Cabin Fever
10 January 2010 | Chesapeake Bay
Captn Andy/icy
It has been a while since posting the last blog and part of the problem has been procrastination. A busy work schedule that took away some of the weekend time set aside for boatwork also delayed the project. The weather held up boatwork and finally gave the final blow, literally, with near gale force winds and a 2 foot snowfall.
When time did become available over the holidays, I retreated indoors and became an armchair captain, reading a bunch of downloaded issues of Latitudes and Attitudes magazine. This magazine is available free online at seafaring.com and I was lucky to find their extensive archive, downloading about 70 issues. At some point they began to offer only the current issues. The magazine is published by ex-biker Bob Bitchin and is focused on the cruising and voyaging lifestyle.
I still managed to get down to the dock and make preparations for winter. The plow anchor had been set off to starboard to keep the boat off the dock. It had to come up and the rode stowed. Extra fenders were put out to help protect from the dock. The windlass which had been rebuilt over the summer refused to turn and will have to be removed and rebuilt again. It looks like vertical windlass configuration results in water migrating down from the head of the windlass down through the gearbox and finally into the motor.
The anchor and rode were pulled up by hand, the boat was released from the dock and let out to allow the anchor to be brought on board, and the barnacle and weed encrusted rode was cleaned and stowed in the chain locker. Further preparations included stowing the whitehall dinghies on the dock with protective cover and clearing leftover gear off the deck.
As I continued my couch potato sailing magazine marathon, I found the publisher writing a series of articles about rebuilding his sailboat. Apparently he had tried to sell it and found no buyers, so took the plunge and began a huge overhaul project that would include all the upgrades he wanted in his next boat. I began to feel better about my own delays and frustrations. Here was a guy with what looked like unlimited resources having the same difficulties I had.
Eventually the publisher completed his rebuild and took the boat south to Mexico. A buyer contacted him and the boat was sold. The reasoning was that the rebuild had created too great a financial burden. The publisher was now boatless.
The huge snowfall hit us along with a nor'easter gale. The water levels in the northern Chesapeake dropped dramatically as the wind blew the water down the bay. There were about 60 cubic yards of snow on the deck of the catamaran. Attached is a picture of a trimaran at the same dock with its own cubic yards of snow. On board the catamaran I found water in the bilge and took out about 20 gallons. The falling water levels in the bay had grounded the boat at the bow and it looked like some water may have entered the boat through scuppers that were normally above the waterline aft, but submerged temporarilly and perhaps leaking due to ice cracking the scupper hoses. The water in the bilge could have also come from the galley pump which hadn't been winterized.
I continued to follow the publisher's quest for a new boat. He commissioned a Shannon motorsailer, which was an odd choice, considering he had sold his old boat due to financial circumstances. He continued to write about the new boat, the design, the choices of systems, and the building process. There began to appear in the magazine some ads for sharing ownership of a world cruising yacht. Apparently the yacht was the new Shannon and apparently there were no takers. The result was publisher Bob once again giving up his boat project due to finances, and once again boatless.
Of course publisher Bob is making money while writing about his boat projects. Hmmm.