There's no doubt that cutting land ties can be extremely difficult. We recently met a newly retired couple who sold everything except their car, bought a yacht and put their excess worldly goods into two plastic boxes. I know some people can achieve this goal but we are nowhere near this step and probably never will be. In fact, as you have gathered by our lack of blog entries this year, Maynard's work has increased tremendously especially in the USA. Our dream of spending idle hours at anchor in far flung places is still there, but the plan has been temporarily modified. That's life sometimes. Luckily we've been able to use Vanish as our home base so that we can fly/drive to and from the office in Louisiana when necessary.
Vanish was based in Charleston this year for 4 months after we completed the delivery from Freeport in the Bahamas. As we had so much downtime in the USA where one can buy every conceivable consumer item, we thought we would take advantage of this and improve Vanish even more than she already is. Maynard wanted to optimise our anchoring setup. Now that we have our new beautiful shiny Duplex anchor chain, he wanted to have the option of two anchors that were fully functional and wouldn't involve flaking rode or chain into the anchor lockers, whether we were in shallow or deep water anchorages. He and Mike pulled the anchors over to the dock and took all the chain and rope out of both anchor lockers, laying everything out on the dock in Charleston. These are the changes we made in Charleston after installing the Duplex chain:
Port Side: Originally had a Rocna 55 anchor with 150 feet (43m) of ½ inch galvanized chain and 330 ft (100m) of ½ inch rope at the end coiled perfectly so it would all fit in the locker. We changed the rope on this side making it only 30 feet long so we have access to the 150 feet of heavy chain which will be perfect for use in shallow water anchorages where heavy ground tackle and the Rocna anchor will be better. Rocnas are known for their holding ability with short scope.
Starboard Side: Originally had a CQR 180 pound anchor with 330 feet (100m) of Duplex 3/8 inch chain and 100 feet of rope hung on the wall of the anchor locker and could only be accessed after a serious effort. We changed this around so we now have the 330 feet of Duplex chain with 200 feet of ½ inch rope attached to that giving us around 530 feet of total scope that will be more than sufficient for most deep-water anchorages worldwide. This side still has the 180 CQR which we have been very happy with.
The reason we have been so fastidious and careful about our anchor setup is that David Marlow has engineered the anchor chain storage lockers to be well aft of the bow. This is great from a boat performance point of view as it puts all this weight in a more buoyant part of the boat but the lockers do have limits on what can be stored in them. This set up maximises what we can store and requires no human interaction at any stage of anchoring.
Another project was with regard to the aft deck area. We like to spend time sitting outside for meals, drinkies, socialising etc. It is sometimes too sunny, too windy or raining to sit outside so we found an excellent canvas guy in Charleston (Chet of Waterland Canvas) who installed a sunshade made of a product called AwnTex 120. It is a vinyl encapsulated polyester mesh and provides 90% shade for the entire aft deck. The shade is made into five sections so we can set up whichever screen we need for any particular anchorage or circumstance.
During our stay in Charleston, in the midst of one of many storms, a lightning bolt struck a nearby yacht. The stray electricity in the water entered a couple of nearby vessels including us which, in turn, damaged the electrics in both our bow and stern thrusters, a thruster joystick, and one video camera AV switcher. Luckily, we discovered these well before we left on our next passage during a routine maintenance check.
After analysing the different symptoms of each problem we pulled out the manual and Marlow diagrams to try to find all of the different components throughout the boat. This is sometimes the hardest part as solenoids, fuses, cables, and switches can be well hidden and aren't always right near each other. The bow thruster was non-responsive and in our trials we removed a fuse on one of the solenoids to check if it was good (it was) and reinstalled it. As soon as we did, the solenoid clicked over and reset itself and started working again. The stern thruster had a battery failure and thankfully those batteries are isolated from the house batteries so we just needed to simply replace them. The thruster joystick up on the bridge would not turn off unless it was switched off at the breaker panel so we unplugged the joystick from the stern control station and plugged it in up on the bridge where it functioned perfectly. This apparently was also a result of the lightning damage so we ordered a new one and installed it. Also, the feed from the engine room camera was not coming through the AV switch on the bridge. This is very important when we're at sea because we can see anything abnormal almost instantly. Smoke, major exhaust leaks and water leaks can be spotted easily. There wasn't much to trouble shoot with this so we had to mail the AV switcher to California to get it repaired. Everything that malfunctioned was working perfectly just two weeks earlier during Mike's routine maintenance checks, so we found it hard to blame these issues on anything but the lightning. Other vessels had similar/worse issues from the lightning strike as well.
We are currently keeping an eye on three weather systems in the Atlantic. One is called Hurricane Edouard which is 1,000 miles east of the Leeward Islands. The other two both have a 20% chance of formation. One of these is currently over Florida and the other is off the Cape Verde Islands off Africa. After thoroughly investigating and enjoying Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Savannah, we motored out of the busy harbour of Charleston last Friday passing the major historic island of Fort Sumter where the first engagement of the Civil War began in 1861. We headed south in overcast weather with rain showers in seas of less than a meter and 10 knots of SE wind. It felt awfully good to be back at sea with the lack of vibes and wide open spaces and provided us with a chance to test ourselves and all boat systems again. We spent the night at anchor near the town of Beufort, South Carolina in a beautiful spot then headed off again the following morning to find our new home for Vanish before unsettled stormy weather arrived. As it was, a low had formed just offshore from us so we were eager to find Vanish's new temporary home in case the low turned into a tropical depression.
Vanish is now in a small protected marina in Brunswick, Georgia. The town hasn't seen a significant hurricane since 1899 so we feel we are in the best possible place to hopefully avoid any tropical activity. The marina is located in a small tributary off the Brunswick River called the East River. There are many yachts in the marina all waiting for the hurricane season to be over. We are at the end of a T dock on a very narrow waterway looking over chartreuse wetland grasses. This morning there was great excitement as we spotted a flock of over 60 flamingoes.......... well after a bit of research .........turns out they weren't flamingos but they were definitely pink birds called roseate spoonbills. There were also great blue herons and other wading birds which were searching for small fish and crustaceans at low tide just opposite the boat in the marshland.
It is very peaceful spot and the town has restaurants and all that we need to reprovision. Unfortunately, we need to leave Vanish again as Maynard is now needed back in Australia. Mike who has been with us for almost 18 months has continued with projects and normal maintenance while we've been in the USA and will continue to do so during this work trip. Vanish has never looked better and we are truly thankful for his help and to have such a well-designed, comfortable, practical vessel which suits us in every way possible and is a perfect home.
(See Gallery for more photos.)
