John Titor: Time Traveler from 2036

12 March, 2015 by RickD

Some folks know me as the Rick Donaldson from the Anomalies Network, back in the days when we had forums there. I was the forum administrator and my friend, Olav Phillips was the site owner, archivist and all-around good guy who owned the equipment.

In late 1999 myself and some other members of the Anomalies Network frequented the Art Bell Post-to-Post forums and encountered an enigma called John Titor. Several of us became interested in his story. He sent information Art Bell and several of us interacted with the guy in those days, including Darby, myself, Phil F., and Pamela Moore. With the exception of myself and Olav, I believe most folks were using aliases of some sort or another, though I have spoken to Phil, Pam and I believe Darby on the telephone myself. We all exist.

John Titor, however, I’m not so sure about.

Eventually in late 2000 I think it was he “left”, not only taking with him his “pickup truck” and time machine, but leaving us questioning ourselves, science and whether or not he was real.

I’ve personally always been of the opinion he was a hoaxer, with some backing to set up the story. I have questioned some of his science, and in fact, personally ripped apart a few things that came out much later from the “Titor Foundation” (or whatever they called themselves later) and in light of Darby’s discovery of Larry Haber (a Florida Lawyer who may have perpetrated or been a party to this hoax) I had written off Titor as not factual. Some of the data I obtained later about the “Time Machine” included a lot of data about the amount of power it used, etc.

As a trained communications guy I noted some of the measurements of power use on the “manual” provided to us was somewhat sketchy. Many of the units were “Coulombs” which is what caught my eye. We measure power in Watts and electrical current in Amperes, and the “pressure” in Voltage. A coulomb is a unit of measurement that takes into account a number of electrons in a storage unit such as a capacitor, and from that is derived amperes.

For instance, 1 C = 6.25 X 10^18 power electrons. 1C = 1A * 1S, or 6.25 X 10^18 power electrons moving one Amp of current in One Second.

It is never used to explain how much power is used, because mathematically it’s not directly related to an amount of current, because you need “time”, you need “voltages”, you need current flow, a completed circuit with a load (resistance) and so forth. So, the short answer was the manual was a hoax.

Now, as to why I am writing this article today.

John Titor stated in a conversation on the Internet 15 (now plus) years ago and basically stated today (according to some interpretations of course) that today, 12 March 2015 nukes would begin falling on the USA.

Here is the exact communication, blue is the question, the bold below is his response:

You have said you will not participate in helping anyone avoid ‘death by probability’. Yet many things you have said could have caused an individual to do or not do something that will now result dying, or escaping death.

It would help if you could give an example. If you are referring to the conflict and war in your future, I’m not sure I’m specific enough to help any individuals avoid anything. Suggesting there is a war coming is a bit different than saying avoid Washington DC at 3:45 AM on March 12, 2015.

Now, if I recall (and I’m not sure I do precisely now) that was a question posed by Pamela Moore, one of our investigators at Anomalies Network, to John. His response was somewhat cryptic and hence the reason for me stating “interpretation” above. He did not specifically state that we would be nuked today, just mentioned that date and his way of saying this was “to avoid DC” would be different that saying a “war was coming”. Subtle but strange.

Over the many ensuing years I’ve seen people call folks like me “Basement Dwelling Titortards” (among other things, which I laugh at) for those things aren’t true. But what I find funniest of all is that people without an open mind, or perhaps it is imagination must deride those who investigate such things with an open mind.

Is Titor a true being? Yes, SOMEONE posed as him. Is his name really “John Titor”, no most likely not. Was he a Time Traveler, almost without a doubt, he was not a time traveler. Did I ever personally “believe in him”? No, though I did question some of my beliefs at some point because… honestly, what is NOT possible? In my mind, nothing.

America is going through tough times. Our best and brightest are long retired, and those coming behind our generation are brain washed, indoctrinated people who some how believe that “Socialism” is the way to go, that “big Business” is evil, that the Russians are our friends. Are these opinions? No, they are facts. The Russians aren’t out friends, never have been, Big Business isn’t evil for all the gyrations people go through to blame them for everything, and Socialism is the driving force trying to call out Capitalism in the first place.

America has not changed so much since I was a child that imagination is a bad thing to have, and our old Cold War Bogey Men never truly went away or went “straight”. But it has changed significantly over the past 60 years…

Lenin said:

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. –Vladimir Lenin

You tell me, honestly, be intellectually honest with yourselves now, how long has the Left/Socialists/Progressives “owned” our children and now our grandchildren. The “seed” has been planted and is growing. Robert Heinlein is turning over in his grave, as are the ghosts of Rod Serling, Huxley, and Bradbury, all of whom tried desperately to warn us all through Science Fiction.

Now, in your current state of intellectual honesty – what do you do about it? Do you believe in “Titor” or our own American structure as it SHOULD have been, not has been fundamentally restructured to be today?

John Titor was a hoax, a well-built, well-considered hoax who has a lack of scientific background (which he used to advantage to disarm “disbelievers”) but he was a hoax none-the-less. Lenin was no hoax, nor was Communism, the Soviet Union or the rise in greatness of the United States since it’s inception to the 1970s. Since the 1970s our “Greatness” has been denigrated both from within and without, even until today with our own President himself stating “America isn’t Great” and we’re not “exceptional”.

America IS a great nation. We’re not the Roman Empire (or the later, Holy Roman Empire). We’re America, formed by a dispossessed people, men and women forced to live here in some cases (Blacks, Irish, Scots, Chinese, all slaves or indentured servants) and yet we strived for Freedom from an oppressive government, a Monarchy and won the day in the end.

Today, there are those who point not to the good of America, but to the bad (such as slavery) and call it “evil” (and evil it was, but it wasn’t the main cause taken up by most Americans).

Today, on the Internet hoaxes, conspiracy theories and hatred abound. Various religions are hated more than others. Christianity, something upon which America was founded, is treated as evil, while Islam, considered by many to be the most dangerous “War Plan” ever in existence is brought up as the “Religion of Peace”. Lest anyone think this is a religious tirade against Islam, consider the source of the stories of Islam and the seven Crusades. No, the Christians didn’t start those wars. They finished them. Yes, they went after Islam to force it back to whence it came, back to the oppressive Middle East.

Back to John Titor once more. He was a “sign of hope” in 1999. People wanted to believe in something imaginative, something “to be”, predicable, and for some perhaps even something to which to look forward. But Titor was not all he promised, he wasn’t even a Time Traveler, just one more hoaxer coming through the pipes on his way to wherever waste moves when it’s done being used and becomes waste. Titor will go down in history as a hoax. Mark my words on that. But there was one plus coming from his story, however “made up” it was.

He wasn’t a star in which to believe. He did, however, do one thing for many with starved imaginations. He awakened that imagination in many and perhaps gave folks hope that somehow there was hope for a failing world.

Unfortunately, today, the world is still failing – and much, much worse, we’re failing our children with our over use of technology, cell phones, tablets, computers, taking away their imaginations, and letting them “Google” everything and BELIEVE in what they find. We leave them in Public Schools to be further indoctrinated with “Common Core” educations where they “learn a test” rather than learn to think. We stifle them by prosecuting them for pointing a finger and saying “BANG!” instead of knowing they will undoubtedly grow up like so many of us who looked up to the military and to our Great Country.

With that I leave you with this thought. Do you want the government to control every aspect of your lives, to give you what they think you need, to offer you more while giving less and taking more from you? Or do you want your children to IMAGINE, to LIVE through their imaginations?

If the your answer is the latter, then America is doomed.

If your answer is of the former, then introduce your children to READING. History, Science Fiction, FICTION… anything except “Googling”.

For the Sake of the Children….

Basic Survival and Communications Skills – Free Book Day

11 March, 2015 by RickD

Heads up friends, families, survivalists, preppers and ham radio operators, sailors and everyone.

My book will be up free on Amazon.com for the Kindle for one day only next week. Check the link on 18 March 2015 any time in that 24 hour period and you can pick it up for free.

Here’s the link:

Please do me the honor of writing a review after you read it. Thanks a million!

Here’s the Kindle Author Page as well:

Remember that’s Wednesday, 18 March 2015 for 24 hours.

Posted on http://windsoftime.us – Sailing Blog

Space… the Final Frontier

1 March, 2015 by RickD

I was saddened to hear of Leonard Nimoy’s death. I was a child in the 1960s and watched Star Trek, the original series on television. As a Science Fiction Fan, I knew the show was somewhat outlandish even back then, but it opened the imagination to so much more. As a child I followed the space program so closely that at one time I could name all the astronauts, and their “stats” as if they were baseball players. In fact, I made my own “space-ball cards” when I was young. Had them for all the astronauts back then (The original Seven and a few extra, and continued until Skylab).

Eventually, I lost track of the astronauts until I worked at the White House. I met several of them on trips to Houston and Florida, but to this day I have never once gotten to witness a launch of a rocket into space in person, only on television. But, I saw Nimoy once in passing somewhere in Los Angeles or some such place while traveling. I did meet James Doohan in Detroit Michigan when I was in HS when I managed to get into the Star Trek Convention there. Many years later, the Challenger was flown into Tinker AFB on the back of it’s taxi (a 747) and flew over my houses several times for photo opportunities. I got several good shots of it. I’ve been to the Air and Space museum many times in DC. I’ve talked to people on ham radio on the ISS, on various shuttle missions and even spoke to one of the missions live from NASA in Houston while working for the WH. I even saw the original Star Ship Enterprise at the Smithsonian as well. I’ve visited Johnson Space Center on several occasions… so I have stayed connected to Science Fiction, Science Fact and even to Space through television, and my job, my ham radio and various other ways.

Leonard Nimoy was a brilliant actor and the embodiment of Mr. Spock. The character was as real to us growing up as any character today – and yet, so much more than some of the paper actors in videos, movies and television. He lived to be 83 – something we all aspire to get to (and further) but for many they never get that far. His acting career spanned several decades, as he started at the age of 10 or so. I remember him in many shows, including Twilight Zone, and playing as Mustapha Mond in “Brave New World” (Aldous Huxley, writer). He was even in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E. appearing with William Shatter in at least one episode that I recall.

Today at the ripe age of 57 I don’t feel “old”, just achy and sometimes problems (like my teeth, currently) get the best of me. Nimoy continued acting until recently. He lived a grand life, and is well loved by many.

So, tonight I wish him a fond farewell, Fair Winds and Following Seas into the journey beyond.

Live Long, and Prosper

Last things to do….

17 February, 2015 by RickD

Somewhere along the way I got a chance to breathe and evaluate where we’re at.

Yesterday wasn’t that day though. I was finishing the kitchen counters, repainting a wall and preparing the house for going on the market. A few days ago though, I was able to, through wheezing and coughing from a horrible cold, to examine where we’ve come in six years.

Remember we had a Five Year Plan. In that plan there were certain things to accomplish and we did them all well before the five years was up. That included saving money, fixing up the house, selling things (including our sailboat, dinghy, my Jeep… I hate that I sold my Jeep so soon… but oh well, it’s just “stuff”). The plan included getting out from under debt (we did that), paid off and essentially stopped using credit cards. We moved all our accounts to a new, investment bank, and I was able to replace our hot tub (with CASH), paid off the house (ok, I still owe a few bucks, but it’s done too soon) and set up a Home Equity Line of Credit, like a revolving charge account against the house.

We used that to get some work done.

We also used it to buy our new boat.

As of a week ago, we have our Ship’s Radio License (Call sign: WDH8090), the boat is now properly registered in Delaware, the USCG paperwork was completed and we should see that soon, we have a notarized “bill of sale” until the official paperwork arrives.

So I have only one more important thing to do. Sell the house. It will be going on the market late this week or early next week. JoAnne had her 6 months check up since Chemo and she’s doing well. I’ve got a full physical scheduled for April. The boat storage is paid through the end of April at the marina.

I’ll be contacting the marina manager to arrange for a bottom paint job next week (to be accomplished when the weather is better there) and to have the name and hailing port repainted,,, then when we splash we’ll do a traditional renaming ceremony (no, I’m not superstitious, but you know, it can’t hurt right? :))

So, ladies and gentlemen, this is the home stretch for us. Or more accurately the “Selling the Home” stretch.

And before I close out, I just spoke to JoAnne. She is fine with getting the house on the market by the weekend, so I’ll shoot for next Monday to give the family members a heads up (we have a son, grand-daughterand a room-mate staying with us currently) so as not to shock them too badly, we’ll let them know tonight. I’ll contact the broker today and get him going, give him a date and see if he wants to come back by the house and look things over or not and go for it.

…Deep Breath…. JUMP IN!

Chasing Arabella

12 January, 2015 by RickD

Some of you know the Arabella. At least have seen ads for her, or perhaps have even seen her riding to anchor.

In 2010 my wife and I and the crew tried racing her. We were headed to Anegada from Leverick Bay. She was headed elsewhere, but had to take the same course as we did for a time.

I’d say we won, but that wouldn’t be true. But we did get compliments! 🙂

Best part we got a lot of shots of that ship in various places throughout the islands over the time we were there!

Final Closing Statement

12 January, 2015 by RickD

I have in my hands the final closing statement on the boat.

The Transworld Formosa 41 formerly called “Duna”, now being called Adventure (and will be officially renamed in a traditional ceremony) officially belongs to JoAnne and I as of today. We’re awaiting word that the former owner has had his money transmitted to him from the broker, but at this point it’s out of our hands and in the escrow account.

USCG Documentation is being done.

I’ll be sending the paperwork to Delaware to register as soon as the title arrives (tomorrow probably).

I have one more form to send back to the broker tonight (for Maryland tax peeps, cuz, you know everyone wants all their pennies).

Other than that…. We now own a boat.

Next stop, the doctor’s office on 29th for JoAnne to have a check up and we’ll be insisting on a CT scan. After that we’ll put the house on the market and cross our fingers. We figure March to April time frame (maybe sooner, as we have people interested, we have a broker and everyone is just waiting for us to pull the trigger).

The plan after that is to go across country, visit friends, get to the boat, do some of the maintenance we need to do, paint the bottom, splash the boat and find something a few hours travel away to get to and go. Oh, and maybe sell our truck…or something. Hell, I might give it to someone. lol

Of course, it’s a couple months’ of groceries worth I suppose.

That’s where we’re at today.

Fair Winds Friends!

2015, the Year of Adventure

10 January, 2015 by RickD

On Friday, 9 January 2015 I made my way through snow, ice and fog to downtown Colorado Springs. I had some issues doing my online banking.

I worked for several hours in the morning to get everything right, correct, all the T’s crossed, I’s dotted, signatures, dates and so forth.

But, the bank, God love ’em, screwed me again. Every time I’ve tried to get the accounts right, move money and keep things in an organized fashion, something weird happens. Friday, it was the final Wire Transfer I needed to make to complete the purchase of a sailboat.

Not just any sailboat, the very boat my wife and I have dreamed about for the last six years. In fact, she’s exactly the boat that has been envisioned by us both in waking daydreams and long sails in the Caribbean in our night dreams.

The old name of the boat isn’t really important any more. She’s lived her last year sitting on the hard in a marina in New York and therefore whatever she was before has been washed away by the tides. We knew her name a few weeks ago, right after I went up for the survey. JoAnne and I had discussed many things, but the name was not one of them.

In fact, as the blog is called we knew years ago we would call the boat “Winds of Time”.

When I returned from the survey I was talking to her about something and she said something about “going on an adventure”. JoAnne loves to say that when we get in the Jeep or Truck to go across country or explore something. In fact, she usually waits until the car is in drive and rolling down the hill from our home to say, “We’re on an ADVENTURE! YAY!” — or words to that effect. It’s always cute and makes me laugh.

So the thought occurred to be after seeing the boat in person that her real name had come out and not only was it NOT going to be “Winds”.

Of course, yesterday was proving to be an adventure in and of itself. Bad weather, ice, snow, fog, cold and the bank couldn’t help me fix the problem. Thus I left work a bit early, jumped in my truck and set off to slide my way from the Air Force Base to home to grab a check book, and then slide my way south and west to downtown to find the bank. Ended up parking three blocks away from the branch office (this is a large investment bank and of course, there is only one branch here; and I’m lucky it is, otherwise I’d be driving to Denver, or Kansas City or some such place).

After arriving there, the young man that helps me with account information met me in the lobby and proceeded to help me get the wire forms together and eventually, late last night I received word from the broker in Annapolis that everything was finished. The official close date is Tuesday. Monday though, we will close as everything is in place.

USCG documentation is being worked for me by a nice lady in West Virginia. The Delaware Registration will be worked in a few days when the sale is officially complete (and the lady in WV sends me the MD title to get to MD — yeah, even the paperwork has been an ADVENTURE).

Today I awaken, a few dollars poorer, but richer for a beautiful sailing vessel.

The bank got things together. I got things together. The broker got things together. The seller got things together (in fact today he delivers a pallet load of equipment to a storage locker for me, spare parts and so forth). In fact, everything finally came together late last night.

Today, JoAnne and I proudly introduce our new boat, a Formosa 41′, full keeled, heavy displacement ketch;

Adventure

The picture is from a few years back, with the previous owners I believe, sailing down the Hudson River. Yep, that’s the Empire State building in the background. With a bit of luck in a few months, we’ll add our own images as we sail past Lady Liberty further down river.

Picture of the interior, looking forward. That’s a wood pellet stove on the starboard side, a kerosene lantern in the port foreground. The wood is gorgeous. The insides need a good “clean”, dusting, wiping down and perhaps some oil for some of the wood. The companionway ladder needs a bit of varnish. Most all of the teak on the outside needs work.

The bilge needs a good pressure wash, a float switch needs replacement and the majority of the running rigging, in particular the halyards should be changed out. The sails need some work, but eventually we will replace them with a new set.

The standing rigging is in good shape – but I need to get a rigger to the top to do a close up inspection of the head (change lights, and a few minor things).

Obviously things like the zincs need to be replaced, some hose clamps changed out and a couple of lights and switches are broken.

All minor maintenance issues for me.

It was negative 10 degrees when we did the survey. The boat was on the hard. We really couldn’t run the engine up but my investigation with the marina staff says the boat ran fine when they put her on land and winterized the vessel. So, all that remains is filters, oil change, some fresh diesel to make her run.

The bottom should be painted and the boot stripe put back on properly. (The bottom has been soda blasted and was smooth, no blisters and the hull is very sound).

All in all the previous owner took decent care of her. He was ready to move on (and I guess away from sailing), and we’ll be ready to move aboard and travel as soon as we sell the house this spring.

Closing on a boat

8 January, 2015 by RickD

Greetings friends.

We close on our selected boat on Monday. There were some glitches with the banks, moving money around and various questions about this and that.

At this point it appears though, everything is in place, all parties are satisfied on the transfer, the paperwork for USCG documentation is in the works, we’ll be registering the vessel in Delaware and sometime this spring or early summer if all the other things work themselves out, we’ll travel to the location where the boat is living and move it south for the Summer and eventually, next winter we will be heading for the Bahamas and Caribbean.

From where the boat lives now, we will likely do a lot of ICW travel, mostly, it appears under engine power. Not precisely what I wanted to do right off with a sailboat, but, you know what? As Emerson said, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

A journey entails learning, travel, examination of the things around one’s self. A journey through life ought to be enjoyed with stopping to smell the roses (I don’t remember who said that). OK, enough cliches for now.

The point is, the boat is 41′ long, has two masts and is a beauty. She needs some work inside. I need to change some hose clamps, work on some woodwork outside, and JoAnne thinks a case of Brasso might be helpful on the portal hatches. I’m not as sure about that part (especially if it requires me to be polishing the brass, I had my share of that in the military… but I am certain I can find a swabby somewhere that will be working on if that’s what she wants!)

The running rigging needs replacement, the sails are “useful” but I wouldn’t cross an ocean with them. Sailing offshore a ways will be fine for short stints, but not a long trip. The sails will require replacement eventually. The standing rigging is ok, but I still need a rigger to climb up (I’m afraid of heights, so I won’t be doing it just yet) and check the mast heads. From what I could see with zoomed in cameras and binocs though, the head SHOULD be good to go.

The bilge is a mess, but nothing a light pressure wash won’t handle, and there’s a broken float switch that requires replacing.

The name is changing (and yes, to all of you who know better, we’ll have a ceremony. No need to tempt dangerous and jealous ocean and wind gods and all that) as well as the hailing port.

When the paper work is complete, and all is said and done, money exchanges hands and everyone is happy, I will post pictures of the vessel.

In the mean time, I could use a few book purchases /grin, you know, to help offset the costs (Honestly, I don’t make much off a book. Less than 2 bucks. So, seriously, check it out)

Rick’s Books

Speaking of books, I will be launching an author web site as well because I’m working on a SF series which I hope to have published sometime this year, depending on a lot of factors. (Wish me luck there).

What do you think?

26 December, 2014 by RickD

Alright – I know we don’t have many followers because quite frankly we’re not actually out there sailing yet. At least not cruising anyway.

But for those who do read here, or see this message, I’d like to ask your advice. Before I ask the question, let me give you some back ground.

We have been diligently looking for the “right boat for the right voyage”, a phrase used by our instructor years ago. He would tell us that we needed to find the right boat for the voyage we intended to make and obviously this is good advice. We bought our first two boats in Colorado for lake sailing – one was a dinghy and the other was our Macgregor Venture 25 with a swing keel. Both were perfect for what we wanted to do. Both have been sold since we thought we’d have been out of here by now.

When we found the boat we believe is the right one for our next voyage – through the Caribbean, we looked for a blue water capable boat that would be safe, comfortable, allow the two of us to sail the boat without extra crew and yet, allow us to take on 2-3 more crew for extended trips (and vacations for some of them, we were obviously thinking of our children and some friends to fill those slots).

So the boat had to be able to cross oceans and still go to the Caribbean, eventually to the Mediterranean and points north (England, Ireland, Scotland, France and Spain to name a few). We found the boat in New York state. Not precisely where I wanted to look (I was sticking to the Gulf Coast and Florida, my wife found THE boat in New York).

Her almost immediate suggestion was, “Since the boat is in New York, it’s common sense to consider sailing to Ireland…”

My first thought was “Yeah, that’s true.” My second thought was “Oh, we’re not ready for that”. I am not confident enough to attempt such a thing right off. Not without plenty of experience on the boat. While I am confident we CAN do it safely, it’s still going to be quite a learning curve to jump off the face of the world and into the Deep Blue North Atlantic, dodging icebergs, whales and the Roaring Forties.

A friend (and an author) Matt Bracken suggested the ICW to me. I’ve been reading up on it, but it wasn’t precisely my idea of setting sail to the Caribbean either.

However, in looking at this I am beginning to think that this would be “smooth sailing” for us to both break in the two of us to the boat, and do our shake down cruise doing short Atlantic stints instead of trying to do it all at once.

So – the question, or request for advice is simple.

If you have already “done” the ICW, what are your thoughts of going North to South along the course and what do you think about this idea?

Thanks in advance if you comment.

Rick

Survey on the boat

19 December, 2014 by RickD

Last night we received the soft copy for the survey of the vessel we are considering. As I mentioned before, I flew out last Wednesday and then spent Thursday with the surveyor going over the boat in detail. He’d already spent a good deal of time (I’d hired him as a consultant to act as my “eyes on site” before I decided to make an offer. He reported the boat in good shape with apparently minor issues and suggested I probably would like to pursue the purchase. He also suggested a “full survey” with me present.

As it turns out, he did almost the entire survey without me, charged me a couple of hours of his time and didn’t write the actual report. What he really did was spend more than two hours and had all his notes and showed me everything wrong he’d found. The survey reflects his work on both days and is thorough in detail. Being there in person is a highly recommended experience for any potential boat purchase – in particular larger vessels like this one. I personally can recommend being present. You can ask questions and they will explain things to you. The surveyor’s purpose is to evaluate the vessel and then place an appraisal on said boat.

So – as expected the images of the problems were in the report. A basic explanation of “adequate” or “outstanding” or “critical” by each item found is there to help the boat purchaser to make their final decision.

Needless to say, my wife and I had questions of each other mostly. None of the surveyor. All said, there is little in the boat that needs repair, and that which does is something *I* can do easily with a few hours of work. My time isn’t cheap at the moment, but will be soon enough.

We signed the acceptance agreement last night about 9pm EST and sent it on to the broker.

We go to close on 7 January 2015.

Anyone interested in a 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in Colorado Springs? Let me know. We’ll be going on the market in late January to early February.

Fixin’ to begin to commence to start….

15 December, 2014 by RickD

My mother used to berate my Dad sometimes with the phrase “Imagonna” when she wanted to remind him of something he said he would do, and had not gotten around to doing it just yet. She’d be upset with him and would be the one to remind him that he wasn’t doing whatever it was with this caustic remark of “Imagonna”.

But Mom had a way of telling us kids she was going to do something, eventually, if we asked her. She used “I’m fixing to begin to commence to start…” meaning to us, she’d get around to it when she was damned good and ready.

On Wednesday last week I spent the better part of eight or night hours actually sitting on an aircraft to head to the location of the boat I’m looking at. On Thursday morning I sat at breakfast with the surveyor and discussed our attack plan.

By Thursday evening, I was convinced.

It was cold, negative 10 degrees below zero when I arrived and looked at the boat for the first time in person. I’d “driven around the area” using Google Street view, but couldn’t quite see the boat from the location the Google car had turned around. So, no sneak previews for me. Only the images the seller had sent to me via the broker, and those on the various ads I could find.

There was ice on the deck. The deck covered with tarps. Did I mention it was cold? Colder than Colorado, that’s for sure.

I had a “Wow!” moment when I first saw the boat. It was just as beautiful, if not more-so than the images told me. In fact, Confucius had it wrong when he said “One picture is worth a thousand words”. The images tell a lot, but when you’re in person and all you can say is “Wow” I guess that says something too. A lot.

My second “WOW” moment was on deck.

My last one was when I climbed down the ladder to the cabin. That was more of a “Triple Wow!”

Basically, the survey went well, everything we checked out was good. There was some “bad” too though, but mostly things I can deal with without having to resort to professionals.

The most important part was coming away from the survey having watched a professional examine the boat, taking notes and taking pictures and knowing his evaluation would give me the confidence to go forward.

We stand awaiting the survey report and in a short time we’ll “be fixin’ to begin to commence to start” our trip to the Islands.

More to follow….

Buying a Boat

5 December, 2014 by RickD

We just were notified that the Seller of the boat we’re interest in has accepted our offer.

<faint>

Ok. I’m better now. Time for a survey. Surveyor is notified, will get back to me shortly with possible dates. I’ll get back with probably flight and hotel information.

With luck weather won’t be horrible. We’ll likely waive a sea trial. Too late in the season. Speaking to both insurance companies and the surveyor, they can do the best job on the hard anyway. Short of ensuring the boat doesn’t sink, or masts don’t fall off in waves. Anyway, at this point, I’ll take it. Spoke to a mechanic at the marina who worked on the boat when the boat was hauled. Said he took care of tightening bolts, checking some hoses and clamps and then winterizing the engine and it starts and runs fine. He was not sure of the oil changes or any of that.

I’ll personally check that stuff out. No responses on any maintenance logs, and I doubt I will find any.

On the good side, I’ve spoken to several people who have been on this boat, seen it and even know the owner. He gets high marks for being picky about the boat and caring for it at this point. But thus far, I’ve seen only pictures and pictures might be worth a thousand words in the mind of Confucius, but I prefer seeing something in real life, living color.

Stay Tuned.

“Somethin’ ’bout a boat”

3 December, 2014 by RickD

Jimmy Buffett has an album, “Songs from St. Elsewhere”. I want to visit that place. Soon.

Today we’re putting an offer in on a 41′ Formosa. I’ve managed to get most of a survey accomplished before we made the offer. We’ll do a full survey if the sell accepts our offer.

Somewhere around Monday we should know if he accepted. If he did, then I’ll have the surveyor go in next week and finish what he started and get me a report. I’m planning to fly out to see the vessel in person. We’ve been doing this all over email so far, and it’s a bit disconcerting. I’m the sort of person that likes to stand in the store and handle the items I plan to buy before I slap down cash for it.

In this case, I’m in Colorado, the boat is on the East Coast. I’ll only have a limited amount of time (2 weeks) to arrange a flight, get there, find and look at the boat and decide if we screwed up or not. I’ll try to meet with the surveyor in person, but he can get in, do his job and present me with the report. I just want to touch the boat and say “I’ve seen it, it’s sufficient in my estimation”.

If the offer goes through, I’ll post information about the boat and pictures. Otherwise… we start over.

New Book: Basic Survival and Communications Skills

1 December, 2014 by RickD

I wrote a book. Just thought you’d all like to know. It’s called:

Basic Survival and Communications Skills in the Aftermath

The current Amazon link is at Amazon

The publication date was 30 November 2014, so it released on Sunday (yesterday as I write this). The book was written specifically for the Kindle in mind, but will eventually be released to other eReaders in the next few months.

Here’s the description:

Nuclear war looms, an errant asteroid is headed for Earth, Yellowstone is showing signs of an impending explosion. Will be survivors. Are you going to be one of them? If so, how are you going to survive and contact your friends and loved ones?

The world has no set time of destruction and it might never come, or next Thursday while you’re on your way home from work might be the very day the killing blow comes. Will you be prepared?

Join the author in an imaginative exploration of several scenarios of “What Might Happen” and practical ideas on mitigation of the “Aftermath”. Survival isn’t always about stocking food and water in a mountain hideaway, collecting the best knives, guns and most ammo. Discover the important information you’ve been missing! This book was written specifically for the Kindle devices in mind.

For almost fifty years I’ve been working with and around radios and communications. I started repairing shortwave radios at the ripe old age of Ten. Since then I made it a career and life style (I’m a ham radio operator and was a military radio communications technician in the USAF). Even my wife is a ham radio operator.

I wrote this book because, as a prepper and survivalist we’ve always worked to stay in contact with our children and family members. While not the best at writing letters (sad for a writer, I know) we have always tried to figure out ways to contact our kids if there are emergencies. We’ve always tried to keep one or another method open to us.

Over the years I’ve taught electronics and radio theory to civilians and military alike and have combined the skills I have in bringing this book to the general public as a way to help folks who aren’t really “radio savvy” or new at survival and preparedness skills (also called, “Prepping”).

The book is the culmination of many years of writing on blogs, forums and answering questions to students, military and civilians. This book is not an in-depth study of one and only one thing however, it is more of a general purpose, basic/beginner’s book to get you started thinking on the path of how to communicate in emergencies.

Of course the book is colored with “End of the World” scenarios and situations but it should get you thinking.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a sailor or a close friend and possibly feel you’re already an expert at survival. But I am dead certain that even experts will gather information from this manual that you’ve not considered in the past. Remember, it is not a rehash of other books.

I urge you all to pick up a copy from Kindle. The price is $4.99 US and that’s about the price of a couple of beers. I don’t expect to make millions of dollars, that’s not why the book was written. But, it will certainly help the cruising kitty if a few folks buy it. (Hey, at 35% royalties, I’m not making a killing here!)

Keep your eyes open for when I can release it to other readers besides Kindle. There will be follow ups to this book with more in-depth and detailed answers about radio systems, licensing (for when aliens aren’t invading because we all know we don’t want to break the law!) and I will most likely work on a ham radio specific companion book at a later date.

Fair Winds!

Rick

Trip to Florida

6 November, 2014 by RickD

We had a great trip to Florida. Not much sitting in airports, and rented a car that can only be referred to as “a roller skate”. The think was called a “Chevy Spark”. I think it was waiting to grow up to be a “Blazer” – but probably never will.

We looked at six boats. Of those, only two were “close” to what we wanted. And only two of them were actually boats we had wanted to look at. The broker with whom we worked was trying to push an Endeavor on us. While it was a nice boat, it wasn’t what we were looking for and I think he just didn’t “get it”. It was in our price range and it was a 37 foot boat, and therefore we MUST want it because, well, it was a nice boat.

We tried several times to get him to understand we had reasons for looking for what we were looking for.

All in all though, we ate plenty of sea food, and I could rarely pass up fried oysters (probably not good for me, but they are GOOD). We got to visit JoAnne’s brother Paul and his wife Cathy and had a lot of fun finding places to eat and driving around seeing the sights there. We went from Dunedin, to Ft. Desoto driving around, through Largo, Tampa, and several surrounding areas.

Of the actual boats we liked, one was a Formosa; she’d seen better days. The young fellow who owned her was asking close to 50K for that boat. I was willing to offer significantly less and the broker told me he likely would not take less. I wished her well and told her good luck on selling it then. We found a broken cockpit, engine wouldn’t start, it needed some real help inside and out. Might have been a steal at 20K and a bargain at 25k, but was robbery at 50K.

The other boat we looked at was an Allied Mistress. She was not… represented accurately in the ads, though the boat could likely have been had for less than the asking price, it would have been a significant amount of work.

One boat was gorgeous, and Irwin. Not really what we wanted, but we considered it. Except the owner came out to let us aboard and show the boat. And give us a dissertation on what all he “still had to do”. Oh well, he wasn’t on the market yet and I think he and the broker were fishing myself for someone who needed to spend money. That wasn’t us. If he was still working on the boat, he really wasn’t ready to sell. She was hoping for us to make a huge offer or something, and he was hoping to escape from his boat I think.

Paul looks great. He’s 73 and had a heart attack last year, and has some problems with his legs, but gets around fine. But he looks to be in his 50s, not 70s. Cathy was doing well as well. Their little home in the retirement community was just right for them, and the community center has a pool (a huge pool) and other things for them to do.

After almost two weeks we had to leave. It was not easy to leave either. Florida was warm, the beach was “Right There”, boats were everywhere. The hotel was just “so-so” but we stayed two weeks and probably anything can go wrong in even expensive places, so no big deal. But eventually we flew back to chilly weather, we’ve had snow already in Colorado and today we FINALLY get to see JoAnne’s Doctor (her 3 month visit, only it’s now 4 months) for her checkup.

Tomorrow (or tonight) we’ll set a date to put the house back on the market if all is well.

In the mean time, there’s this pretty 40′ Formosa for sale we’re looking at. I’ve already contacted the broker, we’re looking for a surveyor to hire for a “lookie-see” to advise as to whether we should pursue this one. The broker has filled me in on all the good and bad of the boat. We might end up buying this one without flying out to say “Yes” first.

The problem is the boat is pretty far north, and not on the southern coast or Gulf Coast.

JoAnne came up with the perfect solution though; instead of preparing to sail the Caribbean the first year or so, we provision and train for an Atlantic Crossing and head straight up the coast to Maine, Newfoundland, then across to Ireland in the right season.

I can’t say that’s a bad idea either…

Stay tuned.

Headed for a Dock

3 September, 2014 by RickD

Well, kind of. We’re headed down soon to Florida to look over some boats. Since I’m a little wary about putting travel data out I won’t say when or exactly where yet. But we’ve got a bunch of boats lined up, one confirmed appointment and the type of boats are all falling in line with our basic requirements.

Each of the boats will be between 34-41 feet long.

Among the top choices were:

Allied Mistress (a 39′ full keeled ketch with an aft cabin)

Morgan Out Island 41 – similar to above

Hallberg-Rassy 35

Morgan 36

O’Day CC

Westsail 32

Those are our absolute top, go-to boats right now. Among the second place was a Formosa (Actually it’s a CT 41, but based on the same designs as the Formosa 41), a couple of different Irwin models, another Hallberg-Rassy (33′), a couple of larger boats (a 45′ and a 44′) and too far away to look at, but would be on the top of the list if closer to our destination, would be two Gulfstar sloops.

We’ve been aboard a Westsail 42 in the past (if you watching the banner pictures, you’ll see the actual boat, the Kataboo eventually) – but not a 32. We’ve clambered all OVER a Morgan 41 in the Bahamas that was for sale at one point. The owner wanted too much money, and we didn’t want to fiddle with trying to get him to drop the price at the time. The boat was sold later, I hear, to some folks who wanted it to move Haitians off their island, most likely, illegally. He didn’t get anywhere near what he was asking originally.

I’m partial to a slightly smaller vessel – perhaps 35′ in length. She is looking for something a bit larger. We might, or might not have extra crew join us (family members) from time to time and for unknown lengths of time. There is nothing set in concrete for that and we’re honestly not sure when this might happen, for how long or if the persons in question will do this often or not very often.

Thus we’ve been torn on buying the larger boat and ending up spending more money in repairs and maintenance, or going smaller, more budget-minded and have the extra crew “make do” with the space we allot them. We feel like they really should come along – they are young and could be helpful, but also at the same time this is really for me and my wife, not to accommodate others. Don’t get me wrong, we love them dearly and would welcome them. But you know… decisions, decisions. Oh their part and ours….

Anyway, truthfully, if we locate a boat that is 34-35 feet long and still has an aft cabin (we have a couple of those) to allow my wife and I privacy and a larger cabin area for the galley and an extra space or three for sleeping, it will be fine.

I really, really, like that Hallberg-Rassey we’re looking at. I also really, really, really like the Allied Mistress. Boat good boats, both of them are in our price range. Both of them have the things already on them we want. One is a bit much on asking price, the other has some work that is required before you can sail off.

But, we’ll figure it out.

The Broker we’re working with has told us several times to “sign a S&P” form… basically it’s an offer letter. I don’t want to do that until I SEE boats personally, touch them, look inside, sniff around and do my own mini-survey. Once I do that, I’ll be in a better position to determine if we’ll have a surveyor come out and do the rest of the job for us. So – not getting pushed into making an offer on a boat sight-unseen, not buying a boat JoAnne and I both don’t have 100% agreement on, and won’t buy one that isn’t really what either of us want. We each can veto the others final say on a vessel.

From a practical aspect this is about to be our new home. We don’t want to live in a camper. We don’t want to be “camping”. We want to have some comfort, a nice place to sleep, a dry boat, places to store food, a water maker (eventually), extra power (solar panels and wind generator) and a way to move the boat without an engine (sail, sculling oars, outboard) and a dinghy. HF radio is part of our lives now (we’re hams) and we’ll take our radio gear with us when we finally leave Colorado.

She has another doctor’s visit in October. We’re waiting for that appointment to make the final decision on the house. We’ll likely put it back on the market at the end of October if all works out. If not, we’ll continue on, regroup as we have in the past and continue keeping on….

Fair Winds!

Storm Chasing

21 August, 2014 by RickD

Spent about 20 years storm chasing Mesoscale disturbances. Have started watching hurricanes, if only through charts, maps, satellite images and computer data for the past 3-4 years. So I’m watching this new disturbance off the north east coast of Venezuela at the moment.

Looks to me, from all the weather charts I looked through this thing will probably develop to tropical storm level but the huge High Pressure system in the Atlantic might break into two pieces pushing west and east and forcing the storm system to move north across some of the Islands then push north east into the North Atlantic.

I’m no meteorologist of course and far from an expert on this stuff – but am trying to get better at it. Let’s just see what it does.

This live satellite loop tracks the movement of the disturbance and shows the showers and thunderstorms approaching the Lesser Antilles.

Accuweather is saying something similar to me. I think the storm will head to the right most path in the image below, at least roughly – affecting eastern PR but no further west.

Decisions, decisions

19 August, 2014 by RickD

A boat… any boat would be fine in a pinch. Something to keep you above the water, dry from the wind and rain, and with a sail and rudder to let you direct your course.

In the past six years of getting ready, we’ve sailed several boats though and have come to the following conclusions:

1) We aren’t racers, don’t care about PHRF ratings, don’t expect to be rounding any orange buoys in an attempt to beat the bigger boat in a fleet and know, for an absolute FACT we can’t outrun a storm coming at us at 25 MPH ground speed in a boat that moves at 9 knots.

2) We love being comfortable when we sleep. The bed has to be “just firm” and not too hard, not too soft and not saggy.

3) We like our showers. We love our hot tub, but there’s no place on a sailboat for one.

So – those details among millions of other small details have brought us almost six years forward from the day we said, “Hey, let’s retire to a sailboat!” and then set forth on that road.

In a few days we will be making our first trip to Florida to visit her brother – and look at boats. We’ve got a long list of boats, but the basic requirements parameters come out this way:

A) Full/Modified Keel

B) Ketch rigged

C) 40ish foot in length (38-42 seems reasonable to us)

D) Two “real cabins”. An Aft cabin and a Vee berth “cabin”.

E) Mast ought to have steps on it, or me, the ability to place steps on it….(I don’t trust me, or anyone else to handle a winch to hoist my ass up 50′ in the air, sorry!)

F) Engine should work, but it’s not the primary means of motivation for a sailboat.

G) There needs to be solar panels, a wind generator and a diesel/gas generator for extra power

H) There will be a water maker.

I) We’re both ham radio operators and I like to operate on HF bands

J) The galley will need to be workable for the “cook”/”admiral”/”First Mate” entity that will be ensuring we eat good meals

Yep – those first three things helped us figure that out. We want comfy beds, and I believe that an aft cabin will be best for us. We will have visitors who will travel with us from time to time, and they will generally be couples, thus the forward berth for them (and the ability for single individuals to have the pilot berth or something).

We need power. Good batteries (and I’ll replace what needs replacement) and ways to charge them are in order to keep the water maker, HF radios, computers and showers.

We need a full or modified keel to keep us stable and slow bouncing in rolling anchorages – which we will try not to be in usually. We’re not in any sort of a rush to get anywhere and just won’t go if the weather is going to be bad. Yep, fair weather sailors when we can be – and we’ll brave the storms when we must. Truth be told we will be watching weather windows carefully and go when we have a decent chance to have good weather, rather than risk a bad passage on a dark night in near-gale and gale conditions. Higher than that… we’ll be snuggled up in a hurricane hole someplace… umm… snuggling….

Water makers aren’t necessary, they aren’t required, they aren’t even cheap. You can catch rainwater, pay for it at docks and produce it from water makers. We will put a water maker aboard the boat. Even if it produces only small quantities of water in an hour because we want to have clean clothing and we drink a lot of water, we like showers and as long as we can generate the power required to run one, then we’ll have one. Again, they ain’t cheap (example: http://www.electromaax.com/products/watermakers/). Then of course you HAVE to depend on power from somewhere, the engine, a generator, wind generator, solar/battery combinations etc.

So in a few days the next leg of this voyage begins with searching for the boat to suit us, to take us where we want to go, to keep us safe and to give us the freedom we want to see the things we want to see.

Until next time… Fair Winds to all….

Cancer

14 August, 2014 by RickD

I’ve been very lax about writing here, for a lot of good reasons. Mostly, this is our cruising blog and simply put, we’ve not been cruising.

Last week I posted why I had not put anything up in a year. It was busy, hectic and we were pretty frazzled all the time. Then January came around with the bad news.

On Tuesday, 12 August 2014, seven days after our anniversary she walked into the doctor’s office and saw the physician’s assistant, Candice. Candice was happy to inform us that there are no visible signs of cancer left in her body. The CT scan can detect no remaining tumor. Obviously, it can’t see at the microscopic level but as far as they can tell at this time she is “cancer free”. We both know and understand the ramifications of this; and that it can return, and if it’s going to might happen within a two year period. The longer we get away from this time without recurrence, the better chances it won’t.

We also understand that time in this world is limited and we’re given an opportunity to see and do things inside of one lifetime. For many that lifetime is cut short when they are young. We’ve made it over a half century. We plan to hang around as long as possible.

She told me moments after we were all wiping the tears of joy from our eyes, “I can go sailing!”

And you know what? She is going. We’re leaving to look at currently available boats in Florida in a few days, as well as visit her brother who lives in the Largo area. We’ll let you know how things turn out.

One more appointment in October for her, then one every three months thereafter. We’ll locate doctors on the East Coast where we can go and have her tests done, and examines performed. After that October appointment, if all goes well, the news is still good news, we will put the house back on the market and sell it as soon as humanly possible and get ourselves to our boat.

Throughout this whole thing JoAnne has been the bravest, strongest person I have ever known. She’s still been Mom to the kids and Grandma to the little ones, and remained my “Sweetheart” through it all. If anyone can sail around the world and has the tenacity and fortitude to do so, it’s her. But we’ll leave that trip for another time. For now, the first part of our voyage through life has ended, and the second leg of the trip has finally begun. We’re both better prepared for adversity than before I think – I hope.

Until next time….

One Year Ago

28 July, 2014 by RickD

Almost one year ago – 8 August was my last entry, and this is 28 July – we were messing with, dealing with a new old RV. It’s still sitting in the driveway, or rather I should say back in the driveway. But, let me start back then.

Last year around end of May we pretty much finished doing the repairs on the house, getting it prepared to go on the market and about July time frame we did so. The RV was moved to a friend’s place for storage, we moved out of the house and the Realtor we’d hired came in and argued with us to drop the price, stage the house, and to drop the price. But, I said that didn’t I? So did she, over and over and over and over and over.

Long story short on that, she didn’t see eye to eye with my wife and I on things. We KNOW the house is worth more than what she was trying to force us to drop the price down to. She wanted it staged, we didn’t, but we thought “Ok, why not”. So she brought someone in, then wanted to charge us for the staging. We refused to pay for it. Wanted the house simple, empty and easy for people to examine. She wanted it cluttered with crap.

The Realtor ended up paying for the staging. We didn’t. Along about October, as Fate would have it, the lack of an understanding between the parties caused us all to part ways. JoAnne and I moved back into the house with almost no furnishing. The Realtor vacated the contact.

In November, we hired another Realtor – and I won’t post any of their names here; but when the job is done, I’ll name names. 🙂

November, December and January brought more people in the first two weeks than we had the WHOLE three months with the first Realtor. Amazingly enough, there were ZERO complaints about the house (when ALL we got were complaints from the first few people that looked at it with the first lady). We believe the first one wanted us to just sell to someone who couldn’t really afford the house (hence the constant browbeating about dropping the price even below the appraised value)!

Then January came along.

JoAnne felt ill a few times, went home from work early a few times – something she NEVER does – and finally toward the end of the month she was beginning to be tired, having all sorts of strange problems so she went to the doctor. Our doctor saw her, then told her something wasn’t right. She sent her early next morning for CT Scan across town. On Wednesday evening, 29 January 2014, Doctor Robison called to tell us the bad news. Cancer. Ovarian. We were sitting at our normal “watering hole” with some of the family, as it was my youngest son’s 28th birthday and we had bought him a beer.

It was devastating. Completely. Cancer? Not her. Not my sweetheart. And yet, it was true.

In February she had surgery, but not before she got sick, her kidneys shut down and we almost lost her from that, her blood pressure dropped dangerously low more than once and she stopped working and went on medical leave for the time being. The tumor was huge – bigger than a grapefruit. They took out a lot of parts, including lymph nodes, lots of them.

The good news was the tumor was not completely cancerous, only a small portion from the way the doctor explained it. And the better news was that it had not spread any further, lymph nodes were clean. The bad news was it was at “Stage IIc or IIIa”. The doctor couldn’t really give us a good staging. We think we went with worst case – because, you know, doctors don’t like to be sued for giving the truth… but that’s another story I guess.

She has since had a port installed for the chemo, undergone 6 chemo sessions, each 21 days apart, lost all of her hair, we’ve both cried a lot and held each other a lot, the kids have been visibly upset, scared and just worried.

On 11 July 2014 at about 2:30 PM the last chemo was finished. She’d had a doctor’s appointment just prior (day before). Her CA-125 tests have been pretty low (11 or so) consistently. On 4 August she has a CT scan – to do, we suppose, a baseline check afterward and for future reference. Ever few months a CA-125 test will be done. And she has to make a decision whether she wants her port removed (every few weeks she has to go in to have it flushed).

She’s leaning toward having it removed because frankly it’s a pain in the ass to have to keep going back to have it punctured (along with her skin) and flushed and it was a 20 minute surgery to put it in. She will probably decide that sometime prior to October. In October she will have enough information to decide whether we will put the house back on the market.

In the meantime, she’s diligently searching for a boat to carry us around the world. After we pay all the bills. And maybe sell the house.

Recreational Vehicle

8 August, 2013 by RickD

The RV…. a machine that takes you from your house to a campsite, to a lake for fishing, hauls your boat or All Terrain Vehicles behind so you can tramp through the wilderness, fish or hunt.

Downsizing from a 5 bedroom home with two people to a 40′ sailboat has to have a transition, right? Or not. Some people go right to a boat. Some already have a boat and are set up in two households. Some of us have had to give up our boat(s) and jeeps and other things just to downsize and collect cash to be able to GET our sailing vessel (and don’t even have it yet!)

In our case, our plan included going across country to get to the East Coast from Colorado. We haven’t left yet. But we did some math and figured out that it was going to cost a lot to stay in hotels, eat out a lot and visit friends. Some friends will “put us up” for a day or two, but we can’t really “put them out”. We don’t want to get in the way of peoples’ lives while we’re traveling and visiting on our way across the country.

So the math worked out that we should buy an older, small RV we could load our remaining belongings (clothing, radio gear, JoAnne’s special cooking tools, tools to do repairs and a few other important-to-us things, like books) instead of staying in hotels and eating out every night. So we went on a search and found an old, 1978 Dodge Shasta with a 440 engine, some dents, dings and assorted minor hail damage, but no apparent leaks.

This week it has rained like hell, so I’ve been checking everything on the RV and sure enough… no leaks.

I’ve done some repairs like changing out one of the valve cover gaskets, repaired some damage on the house in the rear of the vehicle and have tested a few things. Last night I dropped the vehicle off at Pikes Peak Traveland, a local RV sales and service place for a “Check the House” inspection. They will check the entire house systems out for me (I don’t have time to do it right now, and I have no way to check for propane leaks etc). I told them IF the house checks good to install new lights on the rear (Brakes, taillights etc) and look for a broken window (one of the side panel windows is shattered, but still in place) as well as to examine the vehicle’s tow system to see if it is sufficient to haul JoAnne’s Wrangler behind us.

We figured it would be good to have a dinghy, you know?

Our belongings have been pared down from 36 years of stuff we’ve collected, saved and stored (in some cases without even knowing what was in the boxes!) to about 12 storage tubs, one military footlocker full of books and 4 tool bags. The next challenge after the RV is repaired and made sea—er roadworthy is to figure out how to pack all that stuff in there.

So, downsizing from a 5 bedroom house to a 22 ft RV should be quite an interesting process. Since we’ve already downsized as much as we have we think we can do it. But, if not, we will go through all of this stuff yet again, tub by tub and eliminate things we don’t need, or duplicates of some items. We decided to keep most of the Amateur Radio equipment, since it works, it has certain jobs and most of it is small (except the HF rig). The HF rig can be used on the boat, on the road, in the RV, at a camp ground or a friend’s house. We can remain in contact with our family through HF using “Airmail” and the Winlink 2000 system of radios across the country.

Dishes have been cut down. I think she has what she needs, but any replacements or items she wants we’ll get. We gave all our beautiful flatware away to our daughter. She had a few pieces. She threw them out before we could get them for the RV. Oh well, you cruise, you lose. I guess we’ll hit Walmart and pick up a small, cheap set for the RV which will do double duty for the boat later.

Tools… were a problem. I have five sets of tools. Electronic tools (I’m an electronics technician, so this is a kind of lifeline for me, and can earn me money). Mechanic’s tools. Need them to work on the RV going across country, and eventually the engine of a yacht. Metal and woodworking tools. I can “make things”, maybe things I can sell or things I can use. Power tools. They are battery operated (Li-ion batteries) and aren’t quite as bulky as A/C operated power tools, but these include a drill, a Sawzall, a skill saw (small rotary blade) and an LED light. I also have an A/C powered sander, a charger for the batteries and a dremmel tool. Lastly we have a bag of rigging tools. This bag has things like string, lines, ropes, shackles, a couple of sailors knives I made, some marlingspikes, bees wax and various other things.

Thus far I can’t figure out how to eliminate any of these. Eventually, I suppose we can pare those down when we find our boat and figure out we need three wrenches, a hammer, an axe and a pocket knife to do everything. I doubt seriously THAT day will come. haha

So in a few days when I get the RV back I’ll have the task of figuring out how badly I suck at Tetris in trying to fit all that stuff into the RV, out of the way, and in a location that keeps it over the centerline and nothing heavy over our heads….

On the bright side, we won’t have to “down size” to a 40 foot boat either.

Housing Market Worries?

8 August, 2013 by RickD

I am not really worried about the housing market. Obviously with the house up for sale and things ticking up here and there we shouldn’t be worried. Apparently the housing prices in the region have increased by roughly 5% over the last month or so, homes are selling for slightly higher prices than they were back in May (when we hoped to be on the market but didn’t make it).

The sign went into the yard on the 22nd of July and today is the 8th of August. We’ve had three showings, and each one that provided feed back suggested there was “too much work to do” on the house – which I find… simply amazing. The house has been fully remodeled in every room except the upstairs bathroom. New everything, floors, windows, trim, hardware on doors, paint. We haven’t replaced the appliances as they work fine. Nothing is wrong with them. They just aren’t “stainless steel”. Too bad.

We have spent a few thousand dollars upgrading the house and people I think are just trying to get us to drop the price. Not going to do that, so if you want a “flip house” this isn’t it. Move along. lol

Seriously, if people are out looking for a house to flip, there are plenty of them out there, don’t come to my place expecting to get a rock bottom price. Sorry.

I guess the anxiety comes from the fact that JoAnne and I have only owned one home, ever. This one. For 25 years. We mostly raised our children here, there are a lot of memories and the kids all look at the house and say “This isn’t the house I grew up in”. We see the changes, but those who look at it as a property don’t see those changes. I suspect we will end up selling to a military family – and in fact, I HOPE we do. They can take this place and keep it as a rental property when they PCS out (PCS is Permanent Change of Station, for the uninitiated).

Since we have never owned any other homes, and haven’t sold any other homes this process is rather “new” to us. We bought the place back in 1989 and until this past weekend have lived there since. We moved to my daughter’s house nearby, and I have been back every day, sometimes several times a day, to do yard work, check on the hot tub, clean some more and work on the RV. Yesterday we had an email discussion with the Realtor about all this. It seemed like she wanted us to drop our price pretty quickly. In my research I found that many realtors want to shoot for lowered prices for faster sales on the homes. This gives them more chances to make money quicker.

While we want to get out of here this year, before winter, we’re NOT willing to drop the price so fast. We’d prefer to wait on an offer and then negotiate up or down as the case might be.

So… we think that Patience is the watchword of the day. We’ll try to be patient and see what happens. Then if things work out, good. If they don’t, we always have a Plan B now.

How to Make a Hawaiian Slingshot Speargun

8 August, 2013 by RickD

Reblogging this so I can watch the video later. Thanks!

House for Sale

8 August, 2013 by RickD

Friday the sign went up in the yard. The house is for sale.

Saturday and Sunday we held a “garage sale”. I’ll never do that again. I’ll give things away or throw them out before I will deal with the weird people that came by to buy things. I guess, as there is a cruiser culture and a further sub-culture within, or a racing culture for cars and one for bikes, there is a “Garage Sale” culture. There are the lookers, the pickers, the pokers, and the takers.

We had them all. I should have had Jimmy Buffett’s “Fruitcakes” playing in the background all day.

We had a few people who honestly looked through things and then tried to underbid one another (yes, I said UNDERBID). Weird. We had a few neighbors who offered the cost of the item we asked (like a nice desk chair for 8 bucks) and we had some who moved everything on the tables around, back and forth, put them on other tables and dropped things on the ground.

Then we had the thieves. You would never believe that you have items sitting out that are worth a couple of bucks with a .50 cent price tag get stolen, right? Or a nice, nearly new fan at $5.00 get walked off without us really understanding until later what happened.

Never again.

I did sell ALL my power tools that I’m not taking with me, that was a good thing. Got a decent price too.

All in all though, we’re done. This morning I rented a small storage area to put our boat stuff in (a bunch of tubs going with us) so we don’t have to take that to my daughter’s home. With luck we will only need it three months or less. (Average on sale time is about 65 days or so, some homes going in a day or two, others months….).

The flyers should be in the box in the next day or two. We should be moved out in about the same time.

Gate is done, guard rails back in place, new fencing, deck has been refinished, and the basement mostly empty. Upstairs is mostly empty too.

I’m beat, JoAnne is exhausted. We still have to move out our bedroom stuff to the daughter’s place and give a few more things to the kids and donation.

I’m ready to stop working on this stuff and get going.

I hope we sell the house soon.

All done… now what?

17 June, 2013 by RickD

We passed a rather large milestone yesterday with the house. The last room was painted yesterday. My wife painted the “Great Room”, really a family room in the basement while I was putting in the last of the trim in her old office.

Basically, all I have left of the major projects to do on the house is to put in the trim in that room this evening (and I have to do some cut in on the ceiling where she missed painting it).

Other than that, we have no major projects left. I have a few hours of work left to do on some electrical boxes, re-installation of a handrail on the stairwell, and one on the front porch. The deck needs a coat of paint ( a couple hours perhaps) and we have to empty the rest of the “crap” we’ve not gotten rid of. We missed our 1 May date to finish, and 1 June date. But we likely won’t miss the 1 July date.

Last week we purchased our “Land Yacht”, a smallish Class C Shasta RV. It’s older, kind of like us, in decent shape for it’s age and not too many miles. It should serve our purpose; that is to keep us out of hotels along the road trip Eastward, and get us to the far side of the country in a snail-like fashion. We expect it to cost some cash in gasoline, but we will be just fine.

Tonight I plan to finish the trim, the paint and start moving junk out of the house to the garage we can put in a garage sale. With luck, this weekend coming up and next we ought to be able to get together a small yard sale and get rid of stuff. We plan to get the home on the market pretty quick after that and with luck have it sold within three months. Maybe less. The market is doing well at the moment, and we will see.

Now, there is BAD news from our neck of the woods. Last Monday on the way home from work I could see a small fire on the mountain in the Air Force Academy grounds from my work. I work roughly 41 miles from the Academy. Fortunately the fire was contained and put out rather quickly, within I think a couple hours. It was only about 100X100 feet in diameter as I understand it. However, it was dry, windy and no rain was forecast for Tuesday – and conditions were optimum for a forest fire to take hold. And it did.

On Tuesday afternoon at 1435 leaving work I saw smoke to the NW, perhaps 15-20 miles away. That fire had apparently just started, and it mushroomed very quickly. By the time I arrive home, 30 minutes later, the smoke plume was up to 25,000 feet in height and stretching 35 miles to the ENE. Radar was showing it was growing quickly. I could see the smoke from my home (about 8 miles south of the actual fire) and it was being reported as “dangerous”. They were rapidly evacuating people from the area and the fire grew rapidly.

The fire is now known as “the Black Forest Fire” and has sadly claimed two lives. 483 homes, 14,200 acres have been destroyed. Numerous outbuildings are not counted in that count but for every home there was likely at least one outbuilding in that area, whether sheds, barns or garages. Thousands of people have been displaced, hundreds of domesticated animals including goats, horses, dogs and cats had to be saved. Currently the Sheriff says there is no obvious evidence of foul play, but the incident IS being investigated as a crime scene (probably because two persons were killed, over run by a fire storm it appears at this point) and they are leaving no stone unturned to find the cause. The last I heard for certain was neither the Air Force Academy fire OR the Black Forest Fire were caused by lightning (confirmed by the National Weather Service, no lightning within 72 hours of the Black Forest fire’s start, which happens to encompass the AFA fire’s time line.)

This fire came just about two weeks short of one year from the Waldo Canyon Fire on the slope to my west. This fire was north of me. Both fires were with 8 miles distance of my own house (neither moved in the direction of my house though, my family was not in danger either time and most of my children were safe at their homes as well).

The Waldo Canyon fire was started by a human. At this point it appears that so was the Black Forest Fire. No suspects or persons of interest have been found yet.

At this point though, I think it is time to get my home on the market. I need to sell it, and I’m sure someone probably needs a house to live in.

It’s a sad world we live in if those fires were started on purpose.

Finishing the house

3 May, 2013 by RickD

We figured out we have somewhere around 24 doors in our house, counting closets, bedrooms, bathrooms and interior and exterior doors leading in and out of the house.

Yikes, that’s a lot of doors to paint. All white.

Trim is nearly completed.

I still have a lot of little jobs to accomplish, like finishing installing a toilet and sink in the downstairs bathroom, repainting the upstairs bathroom and a few places where I need to complete the trim. I think there are also a couple of closets that aren’t painted yet, as well as finishing the electrical part (replacing some plugs, switches and covers).

1 May has come and passed us by two days and we didn’t quite make our “deadline” but we nearly got it. Now we’re in “Days overruns” (not costing any more at least!)

I decided to give myself two more good weekends to complete all of those jobs. We should be done by mid May.

Now we’ll shoot for Market by the end of the month. Time to interview Realtors now.

Continuing Studies

1 May, 2013 by RickD

Something I’ve learned over the years is that I learn better when someone shows me how to do something. As a teacher I discovered that students had all sorts of learning idiosyncrasies and most of them learned either by reading, listening or seeing demonstrations. I endeavored to do all three for students in my electronics courses. Some simply refused to learn and just ‘wanted the answers’.

Those students who just wanted the answers were the kind who simply wanted to “be done” with college and really weren’t planning on doing anything with their lives after getting finished with their degrees. One day during a class, after a test, we were going over the test answers after I’d graded the tests and recorded the results in my record keeping. That particular week we were studying how semiconductors functioned, very specifically we were discussing diodes and P-N junctions. A diode is an electronic device which passes current in only one direction and blocks current flow in the other direction. They are used as rectifiers to convert alternating current into direct current. The concept is actually one of the simplest things you learn in electronics next to resistance, and Ohm’s Law.

One student had asked me questions all week, and I had explained several times verbally how a diode works, showing circuits with current flow, an oscilloscope (which shows the sine waves and the subsequently converted wave forms of half-wave rectification). Just before the test, this student asked for a review of specific points. We reviewed with the whole class. The student expressed confidence that “I’ve got this” and I passed out the test material – basic 30 question tests with 25 multiple “guess” questions and five “essay questions” – asking students to, in their own words, explain some basic concept they had learned this week.

I generally studied my own materials while awaiting students to finish but something told me to look for the “visual feedback” you get from student’s faces and actions.

The confidence of the previously mentioned student began to falter; I could see him struggling with the test so I quietly began walking the room as I often did to get a glance over their shoulders to make sure no one was cheating (something that was very rare in my classrooms I discovered, but did occasionally occur). The confusion of this student was apparent when he hit the question we had discussed just before the test. I had actually covered almost every thing on the test before passing it out and I was shocked that as I scanned quickly and walk on that this person was completely lost.

What was *I* doing wrong, I asked myself. How could I have explained this over and over in the space of a week and given these students essential information needed to understand the material AND pass the test and yet this student was going to fail this test.

Now, the quarter before this one, I had a similar problem with another student who has passed but was barely keeping his grades up in each of his courses. Was there something happening here I wasn’t getting?

After grading his test – he passed by one question – we begin going over the test.

At that point I realized that the majority of the students in the classroom has gotten 100% on their tests. To me, that was a measure of 1) How well I presented the lesson and 2) how well the students grasped the concepts. All but a couple of people, and one in particular were doing very well. Instead of chalking this up to “poor learning” or “poor teaching” I thought I’d turn this around on the students.

I asked, “Ok, some of you had issues with this concept (which I explained quickly) and I’d like to get an idea where you’re not understanding this. Would anyone like to share with the class and me what sort of problem this is causing?”

It was enough to get the student in question to say, “Well, I don’t know the answer.”

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know the answer’?” I queried.

“Well, it’s like this….” and this student regurgitated the exact process of how a diode works, not only from the beginning of the chemistry portion (where you dope different sections of silicone with boron or arsenic to make P or N junctions – but explained electron movement and hole-theory to the class in precise and professional terms). I was shocked. He could explain exactly what it was he’d learned. I applauded him on his knowledge… then he said, “I just don’t know THE ANSWER!”

I prompted once again for an explanation of the “answer”….

So he said, “Ok, its like this. If I am working in a radio shop for instance and someone gives me a radio to work on, if a diode goes OUT in the radio… what is the answer? What symptoms does that diode show me that tells me it’s broken?”

The light came on for me.

What the student wanted wasn’t all the theory behind how electronic components functioned; he wanted a set of RULES that told him how to easily fix or repair something.

A communications gap the size of Texas was what we were having.

Today – twenty plus years later I can see this attitude in everyone around me. No one wants to study a subject and understand it inside and out, they want a pat answers to a series of questions that allow them to move on to something else! Email messages that contain more than three lines are rarely read. Even this article will have 2 readers out of 100 who read the entirety of the article because, frankly, it’s “too long” for the limited attention span of most people.

Over the past five years of preparing for our voyage my wife and I have read a multitude of books. I read, almost exclusively, technical texts containing scientific discussions of how to anchor and keep a vessel safe to operations of diesel engines, to repairs of water makers – among other things. These books contain math, charts, explanations that put my verbosity to shame. But I have come to the conclusion that there are those who will never venture offshore because they won’t read anything; worse they WILL venture offshore – without reading anything.

In my estimation today’s electronic communications technology–which has essentially made radio almost obsolete, has taken the fun out of learning, it has forced people who are in the midst of information overload in their everyday lives to skip over anything they deem “extraneous”. I’ve found that this sometimes even affects me and I tend to ignore long emails, or skip reading attachments when I should probably at LEAST glance at them.

As a skipper of a vessel one must be aware of all that is going on, stand above panic and think through every detail of what one must do to make things work, keep the ship going and to keep the vessel and crew alive. Fortunately, it’s not flying planes or space ships. You’re not traveling at high speeds or falling from space (or high in the sky) if things fail on a boat. However, shorelines get in the way, and winds and blow you into the weather shore, lines break, sails tear, engines get dirty fuel, anchors can get jammed in coral or rock, anchors can drag and winds can blow when you’re not expecting them because you ignored this morning’s weather report; or over slept and didn’t listen to it.

There are NO “pat answers” in anything in life. There are jobs all over the country that require thinking processes and regardless of how mindless a job becomes (I picture someone installing lug nuts over and over and over and over in a car factory, but even there robots have taken over…) there is some thinking required.

You can make a list of answers for your students so when they are troubleshooting a robot, computer or a space station they can simply check off and when they have one left over that’s “the answer”

I suspect my former student never made it “to the big time” with his degree. He grabbed some job somewhere that required little thinking on his part.

All to often today in conversations I have with random people I see his “lack of thinking processes”. They can regurgitate what they hear on television, from a show, or their favorite movie, and can even repeat things they learned in high school or college courses. But they can’t take two or more related (or even unrelated) concepts and combine those in a logical and reasonable fashion to come up with answers to their questions.

Is there an answer for this problem? I’m sure there’s a list someplace that can help us “fix” the problem, right?

Cruising Skills

26 April, 2013 by RickD

In the five years we’ve been preparing to sell the house and get out cruising we’ve had to learn a LOT of things. We’ve bought books and read web sites of knowledgeable people, asked questions and performed “hands on, on-the-job” training for many different things.

A while back I created a list of skills that occurred to me as I was trying to decide where to go in my “learning curve” next. The list is a couple of pages long with several dozen skills listed. Many things we know “in real life” can translate. As an example I have traveled to many countries and as a military member had personnel for whom I was responsible on various trips through foreign ports. We generally (as a team chief) would check in at terminals and customs with the passports for our team members and make sure things went (relatively smoothly); this equates to a skipper checking into and out of a port for example. Not exactly the same thing with a boat as a traveling crew, but similar enough.

The funny part is that the list of skills required to run a boat on a daily basis is as varied as one can imagine. In fact when we started down this path the thought didn’t occur to us as first how many things we’d have to know and understand.

From some of my reading I figured out that some folks don’t know enough when they start, but learn as they go. Others prepare before leaving. Some never get off the dock because they are still preparing themselves or fitting out their boats; some for years it appears.

In our case we have enough “life skills” that we can equate to something on the boat to at least give us a leg up.

As life goes on the wise become wiser as they realize they don’t have every skill they need to do something, and KNOW they don’t KNOW.

As another example looking at the list there is a category called “Electrical” or “Electrics” for a vessel. Various people call the electrical “stuff” on a boat by various names. As an electronics technician for nearly forty years, it’s all the same to me. Ohms and Watts laws, resistance, current, voltage, soldering, crimping, inductance, capacitance, analog and digital are the same ashore or afloat. The one thing thrown in that isn’t there ashore is salt water, salt air and dampness. Those are separate issues with which to contend. So, I suspect I’m more thoroughly prepared than most for electrical issues. My list looks like this, and remember these are just a few things that came to mind:

Electrical Skills

Lighting
Navigation lights
Anchor lights
Cabin lighting
Wiring
Power calculations
Power panel wiring
Solar Power
Wind generator
Alternator (engine)
Inverters
Radio systems (VHF, HF)
Antennas and the connections to the radios
Antenna couplers (tuning units)
Stereo systems and speakers
Computers
Windlass
Miscellaneous electrical systems

When you begin to break down the systems on a vessel into smaller units like the above you start to realize that everything isn’t as simple as it seems at first. In the past few years I read a lot of information on various forums about radios (I’m an expert in that field by the way, more so than any other area probably) and realized that there is so much misinformation out there about many things. And the numbers of opinions vary to the point of being so wrong and incorrect it’s amazing that some folks are able to “get by” let alone “survive”. (I’m not just talking about electrical systems here either).

The hardest lesson I learned in the last five years wasn’t how to set an anchor properly, tack, gybe or dock a vessel. It was learning NOT to listen to others in some instances (many in fact). I’ve also learned from others by asking questions. But when one asks a perfectly honest and normal “newb” question and gets twelve different opinions, most of which aren’t even right to begin with, or gets yelled at for asking “stupid questions without looking it up” before you get out of the starting gate, it’s a turn off.

Thus, learning technical material without the aid of teachers is just one thing that makes becoming a cruiser that much more difficult. From now on, if I want someone’s opinion, I’ll hire a professional not stick my nose into some of the forums. (There are a couple I like, the people are nice and they aren’t trying to beat you over the head with the ONLY RIGHT way to do something…..)

When talking about electrical connections in a marine environment one has to take into account the quality of the connection and the fact that salt water causes corrosion. I was once “admonished” that I didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to connections. I pretty much let it go and ignored the insult, since I DO know what I am talking about.

In electrical work you have two types of connections, especially when we’re talking about power delivery systems. That is, batteries and the connections at them. You have an “electrical connection” and you have a “mechanical connection”. The mechanical connection is what MAKES the electrical connection work, and keep working. Basically if you make a good, solid connection, say a crimp, you will ensure that current flows. But sometimes those mechanical (crimped) connections in a marine environment will get corrosion. Corrosion causes resistance thereby reducing the electrical connections effectiveness. Resistance causes voltage drops, voltage drops across bad connections cause higher current level, heat and drains batteries more quickly, sometimes to dangerously. Regardless of how well the mechanical connection will hold down in the battery locker when a vessel is bouncing up and down over time, the resistance is going to increase with the corrosion. You can crimp that connect as nicely as you like and let a couple of drops of salt water in and in time, it will fail at the crimp.

The “admonishment” came when I suggested soldering the lug to the wire either in addition to, or in lieu of the crimp. I’m a “solder it” guy. Went through the old NASA high reliability soldering training (among other types of training for making reliable connections) and learned that my stuff was good enough to go to the moon, into outer space, let alone a marine environment. So getting chewed out by someone on a forum for disagreeing with HIS method of doing something irks me, and really makes me wonder how some of these people get by.

Now, certainly, I don’t CARE if some guy does things HIS way, on HIS boat; I’m going to do them MY way on MY boat and I’m going to teach the way I learned that something is reliable to others if they ask; people have to make the decision not to be bloody sheep somewhere along the way. Think for yourselves.

I guess it comes down to opinions versus facts. I use facts to base my opinions. Many just form an opinion on whatever they want to imagine and many just “don’t like the way you think”. Others might use their experience (no matter how much or how little of it they have) to form an opinion. Perhaps they have had good experience doing something a certain way and it hasn’t failed on them. Good for them. Not good for me. If it isn’t common sense and meets scientifically sound principles, I’m not buying it. (Global warming is a very good example of something that DOES NOT MEET scientific principles. Just because a scientist SAYS SO doesn’t make it SO. ) Perhaps I should have listened when we were first learning to sale when our instruction said “I neither offer, nor accept advice from other sailors”. I didn’t get it then, but I “get it” now.

This isn’t to say I can’t learn from others and won’t give up trying. But learning from Internet Sailors who frequent forums isn’t necessarily the way to go when learning! On the other hand, some forums have some smart people. They have experience. They have traveled. They DO things. Those people are almost never online either.Why not? They are… well, traveling and doing things. They aren’t posting in forums. They have blogs, they spend time writing up the misery they have in repairing the head, or getting stuck in the engine room upside down while cleaning fuel filters out or getting the air out of the fuel line. They talk about the problems and how they solved them, rather than opining how “You shouldn’t do this or that, you should spend as much money on the problem as you can and move on…” (which is really all I get from the vast majority of the forums out there).

What this whole thing comes down to is my own list of “skills” I have compiled. My skills are more important to me than to anyone else. And no one’s skills are more IMPORTANT THAN MINE. I need my skills to get by. I can use others’ if they are part of the crew. If not, they are useless to me. Everything on my list I can ‘check off’ as something I have learned about ON MY OWN now. I either knew or had the skills already when I started down this road or I have taken the time to purchase a text book and study it. Granted I’m a bit slow on diesel mechanics (but I have enough information to train myself and all that I need is the “hand-on” or “on-the-job” training to make use of the knowledge).

I can’t say I am an “accomplished” sailor. I’m not. I’m a novice. I’ll remain a novice until I am not a novice. I don’t know when that will be, I don’t know what will cause it to happen. But when it does, I will know it. But the day is fast approaching when I’ll be leaving Colorado for good… and every single, last skill I’ve collected has gotten me there and will get me through the next part of the journey.

————————————————————

Just for the heck of it… here’s a partial list, in no particular order and with no connected explanation. This is not an all-inclusive list, nor in any particular order, but it’s what I’ve learned I need to know thus far. I’m sure I don’t know it all. Your lists may vary. It’s not something you SHOULD do. This is what I have learned and am still learning:

Cruising “Skills”

Keeping log books

Shopping lists
Preventive Maintenance lists
To DO Maintenance lists
Daily chores
Inspections of engine, plumbing, riggings (standing and running) etc
Tracking what has been done and what hasn’t

Electrical Skills

Lighting
Navigation lights
Anchor lights
Cabin lighting
Wiring
Power calculations
Power panel wiring
Solar Power
Wind generator
Alternator (engine)
Inverters
Radio systems (VHF, HF)
Antennas and the connections to the radios
Antenna couplers (tuning units)
Stereo systems and speakers
Computers
Windlass
Miscellaneous electrical systems

Mechanical skills

Diesel engine
fuel
fuel lines
air cleaners
water pumps
oil/oil changes
two-stroke engines
gas engine mechanics

Plumbing

Fresh water pumps
Salt water pumps
Head

Fishing

fishing
fish
lobster
crab
other food

Overall general seamanship skills

Anchoring skills
Weather patterns
weather forecasting
heavy weather sailing skills
Sailing
Safety
Marlingspike
Rigging skills
Rigging repair
Voyage planning
Celestial Navigation
Sextant use
GPS Navigation
Dead reckoning
Chart reading skills
Plotting courses
Plotting fixes
Knot log
Bearings
Navigation
Lead line/depth finding

Emergency repairs

stopping leaks
repairing hull
rigging
sails
anchor and rode
preparing for storms in anchorage and during a passage

Foreign Travel Skills

Clearing in and out
Dealing with foreign offices
Keeping records
Weapons aboard (or not)

Shipboard Management

Galley
Plumbing
Fuel
Safety
Security
Water supply/collection
Propane

Communications

email (Pactor)
weather faxes (Fax programs)
Ham Radio
Marine SSB
VHF
How to call for help
When NOT to call for help

Business and Bureaucracy (and things to have/keep on vessel)

USCG documentation
business/boat cards
ham radio QSL cards
ship’s papers
passports
legal documents
birth certificates
marriage certificate
boat insurance certificate
International shot records
radio licenses
extra passport photos
ship’s stamp
medical prescriptions (if required)
Banking/cash/credit cards
telephones
bills
deposits
mail
taxes

Safety

Rules of the road
Avoiding collisions
Reading buoys/signs
Flare guns/flares
Deck safety (harnesses, PFDs, Jack lines etc)
Personal self defense (and not getting into positions of requiring said self defense)

Leaving boat/miscellaneous

rowing/oars
sculling
dinghy sailing
kedging/setting second anchors

Colorado

26 April, 2013 by RickD

We moved here in N0vember 1989 on a whim. We had five children and I left my military career to start a business in Colorado with some friends.

We bought a house and I got a “temporary” job in my normal field of electronics and radios. The business never worked out, the first job didn’t work out and we struggled to keep our home; but we did. I rejoined the military as a Reservist to finish my 20 years (I did 26 years total with the military). In the mean time I have been a teacher, electronics technician, computer systems administrator and a “security engineer” (unlike “sanitation engineer” this doesn’t mean I do “security” and I’m not a “security guard” – instead I use my electronics skills and other skills to maintain an electronic security system and keep the customers happy.

JoAnne didn’t really “work”; she was “just a mom” – a phrase which I am sure pisses off a lot of moms. Moms are some of the hardest working people on the planet. They are cooks, finance managers, taxi drivers, food provisioners and do many, many other jobs that those of us who do not stay home with the kids on a daily basis have no clue about. JoAnne has worked in fast food restaurant management and retail sales now for many years.

Both of us are tired of working for someone else, spending so much time apart and so much money taken from us in taxes to pay for those who live on the “Government dole” After thirty seven years of working for the government and having them take and take and take from us, we’re tired of giving.

In our nearly twenty five years here in Colorado we’ve lived in the same house–a record for both of us now, to have lived in one house, in one city, in one state for so long a time. We made friends and lost friends, had many jobs, climbed mountains, camped by lakes, traveled the Western United States from here. Our children were raised for the most part in this home in which we live.

Last night it suddenly hit me, even after planning and working for the past five years to accomplish our goal, that we were actually about to accomplish our goals.

We have an incredible view of the mountains and a pretty house. Over the years we let a lot of maintenance things slip simply because we were both working long hours or just too tired to do much when we got home. I suspect we’re both going to miss that view of Pikes Peak out the back windows, sitting in the hot tub as the sun sets on Friday nights having a glass of mead or a beer, chocolate covered strawberries and awaiting the stars to begin twinkling.

A lot of memories are in that house, some good, some bad, but they are our memories and the good part is we can keep those memories.

Our children are all grown up, moved away; they all still live here in Colorado and have their own children and lives to live now. We think that none of them want us to leave because they will miss us and yet they all have come to accept the fact we’re going. JoAnne and I have accepted that we’re starting a new life now one where we will count on each other even more than we ever have. A life that will, if we do things right grant us vistas that will rival the view of the mountains out the back yard. This life will have dangers and it will have it’s moments of safety.

We plan to leave this life of working constantly and just enjoy the years we have left together.

When we first came up with the idea of moving to a sailboat and cruising around the world or just to some foreign port there was a little trepidation. Though we are both world travelers now and can handle “culture shock” and not speaking the language we do get along well with people and enjoy traveling so putting the two things together was perhaps more difficult in our minds than it will be in fact.

I don’t think either of us is quite ready for an offshore passage yet, but we’re ready to try it. In the coming months we have to sell our home — with luck that process will start in less than a couple of weeks when the finishing work is competed. After that the next part of the process is locating the boat that is right for us to begin our travels. Once we do that we still have a long journey to “get there”. We have to fit out the boat, use it and practice sailing some more, get used to the “Rules of the Road” again (been some time since we were on the ocean now) and we have to plan our first few months out. Many cruisers will tell you not to plan too far in advance and we do understand this, but we want at least to know where we’re starting and have an idea where we need to be in hurricane seasons and winters now.

We are going to miss Colorado but we will probably be too busy to miss it much. Our grand children are another story. We will miss them immeasurably.

Thought of the day

25 April, 2013 by RickD

I’ll post a “Thought for the Day” over there——–>

Most likely it’ll be sailing related… or it won’t.

Windsoftime.US

23 April, 2013 by RickD

We own the domain name “Windsoftime.US” so I’ve pointed the blog/DNS etc at one another.

Thus now when you want to come to our site you don’t have to remember any of the wordpress crap, or any long names etc.

Just enter the following (and then bookmark it) http://windsoftime.us and you’re here! (or there if you’re coming from Facebook or some other place)

And the Winner is….

23 April, 2013 by RickD

You will all note that the name of this blog is called “Winds of Time”.

The first boat we owned was “Winds of Change” and the dinghy was “Small Change”. The names Winds of Change and Time come from a Jimmy Buffett song, “Growing Older but not Up” which positively describes me to a T and JoAnne perhaps to a lesser extent. We chose the name of our first boat from that song, Winds of Time.

Now, I know that boat names in some persons’ opinions should radiate femininity, or at least a female sounding name. I also know (and to a small degree believe) the name should be short, easy to pronounce and to be able to phonetically SAY over the radio. The name should be as UNIQUE as possible. There are those who think three names or two names on a vessel is too many, and you didn’t use enough brainpower to come up with it. I disagree. But, I’ll talk about that again shortly.

We had kind of decided for ourselves many moons back that since our first boat was “Winds of Change” the second would be “Winds of Time” and we kept that idea in our heads, thus this blog’s name. However, awhile back we were discussing lists of names and the type of boat we’re getting, where we’re planning to go and our previous travels. We decided that no matter what the boat name would be, the blog’s name wouldn’t change.

So we came up with a long list of names, probably close to one hundred names, things like names of ancient gods and goddesses, animals, stars, planets and constellations. One in particular was the name of a space station which has figured prominently in a series of books that I am working on, Estrellita – Little Star in Spanish.

About 3-4 weeks ago we decided to have a vote. Family, some friends and some internet friends we have known for some years. I opened a poll on a web site I help to run and let the folks there vote, and on a private Facebook family page we held a separate vote.

I kept a running tally on the voting on a spread sheet and at the end of the final eight names we’d chosen for the poll, we were to come up with the top three names; run a secondary vote to decide the top name.

Things didn’t work out that way.

We came up with two very clear leaders out of all the names we’d chosen originally, pared down the last eight names.

There are a hand full of “Third Place” holders and therefore, today JoAnne and I have decided that the CLEAR winner will be the name of the boat when we finally pick her out and purchase her. The first runner up will become the name of our Dinghy.

Let me explain why. Many of our friends and people we’ve read state categorically that naming your dinghy after the mother-ship is a clear indication for opportunistic thieves to visit your floating home while you’re away. In other words naming a boat “Susie” and then dinghy “Susie II” or any other combination that might indicate your absence from home is an invitation. So, being that the two names are significantly removed from one another, that gave us this idea.

The final Eight Names Chosen from the original 100 were:

Dreamweaver
Estrellita
Horizons
Marielee
MaryJean
Seastar
Serenity
Winds of Time

The final tally placed “Seastar” dead last.

Next from the bottom was “Marielee” and “Maryjean”. Both names derived from our daughters’ names and our mom’s names respectively. (Sorry Ladies; but as they say it IS the thought that counts.)

The names that got the next number of votes each were, “Dreamweaver”, “Estrellita” and “Horizons”, each a good name for a vessel; but not our vessel.

As I was stating earlier the name of a vessel is important to the owners, one hopes. The boat name SHOULD say something about the owners, the vessel and her travels; or at least intended travels. JoAnne and I have no intention of sitting in a slip or hanging out on some dock all the time. We intend to travel, far and wide, visit the haunts of Pirates, islands and beaches; thus the boat must suit us to take us around the coasts as well as cross the seas. A boat name should reflect our lives, our love of life and our character as well as perhaps our hobbies. We are both science fiction readers, and travelers. We’ve traversed the US several times, as well as traveled in Europe and Asia. We’re not really “stay at home types” though we did it for our children.

So, without making you wait any longer…. the top two names were (Drum Roll please) were:

In Second Place: “Serenity”

In First Place: “Winds of Time”

Funny how that worked out. This was the name we originally chose for our cruising boat; and yet gave almost one hundred other names the chance and still, the name with three words came in first.

With ONE small caveat the new boat when purchased will be re-christened to “Winds of Time” and the dinghy will be named “Serenity”.

Here’s the caveat; if we locate a boat, probably older, bigger and already a “successful” cruiser that has “made a name for herself” – and is possibly a well-know boat, we might not change from that name and the “Winds of Time” will likely go back into the name bucket for next time.

However, if we pick up a boat with no name, or a name that is dumb, stupid or even unpronounceable (like many are to me) then we’ll do a renaming ceremony.

As to the Dinghy. When we buy the boat, if there is one, we’ll use that boat, but the first opportunity I get, I’m building our dinghy. I already have the plans for it, know what it will be like and how long she will be. She will be a wooden two piece nestable dinghy that can be sailed and row. Thus she WILL get the name “Serenity” (not the “comes with the mother ship dinghy” dinghy).

Thanks to all our kids and their spouses and our friends who chose to vote on the names. A special thanks goes to my good friend Ryan Ruck in Ohio for coming up with the name “Serenity” and congrats Ryan that your choice came in second! ( I know he’s a rabid Firefly Fan so good on him!) haha

Thanks to my dear Lady JoAnne for putting up with my incessant bothering over this for the past few weeks too.

Finishing Work

22 April, 2013 by RickD

Dad used to tell me “When you do a job, don’t do it half-assed”. My wife has accused me of “never finishing” (or rarely finishing projects) – so I suppose I didn’t listen to my dad in that case.

When we started working on the house we knew we were going to be spending a lot of money. We budgeted what we thought we would need then went through and did a quick calculation of what it was going to take (give or take a couple thousand). Since we had the funds in the bank, in cash and could spend it we considered all the ways we could either sell the house quickly or get the top dollar out of it.

Given that the house will only get us “what the market will bear” is something that has weight heavily on me since we started. I have been doing a lot of the work, but we hired contractors to do some as well, like rebuild a bathroom and add carpet. As it turns out after researching things and weighing the cost of flooring versus carpeting we decided to go with oak hardwood flooring, new carpets in the four – soon-to-be, five bedrooms (another thing we had the contractors do). Essentially we wound up having a bathroom remodeled, a closet added to JoAnne’s old office, new hardwood floor and some minor electrical.

Over the past three months I’ve personally rebuilt plumbing, installed new electrical fixtures (lights, switches, plugs, new covers, etc), hung bedroom and closet doors, laid tile, grouted tile, painted everything in sight, breathed fumes from paint, hammered my left thumb, index finger and wrist (don’t ask how I did that), dropped a door on my foot, cut open both hands–twice. I’ve climbed up and down the ladder roughly five hundred times and crawled the length of the house ripping out old carpet, tack strips and nails, then started repeating the process to re-install the floorboard trim. I’ve installed new door knobs, painted doors and missed a bunch of small spots I’m going to have to go back and touch up.

Last night I finished the kitchen – except the trim, which I will complete tonight giving me a roughly 1/10 or 10% completion of the project. hahaha

Tonight the kitchen will be completed. We only have to move the new fridge in and mount the new microwave to say “It is 100%”.

However, this weekend we accomplished putting trim in two bedrooms, JoAnne and our daughter Kristy painted the kitchen with “Kilz” because it was pink (JoAnne always wanted a pink kitchen. I’m NOT letting her paint the galley pink on the boat though so don’t worry) and I did the rest of the painting yesterday for the kitchen.

Basically, if I had to put a real and honest “percentage completed” on this we actually have all of the upstairs bedrooms “finished” except the trim. Minor repairs in the master bedroom. A full “cleaning” in the upstairs bathroom. One linen closet door to be installed, and a patch of carpet for the front room closet.

The basement needs both sets of closet doors in the bedrooms completed – I have one set left to hang and adjust and the other set to adjust so they swing correctly. The bathroom in the downstairs needs the toil installed and the sink and vanity installed.

And I have perhaps a few small jobs to repair or patch things and touch up painting, and nearly all the electrical sockets and switches upstairs and down.

But JoAnne said it best when she said, “Hey, we’re FINISHING jobs now, not starting them”

I’d give us perhaps an 89% to 92% completion score on the projects.

My son has promised to come over and work on the yard when the weather improves… (Let me see, first snow was October 2012, and we’re expecting snow tonight on 22 April 2013: That’s six months of winter so I figure we will have perhaps 3 days this summer when the weather will “improve”.)

Our “May 1st” shoot day is still in the picture – I have one full weekend and 9 total evenings to complete the following:

Trim the rest of the rooms
Install new plugs and switches

Touch up the paint

Paint the doors

—— Ok, we might get finished about 10 May(ish) – we’ll see

Either way, we are still hitting our “Month of May” shoot day to find a realtor.

Dinghy for sale

9 April, 2013 by RickD

Alrighty then; the dingy was sold on Friday.

So, Winds of Change is gone, and so too now is “Small Change”.

http://cosprings.craigslist.org/boa/3731292858.html

CL > colo springs > all for sale / wanted > boats – by owner

jgjrm-3731292858@sale.craigslist.org^[?]

Posted: 2013-04-08, 3:20PM MDT

Walker Bay 8′ dinghy / sailboat – $800 (Colorado Springs)

This boat has been used as a sailboat dinghy and for local lake sailing in Colorado as well as just rowing and sailing on the lakes.The dinghy has a full sailing ring, rudder and other equipment to sail the boat. It is also equipped with oar locks, oars and flotation (to keep the boat floating if you tip her over). The transom is set up to allow for a small (2 hp engine MAX) or an electric trolling motor for fishing. It comes with a grapnel anchor, anchor rode (nylon), bailing bucket, all the standing rigging, mast and boom for sailing. There is a home built carriage to move the boat around though it is light enough for a person to lift alone. (Weighs about 75 pounds or so). There is a dagger board for sailing. A plug for the slot when the boat is being rowed or used in a configuration other than a sailing boat. There is a cover as well.

If you need a small lightweight fishing boat, a small sailing dinghy or just want a row boat this is the boat for you. Sorry, the sailing rig, boat and all parts go together, will not separate them. The price is firm. This boat new costs $900 and the sailing rig another $900.

If you’re interested, call to speak to me at 719-310-7576 any time after 3PM on Weekdays until 7:30 PM. All day on weekends after 0800.

Do NOT Text my phone as text messages will be ignored. Contact via voice. Serious inquiries only.

Location: Colorado Springs
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Posting ID: 3731292858

Posted: 2013-04-08, 3:20PM MDT

email to a friend

April Blizzard – Colorado, 2013

9 April, 2013 by RickD

Ok, it was kind of a fizzle. I got to work at 0610 this morning and unsecured my area, walked across to Security to get some water for my coffee pot and they told me “They just closed the base”. I hung around another couple hours waiting for the snow and watching the radar. When it appeared it was a few miles south of me headed north I decided to leave (before the bus service quit, I was having trouble walking in the 50 knot winds).

So home I came. It ended up blowing HARD. 60 knot gusts here. Geez. But the snow that was promised never really amounted to more than a light dusting and it couldn’t stay on the ground because the wind would whip it back in the air for its further trip where ever snow ends up when blown by 60 knot winds….

I didn’t waste a snow day though. I cut and fitted a whole bunch of doors’ casements – the trim that goes around the inside and outside. I finished the three upstairs bedrooms and the bath room door. I haven’t finished the inner bathroom door because I need to do some other work on the wall in there before I can put up the trim. I did get two frames mostly painted. Need to remove the doors to finish the frame and paint the doors. I’ll do that another day.

It’s been a long day (driving 20 miles to work in 50-60 knot winds and then back home again, then to the hardware store and back and working on those doors). I’m getting closer to being done with them though. Woot!

A couple hours per night ought to get me finished this week with the trim work, then I can start on the baseboards. /sigh

The contractors haven’t contacted me in almost two weeks, and they haven’t finished the job. The basement shower isn’t completed yet, I’ve done more work than they have pulling the carpets, installing doors, painting every room in the house (with the help of JoAnne, Kristy and Carlos). They have the closet finished at least, but haven’t move the light fixture yet.

I still owe them a pretty huge chunk of money… so I figure they will call me someday, lol.

Hopefully it will be by this weekend. I’d REALLY like to have that bathroom finished so I can do the work I need to do upstairs. (Got to have a functional bathroom, I’m not going to start using a bucket in the house, that’s for boats).

I suppose I should call them, but if they are not going to finish the work, I’m not finishing paying them. Oh well…..

Every joint in my body is aching from lifting, stretching, climbing up and down, hammering, sawing (all by hand by the way), ripping out the carpets and so on. Oh yeah, so do most of my muscles ache. And I’m in pretty decent shape for an old guy.

The worst thing though about all this work is my hands. They are so bloody dry I can sand wooden boards with them… lol

They are getting cracked and sore too. I feel like I’ve been running a marathon without actually running haha. In effect we have been, both JoAnne and I. We haven’t stopped except for one evening off in about two solid months. We come home from work and kick into high gear on some project. Then I get up at 0500 and go to work, come home about 1500 and keep going usually until she gets home around 1830. She went into work today (they didn’t close the Air Force Academy, but did close Schriever) and should be getting off work in about 15 minutes.

I haven’t even thought about dinner. I stopped working about 15 or 20 minutes ago.

Think it’s time for some hot tea… or some rum. heh

More doors….

7 April, 2013 by RickD

I installed all the upstairs doors today (except the linen closet) – so five more doors. Two bathroom, two bedroom and the front room closet.

The last bedroom door took me all of about 10 minutes. I guess I got better at putting them in.

Now I have to paint all the trim – not today, ack, I’m sore. Tomorrow probably and install that around the doors. I’ll stop and get my trim nails and most of the baseboard material tomorrow on the way home from work and then start painting as much as I can.

Should take me about 30-60 minutes per door frame – so about 9 doors right now. I haven’t started the other closets yet so – a few more after that. Should take me about 3-5 more days to get all the doors accomplished. I have to cut some dry wall and patch the linen closet (they had a regular door on it and we’re replacing all the closet doors with the same type, bi-fold 6 panel doors).

Also installed all the new hardware on the doors, door knobs etc.

Installed some light fixtures today as well.

The trash company is sorely upset with us…. we have been putting out significantly more trash than normal and they called to complain. 🙂 I told them last week was the “last week”. I think I lied to them. I’ll give them a break and then fill up as much as I can again. I’m going to have to load the carpet in the truck though and take it to the dump. I don’t want to mess with that crap again.

If I EVER have another house (unlikely at this point) I will NEVER put carpet in it. Carpet is nasty, gross and collects every piece of dander, dirt, dust, cat and dog hair and who knows what kind of living critters are down in there. Yuk!

Left to do…

Door trim. Floor trim. Paint touchup in some of the rooms, patching in a basement bedroom, some more light fixtures, install sink, vanity and toilet in the downstairs bathroom, install all the rest of the closet doors, repair the upstairs bathroom, repair the master bedroom window drywall, replace all the plugs, switches and covers and clean the yards up.

End of April, or first week of May I ought to be mostly completely.

Last thing is get rid of all the junk we collected into one place in the basement. Garage sale I guess.

Doors, levels and wedges, oh my!

6 April, 2013 by RickD

I have managed to hang one door in the house. The carpenter that was working on the basement showed me how (I’ve hung doors before, but they were heavy wooden doors and not these lighter hollow core doors, so I figured it would be immensely easier). Watching the carpenter I saw just how simple it was.

Then I tried it on my own a few days later.

Apparently I missed a step or something. What took him less than three minutes took me four hours and eighteen minutes, five splinters, two smashed thumbs and I went through something like 15 shims (little wedges you use to level the door vertically and horizontally) – the carpenter used probably 8 or 9 at most. The door is hanging straight… but the nearly 1″ thick hardwood flooring that was installed made it difficult to get the door swinging correctly with the carpet.

I had to remove the bottom 1/4″ of the door.

I’ll have to go find a wood plane in my tools to make THAT part right again.

On the bright side I only have about four more of those doors to hang. The next couple shouldn’t be as difficult and the last one ought to be perfect.

Then there’s the twelve closet doors in the house (double doors in five bed rooms, front room closet and the linen closet….) – I hope they are simpler… ack.

Winds of Change is sold

3 April, 2013 by RickD

Our little 25′ Macgregor Venture sold a couple weeks back. She went to a new owner who has similar plans as us, to learn to sail and eventually get on a bigger boat in the isalnds. We wish him all the best and Fair Winds.

Phew!

3 April, 2013 by RickD

Rebuilding a house from the inside out is, I suppose not unlike rebuilding a boat from the keel up. Either way you start with what’s left of the hulk and replace every plank and joint until you’re left with a brand new vessel (or house) withe sameq name (or address).

Over the past few weeks nearly everything in the house has been removed, replaced or rebuilt. I’m about to start hanging new doors tomorrow evening after work.

JoAnne, Kristy and Carlos painted most of the rooms while I prepped, painted ceilings, sanded patches in drywall, removed electrical covers and carpets. New hardwood flooring is installed, newer appliances in the kitchen, plumbing for the rebuilt basement bathroom, new tile in the rec room and JoAnne’s now former office has become a fifth bedroom. The outside was painted in the fall and a new roof went up in September. As of 1 March new windows have been installed as well.

We are gambling on a fast sell soon… and with a little luck will be on the market in May.

The Trade winds are calling!

As soon as we sell we’ll pick our retirement date and give notice at our jobs.

Caribbean, here we come!

Why am I becoming a Cruiser?

19 March, 2013 by RickD

My dear, sweet wife and I have spent the last five years getting ready. My mother had a saying that I remember from when I was a little kid. I once asked mom when she was going to make some cupcakes or cookies or other equally sweet treat while she was reading. She looked up at me and said, “Well, soon…” and I persisted. She replied, “Ok, I’m fixin’ to begin to commence to start, I’ll let you know when they are done.”

I happily went on my way thinking I’d convinced mom to get those treats done. Several hours later I wandered back into the house and didn’t smell cookies baking. I was disappointed, but I started to learn about patience. I’m still learning patience today. In fact, I’m to the point where I don’t yell and scream at the bozo in front of me on the street that’s going 20 miles under the speed limit. I might cuss him under my breath now, but I don’t yell as much out loud as I used to do. My wife however says I still have none. But I do…..

It has taken every ounce of patience to get to where we are today, five long, tough years of sticking to our written plan. Getting our bills paid off, getting “off the credit card dole” (you all know that free money the government is using day in and day out that they don’t have? We don’t have to worry about OUR credit cards now, only the government’s credit!) We have been putting away money, close to 20% of our monthly income. That money is being used to update and upgrade our home so we can sell the old place. We have nearly a new house from the “keel up”. New windows, new flooring, new paint inside and out, new gutters, new bathroom, new carpet, new doors and frames, new trim and new tile in the basement family area. We even have newer appliances in the kitchen. Last year a new hot tub went in, and I replaced most of the deck boards. We added a closet to JoAnne’s office (we called it a Library) in the basement so we now have five bedrooms in the house.

The “Plan” has come almost to completion. The next step is to put the house on the market which seems to be picking up in our area, cross out fingers and hope we can get the best price given the market. The step after that…. we’re a little unclear about. We have been flexible about everything and we will be flexible about all our future plans. We might move in temporally with our daughter, or we might pick up a small camper trailer and put that at the daughter’s place to keep us out of their hair, then we might keep it at our own home while it’s on the market and just move in there for during the selling process (it is, after all nearly spring, except for the cold winds here in Colorado in mid March….sigh) or we might get the home sold fast!

We have several options though. Patience is proving to be virtue. But, the following story explains why I’m becoming a cruiser. In the “real world” where we live day in and day out you take things as they come. In the cruising world (which I have barely sampled thus far) I have already noticed you can simply ignore people when they are really getting on your nerves. You don’t feed the animals, as they say, or the trolls (on the internet) because if you do, they get bigger, stronger and more powerful. I totally forgot that lesson somewhere along the way. The guy below is why I am becoming a cruiser. Just to prove him wrong.

In the middle of all this a few weeks ago a colleague asked me about our plans. He thought that perhaps I was clueless and couldn’t answer his questions I think. Throughout the last five years my wife and I have gladly answered questions about what we’re planning. We even went against some very good advice to “keep quiet, don’t tell anyone, they will try to ruin it for you!” due to, we assume jealousy, or just wanting to be party poopers. I’ve never been one to let people poop on my party though, so we’ve continued to say “We will do this and that, we have a plan, and things are coming together”. I guess no one warned me about the Perpetual Party Pooping Pessimist though. Usually when someone asks what can be perceived as a “dumb question” one continues on and answers the question because for many years I was told “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.” Unfortunately, this isn’t true, and I just didn’t know that it wasn’t true, I believed the rhetoric!

The following individual spent the ten minutes we were talking not asking me questions, but telling me all the ways I would fail. His initial question was, “Hey, I heard you plan to retire to a boat! How’s that going?”

When I started to tell him, I couldn’t even finish a sentence before he would tell me how it wasn’t going to work. For instance, I said, “Well, things are going good. We got rid of all our bills!”

He responded with, “Well, you can’t really do that, there’s always going to be bills. You have to pay for internet, cable, telephones, electricity, water, gas and there’s your mortgage!”

“I’m selling the house; I won’t have a mortgage, electric or cable bills or water or gas bills. I won’t even have to pay property taxes then…,” he interrupts me before I can finish the thought or statement.

“Of course you’ll pay property taxes; you are buying a YACHT after all! Those are expensive and you have either saved a lot of money which I doubt with YOUR job or you’re embezzling it,” he says.

“Embezzling? What?” the whole idea of paying property taxes on an “expensive yacht” was missed by me completely with the accusation.

“You have to have a house someplace, where you going to live????”

“On a boat,” I calmly tell him.

“You can’t live on a boat in the United States; you have to have an address! You have to pay your taxes! You have to have a domicile! That’s a law or something… isn’t it?”

“I’m not really sure it’s a law,” I say working desperately to maintain my ‘patience’. Before I could say anything else, he interrupted again.

“So you’re going to just jump on a boat and sail to some Caribbean Islands? You’re going to LIVE on a boat? Does your wife go along with this? I mean, what about Pirates!” he tries a new tack. He’s on my starboard side, I’ve got the right-of-way I think so I stand on.

“It was my wife’s idea. There’s no pirates in the Caribbean save the occasional thief…”

“Your wife’s idea, I can’t believe that. And you’re going to go along with this? What about sharks?”

“Sharks?” I question.

“Sure, are you sure she’s not just trying to do you in? Feed you to the sharks for the insurance money?”

“What insurance money?” I ask.

“NO INSURANCE?! How can you not have life insurance? That’s like a sin or something, and I think there’s a law that covers that too!”

“I think you’re thinking of Obamacare. I won’t have that either,” I stamp my foot, clench my fists now.

“Well, there’s another thing? How are you going to pay for the new healthcare laws, you have to pay your fair share!?”

Finally, defeated, my patience gone and my forearm muscles cramping because of the fist-clench I smile at him in a psychotic sort of wild eyed grin and say, “I’m not. I’m taking all my guns with me, collecting the worst dregs of humans I can and we’ll be raiding the whole coast of Florida, writing Spanish graffiti all over every dock to make them think Spanish pirates are alive and well. I’ll just murder those old people and take their EBT cards, their welfare checks, and I’ll steal the fuel from hapless vessels I will hull with my cannons and machine guns. I’ll take all the women and put them to work in the galley so my wife and do her job of cutting the balls off of every man that asks a stupid question of me again! YARRRRR!” I yell into his face.

He just grinned and said, “You can’t carry guns on a boat! There’s an international law against it! Those old ladies don’t have EBT cards. They live on their pensions…. And I don’t think anyone will believe there are Spanish pirates in the Caribbean… and where did YOU get a machine gun anyway?”

I finally rolled by eyes and walked away. I guess even a cynic can’t remember when he contradicts himself.

Yeah, patience is a virtue. He’s still alive… for now. Until I get the cannons…. YARRRR!

The truth is I want to get away from the rat race and people like that, I want to spend the rest of my life at a slower pace. Driving at 60 or sailing at 6 knots is an option I can ill afford to pass up. Considering all of the problems and learning curve that went with learning to sail (and of course I’ve only just learned it a few years ago – you continue learning for the rest of your life I’ve found out) it is still going to be less difficult on my blood pressure dealing with mechanical issues, weather windows and lumpy seas than it will dealing with the guy from the foregoing conversation. The conversation happened almost exactly as related above. The problem is this person does exist in various maturation stages. He exists about individual rights. He exists where it comes to controlling other people.

This particular person I’ve found over time is a very vehement anti-gun person. He apparently is hateful of those he perceives as “wealthy”. Knowing that he makes more money than me (and he knows this simply because of our job types, I’m a maintenance-worker-electronics type and he’s a thinking-scientist-type who got his degree in some big school while I spent thirty years in college never actually finished a degree; especially not a liberal arts degree) makes him “better than me”. He can neither afford to retire early, nor would he ever consider doing it on a “boat”. He has this belief that I’ll be on some house boat hanging my laundry on the clothes line and out putting my (hard earned I’ll add) savings in some “offshore bank” avoiding paying “my fair share”.

The truth is a person like this knows nothing at all about guns. He knows less about yachts. He knows even less about the Constitution. He certainly knows nothing of freedoms and individual liberties and believes that the individual exists to SERVE his government, to pay his ‘fair share’ so the rest can live instead of understanding that it was people like me, serving in the military that gave him the right to be a complete moron.

Dad used to tell me that you can be the most well-read (Book-learned he called them) person in the world but without “horse sense” (the phrase Dad used to indicate “common sense”) you were dumber than a rock. If you couldn’t put that Horse Sense to work and think out a problem with or without book-learnin’ then you were worthless as a person. Dad used to put us to the test all the time. Without teaching us something, he’d ask us to try. When we didn’t get it right, he’d walk us through it simply and carefully explaining how to come to a solution, all without teaching us the nuts and bolts of the problem.

Years later when I became a teacher (and still believed in “No such thing as a dumb question”) I used that same technique to train people to troubleshoot. They had a minimal knowledge of a radio for instance and I’d work on them, getting them to think through what they knew and what was happening, even to guess (accurately usually) what might be happening to a signal. Once they got the hang of a very simple circuit or a problem, the solution came easily.

My “friend” was a guy who could not, or would not for some reason even listen to a response before moving to the next question and impressing upon me just what a problem I’m going to have counting on myself “out there”. I’ve had similar conversations with him about the same subject and it occurred to me that these Perpetual Party Pooping Pessimists don’t really CARE if you explain the answer, help them figure out the solution, or just give them answer. They want it their way, they want to be right all the time and they don’t give a crap what YOU want or if you have figured out the solution.

I suppose they are even in the cruising community (I know they are, I’m not kidding myself, I’ve met them on bulletin board systems, forums, in chat rooms and email. They are the same folks I know I’m trying to get away from. Here at work, daily, driving around me, in the grocery store, I have to put up with them with a smile, or make them leave me alone with the “crazy look”. Out there, they are dangerous people.

When my patience wears thin, I have to remember I rely on no one but myself and my wife, and she relies on herself and me. We’re a team and we’ve been one for over thirty-five years now. We get along and see eye-to-eye on almost everything (except politics, which we aren’t taking with us). We will both smile and move along when we run into those people.

So… why am I becoming a cruiser? I’m doing it to get away from the Rat Race, to live life on MY terms, to count on ME, to do or die. That’s why.

The Five Year Plan

5 February, 2013 by RickD

It’s already February 2013. This is Year Five of the “Five Year Plan”. We had one goal this year, to sell the house.

We’ve spent the last few weeks emptying it, selling things, throwing things out. I’m trying to clean stuff, but have a cold today. We’ve had two realtors in to look things over. Not sure about that yet.

We have been talking to contractors – we need one bathroom rebuilt from scratch, another refurbished, and the kitchen floor tiles redone, painting, doors, trim, etc.

As soon as that crap.. I mean as soon as we accomplish that, we can put the house on the market haha.

Once we sell… we are gone.

Jeep sold. If anyone knows someone that wants a smaller sailboat, she’s for sale too. We need to get rid of that boat soon. I don’t want to have to GIVE it away – and I won’t drop the price much under what it is, I’ll donate it before I will do that.

Troy Donaldson, my Father

22 September, 2012 by RickD

Dad passed away on the 15th of September. He was born on 6 Feb 1936. We were called last May to come visit because he was ill and in the hospital. JoAnne and I drove to Michigan on an emergency basis, taking emergency leave from both our jobs to get there. We visited with him over a few days and he was improving slightly. My brothers and sister all showed up along with many other family members to pay their respects and well wishes to him.

On my last day before we had to head back to Colorado I had a 15 or 20 minute private conversation with him, just him and me. It was his wish that he be left to his own body… in other words, he knew he was ill and wasn’t going to live much longer. He told me a few things; told me he was proud of me for my own life’s work (such as it is) and told me that retiring early was the BEST thing in the world and he should have done it as well.

He cared very deeply for his family and knew they cared for him, especially his wife, Gail. He wanted me to make sure before I left that Sherry and myself worked with her to ensure she was going to be “all right” when his time came. That was around the end of May this year, 2012.

I told Dad he was my childhood hero and I wished that he could have been Superman in disguise and live forever. He laughed and said, “No one lives forever. None of us. We can only live as long as God lets us stay here” and wished me a long and healthy life myself. Told me to get back to Colorado and make sure I completed my plans to head out cruising. Said it would probably add 10 or 20 years to a person’s life.

He wanted his kids to be happy, healthy and grow up to be intelligent and wise. He said that for the most part we’d accomplished what he hoped for us.

When I discussed coming back for his funeral, he laughed and said, “I’m probably going to be cremated – you remember me how I was, not how I am now. I hate being weak and unable to get up and move around on my own any more. This kind of life is NOT for me any more. Don’t waste money trying to get back up here and just remember me.”

When Bobbi Jo called (my Sister-in-Law, who was chosen to do the notifications) on Saturday morning Dad had passed about 10 minutes before her call. We were on our “Second Honeymoon” in South Padre Island, scheduled to depart on Monday. I wasn’t shocked, I expected it. But I was saddened because my father was there for me as a child as he should have been. He never came to Colorado to visit us, or to DC, or Virginia or even Oklahoma I suppose because that’s the way he was. He didn’t like trying too many new things and didn’t really like traveling all that much.

That’s ok, I got back to see him as often as money and time would permit. Most of the family was there when he passed, though I don’t think they were by his side. I understand only Gail was with him which is as it should have been. I’m glad we made it back to Michigan last May to visit with him and sorry we couldn’t get there in time for the Memorial service, but I understand it was good for family to get together to remember him.

Death is as much a part of life as children being born to a family. I’m confident now that me, my brothers and sisters have accomplished the most important thing, passing on our name, something that some families can’t do as the last of them die off.

Since my wife and I have raised five children and they’ve given us around thirteen grand children now, we have accomplished the most important thing to the family, passing on that name. It’s time for us to move on to the next and probably final stage of our own lives before death comes knocking at our doors.

I expect my Dad is in Heaven now, guarding the Pearly Gates for St. Peter, in his Marine’s Uniform. I hope my family can remember him, not as he was sick and weak in the hospital. The only thing left now is our pictures, and our memories and even they are fleeting things.

I posted this on Facebook the day he passed away. Thought I’d share it here:

My Father, Troy Donaldson passed from this world today. He was 76 years old. He lost two wives, my mother and his second wife Betty. He was married to Gail when he passed. He raised five children, one of those he survived, my dear sister Robin. Dad worked in a factory, as a trucker, wine delivery man, and drove a bus back in the mountains of Kentucky for doctors and nurses giving shots and examining the needy.

Dad’s most important job was as a United States Marine. But he went AWOL for a couple of days to marry my mother Jean. When he came back in he was slated to reenlist and stay in another few years. But they had to punish him for going AWOL. But, he chose to get married on the Marine Corps birthday, so they decided to let him finish out his term and get out. Busted him to the “Permanent Rank of PFC” (from Corporal and he was to be promoted to Sergent when he reenlisted).

Dad sometimes didn’t make great decisions, but at least marrying Mom was a good one… The number of grandkids proves that.

I know Gail is going through a lot right now, but our family loves her too. She’s not my mother, but she was dad’s third wife and Dad cared very much for her. I want her to know how much we will all miss him, right along with her and we support her and she can call on any of us if she needs us.

Dad taught me a lot of things – from how to lay concrete, to wood working, metal working and how to do a good job. He also taught me how to mess things up sometimes, but also taught me how to fix things. Until a few years ago I didn’t even realize how much he taught me.

He never said “Come here, let me show you this or that”. He just did things and made sure I was paying attention. If he yelled at me I deserved it. If I got a spanking as a child, I certainly had done something to probably have my ass kicked for. I learned either not to get caught being stupid, or more likely NOT to do something stupid.

Dad taught me how to fight. Mom didn’t want him to teach me that stuff. Dad said “I don’t want a son that can’t throw a punch, or not be able to defend himself.”

Dad had a black belt in karate but stopped practicing when I was a little kid. Dad was a SCUBA diver when I was a child. He lifted weights. He did a lot of other things I suppose my brothers and sisters won’t remember, being pretty young.

In short, my Dad was my main childhood hero. Oh I liked Superman, Neil Armstrong and the typical kid heroes, but Dad was my hero and he still is.

He taught me all I needed to get through life. He taught me to stand up and fight like a man, to love like a man, and to be an American.

Without Dad my life would have been… mundane, and I’d likely have ended up like so many other kids out on the street, hanging with gangs or whatever.

But because of my Father I’ve been blessed with fantastic sisters and brothers, I married my awesome wife, raised five children with her and now we’re blessed again with — so many grand children, thirteen now.

My friends – life is short. Dad was 76. I knew him for 55 years. My time on this world, if genetics holds up will only be another twenty or so years. With luck…. maybe 30. Who knows? Only God knows.

All of you, call your mom, your dad and your close relatives and wish them well, tell them you love them. Tell them you miss them when you do and go see them when you can. And for the love of God, enjoy life while you can.

Good bye dad. I love you.

My Father

Winds of Change

22 September, 2012 by RickD

The Winds of Change are blowing… nope this isn’t a political rant for or against Obama… it’s about the Sailing Vessel “Winds of Change”.

We bought her in October 2008 after making a “Five Year Plan” to learn to sail, put away a lot of money, prep our house for sale and get ready to retire early to a life of cruising aboard a sailboat. The name of the boat is from a Jimmy Buffett song, “Growing older but not up” where he the winds of time and the winds of change blowing over his head.

At our point in life we’ve decided that a lot of time has blown over our heads and we’ve been in Colorado 23 years and raised our children, most of whom are now raising their own kids or doing their own thing. It time for my wife and I to move on. This is the longest either of us have ever lived in one place.

We both LOVE Colorado and the Mountains and the beautiful views. But the cold is starting to get to us. For the past five or six years it’s been getting worse and worse for my old bones. It’s time to move on and we have the Caribbean in our sights. The world is a strange and wonderful place, and dangerous so we’re undertaking this with full understanding how dangerous things can be, and just how much more of the world there is to see.

After visiting 49 countries myself, and JoAnne has something like a dozen under her belt now it’s time to see as much more as we can before we pass from this planet.

We’re in the last year of our five year plan and everything, so far has gone well.
It’s not only satisfying, but amazing when a “Plan comes together”.

Our sailboat, Winds of Change is for sale.

I have two or three internet Ads up for the boat. But I’ll post some data here in case anyone reading is interested or others link here to get the data.

Macgregor Venture 25

Year: 1979
Length: 24′ 11″
Beam: 7′ 11″
Draft: 5′ 8″ with keel down, 18″ keel up (Swing keel)
Keel weight: 625 lb
Weight: 2300 lb
Engine: Evinrude 9.9 HP
Sail area: Approx 230 sq feet
2 anchors (Danforth, Hall)
100′ nylon rode per anchor, plus 30′ chain on each rode
Two burner propane stove (2010)
Porta-potty (2009)
IdaSailor kick-up rudder and tiller (2009)
Depth finder

$4000 or best offer. Please no texts to my cell, I won’t respond. If you want a good boat for the next sailing season, you’re learning or new to sailing then this is the boat you want. It served my wife and I very well for our learning phase. She’s ready for a new owner. There’s still sailing time left in Colorado this year. All pertinent information below.

Selling so we can purchase our long term cruising boat.

The interior wood has all been replaced. Blue bottom paint, red boot stripe. Standing rigging in excellent shape. Halyards and Jib sheets replaced in 2011 along with main sheet blocks. Bow mounted anchor bracket (for Danforth). Sails are older but work fine; Mainsail and working jib. Sail bag. Whisker pole. Boat hook. There is a gin pole and block and tackle to step the mast and I will teach new owner how to step mast and set up rigging. (It’s very easy to do.)

Interior white/red lights, new bow-mounted navigation lighting. AM/FM Stereo. Depth finder. Sleeps five in drop down table berth, Vee-berth and pilot berth. Two fire extinguishers, new life jackets, two 6 gal fuel tanks, life rings (2). Trailer tie down straps and other hardware. Cockpit cushions. Heel indicator (angle of heel). Wind direction indicator on mast. Interior flotation material in place in boat. Docklines and fenders.

Galley has sink, ice box, hand pump water faucet, and 2 gallon fresh water tank and gray water tank below sink. (We normally carry a 5 gallon tank for refilling on weekend trips) Two burner propane stove, mounted in galley. I have the manual for the Macgreor 25.

Boat on trailer ready to go sailing!

Vessel registered in Colorado.

This is fair warning… if you are interested in this boat the price just went to $4000 US dollars and I won’t lower the price again. If you think you might want her, better get here and look. I will donate the boat to a good cause before I will lower the price again. The vessel is worth more than I have been asking. But if we don’t sell the boat by the beginning of May I will DONATE it and you will lose your chance to get it.

Contact: Rick’s cell @ 719-310-7576 (3PM-7PM M-F, Anytime after 8AM Weekends until 8 PM) leave message if I don’t answer and I will return your call.

Honeymoon Photos

11 September, 2012 by RickD

Ok, not actually photos of our Honeymoon (which we didn’t get when we were married 35+ years ago, just some from the trip)

The Alamo:

Vow Renewal Ceremony photos

11 September, 2012 by RickD

Here’s some pictures from the ceremony:

Back Row, Left to Right: Nick, Becky, Rick, Patrick, Mike Sause, Carlos

Front Row and Sitting – Left to Right: JoAnne, Lucas, Kristy, Gabriel and Cassie

Not sure what Carlos said to Kristy, but…. it’s gonna be a long car ride to Texas now. lol

Marriage Vow renewal

11 September, 2012 by RickD

On Saturday 8 September 2012 JoAnne and I, our daughter Kristy and her husband Carlos renewed our marriage vows. Family and friends from Colorado, Missouri and as away far as South North Carolina. We had a wonderful ceremony written by my JoAnne, Kristy and Mike Sause a very good family friend who acted as our officiant.

Mike dressed in some of his old SCA robes as a Monk from about the 16th century to provide a very nice oration. The rest of us… were in a “beach theme”, white shirts, khaki pants, sandals. The “cake” was pretty awesome… it was a stack of cup cakes, each frosted and sprinkled with sand (graham crackers) and each topped with either a chocolate (white and dark) star fish or shell. The kiddies loved it. The aisle was lined with seashells and we had cookies that looked like little flip-flops. The table was decorated with a bunch of statues made and obtained on our several trips to Jamaica.

On Sunday morning we headed for Texas. Stopping on Sunday night at “Boerne” (pronounced “Bernie” by the locals). Monday morning it was San Antonio, the Alamo and the River Walk. We made it to the Condo about 1830 Monday evening. We’ve already been to the beach and it’s Tuesday. The vacation is going really, really quick. Bah. This morning the Beach…. on the Gulf side of the Island. Tomorrow we go aboard the “Black Dragon” for an evening pirate attack along the coast… More to follow….

Neil Armstrong

1 September, 2012 by RickD

As a young boy I had a handful of heroes. My Father who was a Marine and served in the Korean War. My other heroes in general, were astronauts. Any and all of them. In fact I was pretty geeky as a kid before that word came into normal usage and didn’t mean something creepy.

I was soooo into the space program that I recall creating my own “Astronaut Baseball Cards”. They didn’t sell them in the dime store, so I used to cut out pictures of the various astronauts and make up “stats” about them, like how many space walks they’d done, how many times they went into space, and crap like “How long they can hold their breath”. I think I made some of it up.

A few days ago, one of my childhood heroes died. Neil Armstrong was born on August 5th, 1930 – exactly 27 years to the day that I was born. Yup, I shared a birthday with him. Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon on 21 July 1969. He and “Buzz” Aldrin landed there on the 20th of July and I watched for days while they flew, landed, walked and lifted off to meet up with Michael Collins in Apollo 11.

Last night there was a “Blue Moon”…. a Blue moon I am sure any sailor reading will know, is the second full moon of the month and happens rather rarely. Yesterday was the day they buried Neil Armstrong. When they announced his death, it hit me pretty hard. I’ve never met the man, but I consider him a National Hero. He was one of those people who did great things and never bragged about it, never let it go to his head. He stood out from the crowd and avoided contact with the public and the media for most of the rest of his life. I don’t know enough about him to understand his thinking but he was humble, unafraid of the world I am sure. Anyone who can jump in a tiny speck of dust and fly to, and land on the moon, walk on it and come home in one piece is a person who is courageous, heroic and deserving of any praise applied to him, regardless of his own beliefs about himself.

Neil Armstrong, while not “quite” the hero I consider my father to be, or even my father-in-law (who served in World War II in the US Army) is still one of those men who come rarely to this Earth and even more rarely distinguish themselves as a pioneer, a hero and a person every child might aspire to be like.

The original Seven Astronauts were the first guys I made “Baseball cards” for…. and when Grissom died in Apollo Eight, I remember crying about him. I didn’t cry for Neil… But I pulled my car over for a moment. Below are the the original Seven Mercury Astronauts.

As a sailor I read a lot about the sailors of old, Cook, Columbus, Degama, Polo and so on. As an American born in the early 20th Century and having lived into the 21st century I sincerely expected our Astronauts would pioneer the way to Mars, a Lunar Colony and perhaps even land on an asteroid. But our political structure has thus far prevented such things.

To me, I guess I will leave it to the grandchildren and perhaps the great-grandchildren to get there…. and get the politics right (or remove politics from the equation) but for me, I’ll head to the Caribbean, do an Atlantic circumnavigation and be happy with tracing the steps of the Vikings, Pirates, Privateers and great Explorers of 15th, 16th and 17th centuries…..

Bon Voyage Astronaut Armstrong – may you fly to many planets and stars and explore them ahead of us all.

Internet Connectivity for our Sailboat

28 August, 2012 by RickD

Rick Donaldson, N0NJY

My wife and I are about to retire to a boat. We have spent four years of our “Five Year Plan” preparing ourselves and our house to sell, and in general learning all we can learn. There’s no way we’re “ready” but we’re “ready to go”.

You might ask, “If you don’t have a boat yet, why are you worried about things?” – I’ll try to explain in this entry in the blog.

One of our biggest concerns is staying in touch. My wife is an avid Facebook user and uses her iPad everywhere. That means we need a wireless internet connection. Our other issue is getting email while doing crossings. I have decided to solve that using Winlink. Now I know that some ham radio operators HATE Winlink. I also know why they hate it. Most of them are crotchety old men who still want all Amateurs to have to learn Morse Code at 20 words per minute to be able to get their Extra Class License. I’m a crotchety old man too, with my Amateur Extra Class License and I think they are full of donkey poop.

With that said I’m also a computer, electronics geek and have been all my life. I’ve been working with electronics since I was ten years old and I try to stay up on the latest technology. So – when it comes to Winlink, I’ll use whatever I have to get my signal out to get messages back to my family and those other crotchety old men can just keep on using Morse code and RTTY as long as they like. (Fortunately, the FCC said it was ok for us to continue using Winlink methods and the plaintiffs lost that one… but that’s another story for another time).

Back to Wifi. I’m not a Pirate (yet) and I never propose or condone piracy of books, music or even wifi signals. However, there are certainly a lot of free wifi-hot spots around the country (USA) and in other countries I’ve visited, and I’ve been to (at least count) 49 countries around the world. My visits to BVI, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and other islands have shown there are still free wifi hot spots. And if there aren’t then there are Pay-as-You-Go hotspots.

In either case connecting to a wifi connection should be as easy as getting the signal and being able to get back to the wifi antenna. But what if you’re at anchor a mile away from the hot spot, marina or coffee shop offering the services and you can’t anchor closer, or can’t afford the slip on this month’s budget? What do you do?

I spent several weeks researching what most other cruisers do and came to the conclusion that most everyone “throws money” at a solution. I’m glad there are folks who did well in this world and have money to spend that those of us who spent most of our lives in the military scrimping and saving do not have to spend. Since JoAnne and I will be on a pretty strict budget for our world cruising (because if not, we wouldn’t get very far from the first dock…) I have to over-think everything. And I think I can’t throw a lot of money at a solution.

I also realized that while sailors are in my opinion some of the most independent minded, well-educated (even if only by experience), and resourceful to the extreme only a tiny portion of sailors are actually trained or understand electronics to a great degree. Many say “If you can’t fix it, don’t have it on the boat”… thus they don’t have radios unless they are cheap, keep computers running by asking others to fix them, and so forth. I have nothing against these folks. And more power to anyone who can spend that money on things they need.

Me, I build things, I hack, I manufacture and I do a lot of my own electronic work if I have the schematics and tools. Thus for the wifi situation-to-come, I’ve decided to put together a system of parts, antennas and so forth to make a wifi station for the boat.

Now for those that want to spend the money, there are several companies that offer pretty much what I am building for a nominal fee. So far, the same system has cost me right at $125.00 USD. You can contact those companies and get the same thing all in one package for between $300-$500. At least one place will help you out for $1000. That 1000 bucks is another month of cruising for me though.

I’ll do a quick write up for the devices, and system, building the antenna, wiring everything up and making it work. For me, I have to do this BEFORE I have even bought the boat… I still have my job, I have the extra money NOW, rather than wait until I’m already aboard ship and headed for the Islands and the time and a work bench or three to work on.

Once I’m on the boat I’ll be busy enough just outfitting and making sure the boat is safe to worry about electronics, and rewiring computer systems. So, that’s why I am doing things now, while I can, rather than wait until I HAVE to do something!

To that end, we purchased a new laptop. Not expensive but fully capable of running our navigation software (OpenCPN) and communications software (Winmor, Airmail, RMS Express and some other things for amateur radio). I’ve tested and verified everything works on Windows 7 so I’m happy with the machine.

Last night I finished the antenna elements for the wifi antenna (and I will detail that later). The Postman brought my new toys – the Ubiquity M2HP module (more details later) and the POE (power-over-Ethernet) adapter. That’s most of the equipment. I already have a wireless router in use at the house which I will “borrow” from my network. Once I have assembled and tested all this, I’ll do a write up in a step-by-step manner that others should be able to follow.

So – I believe that if you’re going to do something, do it right and practice to get better. I’ve been “practicing” to be a “skipper” all my life – I just didn’t realize it until a few years ago. I’ve spent my life learning everything I can, from electronics and radios, to how to lay cement, do wood work, metal work. Hell, I even learned how to use old printing presses (those things they used for Newspapers before there were computers… don’t ask me to explain what a “newspaper” is. I’m too old and crotchety for those kinds of questions! /grin

Good bye to a friend; Ted Allison N0NKG and his wife Mary

22 August, 2012 by RickD

Hi all. Well, we’re getting ready for our vow renewal ceremony in September, then a vacation – we’ll call it a honeymoon we never got.

The roof is replaced after a massive hail storm back in May, as well as new gutters. The house has been painted outside. When we’re back from vacation the carpets get ripped out, the walls painted and some internal repairs that I’ve been putting off, then new carpet goes in.

At that point, the house goes up for sale. Probably October or mid November we hope. Today is the 21st of August so we are officially at 4 years of our five year plan!

Winds of Change is for sale – as is “Small Change” (the dinghy). I’ll probably get my old 2000 Jeep Cherokee up for sale soon as well. We have a lot of junk in the house to go through, pack and get rid of as well.

JoAnne has been in and out of the doctor and dentist getting examines, physicals and her teeth fixed. I’ve been into the dentist a couple of times as well and had one of my wisdom teeth pulled. Two more to go.

I’m writing this blog post on our new “Navigation” and Boat computer. We picked up a new laptop yesterday. I have been adding OpenCPN, charts and some gps drivers. I’ve also tested it with my amateur radio communications software and that works as well.

Right now, I’m decompressing the charts for the US.

We will use this program some for navigation, but likely not a lot. We will tend to rely on paper charts most of the time. I prefer the feel and look of paper, plus, you can’t get those darned plotted lines off the screen when I forget and use ink 🙂

Looks like we have several folks who are somewhat interested in the boat. Nothing firm. One offer was well below what we were asking (in fact it was low enough I didn’t counter offer, and their second offer wasn’t enough either. I countered that one and they didn’t want the boat after that I guess… too bad, because it would have been a good boat for them as they were new sailors).

At this point we’ve had two interested parties contact JoAnne personally and one saw our sign and came by on Sunday. I’ve not heard back from that person yet. He seemed pretty interested though. Well, so far most people who I have spoken to said I don’t have the boat priced too high for the area or for the boat. Some have told me different, but they don’t know anything about boats, and know even less about the stuff on the coast. /shrug

I’ve not really had a lot of time to put anything here – so this is going to be the last for awhile until we get through with our ceremony and get on vacation.

I’ll post more if we sell the boat, the dinghy, or anything significant happens.

Oh, I wanted to say one more thing. Over the past couple of years, I’ve lost several friends, my sister and nearly my dad, either through cancer or other things. Nine days ago a friend of ours and his wife were involved in a pretty terrible accident. Ted and Mary Ann Allison – Ted was a ham radio (N0NKG) operator I’ve known since coming to Colorado. He was active in ARES, and he was a mountain climber and a fast-walker. He died a couple of days after the accident and his wife passed a few days later.

The man who hit them still has not been charged. He was apparently speeding (he flipped their car), going the wrong way on a one-way street and went through a light or traffic sign without stopping.

Life moves too fast for some, and not fast enough for others.

Ted will be terribly missed.

I will leave you with this thought….

Slow down and get where you’re trying to get without killing yourself and others. Nothing is so terribly urgent as to run traffic signs, speed way over the limit or go the wrong way.

And you should NEVER KISS GORILLAS!

Good Bye Ted.

S/V Winds of Change

6 July, 2012 by RickD

We’ve had several calls about our small sailboat. She is called “Winds of Change” from a line in a Jimmy Buffett song (just as this blog is titled from the same song).

So far no one has offered to buy her.

She was the perfect training boat for us. Not too big, trailerable, with an actual keel (swing keep) as opposed to say, a Macgregor with a water ballast.

So far everyone who has visited has have nothing but nice things to say about the boat. Hopefully someone will buy her soon so we can go forward with the next plans! 🙂

When the fires hit Colorado Springs, ash and soot fell all over the city. People with any sort of respiratory problems were suffering. Smoke covered the city on several days and there were 2 lives and 346 homes lost. Thousands of animals fled the mountains, including bears and deer moving into the city to escape.

Thousands of people were evacuated.

The FBI and Homeland security, along with the local police and county authorities are investigating this fire but are being very closed-mouthed about it so far. We have suspicions this might have been something even worse than simple arson but for now I’ll keep that to myself as well. I hope they catch the person that did this. I find it strange and scary though that there wasn’t just ONE fire, but three near major urban areas of the state, not to mention the other smaller fires that were apparently set in various places of the state.

This weekend I’ll be trying to finish cleaning out the over-stuffed garage (It’s about 1/2 done). Next week – it’s the basement. It’s time to start looking at a truck to start filling to take junk to the dump and stuff to donate elsewhere though.

That’s it for now.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Walker Bay 8′ dinghy / sailboat – $800 (Colorado Springs)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: