Trip to the islands

We had an awsome sailing day to start our trip to the Bahamas. We were running at 7.5 kts down hawk’s channel when we caught a crab trap! It slowed up down to 5 kts. You can just see the “beast” being towed behind us. I cut the trap loose but still had the rope trailing under the boat. So, hours later, I had to go in and cut it loose from the prop. As it turned out, the rope had worked loose and I went swimming for nothing. We anchored in Angle fish creek to a great sunset… a real good start to our crossing.

Diving to cut loose the rope.

We crossed with two other boats and had a great crossing, The wind was a bit light but it was at a good angle for motor sailing. And we crossed the stream at record time and speed.



Waves of grace and Our desire crossing with us to the Bahamas

I’d forgot just how clear the water is in the Bahamas. We could be in 20 feet of water and clearly see the bottom. The water is a startling shade of light, clear blue with dark patches here and there that are the sea grass beds on the bottom. It’s delicious! Stay tuned for more!

 

It's 25 feet deep right here!... What a day!

Deck 2

OK, now that all of the wood repairs on the deck are done it’s time to replace all of the rubber between the deck boards. This job was last done about 10 years ago at my house when I did the rebuild on the goose. Now, I’m having the rubber seams are starting to pull away from the teak boards and letting in little leaks here and there. The only real fix is to replace all of the seams with new rubber.  It’s a long and involved process that starts with defining the area and cutting out the old rubber.

Then it’s time to clean up the seams with a home made “hook” knife made from an old file. This is a tedious and demanding job that has to get all of the old rubber out but not the wood that it is stuck to.

 

Cutting out the majority or the rubber

 

now, take your home make hook knife and clean up the edges of the boards

 

Then you go back and pound in all of the cotton (that is at the bottom of the gap between each board).

final product, ready to tape

Finally, you take a roll of blue tape and tape off each seam side in preparation for putting in the new rubber.

Now, you can get out your tubes of rubber calk and calk away! After a few seams are full you have to go back and “squish” the rubber down into the seam and smooth it off.

 

 
When your done, you have about 5 minutes to peal up all of the blue tape (before the rubber sets) and then clean up. After 4 hours of hard work, you have another 2 x 2 foot area
done.... and it looks just like it did before you started. Only 14 more times to go and it's done!

 

Marathon

 

Marathon is an island about ½ way between the mainland of Fl and Key West. It has a great harbor that until a few years ago was like the “wild west”. There were no rules and people anchored everywhere, dumped their holding tanks and abandoned their boats when they sunk. In resent years, the city took control of the harbor and removed most of the derelict and sunk boats and installed a large mooring field with a small anchorage by it. There’s now about 250 hurricane proof mooring and a much cleaner harbor due to two active pump out boats that come around every week,,,wether you need it or not.

view from the top of our mast

The shore facilities also include a large multipurpose building for gatherings, equipment repairs and every cruisers need: WI-FI. There is also a large bathroom/shower and laundry facility. They have room for hundreds of bicycles and a large car parking area. During the winter the harbor is full but there is a core group of cruisers that have made Marathon their home and live on the “hook” (mooring) year round in the harbor.

Hundreds of bikes

Main building with workshop area and large multi-use room



One of the locals catching some sun

There’s only one main street thru town and it’s HW1 which runs from southern Miami to Key West. The strip is filled with everything that you might need from boat repairs and part places to grocery stores and tourist traps! They even have a hospital for people and one for turtles! Marathon has many meal deals at several of the local restaurants which draw the frugal boaters like roaches to a cluttered kitchen.

Morning walk

All in all, it makes for a good stop to restock or repair and to find good friends from last year or to make new ones. We plan to stay here until mid February and then head to the Bahamas.

Great sunset

Sailing

Just so you (up there in the frozen north) don’t think that it’s all work down here we went sailing on a friends catamaran the other day. We sailed out to the Gulf Stream and found this 2 masted top sail schooner slowly moving along. We sailed a circle around it before heading back into the harbor. On the way in a 2 foot iguana swam past our boat! It looked just like a snake going thru the water.

Oh, and since it’s getting a bit warm down here I decided that the beard was too hot and got rid of some of it.
 

 

What do you think about the "new" look?... ARGGGGGG!!!!

Varnishing, (NOT AGAIN!!!!!!!!)

Real quick.

Varnishing is just about as asinine as it gets on a boat. You take a great looking finish,

attack it with sand paper until every bit of that gloss is gone,

       

then you go and put it back on again. Looks great when your finished doing your “penance”.

Boy! does it ever bead up water after you put a fresh coat of varnish on.

 I feel like Sisyphus who had to roll the rock back up the hill every day only with me, it’s varnish twice a year.

The family “car”

When you live on a boat your dinghy becomes your “car”. Need a gallon of milk? Hop into the dinghy and head into the store. Going to another boat? Yup, into the dinghy and start up the engine. Setting out a spare anchor… into the dinghy, anchor and all, and take off.  We started out with an old, leaky dinghy and an old engine that sounded like a chainsaw when ever it decide to run. After a year or so we bought a new motor and a better used dinghy that also tended to leak. After that we found an off brand dinghy at the boat show, Big Dog Boats. 

The boat at the boat show

This dinghy looked good, it was the right size and the price was right… the only trouble was... it was not put together very well. This Chinese manufactured dinghy was sold in the USA by a company called Big Dog Boats and just as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for”.  After 2 partial years of use, here’s a pictorial of everything that has gone wrong with this brand of dinghy. 

outside hand holds coming off

every line that ties something to the boat rotted from the sun

"D" rings that are made of steel that was chrome plated instead of stainless steel

transom that is delaminating after 2 years (dinghy used only 6 months each year)

notice "Bubbles"? Air floor has two leaks at the seals

plastic connector on seat broke

The last straw happened when I was returning to the Snow Goose and I noticed that the entire back of the boat had come loose! The wooden transom that the engine sits on had un-glued from the rubber boat! This is a bad thing. I calked the transom back into place then put screws into the rubber flange to hold it tight. 

entire transom came loose... the glue failed

I glued and screwed the transom back into place

This boat represents typical Chinese manufacturing, looks great but made to a sub-standard quality.  So, if you ever see a Big Dog Boat for sale… beware!

Saltwater woe’s,

Every year I go up the rig and inspect the wires that hold up the mast. I not only check the wires but more importantly the end fittings. Well, this year I found a bit of trouble, 5 of the end fittings on my standing rigging were cracked.This is a "bad" thing for if the end fittings fail the wires that hold the mast up can come loose and the mast falls down when under high stress, like, Oh say, in a storm! Salt water gets onto the wires and wicks it’s way down into the end fittings. Once there the salt begins to rust the “stainless steel”. When steel rusts, it grows in size and with no where to go, it’s like water freezeing in a glass jar, (only this is a stainless steel fitting) and it cracks the fitting. 

crack at the bottom by the wire
 

One of the cracked end fittings was on a jumper strut wire (up on the top of the main mast), two were on the end fittings that hold the main mast up and two more were part of the rigging for our second mast, the mizzen mast. I started on the main mast by climbing up and unhooking the bad wire, taking it down, replacing the end and reinstalling it. Sounds easy until you have to undo cotter pins, knock out clevis pins, unscrew the tips of the spreaders (to release the wires) all while hanging from a bosons chair 50ft+ above the deck in a wind.

Next it was the Mizzen and the main standing rigging. Here’s a pictorial of what it takes to replace a 3/16^th end fitting with a “stayloc” brand wire fitting.

I use these large cable cutters which are NOT chain cutters

cable cutters "shear" cut so you get a clean cut wire

cut the wire close to the bad fitting

excellent clean cut

old on left, new Stay Lock on right

put the tappered plug over the inner wire and slide it down into the outter wires

Now, bend the very end of the outter wires to follow the bevel of the inner tappered plug

Now, put some silicon calk into the wires to keep that rotten salt water out

slid the end on and

screw it together

finally, tighten the two down really tight

Here are the five ends that I cut off showing the cracks on each one!