I’m a world traveler, and always have had to do trip planning, logistics, coordination with others, set up hotels, rental cars, quantities of equipment and many other things for entire teams of personnel traveling to other cities, states and countries.
Somehow it seems that the devil is in the details though when it comes to boats.
Safety is the very first, most important, and critical priority so most things have to be considered there first. But there are so many other things to take into account for a trip involving multiple days at sea – something we’ve not yet done – that I’m getting lost in the planning. (Not really, but it is certainly different when you’re doing all the planning and a lot of the physical labor involved too.)
We are still working on the interior of the boat, to include removing all the extraneous things we THOUGHT we needed, but haven’t used in a year (or two, in some cases). I never wanted to have to be able to store anything in a storage locker and yet, we rented one for a full year a few days ago.
I’m starting to move things over to it (a car load of larger items that have absolutely no use on the boat under way were moved yesterday). Today, I’ll be removing everything from the V-berth and beginning a paint job inside. I want to clean and paint the forward cabin for visitors who may come to stay with us along the trip in the Bahamas. It will also afford me the opportunity to put my hands on each and every item in the forward cabin and call out “Yep, nope, throw it out”. lol – to myself anyway.
I do need to go through the through-hulls again, look each one over, and ensure they are good to go, no danger of anything breaking, sticking or being no use when you need it most. I’ll start in the front. The paint is to make things “cleaner” and easy to wipe down inside. Some areas have never had a coat of paint, and some have only a simple primer coat. Some have nothing (down inside the bow for instance). Not sure how well I can paint in there, but we shall see.
I have one more fan to install in the forward cabin if I can. It only takes a few moments, but, it’s a pain with all the stuff in there right now, so it’s not been done.
Once the area is painted and dried, I can move the cushions back, and we can store a few things in there like our extra beer and soda we’re going to provision, paper products (paper towels, toilet paper) and a few small items (a tool bag).
JoAnne hopes to pare down our clothing to necessities and a few nice things, a couple of items for cold weather (*we hope to be leaving before it gets horribly cold in January!) and she’s going to be collecting and going through our clothing, removing unserviceable items and we’re replace as required. There are two lockers in the middle cabin that bug me. I have some electronic parts in them which I probably don’t need on the boat for the trip but do not wish to throw out or give away. I’ll be collecting things together and storing them ashore. That SHOULD give me a couple of places to store more food for this trip. (Canned food for veggies and things that spoil easily).
I have already looked at our trip and planned a course or two for Abacos. We have a couple of contingency plans, so that if something goes wrong, we can turn and head back to the States and get into a bay someplace to do repairs or whatever. But, basically, this should be a pretty straight shot right to the Bahamas from Cape Fear. About 415 nm from here, straight line distance of course, without tacking much. If the weather window is right, we ought to be on a pretty good tack anyway all the way down. I’m still trying to work out the weather patterns for October though.
We are starting to make sure all our required paperwork is in order, I have to renew my insurance about October time frame, I need to make sure we have no outstanding bills, our slip is taken care of for us, and our car is ok to be left alone for a few months.
This is, if all works out, a six month trip to the Bahamas and perhaps the Florida Keys and then back here. This will be our first major multiday trip. Neither of us have done it before, but we think we’re mostly ready. Time will tell.
I think I posted this before, but because it’s one of Kurt’s most watched videos, I’m going to post it again… with comments.
This video was shot by Kurt A. Seastead of s/v Lo-Kee. He is currently doing a refit of his boat.
Adventure was purchased in January of 2015 by Rick and JoAnne Donaldson (that’s us) for a long term cruise and travel. The boat had a few things wrong with it, but over all, she floated. The equipment was old (and mostly still is), but it all worked.
Some of the comments on the Youtube video included comments about how “sloppy” I am. 🙂 Another comment was about how dangerous in mast furling is (or perhaps could be?) and that the person writing the comment would NEVER use it.
I’ll make a few of my own comments.
I’m currently working part time in a marina. I’m handling boats coming through from the Caribbean and Bahamas headed north. I count the number of in-mast furling rigs I see daily. I see no less than 5-6 out of 7-10 sail boats. I find it interesting that there are so many who’ve traveled oceans with these rigs so far. I have traveled IN the ocean but not crossed it yet. But so far, the only issues I’ve had with the rigging was having to replace all the halyards and make sure the proper maintenance was performed on the rig.
The boat came with the rigging installed. I’m not going to undo everything just to make a couple of people happy so they can assume they are right. The truth is, if the rig gets jammed, the sail can be lowered and treated like any other main sail.
I wonder how many people who make claims about how “bad” something is, have actually used those pieces of equipment. I venture to say “Almost ZERO”.
As to my “sloppiness”… We had not cruised before we bought the boat, except on bare boat charters and a smaller boat in lakes using our trailer to get there. Out of necessity we packed lightly, moved the boat and sailed, but generally for 2-3 days at a time. We couldn’t get enough stuff on the boat to support us. That included food and water (rather important items).
We also LIVE on this boat, full time. We don’t have a house, don’t want to waste money on “storage units” we will never visit. Have no place close by to store things with friends and honestly, don’t want to do so. There is certainly only so much room on a boat. We have spare parts for a lot of things. We have tools to do repairs (and tools take up a lot of space, but without them, we’d be lost). Tools also can keep me working when necessary to earn some money, because, I know how to do a LOT of jobs.
So one person’s sloppy, is another person’s “organized chaos”.
Also note that we had been on the boat LESS than three months when that video was shot. We’d owned the boat less than a year and moved aboard in August 2015. We were still learning how and where to store things. It was somewhat haphazard at the beginning.
Truth is, we have gotten rid of a lot of things, BUT, we still have clutter and things we can’t yet part with, and until we can find smaller, like items to replace things we use we won’t be doing that just yet. We have significantly reduced the weight of several items though and we now have a car at our “new marina home port” so we use it to store extra tools I won’t need when cruising.
There are things on this boat a lot of people wouldn’t want. I’ll give you a little idea. Composting toilet (a lot of people HATE them, but have never used one. A lot of people swear by them. I’m still in the middle on this). OLD electronics. I have very old radio, doesn’t do AIS. Broken radar, I’m not paying 2 grand for a new one. Old, but functional chart plotter (old…. is 1990s, updated firmware for 2009 and no more support). But it has brand new charts (days old now). We have no microwave. We have no freezer. We DO have a working refrigeration unit (I repaired the ancient one and it works fine). We have a gas generator (Honda 2000eu version) which people hate because it uses gasoline. (A lot of people have a gas motor for their dink…../shrug). We have a propane engine for the dinghy (hard to get propane I hear…. so far, so good, no problem with that). We have a NEW stove and oven (ok a year or so old now) but my wife loves it.
And so on. I’m absolutely CERTAIN that if you’ve ever been on and sailed a sailboat something in that list will make you cringe. And some of you will think “Cool, I use one of those!”
Here’s my point, and the point of re-posting the video once more.
Everyone has their way of doing things. We each have an idea of what we like, don’t like, and how we would do it, and how we would NOT do it. You, me, him, her, doesn’t matter. There are people who wouldn’t GO in a sailboat, because they are power boaters. We have some who pick at us calling us “Blow Boaters”. I take it as a compliment, and point out the price of fuel, and the wind is free….
We’re on this journey because my wife wanted to travel. We think it is a neat way to see things. We love meeting people.
We’re not on this journey to please ANYONE other than ourselves. Perhaps that’s selfish, but after 60 years on this planet, doing everything for everyone else, I’m a little peeved at armchair sailors and snobs who nit pick everything anyone else does “because it’s not how *I* would do it”.
A few years ago, I stopped visiting Cruisers Forums, and Sail Net (and I HELPED form sail net!) because of the armchair sailors who would denigrate others for what they considered “dumb questions”. There is a large group of people out there that are at work every day, getting up, going to work, going home, and logging into the computer – and on weekends they go out to their marina where they store their boat, they climb aboard and drink “sundowners” and wake up with hangovers. On Monday they go back to work. During the week they call some company to go polish their boat or wash it, and pay through the nose for the privilege of sitting on the dock on weekends drinking their Bud Lites – but during the week, they bitch and complain about all of us who actually live on the boat, go places, and make due with significantly less space than they have, no or low income, squeeze Lincoln until he screams and buy our cheap beer at the grocery store, and our liquor from the local markets.
They do this because they feel as if they are better than the rest of the cruisers out there.
I’ve yet to meet a long distance cruiser who has a perfectly clean, perfectly cared for boat, that isn’t somewhat cluttered, full of extra “stuff” they “need” (hoses, extra lines, pieces of “small stuff” – that’s bits of twine and line for those of you who might not know that), tools, the odd “silver tea service” or plastic wine goblets.
You know why? Because they are out there doing their thing, being happy and not complaining about how the other half lives.
Kurt and I are discussing a remake at some point. A follow up video to this one. It will address some of the questions you all have, assuming we find the time and can connect somewhere to do it. But, it will also be real, personal and it shows the truth.
The fact is, I write this blog on the same basis. I tell it like it is. Not how you want it to be. There’s no such thing as a perfect boat, day, trip, travel, or location. There’s rarely a perfect day of sailing (it happens, but it’s not often). Extended cruisers sometimes pick up jobs. They sometimes have to stop and work for a living. Sometimes they travel and are out of contact for weeks at a time. Sometimes they even catch fish. Sometimes they get hurt. Sometimes, unfortunately, they can die.
I write about everything. Good. Bad. Ugly. Fun. Doesn’t matter. I enjoy writing about our Adventure(s) and what we go through. I was beat up by a once-friend on Facebook because she disagreed about how I presented my store about a marina. We had a ROUGH time there. We had a lot of things go wrong. Most of them happened when we were not even at the boat. And yet somehow having these bad things happen and writing about them upset this lady to the point she de-friended me. I was, in her eyes “putting down her marina”. /Shrug
As I said, I’m not here to please anyone else.
Kurt wanted to do the interview above. It was impromptu, we had not really cleaned up the boat after having been traveling for a few weeks. The wife was off doing laundry. I was going Kurt the tour.
So, sometimes, sloppiness is a perceived thing (mostly to OCD people who have a penchant for correcting where someone sits their coffee cup) and equipment issues are almost ALWAYS, ALWAYS based on 3rd hand, biased reporting by people who have zero personal experience with them. I’m sure that a lack of spit and polish on the bronze pisses people off to no end. 🙂
When it all comes out in the end…. If we have a good time doing what we’re doing, why would anyone be upset? Except for the people in Florida that don’t want over night anchoring because, well, they are armchair sailors and boaters and honestly don’t know anything about how the other half lives. They just don’t want to see us in the waterways.
If we all had to please everyone around us, all the time the task would be to ensure everyone is happy. And you’re not.
That is not the way to live your life, friends.
Go out and be happy. If you’re going to sail a boat, do it. Don’t complain about how others do it, how they live, that their equipment isn’t like yours…. be happy we’re different.
Our old VHF radio works fine. It is an ICOM M502. The previous owner I guess installed it or had it installed with the remote microphone connection in the cockpit. The microphone, however, was well sun-dried, rather like a raisin.
The cable and case which appear to have once been white were that dull yellow color the sun cooks plastic to when the stuff sits in the sun too long. The cord, which was once the cool, curley-Q design was stretched out and pieces of the cover were disintegrating.
Pieces of it liter the sole of the boat and the cockpit floor every time I connect it. It was well past due for replacement.
I had counted the pins on the mic connector before I departed the boat for Colorado last month and stopped in the local ham shop and found a cable I could attach by using the old connector and mic body. Picked the surplus cable up for a couple of dollars.
Unfortunately, I’m really having issues with my close in vision for doing soldering and stuff like that, so I considered perhaps I could get a replacement mic already to go. Sure enough, I did some searching and found a black one, a white one and a few extra items I don’t need, so I ordered it. Cost 100 dollars, free shipping. Not bad I guess.
It will be here next Tuesday. I can use that now. I’ve packed the old microphone and new cable into a plastic bag and stowed it under the nav station seat for after my eye surgery so I’ll have a spare again if needed.
Our plan is starting to flesh out. We are going, at this point, down the ICW a ways. We will decide about whether we will sail out and back in to the Bahamas, or go all the way to Florida on the ICW later. We, as usual, will have several plans and back up plans in case something goes wrong.
With all that in mind, today I ordered the rest of the Explorer charts for the Bahamas. We already have the last edition for the Near Bahamas, including Marsh Harbor and Abacos. So, I ordered 2 more chart books, a full chart of the Bahamas for planning and a copy of the chart for Abacos Sea, which I promptly found a copy thereof after ordering. Oh well, spare.
We’re looking over some cruiser guides as well, but I placed an order for the Waterway Guide for the Bahamas. Might not get any others, but at least we will have that one. We will decide on other books if necessary once that one arrives. We have most of the Waterway guides already, and they have been decent for the ICW, helpful. There are things lacking occasionally which I find in other books.
The biggest issue with books is we have no real room in which to store them. I’ve got to empty out a couple of lockers under the seats, consolidate things, and make some more room for stuff we truly need to keep. At this point I have SOME room in the forward head, which doesn’t work. I’m about to rip out the toilet in there and put in a working, manual pumping head without the holding tank. I hate the way the system is here on the boat, without a way to empty the tanks overboard in the ocean without climbing into a rather precarious position on the fore-deck. That tank has to go. It takes up a lot of space anyway, a place I can store… say books. Or Food. Or chain. Or an anchor. Anything but poop.
So, new books, new charts, new microphone, and in a few days, new lenses for my eyes.
Then I can actually read the charts and books.
And the microphone display.
And see the little ants better.
(We have little tiny ants aboard. I’m hunting for them now, I think I know where they are coming from, so I will find them. And kill them. And their mommy too….)
Winds of Time 