Kaimusailing

My smart phone cell coverage is from Walmart and costs a lot less than from Verizon. I don’t know why customers who have years of loyal following never get a good deal, in fact, they are the ones that pay and pay, while newcomers get the best deal. Soon the newcomers become old loyal customers and get shafted. It’s their turn. Anyway, my data allocation is 10 gigabytes per month and if I try to stream video, that data starts to shrink rather rapidly. I can buy more data, which I do from time to time, if I have no other way to access the world wide web. Often the end of my monthly service comes up and I have leftover data that I can burn up with aplomb. I can go to YouTube or NextRadio, wherever I was trying to skimp and save, and just burn data.
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I use the phone to upload blog posts and do it very efficiently if I have no marina wifi, or McDee’s wifi, etc., but when I have a couple gigs of data left I can stream videos and romp around the internet via smart phone. All I need is cell phone service.
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If you are out at sea, you are not going to use any cell phone data, so when you come into a port you can let it go, stream, stream, stream. Some have unlimited plans, but what good are they offshore. Likewise, your dollar budget gets bloated a bit when you are sailing and not paying marina fees. You can splurge a bit from time to time.
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The discipline to keep within your limitations is learned over the years, but even after years of learning, we find ourselves burning up our capital with such acts as cutting away the rig that we worked so hard to perfect. It failed, so it was not perfect, and we let it go to the bottom of the sea just as politically we might have to send some of the politicians down because our years and years of political evolution have produced something that is far from perfect.
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When I was reading the book, Jack Kennedy, and followed the way the Kennedy’s worked the political system, it dawned on my that that was the time when the political system morphed from a really awful back room Old Boy system to what we are dealing with now, the loaded primary system. What we have now is political parties that of course are defined by their members who have evolved to the extremes. The Democrats have evolved to the left, the Republicans have evolved to the right. Now it is hard for an ordinary citizen who is not politically extreme to find a middle ground candidate, we are getting extremes thrust at us from both of the major political parties.
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It is easy for citizens who are to the left or right to get on the bandwagon for their candidate who will battle the candidate of the opposite political gender. That is the big problem that is facing all of us, the political landscape resembles WWI, there is no viable no mans land, you are either over here on this side, or over there on the other side, never the twain to meet and compromise, how can you govern. Trump can’t govern. I suspect there is a political entity on the left side who also can’t govern. It’s time to try to evolve the system back to the middle so politics can be more normal, more effective.
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There are those who are happy with the current situation, that the government can’t function with a war going on between the two major parties. The government is the problem, so if it can’t function, that is good. This is wrong, the government functions to provide services to the populace, and when it is in disfunction, we all lose out.
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Sailors vote with their anchor, we up and get underway when we sense we are in a bad area. We might have bad loud music from jerks towing waterskiers, we might have harrassment from local authorities about anchoring in their jurisdiction. We might hear of a better place, so we hoist our anchor and head off. It doesn’t really work for us, we have no power in any of these jurisdictions. We are transients. Just like the good people who are exploring the country in their RV’s. It’s the old gypsy vs landed owners struggle. The struggle between the left and right on land might get ugly. The RV people might wish they were afloat, we boaters can hoist our anchors and head off. To where? Where is the ideal place for nervous nonpolitical boaters to head?
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I’m guessing it’s the Florida Keys. It’s not really part of homeland USA, it is the Conch Republic. Might be too lawless, too loose for Kaimu and her captain. But I’ll take the chance if I can make it. Like the Cubans who are trying to transit the Florida Straits, I am trying to transit South along the East Coast. Like them, who find out that their cardboard boats are falling apart, I am shocked to find that my boat, and maybe my mind, are suffering some attrition. So, I am taking it safe. The boat, which is leaking a bit, something to be concerned about, has lost its rig over the side to the bottom of the sea, and I, who am so slow to respond now, approaching my 70th year, become a team of boat and sailor, both old and falling apart, but lets get some enthusiasm for overcoming the odds.
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I don’t want to make the venture of DIY sailors out into the ocean a completely positive or negative transition, but here I am, DIY, heading out again with little to guide me, even prop selection. This is a mystery, what prop do I need? My old Yamaha was so good when it ran good, and it did, up and down the East Coast. It was Oriental, and I stripped some of its Oriental features down so that it could be operated like an Illinois farm tractor. Get rid of the electric choke, get rid of the electric fuel enrichment. But it always ran in idle to push the boat at 6 knots. This is hard on the engine and it seemed to me that I should go to a smaller engine so that it wouldn’t be running at idle all the time, and switch to fuel injection, because today’s fuels wreck carburettors.
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So the first use of the Suzuki 25 fuel injected outboard has been completed. I got underway at about 9 AM by starting the engine, then weighing anchor with the windlass. The Suzuki pushed the boat up to 6 knots at full throttle into a 20 knot breeze. It ran at about 5 knots throttled back. I had 1/2 tank of fuel in the main tank.
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We left Beaufort and then took the ICW along Moorehead City’s waterfront. Bogue Sound was very rough and we were heading right into a stiff NW breeze. NOAA reported gusts to 30 knots and wind speed averaging 15-20. We were making just under 5 knots.
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We ran all day until the main tank was indicating 1/8 tank of fuel. I poured in 5 gallons from a jerry can and the gauge went back up to 1/2. We had been running for 6 hours, so the gallons per hour is less than 1, but we were throttled back. The Yamaha at best used 5 quarts per hour. If I got 1 1/2 gallons per hour I was happy. It looks like the Suzuki is almost twice as fuel efficient as the Yamaha.
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During late afternoon the sun began to bother me, I was heading straight for it on a Westerly course. My eyes couldn’t adjust to look at the chart or depth sounder and it was even hard to see the daymarks along the waterway. I thought about calling it quits and anchoring but it was too early, we needed to make more distance.
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We also were into the restricted military area of Camp Lejeune with warning signs on shore and on the charts. The sun went down before we could get out of that area, so I pulled to the side and anchored. The photo is of the last bit of sunset above the swing bridge.