over to a different dock with the stern right up against the sea wall. This was a pretty neat trick without an engine. Moving a 37,000lb boat with the current flowing and a good breeze blowing using only lines and our dinghy as a small tug boat was a bit dicey but very interesting. Once the boat was secure, we strapped a 6' long aluminum "I" beam to one of the 25' long forks on the marinas forklift and we drove the forklift out to the seawall so that the "I" beam was directly over the companionway. We then ran a chain down to the engine and using the come-along we lifted the old engine vertically out the companionway. This sounds so easy and the truth is that it was fairly straight forward. John has done this many times and he set things up so well the process went perfectly smooth and not even once did we scrape against any of the boats woodwork. I was very impressed.
We lifted the 500lb engine to about 10' over the boat so it would clear our bimini and solar panel arch and had the forklift back up away from the boat. The thought definitely crossed my mind about what would happen if the chain parted and that engine crashed back onto and probably through the boats deck! All went well however and the new engine went in just as the old had come out. The entire swap process took about 2 hours.
Thursday night uncle Mickey and Dot along with Todd and his wife Nita took us all out to dinner at a really great Mexican place. We all had a great time getting to know them all better and Taylor really seemed to hit it off with Nita!
Back at work on Friday we learned that getting the old out and the new in was the easy part. Once we had the engine in place, we figured out that the transmission that came standard with the new Yanmar 4JH4-TE engine did not have the same dimensions as the transmission attached to the old engine. It sat too high and there was no way it would align with the prop shaft. The solution was to swap to a different ZF transmission with a lower output flange. Simple really. Except the correct transmission was in St. Petersburg on the other side of Florida. So, Jackson and I spent 8 ½ hours driving one of JAS Marines vans across the state and back to swap the transmissions. Florida is FLAT my friends. VERY Flat.
We worked on getting the engine fully installed on Saturday and made good progress but were again stumped when we discovered that the coupling on the prop shaft and the transmission output flange were not the same diameter and would not bolt together. This required a new coupling that John had to go to Ft. Lauderdale to get Monday morning.
We all spent Sunday running tons of errands (John let us use one of his company vans) including buying over $800 in groceries and provisions so we will be prepared to head toward the Bahamas as soon as the boat is back together. We should have enough food and supplies to last for several months at least. We also hit the local used book store, got haircuts , bought lots of engine hoses and other parts we needed and shopped for stand up paddle-boards. Fun fun fun.
Today John was back with the correct coupling and the process of getting the engine final aligned and bolted down began. This is the really hard part. The output flange on the transmission has to line up with the coupling on the prop shaft perfectly. That means it has to line up to within a thousandth of an inch or so! This 500lb engine sitting on 4 giant rubber mounts and on an angle such that it constantly wants to slide backwards had to be maneuvered around over and over again until finally the alignment was perfect. This was a task for John, the expert, and all I could really do was watch. He got it done after a full days work and we now have the engine bolted down in its final position.
All we have left to do now is install the drive saver flexible coupling between the output flange and prop coupling and install some hoses and final electrical connections. We should have the engine running tomorrow.
Our plans for after the engine swap is complete at this point are to finish up the water-maker installation, do some badly needed cleaning and organizing, get any final provisions we need and then head out to Key Biscayne just south of Miami as soon as the weather permits. This should be a good day-sail, if we leave around 5am we should be anchored up by late afternoon. We will spend perhaps a week in Biscayne Bay to have some family come visit and then we are off to the Bahamas.
We are still finalizing our island plans but I am pretty sure the Abacos are out. We want to get south, it has just been too cold this far north and the Abacos are due east of here. The plan is to head from Biscayne Bay to Gun Cay in the Bahamas leaving around 2am to cross the Gulf Stream at night and so we can arrive with the sun high the next day to make entering the banks easier. After anchoring for the night at Gun Cay, we will head out early for Chubb Cay where we will again anchor overnight before crossing the "Tongue of the Ocean" (where the bottom drops to over 18,000 ft deep) to Nassau. We will not linger in Nassau but rather will move on as quickly as weather permits for Georgetown in the Exumas. The goal is Georgetown where we hope to meet lots of other cruisers and more importantly... KID BOATS !
One thing for sure: We have to get away from here and off to a place where spending money is much harder. I figure that if we are anchored up off the beach of an un-populated outer island in the Bahamas with the closest store at least 100 miles away then we HAVE to end up spending less than we have been doing here! Our spending with all of the boat problems we have had over the past couple of months is unsustainable.... I feel like Greece or California.
We also have to start having some fun. While being here is much better than Jacksonville the bottom line is we are still not doing what this entire adventure is supposed to be about. We are still trapped by this crazy broken boat and everyone has frayed nerves and daily disappointment. We need warm clear water, sunny beaches, warm weather and no ongoing broken boat disasters to prevent us from exploring and chasing after some FUN! It has got to get better.
The picture above is a typical "school" scene. The kids gleefully sit and pursue their studies eagerly while Michele opens her fountain of knowledge and fills their open minds with wisdom. They never pitch fits and scream or fight. Really, I promise!
I posted some pictures of the engine swapping work in a new gallery along with a few other pictures from our adventures so far, so check them out! If anyone keeping up with this has any specific questions or such, please email me at terrycspringer@yahoo.com.
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