THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: Ep1
By DNA DAVE
Please follow us:
• Where in the world is DNA DAVE: Follow our route at either of the following sites:
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Episode 1: “The back end of life”
“Comes a time, when you’re drifting. Comes a time when you settle down. Comes a light, feeling’s lifting, lift that baby right up off the ground.” These lyrics by Neil Young allude to the front end of life, transitioning from crazy, risk-taking early adulthood to finding a direction and partnering up. I certainly had my crazy days, a topic I may need to return to in a future episode, perhaps entitled “9:10 toast a friend”. For now, episode 1, I’d like to discuss the back end of life. Comes a time when you’re done being serious. When you start looking back and wondering if there is anymore that you really need to do, whether all those seemingly exciting pressing next steps aren’t just more of the same. When you ask if there might be something else, out of the box of rain that you left behind, something you felt, something you miss, something you believe in, something you need. “Comes a time, when you’ve been there, comes a time when you’re done with that. Comes a light, feeling’s lifting, turn those roots back into wings.”
The last 5 years have been a holding pattern for me. Children raised, one lost, 30 years of marriage, we’re in different places, have I made enough money? Should I really focus on work now? What would that look like? Is there anything else I’m as passionate about as science and mentorship? Wait.
“Sailing is the art of moving incrementally towards some arbitrarily designated destination, at whatever pace mother-nature allows, while expecting little more than to arrive safely, somewhere.”
………………………………..DNA DAVE
This was something I wrote on page one of “DNA DAVE’s Sailing Syllabus” that I wrote in 2013 to teach friends, family and my trainees how to sail. This statement is there to make sure that they understand first and foremost that the point of sailing is not to get anywhere, but to get everywhere. To Zen, to do very close to absolutely nothing, while never getting bored. Another way to put it: “The voyage is the destination.”
Doing absolutely nothing, while never getting bored is about as close to impossible as you can get with me. I am your quintessential Type A. I am constantly fighting boredom. I cannot sit still, I cannot listen to small talk for more than a minute, I cannot look at something that needs fixing and not fix it. I cannot do any job half-ass. Maybe playing music, since perfection is hopeless, but I have to be in the mood. I cannot play sports unless it is to win. I cannot coach unless the goal is to be in the last game. I am never satisfied….. except when I’m sailing. I can fiddle with the sail trim, but I don’t really care if it is perfect. I don’t care where I’m going, I don’t care how long it takes to get there. Sure, there is plenty to keep me thinking – rocks, breakers, floating debris, cargo ships, weather, currents, constant innovation, an occasional bird or that insect that somehow survived to visit miles offshore. One time a lizard made its home in my bimini cover and ate those insects for me. But sailing is about feeling free, feeling unbounded, unplugged, off the grid, unrestrained by fuel or spark plugs, using only what mother nature provides, and completely at her will. Your job is only to make the best of it, survive, and watch the water, watch the sunset, watch the sunrise, feel the motion. Thank God I don’t get seasick.
But, maybe I should keep doing science. I love it, I get to teach young people everything I know about how to succeed as an artist in a world where “success” is an elusive thing achieved mostly by rubbing elbows with boring, unimaginative ladder climbers. Maybe that summarizes most professions. But, unlike many fields, science can be forgiving for smart creatives because one can actually make a living without being one of them. Good science gets found and funded. If you love it, and are addicted to it, you will be heard, you will travel, you will meet plenty of other smart creatives and you will live a good life. So why would anyone want to give that up?
There is a website called sailboatlistings.com. You can enter your dream boat, be as specific as you like with the make, model, year, bells and whistles you want, and then just sit back and wait. I met my dream boat at a boat show sometime in the mid-late 1980s. I lived on two boats during graduate school. First was a 1968 Columbia 36 my girlfriend and I named “Stella Blue”, and we had an artist paint a beautiful blue rose on both sides of the stern. As wonderful as she was (the boat I mean), we learned that living on a boat is a very good test of the strength of a relationship, and ours did not stand the test. After about 18 months, I bought myself a 1971 Ranger 26. I named him “MAX”, which I painted myself using masking tape in art deco letters on both beams. Ever striving to break any trend I could, I proclaimed that I owned the first male boat in history and hosted an amazing christening party with a local Dead cover band (“Jerry’s Kids), an ad hoc team effort stage built the same moring at the end of the marina parking lot, and a good buddy of mine (who by the way went on to invent zooming and scrolling with your fingers) painting a perfect skull and crossbones on a circular piece of plywood that we mounted 20 feet into the air with 2x4s. MAX had about 5 feet 8 inches of headroom and I was about 5 foot 10 – “Not MAX Headroom” as we sailors used to joke during the time when that was a very popular TV show about a witty artificial TV host. I had a giant multicolored canvas cover made that went from stern pulpit to bow pulpit so that I could use the cockpit as a room where I could stand up, and I could leave all my hatches open and just duck my head and pop out at the entry way or the hatch over the head. Neighbors got used to having conversations with the top of my head, while the rest of my body was occupied with, well, the reason for pausing a few minutes while passing through the head. OK – I digress. Both of these boats were “plastic classics”. Very little if anything but plastic and stainless to maintain. While there were still plenty of wooden boats in those days, wooden boats were for people who wanted to spend 90% of their time maintaining and 10% sailing, while plastic was for those who wanted the inverse formula. But—at this boat show—I met the perfect marriage of practicality (plastic), beauty (real wood) and the beast (built to withstand anything). The Hans Christian 38t. Plastic hull, massive strength, overbuilt at every juncture, teak deck, teak cockpit, traditional teak interior, complete with hanging kerosene lamp – OK – I fell in love. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and this is the most beautiful piece of cruising marine architecture I’ve ever laid eyes on.
One more digression – my Father wrote two books as his “memoirs”. One was about growing up in the 1920s, very entertaining, and the other about his time in WWII, very boring. But what was missing in those memoirs was his wife (my mother), and his children (me and my sisters, and a son was lost before I was born). My point – I don’t want to do that. I had 30 wonderful years with a woman who devoted her life to caring for others, including not so easy to handle me, and we raised 3 amazing children, with stories galore. But we are about to skip those years, because this episode is entitled “the back end of life” and this chapter is about looking forward at a time in life when you tend to look back too much. There will be plenty of time for “the middle part”. So – let me fast forward 30 years.
After my marriage ended in August of 2018, one evening, on a whim, possibly after a glass of Woodford, I was longing for the love of my life. I was married at 28, knew nothing but monogamy, family and division of labor, with all interest in dating completely atrophied, and now I was 58. And so, on this whim, in an age where others were finding their soulmates in computer apps, I went on Sailboatlistings.com and entered my ideal criteria, a Hans Christian 38t, fully equipped to step onboard and go anywhere. Then I completely forgot about it.
For 4.5 years.
THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: Ep2
By DNA DAVE
Please follow us:
• Where in the world is DNA DAVE: Follow our route at either of the following sites:
• Capt. Chandler’s Garmin tracking system:
https://share.garmin.com/WickedIslandMarine (fun to follow and if you click on each waypoint you will find information of interest.
•For most of you the above link will be best but for the maritimers, you can find us on
• Marinetraffic.com: search for our MMSI: 368338090 (NOTE: we have not yet been able to change the MMSI on our chart plotter, it is a huge pain, so please use the prior owners MMSO for now: 316025867).
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.m.gilbert.19/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.m.gilbert.7/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvDSNXBAaYlzIgsBEUidWFg
• The Voyage is the Destination blog site: https://davidmgilbertca.wordpress.com/
Episode 2: How do You Pronounce “Heure Bleue?”
January 14, 2024: If the voyage is the destination, then sitting idle is aimlessness, purposelessness, oblivion, limbo. Here I am in Puerto Rico now for 18 days, waiting for things out of my control……. Many have asked “Where is DNA DAVE, he hasn’t moved in weeks”. What a strange question. A better question: “Why haven’t we heard from him?” The fact of the matter is I cannot get motivated to write or post photos or videos about the voyage, because I am in limbo. The only good thing about being in limbo is my work, my colleagues and collaborators, my science, where I can make a difference, where I can help people to be productive. I have time for it, and it brings me solace. Maybe I have been in limbo all my life, I don’t know. Is this yet another way of testing my resilience. Am I cut out for this life where so many things are out of my control? Of course, it could be wonderful in another life – I am learning about Island culture and making friends – but – everyone is either retired or in the boat business. I am neither. Alas! In the meantime, let’s return to the beginning.
May 6, 2023 12:00 AM “Dear K – I definitely have the itch. But I need to liveaboard. Can you find me this boat in the attached link (this is my dream boat) and a place to live on it. I’ll rent out my condo and move on board and we are good to go!!! https://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/95636”
I am a terrible sleeper. I typically sleep 2-3 hours and wake up (hmm perfect sail watch pattern). If I don’t get back to sleep within a few minutes, I generally check my email. On May 5, 2023, just before midnight, I did exactly this and much to my surprise (not good for getting back to sleep), an email from Sailboatlistings.com, a perfect 1979 Hans Christian 38t, the boat of my dreams, outfitted with everything needed to cruise anywhere in the world. I forwarded the link to a sales agent that I had become acquainted with since moving to San Diego, let’s call him KJ, and I asked him to find me a boat “just like this”. Little did I know how talented of a salesperson KJ is, as he did his job very well, he sold me that boat!
Here was the process: Logic: This is the boat of your dreams; you are turning 64 this year and you can afford it. Counter logic: But it’s in Florida and I live in San Diego! Logic: You can ship it, it will cost you about $28,000. Counter-logic: OK well hmmm – that’s still affordable in a literal sense, but how many other costs will there be? What would be the worst case scenario? Logic: Worst case, $150,000 all out the door and all crazy contingencies covered and (just barely) within your budget. Counter-logic: OK, but every marina says there is an 8 year waiting list for liveaboard slips. Logic: That’s just a game the harbormasters play, I’ll help you get a slip. And voilå!! Logic triumphs over Counter-logic.
There are some things in life that one should never get emotionally involved with. Boats are squarely in the hopeless romantic category. Even the most experienced boater will find a way to convince themselves that this next boat will be perfect, needs very little, and will fit nicely into their budget, despite knowing with 100% certainty that such a thing is impossible. There is nothing practical about a boat. Boats are uncomfortable, they smell, they leak, there is constantly something broken that is essential and cannot be postponed. But, there is no way to resist the boat you love. Right? Absolutely – and anyhow, I’m turning 64 this year, and I long for my liveaboard “lift the lines and take it all with you days” and I ain’t gonna miss out!!!
June 15, 2023: The glorious day arrives when the boat gets surveyed. KJ found me a surveyor. I fly out with wild anticipation, elated that my good friend from Atlantic Beach has offered me her car and her home and I’m saving several hundred dollars not renting a car and a hotel room! How naïve I was to think several hundred dollars meant anything – what an idiot! But let’s wallow in the bliss for a while!! She surveyed like a champ. The owners, a couple in their 70s living in Montreal but clearly sporting their native French roots (very familiar to me having lived in France for two years), were proud to show me how much love they had given this boat for 11 years. The surveyor was incredibly thorough, and there were only a few deficiencies, none of which would prevent her from heading offshore, but things that one would want to fix nonetheless. A tiny packing gland that prevents the rudder shaft from leaking where it comes through the hull was not leaking but probably had never been changed since 1979 and should be re-packed for the next several decades. The engine ran but heated up a bit at 6000rpms (she should not be run over 2000 rpms anyhow). Nearly everything replaced in the last 10-15 years, it’s practically a new boat! No brainer!! Time to get excited!
Next was the little detail of documentation and insurance, for which the most important decision was whether to change her name. Her name is “Heure Bleue”, translated from French to English means “Blue Hour”. The hour before sunrise and after sunset. Carollynecorner.com calls this: “The in between time when anything is possible….that gives the opportunity to gaze behind the curtain of the consciousness and gives a hint of the world that expands much further and deeper into your soul.” When cruising, one sees every one of these hours. How romantic. Why change her name? Besides, it’s a lot more paperwork, and… very bad luck to change a boat’s name. (Note from the present – Hmmmm…….I now question this old tale – I’ve changed all of my prior boat’s names and never had bad luck – read on!). What I didn’t anticipate is how difficult it would be for people who don’t speak French to pronounce “Heure Bleue”. Not that all French and Canadians pronounce it the same, but I’ve heard everything from “Hur Blur” to “Hewer Bleh”. What was the Coast Guard going to think if I have to call her name? Will they understand the proper pronunciation: “ehr (guttural) blue (just relax the u)”. Anyhow, her name is Heure Bleue and that’s that! It also allows me to call the tender “Baby Blue”, and that allows me to hear Jerry’s voice in my head:
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
The sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
And I think: “I hope I never have to play this out for real. Baby Blue is taking me snorkeling!”
After the whole ownership of Heure Bleue was settled, there was only the tiny matter of getting her from Green Cove Springs, FL to San Diego, 2,350 miles by land, or about 5,500 miles by sea. By sea? Seriously? I thought you were shipping the boat? Boat owning lesson #1 – nothing happens without considering a long and painful series of options. I got two shipping quotes: one for $30,000 and one for $14,500 – to this add the cost of haul out, breakdown, re-build and re-splash, another $2-3,000. But then come the naysayers. There are always naysayers, no matter what you are doing with a boat. Like the Liliputian Glum from Gulliver’s Travels. “Don’t ship…..” “Shipping is terrible for a boat. All the rigging comes down, that weakens the fittings and the person re-assembling is different from the person breaking down – it’s a disaster. Don’t do it! It will never work!” The alternative, I was told, was to take her “on her own belly.” Sounds gentle and kind to Heure Bleue. Its way better to thrash her around in 30 foot seas and grind her against 30 knot winds and put 10,000 more hours on the engine and rigging – for sure!!! Definitely worth some thought.
Sailing across two continents. How does this work? What does it cost? Surely I cannot do this by myself, I can sail but I’ve never done anything like that. And, anyhow, I cannot take that much time off of work. Maybe a week or two. I’ve never taken more than a week in my life and other than Galapagos where there was no internet I’ve never not worked more than a day or two. No worries, I can just hire a Captain to deliver Heure Bleue. My agent KJ came through again with a very capable Captain, Captain C., willing to do the delivery for $40,000. After putting my jaw back in place, I learned that this is pretty reasonable for what I was told would be a 40-60 day delivery. O….K…. What else? Just a small fee of about $3,000 to get through the Panama Canal and provisions and, of course, an extra few thousand to insure the boat (so long as you do not visit Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia and El Salvador) and some unknown amount for a couple of crew members. My first reaction was “too expensive, no can do, just not possible”. Then….once again, rational logic took over. Logic: If you do this sail, you will have a 24/7 sensei who can teach you more about your own boat than you could possibly learn in 2 years of living aboard.” Counter-logic: But it is too expensive. Logic: If you sail the whole thing, you will save the cost of crew. And guess what, a neighbor of your sister and good family friend MM has a lifetime of sailing experience and is excited to crew the entire route. Surely that will save some money! Counter-logic: But it’s too expensive! What if something breaks down. You will be flat broke. Logic: The survey concluded everything was in “better than average” shape, she is ready to go. How about you budget $20,000 for everything that could possibly go wrong? A pre-meeting with Captain C confirmed that was a good amount to cover conceivable contingencies, given the survey. If we say that the shipping cost was going to be $30,000 all said and done (naturally, logic was forgetting about the lower quote), then we are getting the adventure of a lifetime for ~$30,000, and a 40-60 day immersion education in “Heure Bleue-ology”. Counter-logic: What about work? Logic: Well, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink system gives me COVID-style Zoom supervision of my laboratory and same-same conference call ability anywhere on the planet. What’s more, CEO says do it! Logic prevails again!! Let’s do it!!
Before you know it, I was meeting with Captain C in August, looking at routes and possible stopovers. 5 legs should do it: Jamaica, Panama, southern Mexico, Cabo and San Diego, just over 1000 miles each on average. In September, Captain C and I flew out to spend two days inspecting her readiness and inventorying every spare this and that on the boat. I made a 20+ page google doc (currently 52 pages) with everything we had on the boat and everything we planned to do to get ready. Awesome!!!! We doin’ this. I’m brushing up on “I can see clearly”, “Into the Mystic” and “Southern Cross” on the guitar, fantasizing about sitting on the deck howling like, well… like I did when I was in my 20s!!! Yeah baby!! Let’s set a date to set sail – the last day of Hurricane season, November 30, 2023, seemed just right. All there was to do was to wait until November!!!
THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: Ep3
By DNA DAVE
Please follow us:
• Marinetraffic.com: search for MMSI: 316025867 (NOTE: Although our MMSI is 368338090, we have not yet been able to change the MMSI on our chart plotter, it is a huge pain – see Ep3 for an explanation – so please use the prior – Canadian – owners MMSI for now: 316025867).
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.m.gilbert.19/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.m.gilbert.7/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvDSNXBAaYlzIgsBEUidWFg
• The Voyage is the Destination blog site: https://davidmgilbertca.wordpress.com/
Episode 3: “Boat Speak 101”
In this episode, we will learn the nomenclature of boat preparation. We will cover both the intention of the words and their reality. In the prior episode you learned some vocabulary like “on her own belly”. Today, the entire episode will be “Boat-speak 101”. Let’s get started!
Provisioning: This term sounds simple enough. You buy the stuff you need for your trip and put it on your boat, right? Ha! If only it were that simple. February 15, 2023 – I pack my sister’s car full of “stuff”. Some of this “stuff” is under 50 pounds because I flew with it, some is light and some is heavier. Not a big deal, until you realize that your boat is “on the hard”, that is, on land. In the water she is 3-4 feet above the dock. On the hard, she is more than a basketball hoop high, and I cannot dunk. There is a tall ladder, but it is wise to have at least one hand free to hold on to the ladder. Still, no problem – this is a sailboat and sailboats have things call winches that allow a person to have the strength of 20 people when raising and trimming sails in all conditions. Let’s tie the “stuff” to a line (line is sailing for rope – never say rope). Of course some “stuff” has handles to tie to and other “stuff” requires some ingenuity to tie up but, this should work and it more or less does, until you get the “stuff” near the top. And then there are things called life lines that prevent you from falling overboard but require now a good 4 feet of exactly what I’m not supposed to do – bend way over and haul with your back. In 2021, I ruptured my L5-S1 disc lifting weights and spent the better part of 6 months living and working flat on my stomach until I could stand and then another 6 months before I could sit. One doesn’t forget such an experience. But – we have to get the “stuff” on board, there is no option. Deep breath, lots of cussing, and there you have it! “Stuff” on board. Nothing that 3 days of McKenzie stretches can’t fix – been there done that!! Now – do that 10 more times over a week or so and you are done! Fortunately, I only had to do one such load on my own.
Dominos: This is not really a sailing term but for me it’s a very important provisioning term. Remember Captain Kirk: “Space, the final frontier.” On a boat, space is the only frontier. First, there is no space, so you must create it. You must push stuff, re-locate it, or make something smaller. For example. 12 packages of adhesive still in the packaging? How blasphemous! Remove all the packaging, cut out the key bits from the instructions, put all the tubes and directions in a Ziplock baggie, squeeze all the air out of it – instant space!!! Second, there are always 10 things on top of the thing you want, so you must be 100% sure that your thing is under there, because you are about to fill the only open space you have to move around with all the stuff on top of the thing you want, which is often very heavy. And even if you might use something again in 10 minutes, you must put it away, If not, it is certain to end up somewhere else and you will not know where it is in that moment when you need it NOW, which is a sailor’s nightmare. So – a place for everything and everything in its place. Recall our inventory in episode 2 – during provisioning, if you add something, or move something, you have to stop and modify the inventory immediately or it will be lost forever. If you stay disciplined, eventually you will have tons of “stuff” in a boat that already started with tons of “stuff” and be able to find everything in your laptop with a logical search term. You must resist the temptation to be lazy and say, “well, everything is definitely somewhere on the boat, which is not that big, right”? Good luck with that! So exactly where does “dominos” come in? Soon, you will need one of those things. To get it, you must move the sails and sleeping bags to get to the cushions so you can remove them to get to cabinet number 4 in which there is a box with three smaller compartments and 4 bags in it, one of which has what you want, but you need the flashlight in Drawer number 2, which is on the other side of the pile of dominos. Back you go, get what you need, and then immediately reverse the entire process so that you have the space to move about, and do it precisely so you don’t disturb where things are. And, of course, when you are done with said “thing” – rinse and repeat the whole process, this time you won’t forget the flashlight. Those of you who know me well can easily picture the scene. “Dave where is X?” That is then followed by a repetitive singing and whistling rendition of Van Morrison’s Domino: “Oh oh Domino, It’s all right, Roll me over, Romeo, There you go” interrupted periodically with cussing and screaming at inanimate objects. “Come on Mr. Bincover, let’s get with the !@#$ program!!” My poor colleagues. No one warned them DNA DAVE was insane. But, I inevitably surface with X in my hand, hand it over, and go back to singing whistling and swearing until all is put away again and as soon as that is done, you say – “OK, I’m done with X”. Rinse and repeat. “Whooooa, whoa ooh whao-o – Dominos”!!
Don’t fall off!! I have to mention this because, when your boat is on the hard, you have to go up and down a very steep ladder approximately 100 times a day. You might have 5 things in your hand and under your arm, and at the top you have to step over 10 more things. I sometimes wondered what my doctor or health insurance agent or one of those safety video people would say, like proably “don’t EVER do this”. But you have to do it all day and into the night. You have no choice. On that first trip up I was talking to the owner of our boatyard, Tom. After we were done he said to me “Don’t fall off.” I was really glad he said that because his voice echoed in my head every single time I went up and down that ladder. And I didn’t fall off. But, ironically, in the last week of our time there, Tom himself fell off and had to be hospitalized. The crew of Heure Bleue bought him a get well card in which I thanked him profusely for his advice, which worked well for me.
Break Out Another Thousand (BOAT). Somehow I went my whole life owning boats and managed to not have heard this saying. I learned “A boat is a hole in the ground into which you pour money.” and “The two greatest days of a man’s (person’s) life are the day he (they) buys his (their) boat and the day he (they) sell his (their) boat.” But this one I had not heard. While in the ACE hardware in Green Cove Springs, I was lamenting to a young man about how I was going broke buying so much stuff, to which he replied “don’t you know the definition of BOAT?”. He seemed delighted that I hadn’t so that he could be the first to tell me. What is ironic is how much of those initial expenses were things that I hoped to never use. I hoped they would rot in their package and never be opened. It’s a marketing racket actually. Life rafts, Man Overboard Modules, Life Slings, EPIRBs (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon), flares, flare guns. The offshore life jackets that serious sailors would never sail without (Captain C insisted on one per crew) are not coast guard approved, so you have to buy the other ones to show the coast guard, whom you hope will never board your boat. And none of this “stuff” can go in bin 27 because it has to be out in the open where everyone can access it in seconds. All of these things are extremely expensive and all of them have to be inspected and replaced when the expiration data arrives – what a racket!! And lets mention just one more example – the electronic equipment – no one knows how to read and navigate with a chart and a pencil anymore because they have a machine to tell them what to do. But it’s all ridiculously expensive. Fortunately, when you buy a used boat, it comes with the VHF and HF radios, automatic identification systems (AIS), radar and navigation equipment that the prior owner installed. Super! But get this: you have to assign your boat a new MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) number in order for anyone to identify who you are. When you need to hail Mary (know as May Day) or a huge freighter is heading right at you unable to stop, everyone everywhere immediately knows your boat name, type, size, speed and direction you are moving. This is all very useful information that gets sent out in a millisecond when you are in trouble – great use of modern technology. But…..you have to change the MMSI on your instruments or it doesn’t work. Shouldn’t that be a few clicks of few buttons found on page 37 of the manual? Noooooooooo!!!! In every case, you have to send your instrument back to the manufacturer, pay the shipping, then wait 3 weeks for them to change the number for you and ship it back to you at your expense. Can’t wait that long because you already planned to leave tomorrow? What’s the alternative? I guess one option is to just go like we did in the old days. How can a company ethically ask you to do the impossible just to make use of their life-saving technology. Option 2 –find a smart guy (whose name is Ziggy, uh oh) who knows how to connect his computer to the equipment with bootlegged software off of eBay who will make you a deal – for a little over $1000 he can get your MMSI changed. No brainer, just do it!! BOAT. The process for all monetary decisions with a boat happen as follows: 1) It’s broke, crap!; 2) sticker shock; 3) Do I really need this?; 4) I really do need it; 5) research all options; 6) eventually, $1000 seems like a deal; 7) Pay. Sometimes by the time you reach #7, you are so delusional about how much money you think you just saved that you can’t stop singing Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust all day long in celebration of Ziggy’s heroic efforts to save the voyage!
[Note: Shortly after this experience, I discovered that the same policy of sending your instruments back to the manufacturer applies to the SIMRAD navigation equipment, which sends out an AIS signal for other boats to know who you are. Since this is not life-saving, and passing boats would still see her correct name and specifications, except to think we were Canadians, and since Ziggy needed $1,500 to fix the SIMRAD, I decided to leave the AIS associated with the previous MMSI number. This explains why, when you go to MarineTraffic.com, you see a Canadian Heure Bleue. She’s the same boat and her AIS is telling you her accurate position.]
Watermaker – A watermaker is exactly what the word says. A machine that makes water. In Saudi Arabia they have nothing but desert sand and yet they have plenty of drinking water because they have giant watermakers. Someday Americans will figure that one out. But it is now popular amongst boaters to have a small scale watermaker. Why do you need a watermaker? Well you don’t, really. Somehow people sailed across the 7 seas without watermakers until very recently. But we all know how needs change. We didn’t have smart phones until 2007, and now we expect impoverished displaced immigrants from Honduras to have one so that they can fill out Joe Biden’s immigration forms online before arriving at the border. But what is the reality here: we need at least 1 gallon of drinkable water per person per day to stay hydrated, more in the heat. Then you need to wash dishes (or you could dip them in the sea). Heure Bleue has a salt water faucet so you can get all the grease off first with the unlimited water source and just do your last rinse with fresh. And how long can you go without a fresh water shower? Well, you decide. I’ve had some watermaker die-hards end this debate with an irrefutable: “I like my fresh water showers.” Most people justify it as a modern tool to allow the average person to sail long passages or to visit areas of the world that are uninhabited or otherwise lack copious drinking water. Heure Bleue’s water tanks hold about 100 gallons. Do you trust water that has been sitting in a tank in Florida all summer long? You can certainly boil tank water for coffee or freeze-dried foods and there is no problem showering with it, but drink it? Heure Bleue has a faucet that is equipped with a water filter…but still…ewwww!!! For all these reasons, it is good to have a watermaker but, what a pain!!!! It’s heavy, takes up a lot of space and it’s expensive and requires a lot of maintenance. You need to be at least 3 miles from any high traffic area to have water clean enough to make fresh water without needing to change a clogged filter with each use. If you are not offshore, you need to flush it with fresh unchlorinated water every 3 days, and you need to pickle it if you aren’t going to use if for a few weeks. It draws a lot of power so you need to be careful not to run your battery down. It’s a blessing to know you have unlimited water just in case but it is also a liability. Heure Bleue had a watermaker on board but the owner disclosed from the beginning that it was non-functional. They only sailed the Bahamas and got their water from civilized marinas. Thus, it’s now time for us to go through the BOAT process: 1) The Watermaker is broken, crap!; 2) I was quoted 20,000 BOATs to replace the existing one, but there are new brands as low as 3 BOATs ; 3) Captain and crew say it would be important to have it; 4) I guess I need it; 5) Research: portable vs. non-portable, AC vs. DC, 5 gallons per hour vs. 18+. There are many good sources of information by googling if you are interested; 6) OK there is a Rainman (reminds me of the Dustin Hoffman movie so I can remember the brand) for $5,000 with a good reputation and the store is right in St. Pete, Florida where my sisters live so I can save the $500 shipping cost, what a deal!!! But….here is the next part of this story. In August I diligently asked the salesperson whether I needed to send a deposit to make sure there is a unit in the store on November 17 when I show up to pick it up. He assured me that they always have one in stock and that I need not worry my over-analyzing intellectual little mind, one would be there for me on Nov 17. NOT…. The closest one was in Miami and to ship it would take a few weeks. No acknowledgement of the inconvenience for a scheduled boat delivery or my offer to pay a deposit, no apology, no professional responsibility whatsoever. Rainman = bad!!!! Back to step 5. Repeat research for another entire day. Be grumpy to anyone who asks you to do take a break and do something fun. Interestingly, I followed a lead that Tom, the owner of the boat yard, had given me when I told him I was buying a Rainman. He said he knew a guy in San Diego who is a reverse osmosis geek and invented his own brand of watermaker that has parts that are readily replaceable – like the old Volkswagen concept before capitalism and planned obsolescence reached Germany. This is the boat world by the way – a boatyard owner in Florida knows a watermaker guy in San Diego. So I google and soon I’m on the phone with a straight talking guy who tells me to go portable cuz I don’t need a watermaker after this trip and a portable is easy to sell and he will help me sell it after I’m done. He tells me his product is a bit expensive but it is high quality and comes with his personalized service. He promised to answer every question within minutes and he has fulfilled that promise at least 10 times over. His name is Rich from Cruise RO & Schenker Water Makers. He also does marine AC and refrigeration. He won me over, and what a deal!! It was only 7 BOATs with shipping and it came straight to the boatyard within days. Only 2 BOATs more than I intended to pay! I could tell many more stories like this, but it should now be clear why the word “budget” is not on this boating vocabulary list!!
Splashing: Splashing is the opposite of hauling out. Typical boat owners haul their boats out to have the bottom painted, inspect a few things and then return her to her slip, with no fan-fare. But to every seasonal boater and every serious cruiser, splashing is a baptism. You haul out to wait out hurricane season, to take a break and fly home for a few months, or to fix something serious under the waterline. All that stuff that typical boat owners haul out for, you do when you haul out for other reasons. Cruisers are either “on the hard” or “in the water” and that holds a lot of significance. If you are in the water, it signifies that your boat doesn’t leak and doesn’t have any problems below the waterline – you are beyond the big milestone for being ready for blue water. Prior to splashing, you either have leaks, you are provisioning for the next season, or you are doing major repairs or renovations and are staying on the hard because it is less expensive. Not only is the rent cheaper but you don’t have to clean her bottom once a month, and the bilge stays dry. Unfortunately, being on the hard has its own kind of wear and tear. Use it or lose it: when things don’t get used they tend to decay. Gaskets and seals dry up and crack. Valves and stopcocks freeze up. Adhesives contract and create holes for water to seep in. We do not really know how long Heure Bleue was on the hard. There was COVID, there was a year or more of putting her up for sale. Regardless, on November 29, exactly on schedule, we splashed Heure Bleue. The lift is a gigantic U-shaped frame on wheels with one end open for the boat to enter, but there has to be room for the closed end to slide over far enough for the straps to cradle 15 tons in a balanced manner. To do so, we had to remove the forestay, the gigantic steel line holding the mast from falling backwards, so that the lift could position itself around her. As is often the case, the proud owner watched with mixed feelings of fear and excitement. Will the mast stay up? Will one of those straps break? Why do those tires look like they are about to blow out? Why are they turning 180 so quickly! But all along the overarching emotion is “soon we’ll be on our way!!” Only in joking would one say: “If she floats!” As they lowered her into the St. John’s river, the foreman asked me to step aboard while she was still in the cradle. I said “Seriously? That seems like some kind of insurance no-no, whatever would you want me to climb up that trapeze and jump in the boat for?” Foreman: “Why to check for leaks before we let her go.” Hmmm, OK. I had done a thorough inventory of all the through-hulls so I knew how to do that. Cool. A little dangerous, and I’m carrying my laptop bag over my shoulder, but none of the boatyard guys seemed concerned. As I stepped on board, I could hear water rushing, like a creek waterfall somewhere nearby. Surely that can’t be Heure Bleue. Or did we leave a stopcock open? I could hear it rushing in from the bilge, opened the bilge cover and….
Propeller shaft seal (PSS) – You know how when you start researching a new car that you’ve never seen before you start seeing them all over the place? Or when your doctor tells you that you have some affliction that you can’t pronounce and then you suddenly meet 20 people with the same affliction? Well, “waiting on the PSS” is one of those phrases that never registered in my brain because I didn’t have any idea what it was, but now I do. And now I hear those conversations and respond with: “oh no, not the PSS!”. The PSS reminds me a lot of one of those evolutionary puzzles. Like why do some Galapagos tortoises have saddle shaped shells? Because they started off with regular shells and then they found new lush environments where if they could only get that shell out of the way so they could reach their neck up high to get the food they could start a whole new species. So, only those born with curvy shells above their neck could move into this new niche. Then, it became so much a part of life that males show females how worthy they are to the ladies by facing off and instead of fighting they measure whose neck can stretch the highest and that one gets the lady and the other one walks off in shame. We all have to work with what we have. So – humans wanted boats with inboard engines. Thus a long strong metal rod (the propeller shaft) has to connect the propeller outside the boat to the engine inside the boat. Also, so I’m told, we need water around the propeller shaft to keep it lubricated, so there is a cylinder that lets water come into your boat and bathe the shaft without leaking. What I am still not clear about is why the shaft absolutely must be in two parts. This creates the whole problem. It also necessitates having an engine that is perfectly aligned so that the part of the shaft coming out of the engine precisely matches the rest of the shaft that is protruding in from the back of the boat. Is it because the shaft would somehow be too long to go all the way from the propeller to the engine? Why? Or maybe it is actually by design, to generate more business for the boatyard to be able to say “Sorry, your engine is 1mm off center, and so we cannot connect the two halves of the propeller shaft without lifting and re-aligning your entire engine so please BOAT.” That’s a bit cynical. All engineering logic aside, the place where the two halves of the propeller shaft come together must be connected with a connector thingy and then, to prevent the water that is purposefully leaking into your boat to lubricate the shaft from gushing out and sinking your boat, there is a seal, the name of which is, finally, quite logical. So, knowing all of this, when you say “propeller shaft seal”, the phrase makes perfect sense. But if you are tortured with a mind like mine, you cannot get beyond the fact that no one has solved this simple engineering problem that is a major cause of sinking, other than, well, the outboard engine. How hard could that be? Anyhow – back to Heure Bleue – I’m watching water gush into my boat, I look up at the lift foreman, who is smiling at me and says “Don’t worry, I gotcha!” And all I can think is, “Thank God this happened here.” As it turns out, it happens here often. The PSS is made of rubber. Heure Bleue passed the survey on the water, but then sat on the hard in Florida heat from June to November. Her PSS was probably on its last legs and being dry for over 5 months put it over the edge. We didn’t sink in the Atlantic several days later. Rather, we are now back “on the hard” and I can join right in with the folks at the Marina clubhouse who are “waiting on the PSS.” Great conversation starter: “Yours fixed yet?”
“Every project is 7 projects” This is a phrase that I heard so many times I wrote it down to save for this very moment. You plan out your project perfectly. You make a trip to the hardware store, and you’ve blocked off the time for it. You get started by opening bin 13, which requires a set of dominoes to get to. You finally arrive and you see there is something else there that will need replacing soon. May as well fix that while you have all the dominoes out. But to fix that, you have to get the tool from bin 4. More dominos. Now there are two messes in your cabin that you need to keep separate, and you find that the tool in bin 4 is not quite what you need. Maybe your neighbor has one. So you un-bury yourself from the mess and climb down the ladder and start talking to your neighbors. Everyone has 10 suggestions whether they have the tool or not so it takes a while. And no, the PSS is not fixed yet. One neighbor has a pretty useful tool, but it is missing this one screw that would make it work. You have a box full of screws in bin 32, so you borrow the tool and climb back up the ladder to your two messes. To get the box of screws, you have to remove a bunch of blocks, some thimbles, a box of electrical connectors, a bag of ratchet straps and some varnish cans but there it is!! You can see it! Be careful to keep this clutter separate from the clutter from bins 13 and 4. In fact, since the tool in bin 4 is useless for this project, maybe you should put everything back in bin 4 before going any further. Finally, you have a place to sit down and go through that box of screws. Nothing is really perfect in that box, but if you hold the tool just right this one screw could work. Great!!! So now you start working on the second project, which doesn’t go so well, and you make it worse so you have to now patch up a mistake, which requires the adhesive in bin 23, creating a third project. You also realize that the tool in bin 4 would probably work better than your neighbor’s jerry rigged tool and wouldn’t damage things. But the thought of both bin 23 and bin 4 dominos at once is daunting, so you go back to that first project, assuming you can find the parts you just bought in the pile of rubble in the cabin. By the way, I’m making all of this up, except for the concept – I could continue with 4 additional fictitious emerging projects but I think you get the picture – “every project is 7 projects”.
“Only about one month behind.” After hearing this phrase several times, I began to get anxious. When I was living on my boats as a PhD student in the 80s, I didn’t have any lengthy problems. My engine ran, my stuff worked, I buried my gunnels and doused sails in relentless 4 foot chop, 4 knot currents and 30 knot winds all the time – hardly anything ever broke. IDK what is going on these days. Is it that we just didn’t have a lot of things to break back then? I suppose I got lucky with the PSS on my Columbia 36, or maybe I just kept it lubricated by sailing all the time, and my Ranger 26 had an outboard engine that never failed. The worst thing that ever happened was I ran out of gas and had to sail into my slip. I had a spreader break once, but I was able to reduce sail and limp her home, fashion a new one out of wood and pay someone to replace it. Those minor occurrences are 40 year memories for me, so they really were the worst things to happen. How can you get “only a month behind.” And how can you think “only” a month behind is a good thing?
Stay tuned.
AuthorDavid M GilbertPosted onCategoriesThe Voyage is the DestinationTagscruising, liveaboard, sailboat, sailing, travelLeave a commenton THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: Ep3Edit”THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: Ep3″
THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: EP4
By DNA DAVE
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Episode 4: Escape from groundhog day
Jour de la marmotte!
In November and December Green Cove Springs, FL is full of Quebecers, or Québécois, provisioning for the Bahamas. They, and a handful of Midwesterners, make up the vast majority of residents. Since I lived and worked in France from 1990-91, my French is pretty good – albeit 30 years rusty. Canadian French is a little different, a bit less romantic in my opinion. The syllables are a bit sharper, if that makes sense. Regardless, I got to practice my French. We would all see each other out on the yard, along with the employees, Tom, Tommy, Thomas, Hal, Murph, Joel, Kyle and Andrew, none of whom speak French. But, we all managed just fine with a little bit of either language. At least most of us have a PSS and know how to say whether or not it is leaking. Making friends is one of the best things about boat life and it’s the people that made Green Cove Springs bearable. There is no bar, no liquor store or restaurant within 2 miles of the boatyard. We had no car because we had no plans for coming back. We could pay Uber Postmates to deliver a 6 pack for $50 or we could walk a little over a mile to the Speedway gas station and get bottled water, very cheap beer and heavily preserved snacks. There is also a “Larry’s Giant Subs” in a small strip mall across the street from Speedway that we never dared to try and, strangely, two workout places “Workout Anytime” and “River Strong Fitness”. I’ll let you speculate on that one. There is also an ATM machine in the parking lot. That became my aerobic – run to the ATM, take out the maximum, run back. We needed 4000 American dollars for the Panama canal, which by the way also required finding a unique hiding place somewhere in Heure Bleue so that pirates wouldn’t be able to find the money after beating us unconscious. More on that later.
There were two nice things about the boatyard location. One was “The Corner Pocket” restaurant. On that first trip when I had my sister’s car, I googled restaurants and wondered why a pool hall came up. But it had great reviews so I stopped in. I didn’t see anything looking like a restaurant, but it was definitely a pool hall, so I figured I’d have a whiskey. As I approached the bar, I saw tables way in the back. Long story short – $2 whiskey pours, some fantastic home cooking, classic Southern hospitality. I felt, and later we all felt, right at home there. We ate there every time we were up for calling an Uber. Each time, we were given a complete description of the special meals and desserts as well as menu items were not available that day and why – no food was served unless fresh ingredients were available and approved by the chef. One day when family visited we all crowded around a big table and got the royal treatment. When Cheri the owner found out we didn’t have a car, she offered to give us a ride to and from the boatyard. We didn’t want to abuse that offer but we did take her up on it one night. She had to send her husband to pick us up because she was in the middle of a pool tournament, lol, what a riot! Her husband was a University of Florida Gators fan and proceeded to give me a hard time bout being an FSU Seminole fan even though the 12-0 Seminoles had just beaten the sad 5-7 Gators in the 2023 annual Thanksgiving weekend game. So, I empathized with his Gatorness, telling him that I was sorry that he was a Gator fan. In response he showed me on his phone a cartoon of an Alligator sitting in a lounge chair with a fat belly and a T-shirt that said “Selection Committee” – despite being undefeated, FSU was not chosen to be one of the teams in the 2024 college football playoff tournament. Touché, although it would have been more believable if it was that sad looking fuzzy elephant “Big Al” instead of a Gator with the selection committee T-shirt. We are all well aware of the spinelessness of selection committees to stand up to the Crimson Tide. Don’t get me started about the undefeated 2017 U. Central Florida team that outscored opponents 627-329, and were not selected. They later made their point with a 34-27 win over #7 ranked Auburn in the Peach bowl. And then guess who eeked out the 2024 championship game in overtime – Roll Tide!! How utterly boring!! Anyhow, the Corner Pocket – great place and great people!!
The second positive about being “stuck” in Green Cove Springs was the Reynolds Park Yacht Center, which we referred to as “The “Clubhouse”. The Clubhouse, ¼ to ½ mile down the road, depending upon where your boat was, had spacious laundry facilities, decent showers and toilets, a fully equipped kitchen with large refrigerator, a large open room with a big eating table, couches, big screen TV, printer, computer desk and good internet. Needless to say, every morning and evening was spent at the Clubhouse having breakfast and coffee or dinner and drinks with all the sailors provisioning in Green cove springs. Mind you, the walking distance was a challenge when you just wanted to get to a toilet but, with sufficient biological warning and a little forethought, one could avoid embarrassing accidents. Of course, an encounter with a neighbor in the entryway to the clubhouse could lead to some very creative dance moves, or should I say maneuvers, usually followed by a polite: “can I talk to you in a few minutes? I really want to hear about your PSS but, well, nature is calling.”
Walking to and from the Clubhouse was also a time for reflection. Whether there was a full moon, a pleasing sunset, or a rainstorm, one could not help but check and see what was happening. After passing the regular marina scene, there were a couple of very long docks on which cars and trucks could drive for who knows what reason. Some of the boats on those very long docks were serious looking cruising vessels. But, there were also several very tired and rusty looking huge ships including a cruise ship that had clearly not been in operation for many moons. But unquestionably the most intellectually stimulating sight was a very strange looking vessel, as square as Sponge Bob and very well maintained. With shiny blue paint, the “Polly-L” was a flat barge like thing with a 3-story building on top and a driveway sized flat deck equipped with a single sizable crane for lifting stuff out of the water. Instead of anchors and lines like a normal boat, it had 3 gigantic posts that appeared to allow it to stop and plant itself anywhere that was shallow enough. It didn’t need a dock, it is a dock, whenever it wants to be. Odd. On its side was an emblem with a painting of an old Spanish schooner and the words “Amelia Research & Recovery Company”. Trying to figure out what the Polly-L is, one is decidedly misled by captions written on the boat about protecting the environment. That leads one to wonder if it is cleaning up hazardous waste sites or something. Or maybe it is a University marine archaeology vessel, researching the ocean floor. Albeit, its pole anchors, as big as they were, couldn’t possibly go deep enough for that. Another speculation was that it might be responsible for the huge space shuttle external fuel tank out at the end of the dirt road past the furthest boatyard to the east. Maybe this vessel went out and recovered the fuel tank after one of the space shuttle missions dropped it into the ocean. It was cool, although just a giant piece of metal. I wondered why no one thought to put up a sign and charge $2 for anyone passing by to come and take a look at a piece of a space shuttle. And how is it OK for the government to drop a giant piece of metal like that – what if it hit someone on the head? Indeed, walking by the Polly-L was an adventure in speculation that would last until ones attention switched to the Clubhouse door in one direction or Heure Bleue and her endless projects in the other direction. It’s amazing how much speculation humans will endure before they take 1500 milliseconds to type a search term into Google. Today in reflection, over 3 months since leaving Green Cove Springs, I took the 1500 milliseconds to find that Amelia Research & Recovery is a treasure hunting firm. Literally. They chase after the days when, for 250 years, ships returned to Spain carrying treasure mined in Central and South America. According to the website video, over 1000 Spanish ships were lost to hurricanes or poorly annotated charts until 1783 when the British squelched the Spanish empire and it all came to a stop. According to this website, billions of dollars in treasure is buried in the ocean for anyone to find. Polly-L is expressly designed to hunt for it. Treasure hunters. Nothing to do with ecology or the environment or cleaning up anything. A treasure hunting, profit-seeking company. They claim to have recovered $500 million in treasure. How cool. Who would have guessed.
One day, while walking to the Clubhouse, I recall reflecting on how the good ol’ boys in Port St. Joe would make fun of my “lily hands”. True, I’m a scientist. Manual labor for me is a weekend gardening or landscaping or doing the occasional difficult household project. I pound away for a day, but then go back to office life. I’ve never considered myself to be strong. I did figure out how to win arm wrestling contests in bars, but that was by using my elbow to gain leverage. Same thing with boxing out a big dude in basketball. I used to get great pleasure from watching my teammate get a rebound entirely because I kept a much larger dude out of their way, with no one noticing what I had done. It’s a cool feeling to keep that little secret to yourself. It’s all leverage. Who said: “Give me leverage and I’ll move the world.” Someone said that. I just love to apply it whenever I can because I’m not very strong. In Green Cove Springs, however, I was spending everyday doing boat work. I could feel my hands getting rougher and thicker. I’m always impressed with people who have those big strong handshakes. I think it’s mostly bone structure, just genetics. Surely that is a big part of it. I wasn’t given big hands. I also didn’t get long fingers – have you ever tried to play guitar with an Eric Clapton cord book? Very humiliating. But daily boat work strengthened my hands and forearms in ways I had not experienced before. We will talk about the core workout of sailing later. Right now I’m talking about working in small spaces, where everything is salty, rusty and seized up, and no bolts or screws are in a convenient angle or distance. Your hands get thicker by the day. Its Lamarckian in some senses, except of course it’s not. We are just expressing a part of our physiology that we didn’t make use of in the past. Your hands get scraped and bruised and sore from turning, pulling and pushing while banging up against hard sharp protruding objects and, as a result, they get thick and rough. As I write this, after two weeks in Golfito with little boat work to do, I realize they have already reverted to their lily little selves. Maybe not all the way yet.
Well such was life in Green Cove Springs. Wake up, go to the Clubhouse, find out what projects were in store for folks today, check email and have coffee, then go execute the days projects. Return to the Clubhouse in the evening, and discuss what projects got done and what roadblocks were encountered. Decide who had the worst luck today, whose situation is the most dire. Then have a few drinks, if you happened to have means to get into town to buy them, and start over again. Sound like the movie “Groundhog Day.”? Sure seemed that way. So much so that we had it going in English and French every morning “Happy Groundhog day” in English and “Bonne jour de la Marmotte!” in French”.
There was Sylvie and Boualem from Kahina. They had a PSS problem. Sylvie was always a bundle of positive enthusiasm and Boualem was always joking with a straight face, one might say full of @#$! I could never tell when he was serious so I just didn’t believe anything he said, it was easier that way. Except when he was talking about playing guitar and harmonica. When he found out that I played guitar and harmonica, he asked me daily when I was going to play. Then he would motion with his hands to remind me that he has arthritis and can no longer play well. Finally one evening I brought two guitars and my harmonicas to the Clubhouse. Boualem and I played for the Clubhouse folks for a couple of hours. It turned out that Boualem was too modest. Arthritis or not, the dude could jam! I could lay down any cords and off he’d go! Soon people were making requests and I happen to have a 300+ song list in an iPad so we could accommodate. When we started playing, Steve, who owned a gorgeous Pacific Seacraft 32 named Rafiki, took off. Knowing Steve, it was unlikely that we offended him. Nope, a few songs later he returned with whiskey and tequila for us all!! It was a good night to forget the groundhog.
There were two Marks – both Marks were big guys and both from big states. Young Mark was from Wyoming while older Mark was from Montana (which is easy to remember as his boat was named “Big Sky”). Mark from Wyoming was there with his wife Emily. Both of them could be seen most evenings in the Clubhouse kitchen cooking up very tasty smelling meals. It is unusual to see such a young couple preparing for a long cruise. Mark and Emily were very lucky, not only to share their love for sailing, and so obviously for each other, but both of them had professions that allowed them to take long breaks and return to their jobs. Literally everyone else I met in the boatyard was either retired or was there because they worked on boats for a living. There was only one other young guy there, Alex, who had done very well in computers and decided to retire early and just work on his boat. Alex never talked about sailing, but he could convey a ton of knowledge about how to fix stuff. This joy of working on a boat was a bit foreign to me. I don’t mind fixing things once in a while but the point is to have them fixed and go play. But some people take more enjoyment in the fixing part. In fact, one older retired guy in the yard told me his wife would never let him sail, so he bought his boat just to come down in the winter and work on it. Always being on the hard, at least he never had to worry about his PSS!! Just don’t fall off!! Getting back to the Marks, Montana Mark was a hoot. He always had a huge smile on his face as he told us all about what a rotten day he had trying to fix things. When first mate MM told him she was from St. Petersburg, FL, he proceeded to tell a story about how he has navigated the Bahama reefs for years without problems but the one time he entered Tampa bay he hit something, bent his rudder and had to haul his boat out and leave it in Tampa for months. A horrible story that he delivered with laughs and hoots. Montana Mark was the one who coined “every project is 7 projects”. Mark would proceed to tell us all 7 of each of his projects each evening, and how each one morphed into the other. Often one of the 7 would require ordering a part, which then required waiting for it come, or driving to get it, which then fed right into the Groundhog Day theme.
So how about Heure Bleue? Fortunately, there is a fairly common series of “PSS kits” with the parts to replace the seal for most boats. We ordered the kit, which came reasonably soon, but the yard told Captain and I to remove the old one ourselves. Of course, that meant 95% Captain and 5% me doing what I’m told and not being strong enough. For example, I was told to pull the propeller shaft out while Captain banged on it from inside. If anyone had had a video camera they could have produced one of those viral Tik Tok segments of me pulling, then bracing my feet against the hull and pulling some more, pulling at an angle, jiggling and pulling, every kind of pull and I think it may have moved ½ inch one time. After all of these antics, I learned that there is a tool called a “puller” of all things. But of course we didn’t have that tool. The yard must have one. But the yard said they didn’t. Which then led to a series of clubhouse discussions of who has a puller and why our famous boat yard doesn’t have one. Someone knew of a guy in Georgia with a puller. Seriously? I’m going to have to pay some guy from Georgia to come down to this huge boat yard to pull my propeller shaft? Another guy told me he had 3 pullers, but they weren’t here they were in his home in the Midwest – how useful. Meanwhile, Captain thought that the engine itself might be “out of alignment” and started talking with the boatyard guys about it. Remember that 1mm off thing from Ep3? I began wondering how much it costs and what kind of tools one would need to lift an engine up off of its mount inside the cabin and how would such a tool fit inside the cabin and how did they get that engine in there in the first place? It’s like building a ship in a bottle. And if they do this thing, how can they possibly be sure that they re-aligned it 1mm to the left? I’m guessing multiple BOATs for that one and not getting it right the first time. Then, miraculously, and with absolutely no warning whatsoever, Murph and Joel, two of the boatyard guys, came into Heure Bleue’s cabin at 7:25am, without knocking, and started working on the PSS. Of course MM was already up and out of the boat, so only Captain and I were woken by it. They talked a bit and then after they left Captain emerged from his quarters, I sat up from my bunk, and we looked at each other and shrugged. “I guess they are going to work on it today.” In the end, no re-alignment of the engine – happy day, just think how much money I saved!!! Who cares what the PSS cost! The logic of boating is always: “It could have cost a lot more.”
And so, on December 7, one week after sinking, we were ready to splash again. One week seemed like a disaster of a delay. Our big hope was that, since we had budgeted 3 weeks to get through the Panama canal, maybe we would get through faster and make up the time (little did we know what was to come). As we splashed Heure Bleue for the second time, I had very little confidence this time. I was not going to get my hopes up. In fact, while they were strapping her up, I was easily distracted a guy who wanted to show me the inside of his boat, “Wild Oats”. I can’t remember his name, but I remember the day he arrived and his boat was being hauled out for some repairs. He had a long white beard and looked a lot like Santa. He told me that he was 82 and was getting too old to be single-handling his yacht around anymore, which was larger than Heure Bleue. I realized that this moment was the end for him, How sad and how inspirational at the same time. Here I was on the other end. I told him that and he just said to me “Do it now while you can, son.”. Later, I overheard someone in the Clubhouse ask him what kind of boat he had, to which he replied “a sailboat”, so I decided not to ask him that question. I did however take a photo of Wild Oats, because she was the second most beautiful boat in the yard. Some days later I saw him waiting out in front of the Marina office for a rental car to arrive. He said he was going to drive up to his girlfriend’s house in Maryland, where his children also lived. I was happy that he had people in his life.
Anyhow, on this day, while waiting for Heure Bleue to be splashed for the second time, I was swept away by the old man’s offer to tour the love of his life, Wild Oats. It would take a while for them to get my fat-bottomed girl into the water anyhow. Up the ladder and down into the cabin we went. The first thing I saw was a giant chart mounted on the wall of the salon, and I imagined him pondering every evening about all the places he will go. I thought, “I will hang such a chart in Heure Bleue, and I will ponder too, and I will do it until I’m one year older than he, just to honor the old codger”. He was very proud of everything on Wild Oats. I googled its meaning, which came up as “the indiscretions of youth, especially the dissoluteness before settling down”. How hard this time must be for him to have to settle down! An impressive thing about Wild Oats was that, being that the cockpit was in the center of the boat, he had a whole master bedroom behind the cockpit. And between the salon and the stern quarters was a long spacious navigation station. How many years had this man spent in this cabin? Suddenly I panicked!!! Heure Bleue is about to be splashed and I need to be on board to check for leaks!! I apologized to the old man, slid down the ladder and ran full speed down to the loading dock. Heure Bleue was already docked. Captain had done the inspection. We had two leaks, but they were slow ones. One in a through-hull that to the day of this writing we have not figured out where it goes. It disappears on its way towards the front of the boat, still a mystery as to what needs a salt water source up front that is not serviced by the head and anchor wash through-hulls. But I certainly don’t dare to close the stopcock until I know where it’s going! The second was in the rudder packing gland. Hmmmmm – remember that item from the survey in Ep2 that was not leaking but probably had never been changed since 1979 and should be re-packed for the next several decades. That is, the other big Achilles heel, sister of the PSS? Well I paid the boatyard 2.7 BOATs to re-pack it and now it was leaking. And guess what? It’s still leaking to this day, a very slow weeping sufficient to dampen a paper towel wrapped around it. So, the decision was to do a quick haul out tomorrow and fix both things in the sling and drop her back in. Fair enough, so long as I don’t get charged for fixing the rudder gland that wasn’t broke until they fixed it!! Overall, though, the good news was we could proudly announce at the Clubhouse tonight that we are on the water and the PSS is not leaking!!
Once on the water, the second half of Groundhog day activities begin. This can mean fixing things that require being on the water to cool their systems, such as engines, air conditioners, refrigerators and freezers. And with fridge and freezer working, one can also provision the perishables. But the other thing one must do is to wait for a “weather window” and decide on a course. This is particularly important in long passages, as the direction and strength of the wind and the movement of fronts and pressure can make a huge difference in how fast you get somewhere, and how much fuel you will have to use to get there. Also, on long passages you will not be able to just run into a nice protected little bay whenever you want, as you will be hundreds of miles offshore. You will have to deal with whatever nature offers you. Heading out of Green Cove Springs means you must enter the Atlantic Ocean from Jacksonville, FL. After about a day of sailing due east, you will run into the Gulf Stream, which flows northward (opposite of where we want to go) at speeds that can vary from 1-6 miles per hour. Now you might thing you want northerly winds because those will blow you south to where we want to go right? But winds from the north against strong currents moving north means very choppy weather. Winds from the south blow with the current, so the water is smoother, but now the boat has to beat into the wind. What we wanted were winds from the west, to blow us off the ocean and give us the best compromise in the Gulf Stream. The weather also changes, so one has to examine the forecast. One thing I learned about in the Clubhouse, from a Captain named Dan, was that there are dozens of “weather models”. When heading out on a long passage, you do not trust the forecast unless all 6-8 of your favorite models predict the same thing. In fact, you don’t need fancy equipment, the standard phone App “Windy” allows you to check several different models. Fancy Captain’s software can plot the best route when leaving on different days or times. One can also alter the route. There are many ways to get from Florida to the Panama Canal and I found that pretty much every person I talked to had a different opinion on why their favorite route was the only one to take, because of pirates or reefs or currents or political climates. I liked Captain Dan’s answer the most: “The best way to go is the way your Captain chooses, because he knows your boat and your crew better than anyone.” And so, our Captain chose to sail out and around all the islands and reefs and the strongest sections of the Gulf Stream currents, around the politically volatile places, the complex customs and immigration control, and down to Puerto Rico, approximately 1200 nautical miles. Unfortunately, we had an unusually difficult weather window problem in that second week of December. Decidedly after hurricane season, mind you, storms were cropping up out of nowhere, northerly fronts clashing with southerly fronts and combining to create powerful storms on the sea. Captains on both the Atlantic and the Pacific were reporting back to hold off, crazy things that had never happened before were happening every week. On December 16, the forecast was for 45 knots of wind with tornado warnings off the coast. It was raining torrentially and blowing like crazy. Remember Montana Mark? That night he popped his head into the Clubhouse door just to tell us that he had clocked 51 knots of wind on his windmeter right here in the marina. He walked all that way in the rain just to make that announcement, and then he left. We were all feeling it. More and more boats were off the hard waiting in the water, afraid to leave. Then, on December 17, Captain said “tomorrow’s the day, if we don’t leave tomorrow it will be another week before we get a chance to get out of here.” The others thought we were crazy. Captain’s call was that the direction of the wind would be favorable to get us across the Gulf Stream on a broad reach and that thigs should recede after we get a couple of days South as another cold front pushes down to Northern Florida. Heure Bleue being a fat-bottomed girl, built for blue water, and high winds, she should be at her best in the predicted 30+ knots of wind, 12 foot seas with 7 second periods. First mate MM and I didn’t really care, we were dying to go – no matter how nasty it was, it had to be better than one more day in Green Cove springs. I went to bed singing: “Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin’ waves go by.” BTW, if you never saw Casey Abrams and Jack Black do that song on American Idol – google that up right now and watch all 180 seconds of it.
On December 18th, at 10:08 am, 18 days behind schedule, the last dock line was lifted and off we went. Upon arriving to the top of the St. John’s river, we were moving 6 knots to the water but over 10 knots to the land with the current screaming us out exactly as planned. My high school friend Doreen, who lives in this very area known as Atlantic Beach, was checking our position and chased us down to catch videos of us flying at top speed and meet us at the last possible fuel dock. We filled up both tanks and all 20 of our strapped down 5 gallon Jerry cans and had lots of goodbye hugs with Doreen. Doreen had met Captain C and MM already on a swing by Green Cove springs the day before our first splash and sink episode. In fact she gave us a bottle of Champagne to celebrate when we splashed but the whole sinking thing had us so spooked we hadn’t dared to jynx it by celebrating even after we were floating. Sailors are a very superstitious bunch, I suppose because so much of our lives is totally out of our hands. We would save that bottle for later and we would know when the time is right. Anyhow, fueled up, right on weather window time and ready to go, we shot at top speed out of the St. John’s river and into the Atlantic ocean. It was eerily flat and quiet that evening as we watched the sunset behind us turn into our first heure bleue of the voyage. Since I had volunteered to do the 4-8am shift, as soon as it got dark, I went down to my bunk, tied up the lee cloth just in case the nasty forecasts were accurate, and crawled into my nice warm sleeping bag, satisfied that we had finally killed the groundhog.
THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: EP5
By DNA DAVE
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Episode 5: “Shakedown Cruise”
“Everythin’s shakin’ on shakedown cruise / the place where boats break down / as soon as you think you’ve got the groove / get up and try to walk around…. Just get up and walk around…ha… ha.”
In his book “Flirting with Mermaids” the professional Captain and writer John Kretschmer talks with a boat surveyor about the condition of a boat he is about to deliver. He takes that report with a grain of salt and, after the surveyor is gone, he says: “We all know that the real survey is in the delivery.”
At around midnight after watching an eerily calm heure bleue (end of Ep. 4), as we shot out of Jacksonville into what was sure to be some pretty decent action, I awoke to the expected rockin’ and rollin’ down in the cabin. I had gone to my berth (bed) early and was curled up in my lee cloth (a sheet of canvas that straps you in so you don’t fall out of your berth). My watch was not till 4am; this was time for the handover between Captain C and MM. There was no need for me to get up unless there was an all hands on deck situation but, I could hear a lot of anxious talk going on. Captain C was opening and closing various compartments. I woke up several times between then and my 3:30 wake up time still hearing Captain Cs voice, who should have been sound asleep by now since his watch ended at midnight. Something was definitely up, but hell if I’m going to get out of my cocoon unless someone tells me I am going to be useful and not just another body shouting random thoughts to two people with more experience than I. Besides, I needed more sleep to be at my best in case something serious actually was happening!!! Logic 101 – go back to sleep!!
When I eventually got up for my shift, everything seemed in order. MM was at the helm, Heure Bleue was in her element, on a broad reach (meaning the wind is 90-160 degrees or between 4-5 o’clock in some terminology) and surfing good sized waves. It was too dark to see how big they were, but who cares, she was struttin’ her stuff! We were seeing 8-9 knot speeds from a 13 ton full keel bathtub loaded with 2 tons of kit from which we had estimated her speed at 5 knots!! Her hull speed is 7.7 and she would drop under that on the rise and over that on the surf, so her rigging was not stressed. She felt good, she was in control!! With about 27 knots of apparent wind (add that to 7 knots of speed out in front of the wind to get a true wind speed somewhere in the low 30s), we were in the sweet zone, heading for the Gulf Stream and outrunning the next nasty stuff the weather models were predicting, exactly as Captain C predicted. In fact, as I geared up and tethered on for my shift, all the signs were good and I thought about how awesome it was that Heure Bleue was such a tough old gal; nothing to fear out here. And what a great call by Captain C to get out of Green Cove Springs!
What I didn’t know until sometime later was that the rudder shaft seal, that other Achilles heel I told you about (other than the PSS), had started leaking badly as soon as things heated up. Not sure to this day exactly what Captain C did in the middle of the night, but it likely saved us from sinking. Later in the course of the trip, he sealed it up further so that now it is down to a weep – if I leave a piece of paper towel around if for an hour, it gets a bit damp. In fact, 2 days ago I cleaned the bilge dry and its is staying dry. So – should I do anything about it? Recall that this is the thing that wasn’t leaking but the surveyor said it looked like it hadn’t been changed since 1979 so better change it. Right! Doesn’t this prove that you never fix anything that ain’t broke!!! When I was a post-doc in France, working in a 10th floor corner of the building with a lot of Polish scientists, I learned a Polish phrase that fits this situation very well: “If the shit doesn’t smell, don’t touch it!” Think about it – that’s true!! Crusty, dried up dog shit doesn’t smell at all. We messed with crusty old shit!! Why did we do that? Now I have to live with this other Achilles heel and, despite how difficult it is to access, I have to check it regularly for sanity. My thinking is that if I don’t touch it, it might eventually stop smelling (leaking)! My bilge has been dry now for over a month, fingers crossed!!
So back to Ep5; we are finally sailing. But, we are also on a long passage, and we are also delivering a boat. All of these things have different influences on the sailing experience. My life experience has been either day sailing, racing, or coastal cruises of not more than 24 straight hours. In this type of sailing, you spend all or almost all of your time on deck. When you are on deck, your attention is on sailing. You feel the boats movements, adjust the helm or the sails accordingly. If it is daylight, you see the water and understand the conditions. You can see obstacles on the water, you can see wind gusts coming at you. The larger waves are continuous but ripples overlaying them – what I learned as “cats paws” – tell you when a wind gust is coming. In light winds they also tell you where to go to get some more wind. In daylight you can also see the sails – you watch for luffing (the front edge of the sail flapping), which means the wind is getting on the backside of your sail so you either have to veer away from the wind, tighten the sail, or wait and see if it is temporary. You also have tell tales on the sails – very light strings of yarn or cloth that tell you how the wind is flowing across the sail. You want those to be straight. The more you learn, the more ways you can come up with to trim those sails perfectly. People like to ask: “So what do you do all day while sailing”. Well, when you are on deck, you can always be busy with something. If you have my brain type you are constantly bored, and rarely relaxed. When I play music, it’s to play well, when I play basketball, it’s to win, when I exercise, its to get it done in time to get back to the office, and if I do the boring elliptical, I read something. I hate down time. Sailing is the only activity where I can appear to be doing nothing for hours; but, I never feel like I’m doing nothing. In fact, I feel so busy, I’m relaxed. It’s addictive. Keeping track of all these moving parts is therapeutic. You have 360 degrees of responsibility and constant knowledge gathering, interrupted by events. In the daytime, you also have a good chance that all the crew are awake and on deck to discuss all of these moving parts and events. As the hours would pass, we’d have a flying fish on board, a school of dolphins visiting, a freighter or cruise ship passing too closely, a sail to adjust. Mini-crises are routine. Something gets tangled, a little chaos, then tidy up all the loose lines. Somehow things happen in clusters. One thing goes wrong and somehow triggers another mishap, and so one. After disaster is narrowly averted, we would laugh and say: “So what do you do all day while sailing?”
Night sailing is a different experience entirely. First, depending upon how much if any moonlight you have, your vision is limited both on the water and on the boat. You look for lights, which could be buoys but the further you get offshore, the more likely they are boats (or sometimes stars on the horizon that looked like a boat). You can’t see lobster traps, so if you are in an area with such obstacles, it’s a real challenge and you just have to research where you are going and stay clear of the areas known by sailors to have such traps. One of the beauties of offshore sailing is that, so long as you know where the big rocks/islands are and set your course accordingly, there are very few obstacles. You can also check the radar for persistent blips above the noise of occasional blips, and see whether those blips are moving toward you. As for when the big waves and wind gusts are coming, you hope to feel them coming but you know that you have less time to respond. You also hope to God you don’t have to leave the cockpit in the dark. You are always tethered to the boat at night, but going forward on the deck means having to move your tether, creating a millisecond of vulnerability to rogue waves washing overboard or violently shaking the boat at the wrong time. For this reason, it’s important to prepare conservatively before sundown. One way to do so is to reduce sail area in case the wind picks up so that you are ready for it. Of course the down side is that you sail more slowly, so on a delivery, it’s a compromise, in a race you don’t do it. If you have multiple people on deck at night, you can afford to take more chances. In our case, we were alone one deck, doing 4 hour night shifts to maximize sleep: 8-12 (Captain), 12-4 (MM) and 4-8 (my shift). To reduce the size of the main sail, we do what is called “reefing”. There are 2-3 points on a mainsail where one can partially lower the head (the top) of the sail and then lock the front bottom (called the “tack”) at the gooseneck (where the boom meets the mast). This is not easy to do alone nor easy to do at night, thus very difficult to do alone at night. So we would do it before sundown. Reducing the headsail that is at the bow (front) and known as the “jib”, is much easier if you have a “roller furling” jib. On most modern boats the jib rolls (furls) around the forestay, which is the giant steel line holding the mast up from the bow. Furling the jib in and out can be done easily from the cockpit so one can adjust it to virtually any size by pulling on one line or the other (like dental floss). The only problem at night is that it’s not easy to see how much you have furled it. So, in our 25-35 knot conditions, we would have two reefs in the main and adjust the jib so that its head is lower than the head of the main (good physics to have the main sail slightly higher than the jib), and hope to at least maintain 6 knots of speed until sunrise. If conditions get bad, one can furl in the jib all the way, and if they get worse, wake up the crew!!!
All this life on deck sharply contrasts with life down below, the latter with which I had much less lifelong experience. Life on deck is easy. It’s predictable; you see what is happening, you feel in control and you are busy. It’s down below that’s tough, day or night. It’s one thing to have to go down briefly, grab something and run back up on deck, which was the extent of my prior experience. That’s work enough by the way. I recall the day before my wedding (July 9, 1988), we were sailing up to Angel Island in the San Francisco bay where our wedding was planned. My X-wife had brought her bridesmaid friend and they were in their bikinis looking for cocktails as we headed out of the marina. I warned them that it would be getting very cold and windy soon, but they didn’t listen. It was OK that they didn’t want to participate in sailing, I’m typically a solo sailor. However, when they both started getting freezing cold (recall Mark Twain’s famous quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”), I reminded them where the foul weather gear was: down below, in a locker, across from the head. First my X goes down, comes back in 10 seconds to get sick. That should have been a warning for me but love is blind. Next goes the bridesmaid – same result. Now, I had two sick passengers on deck and had to leave the helm unattended in San Francisco summer afternoon 30+ knot winds and spray, to go down and get their foul weather gear! But I digress.
As I said, it’s one thing to make a quick run for something. It’s another to try to make yourself at home in 20+ knot winds. Captain C made a great analogy to relay what it is like to sail a long passage – imagine a gym, where you go in and everything is constantly moving randomly about at 40 degree angles, sometimes lunging with no warning, and that is now your platform for doing your workout, lifting heavy things at weird angles. Fortunately there are places to hold on with one hand. Imagine there is a napping place with lee cloths tied to the ceiling to hold you in, just in case you get tired of the funhouse. As you try to doze off you can feel your core engaging with each random movement and you struggle to pin yourself in a position that minimizes this motion but you cannot ever eliminate it. Where the analogy breaks down is that below decks is not a gym, it’s where you live; you cannot leave, because there is nowhere else to go except, up on deck, and maybe you are tired of waves crashing on you and constantly paying attention. Below decks, there is no moment when you cannot be holding on or you risk being tossed, and tossed we were. Both MM and I took a few flights during this trip, fortunately only resulting in bruises, scrapes and aches. Captain never lost his footing. Not once (that we saw), which tells you that there is a level of experience that permits improved mobility. With time, I learned to pick up on patterns in the sounds and movements of the boat. Although the ocean waves randomly combine or cancel each other into various shapes and sizes and directions, approximately every 100th wave is twice the median and these usually come in threes. Then there is the occasional vacuum-wave (I made this name up); this one starts with a bang as if a great white shark just smashed full speed into your boat; for me it resembled the bang before a huge earthquake like the 1989 San Francisco quake that I experienced. The bang is followed by a brief hollow free falling that gives you about one second to grab something a lot more tightly than usual in preparation for a big time lunge that can toss anything in any direction.
So, blind as you are to the outdoor elements while down below, you do come to some understanding. Once you learn how to swing like a monkey through the cabin, and you know where all the best places are to grab or fall if you have to, you are ready for the next challenges. Changing clothes, brushing teeth or just filling your water bottle is a major project. To fill my drinking bottle, I learned to hold the large water bottle in a way that at maximum heel, it would just fill the bottle, and as the boat would round up, I’d just be patient. If you try to pour on the round up, you are going to spill on the heel. I noticed that Captain C put his name on a one gallon bottle and drank directly from that, so I eventually followed suit so the filling part is down to once a day. And how about using the toilet (the head) …. an unthinkable combination of stripping off gear with one hand while braced up against whatever you can, then making sure you get everything you need into that small hole if you can manage to stay on it, then re-dress. Then it’s time for the clean-up, hopefully minor, sometimes major. Indeed, in strong weather, one should budget 20 minutes for any visit to the head and be thankful for anything less.
One last challenge worth discussing in detail … cooking. It takes serious skill acquisition to cook under these conditions. The stove can swing on one axis to compensate for the leaning of a sailboat, which is natural. I’ve never seen a stove that could swing on all planes like a gyroscope. That would be a useful invention to keep things from sliding around, but it still cannot compensate for vertical lunges. Maybe Elon Musk will invent something for that. Regardless, most things remain on the stove, most of the time. During the first day or so of the cruise, Captain sewed us a wicked cool (appropriate adjective for a New Englandah) strap with clips so we could strap ourselves to the stove. With the stove on the port side, and the wind from the port side you could strap in and lean back and feel like you were standing up straight and could use both hands, at least briefly. But when opening and closing bins, cans, jugs, or using knives, forks and spoons, nothing can be casually set down on the counter top or it will end up somewhere you never predicted. There are some clever tricks – for example – the sink is a safe haven, a point of low thermodynamic stability – setting something down in the sink buys you a little time. That sticky tacky cabinet liner stuff can also help prevent things from sliding horizontally, but not vertically. To leave you with one anecdote, DNA DAVE decided he would make everyone spaghetti. Sounds easy. Boil water, fry up some ground beef, open some tomato sauce cans. But its nice to make plenty to have leftovers when making spaghetti. So the moment came when the largest pot in the boat was full of boiling water and then – bang!! – remember what that means? Now comes the freefall and then…. Knowing that a lunge was coming, I could do nothing but lean back and watch that pot of boiling water fly across the cabin and hit the navigation station. Captain and MM plunged into the cabin within seconds, relieved to see that I had not sustained 3rd degree burns 300 miles offshore and, remarkably, there was no serious damage whatsoever. But – it could have been a lot worse. No more huge pots of boiling water for me!!!! This is a problem still to be resolved. In race training we had clamps to hold the pots and pans on the stove to prevent such occurrences. Still, cooking underway is a skillset I have not mastered. Captain doesn’t bother. He eats Mountain House freeze dried food, which is done by boiling water in a closed kettle, pouring it into a bag, and eating out of the bag. Interesting thing about that Mountain House food. When much later I was organizing the leftover foods by expiration date, I noticed that Mountain House expired in June of 2035. Hmmm 12 years from purchase date. My first thought upon reading this was: “Why do they need to put a month on the expiration? Wouldn’t just 2035 do? What happens in 12 years and one month?” Well I still have a ton of these packets of many varieties and I’m not the least bit worried how quickly I use them up! And if I ever do a long passage again….. this will be my food of choice and I will have plenty of varieties to choose from!
Over time, just the thought of having to get up and move became tiring to me. Captain C never showed any signs of needing to adjust. MM and I had different types of adjustments. MM got seasick on the first morning, went without eating for a day and then recovered on the third day. I never got sick, but I was not brushing my teeth because it was so much work, I was not drinking coffee or even much water, for fear of having to go to the head. I grew tired of holding on for dear life to do anything. I started hearing voices. Not from inside my head fortunately, but the sounds in the cabin, the squeaking autohelm (which was on its last legs) transformed into screaming dying babies lucidly crying “help me, help me.” Sometimes I would clearly hear MM or Captain C’s voice saying something urgent and I’d wait for more clarity and nothing would follow. To enhance the atmosphere, there was a giant melon and pineapple that hung in a net on the high side of the boat (my bunk was on the low side), and would swing out right at me, the pineapple smashing into the wall of the cabin as it swung back, leaking pineapple juice down the wall. I finally moved the pineapple and cleaned up the wall, but the melon stayed for me to watch and wonder as I laid awake in my bunk. Eating that melon was a great source of stress relief for me. On the third night, I got very depressed. Laying in my bunk I could hardly sleep. I was claustrophobic and anxious, maybe something like what a panic attack might feel like, although I don’t know that diagnosis fortunately. I thought “what have I done”? I bought this boat because it is rated one of the safest and most comfortable boats made (comfort ratio 42, capsize formula 1.7), but here she was roaring, slamming, rocking and rolling in all directions. I couldn’t help thinking that I had made a colossal mistake. What was I doing 300 miles from mainland USA, 150 miles from any type of land, crossing the Gulf Stream with 12 foot seas at 5 second intervals. As we were crossing the Gulf Stream, the wind changed direction and we were on a close reach, with the wind at 60 degrees off the port (about 2 o’clock). She was heeled over as she should be but the starboard side gunnels were dipping underwater and looking out the ports was like watching an aquarium. We discovered that the ports were not water tight and water was coming in from there and from other places. We’re not talking about water gushing in that you can see. We are talking about water that shows up in places and you don’t know how it got there. Wires feeding all of the electronics were wet, canned goods were wet and the labels falling off (MM wisely labeled the tops of every can with permanent marker), books were wet; but, where did the all this water come from? Here we are with still over a week to go and my boat is a sieve and there is nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile I’m going broke to get here. Over the last few months, each time I had thought I had weathered a disaster, all I had to do was wait another week and it would get worse. By the time I left Green Cove Springs, I had a $24,000 credit card bill after thinking I had generously budgeted $10,000 to provision the trip. What I was doing was just, literally……insane.
That night was the first of two extreme low points for me in this voyage. I eventually managed to fall asleep for a bit and when my 3:30am alarm went off, I had somehow come to Jesus on it all. I sat up and said to myself that I have to stop focusing on how hard everything is. I just have to focus on the task, not how long it takes. Put my shoes on slowly, stand up slowly, expect 20 minutes to use the toilet, so what! Find your gear, grab a snack, get up on deck. Once on deck, I always felt better. On deck is where I fell in love with sailing, and the ocean is always so beautiful at night. The white caps flicker in all directions, Heure Bleue cutting through the waves, bioluminescent microorganisms emanating from her hull. Watching for ships, watching our heading, watching the sunrise, all good. After sunrise that day, I was handed a cup of coffee, my first of the trip. To me the sensation of coffee at that time was like a rushing uplifting high. I shared my experience that morning with Captain and crew. Captain C. confessed that after he is done with a long tough passage like this, he is so grateful just to be able to do anything normal, like brushing teeth or eating with two hands. MM concurred that it takes time to adapt and then time to de-adapt. What’s funny about MM is that, after it was all over for her, sitting at dinner in Golfito, Costa Rica, she could not remember a single negative thing from the entire trip. Ha! I do remember, and I will avoid passages that are more than 2 days in the future, although I’m probably talk myself into something stupid like crossing the Pacific and regret it. I’ve heard that the Cook Islands are the most beautiful in the world. But why are these beautiful places so hot and humid? I’ll keep looking. Maybe I won’t have to cross the Pacific.
And so, in the early days of the shakedown cruise Heure Bleue had shown us how she has been missing an angry sea. She came out of the gate on a broad reach exceeding hull speed and she crossed the mighty Gulf Stream heading into heavy winds with little effort. By day 4 the wind had eased a bit and she showed us that 15 – 20 knots was still plenty to keep her moving. With one reef in the main, a full staysail and the jib partly furled, the 30+ knot squalls were easy to handle. While they could still bury the gunnels under water I had no qualms until an occasional wave would land in her very high and dry cockpit; spilling a little wind in the mainsail made those events short-lived. However, the water seeping in was taking its toll on us; it wasn’t Heure Bleue’s fault that her prior owner didn’t keep her dry. We frequently wondered whether he ever set her free in the blue water that she was designed for. Perhaps she’d been a Bahama baby a little too long. Down below, we managed to get everything we could think of into Ziplock bags. Sopping up dripping water with microfiber rags became a routine chore. We lost some instrumentation as well, probably due to water behind the navigation panel. Some of the water we could trace to the source and mitigate, but some of it was just coming in mysteriously; speculating where the water was originating for each wet area became a routing pastime. I remember thinking that we had been on a port tack the entire passage; one of these days we will tack and find out how bad she leaks on the other side!!!
Finding routines helps the time pass. Each evening we tried to have dinner before dark fell, which almost never happened because it always took way longer to cook anything than expected and night falls early during winter solstice. Regardless, we did manage to make dinner a time to reflect together. After dishes, it was bed for MM and I, while Captan C took the first shift. We were fortunate that we all had a different favorite shift. MM would rise at 11:30PM for her shift, and hit the sack again when I would emerge for my shift. She seemed to prefer breaking her sleep into two parts. Captain was a night owl so he was elated to go down after midnight, and I’m an early bird so sleeping 9PM to 3:30 and getting to watch sunrise suited me just fine. Such was life as we settled into nearly a “groundhog day” life, where there is no change of scenery and time becomes a very vague concept. I was trying to carry out my day job while offshore, and Zoom meetings were working pretty well for me. I kept my laptop in a Pelican case. I’d get my headset on, then open the case very carefully, plug the AC cord into an outlet, and then holding tightly to the laptop, close the case and place it back in its secure spot. Once seated, I could lock myself into position in the navigation station seat, freeing my hands to connect to Elon Musk’s Starlink offshore internet system, kindly purchased for me by my very supportive employer. I could then join a Zoom meeting and hold tight to my laptop while acting like everything was normal. Indeed, the system worked well. What broke down was my ability to have any idea what time it was. As the days passed, I realized sometimes hours late sometimes the next day, that I had missed meetings. “Oh well, they survived without me.” Another reason not to do long passages; one just gets too busy living in the twilight zone. Perhaps it’s therapeutic in its own way.
On Day 4, the autohelm breathed its last “help me, help me” and we had to hand steer, which turned out to be quite a chore. Heure Bleue has a teak steering wheel that will really put the calloses on your hands without gloves. Captain C said that real sailors don’t wear gloves so I eventually took them off and leaned into the sore palms thing. With autohelm, one can hunker down in the dry part of the cockpit and just check on things every 30 minutes or so, but hand steering kept you in the elements. One morning, the breezes would change instantly from warm to cold as preludes to little squalls that would require forceful handling of the helm (fancy word for steering wheel) while dumping cold rain on me. At first I rejoiced at the rain for washing all the salt off of me and then I’d be shivering for some time, singing at the top of my lungs all the lyrics I could remember to help stay warm, and then suddenly blasts of warm air and sunshine would return and soon I’d be covered in salt spray again. It was hard to believe we were off the coast of Florida and the Bahamas, except that the water was much warmer than the air, giving us hope that soon, the Carribean heat would come. “Careful what you wish for”, Captain C would say. Fortunately, the real heat didn’t come for a while.
Eventually, Captain C, who had been studying the Windvane manual since Day2 when he anticipated the autohelm passing, took to setting it up!! That led to a whole new set of fun distractions. Ours is a Monitor windvane. Many say it’s the top of the line brand. The short story, it works amazingly well. The long story, well, read the manual. The wind vane truly deserves the label “contraption”, as that is what it is. It looks like something from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or, maybe that thing you had to assemble to play the 1970 Mouse Trap game by Ideal, if you are old enough to have played that game. The windvane has a heavy stainless steel paddle about the size of a canoe paddle that drops into the water and swings one way or the other when the boat veers off course. The only thing I could figure out for sure from watching it is that the force of water against that paddle is the only thing powerful enough to hold the steering wheel of a 15 ton vessel, assisted of course by a series of blocks and pulleys that distribute the force and connect to the steering wheel. OK, but how does it know what course to hold, Willie Wonka? First, the most important thing to know about a windvane is that it holds your boat on a course to the wind, not a course to a compass. If you fall asleep and the wind shifts while you are sleeping, you will wake up to find your boat sailing brilliantly on a new course. And that’s no huge problem if you are out to sea; you got a nice rest and never had to adjust your sails, she sailed in top form following a wind angle. An interesting comparator is the Portugese man of war jellyfish, that the Ozzies (Australians) call blue bottles or “blueys”. Blueys are born on either a starboard tack or a port tack. The floating part of a bluey is structured just like a mainsail, so half the newborn siblings set off to the left and half set off to the right and thus goes their gene pool. In principle, a sailboat with her sails set and her rudder locked down would sail herself just like a bluey, but the waves may knock her around slow her down and make her meander; besides, people like to pretend they can control mother nature so they build contraptions. Anyhow, the other important part of our contraption is an “airvane”, which is another giant paddle that weighs almost nothing and sticks up in the air. It is sensing the direction of the wind. This is one of the two things you adjust on the windvane. You rotate the airvane until it sticks straight up in the air when you are going in the direction that you want. Thereafter, if you veer off course, the wind blows the airvane sideways and that lifts this blob of lead. Somehow that blob of lead transmits a signal to the paddle in the water through a bunch of gears and connecting rods, using 1970s technology that still is the state of the art, to turn the paddle such that it gets pushed with sufficient force as to, through a bunch of blocks and pulleys, turn the steering wheel and the 15 ton sailing vessel the correct way to stay on course. Once on course, the light flappy airvane and the heavy paddle straighten up and the and the tension on the steering wheel disappears. Now – one last trick!! You have to lock the whole system onto the steering wheel at just the right time in this process to “set” the windvane. Soooo – to my point – this became one of our main sources of distraction once it was assembled. If you were at the helm and the windvane slipped – woops – now you had to release this stainless steel key that inserted a pin into a series of holes in a flywheel at the center of the steering wheel. Then you had to reset it. What a show it was!!! The helmsperson now had to: 1) keep the giant bathtub moving in the right direction (most important); 2) turn around to see when the airvane was pointing straight up; 3) feel the steering wheel ease as she locks in on course; 4) insert the key to lock the system and let go; 5) wait and watch. Sometimes within seconds you know it’s wrong – start again. Other times you might have a minute. Other times a few minutes… Then there is a moment when you realize …. You got it!!!! She might last 30 minutes, she might last 7 hours. Take a break, sit and get some relief while you can, get a drink of water, you might just be able to get lazy until….whoops –the sails are flapping, run back, release the pin, get her under control– rinse and repeat!!! I’m sure this sounds tiring to you, but you do finally get it and, as an alternative to hand steering, it was awesome!! Almost silent, and no energy usage at all, all the energy derived from the momentum of the boat and, well, the human energy put into setting it.
Another highlight of being on the water was…. Fishing!!! Fishing is just about the most boring sport in history, perhaps second to golf and somewhere ahead of baseball. If you are like me, fishing is basically an exercise in untangling lines until you realize its better just to cut the whole mess and start over. One of my favorite phrases I learned living in “the south” was: “fishin’ ain’t catchin”. Fishing is non-stop boredom and wishful thinking. I guess for those who love it it’s Zen, plenty of time to think. However, when you are on an extended offshore cruise, there comes a time when it is less boring than watching the 3 millionth wave pass by. Who cares how long it takes to rig up it’s something to do!!! Before we left, Captain C told us that we would not be using fishing poles because we might never know which country’s waters we were sailing in with what fishing regulations. Short of buying a fishing license in every country, we would be using a hand line, that way no patrol boat could spot it from 10 miles away. The only problem for me was that the only thing I ever caught on a hand line was crabs. In Cape Cod we used to tie the chicken bones from dinner on the end of a string and within minutes, a crab would go after it. And crabs are so stupid that they won’t let go of their special chicken bone just become some human is dangling it 20 feet above the surface; they always come up with the chicken bone. Now that was catching!!! Worked every time. Only I don’t like to eat crab so I’d throw them all back. Here, we are supposed to catch a fish. For me, catching any fish worth reeling in has got to be a good fight!! Lifting the rod, reeling on the way down, etc. How the hec to you bring in a fish on a line – you’ll cut the hec out of your hands. How do you even hook the fish? Well Captain C had an answer for this as well. The fishing line comes from the lure back through a block up to a second block (absorbing the strength of the fishes pull). From there, it receives tension via a bungee cord and subsequently gets tied to something with a slip knot that is easy to quickly remove, then to the hand reel. Lastly, to let you know you got a fish, a clothespin is clipped to where the bungee cord grabs the fishing line, so if a fish hits, it meets the bungee cord and pops the clothespin off with a snap and if your lucky a smack in the face to alert you that you got a fish. If only it worked that way. At 9PM we discovered a dead fish on the end of the line. Without question the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen. We had a dozen texts to friends and colleagues all guessing what the hec it was. A starving barracuda that lost all of its guts being dragged by the boat..nahh. A ribbon fish was winning for a while, and we discussed its habits and why it had to be a ribbon fish in that particular location (somewhere between Turks and Caicos and Dominican Republic). That was then apparently vetoed by some new hypothesis. I forget what species we finally ended up calling it but it was the only thing we caught the whole passage and I’d rather not catch another.
Day 8 was Christmas day, which we celebrated 150 miles off the shore of the Dominican Republic with a cruise ship called the Norwegian Escape, that passed us about ¼ mile to our port – when you are hundreds of miles offshore and you come that close to a gigantic ship, it’s a remarkable moment indeed!! We photoed them and they photoed us. They were heading to the British Virgin Islands for Christmas holidays, information that we can capture with a click of the chart plotter. Of course the only important thing is what direction they are heading, but the rest makes for good conversation. Captain C. originally estimated our arrival in Puerto Rico on Christmas Day, but the math is always fuzzy when sailing. This is true even in a small boat on a day sail. We assumed an average of 5 knots (kt) of speed. 5 kt yields 120 nautical miles (NM) per day, which over 7 days would be 840 NM. Note that a NM is 1.15 statute miles (the unit we use in America), so they are similar enough but, 15% can make a difference if you mix up which unit you are using over hundreds of miles. The knot (kt) is a unit of speed meaning NM per hour. The word nautical does not have a k in it but we spell knots with a k because “back in the day” sailors measured their speed using a very long rope with knots tied at regular intervals. The rope had a log tied to the end so they let it out for a certain length of time and counted how many knots were between the boat and the log. Such goes the etymology. Puerto Rico was at least 900 NM by the route we originally discussed, so 7 days was already optimistic, but somehow our passage was over 1200 NM, which we did in 9.3 days or 223 hours, coming to an average of 5.38 kt. The part that makes the least sense is that I never recall our speed over ground being less than 6 kt on our entire passage. The formula is simple, speed over ground and total NM, so no need to compensate for the strong northerly currents of the Gulf Stream, nor any changes in direction: total NM, total time. As a scientist, whenever things do not compute, a feeling of great anxiety sets in and I am compelled to get to the bottom of it. But when sailing, I throw my hands up and assume I missed all those times that we dropped under 5 knots for sustained periods of time. Or, maybe the instruments were wacko from the water dripping in!! Given all of this uncertainty that inevitably occurs in trying to estimate a passage time, it was curious to learn that the Marina policy required a 7 days advance notice reservation with credit card, no cancellations honored, and no promise of a slip outside of your reservation. So much as to say that professional maritime hotels have no idea how boating works, since no boat can predict 7 days ahead when they will be anywhere. A more logical hypothesis would be that it was a scam to make a substantial amount of cash off of boaters who are just happy to have arrived safely. Fortunately, we were only a day late and the Marina was kind enough to not charge us. Apparently, reservation policies are there solely to frustrate literal people like myself, as we found that no one paid any attention to them. In my 1980s days of cruising, I just pulled into the Marina and fell asleep and in my 21st century days of charter cruising, I have only anchored. Who knows, maybe those Marinas in the 80s had reservation policies, but you wouldn’t know them because we didn’t have internet or cell phones to find out!
On December 27, we crossed the Puerto Rico trench – 5.3 miles deep at its deepest – to enter Mona passage. This happened on my watch, and I remember seeing the chart plotter reading 21000 feet (4 statute miles) at one point. No matter 20 feet or 20,000 I thought – if you sink you sink. Mona passage, being between the large islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic is famous for its strong winds and currents as mass quantities of water and wind from the Atlantic squeeze through the passage to the Caribbean. A lot of hype has been made about 40-50 foot waves in this “dreaded” pass, but on my watch, it was eerily calm. So calm that there were lake sized areas of completely flat water. Anticipating seeing land for the first time in 9 days, I decided to determine how far I could see on a clear morning so I watched for Desecheo Island, that should be the closest bit of land. Indeed, I could spot an irregularly shaped object at 30 miles that with time I could verify did not move and eventually could be clearly identified. Not bad, considering I was sailing with my old pair of glasses. Land Ho!!! As we passed Desecheo a small pod of Dolphins greeted us as if to say “bienvenida a Puerto Rico”. By 6PM we had reached the dock in Marina Puerto Real, stepped off onto a stationary dock and sooner than it had begun, all the rockin’ and rollin’ that had been our lives for 9 days came to a screeching halt. We showered, we shaved, we put clean clothes on and we ate food cooked in a kitchen by someone else.
AuthorDavid M GilbertPosted onCategoriesThe Voyage is the DestinationTagsadventure, cruising, liveaboard, sailing, travel2 Commentson THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: EP5Edit”THE VOYAGE IS THE DESTINATION: EP5″
The Gilbert Laboratory 