by Judy Handley | Oct 22, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA |
Day 363, Year 6: 174 Charts
Date: Saturday, October 22, 2011
Weather: Partly Sunny but Cooler, Winds Calming
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
A great deal of today was spent sorting through the 174 charts we own. When our friends Jon and Heather arrive tomorrow night, we want to be able to offer them charts for their trek around the world. But before we could do that, we needed to do an inventory to see just what we do have. Most of the charts we have were never used as we relied almost entire on electronic navigation. However, we certainly did have paper charts in case something went wrong with the electronics. We had the paper charts . . . just in case.
We started the day by taking the car back into the shop to get the repairs completed. We also went to the computer shop so Mark could read what I had written on the work orders and add any further directions. At the end of the day, we have a car, but we still don’t have our computers or external hard drives back. They said they would be able to tell me by noon on Monday whether the data on my hard drive can be recovered. In the meantime, I am still wondering around a bit dazed, hoping my photo files can be recovered. While in downtown Falmouth, we took some photos. Falmouth was founded in the late 1600’s and the green surrounded by churches is a very much New England.
In last night’s log I talked about the battle of the boots between Ziggy and Jonah. Take a peak at the photos attached to this log to see Jonah in his bright red ladybug boots and Ziggy in his pink, furry-topped boots. Too cute!
by Judy Handley | Oct 21, 2011 | Cape Cod, USA |
Day 362, Year 6: The Question of Importance
Date: Friday, October 21, 2011
Weather: Continued Partly Sunny and Very Windy
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
I know health is at the top of the list of what is really important in life, but I’m having a hard time thinking that right now. A few weeks ago my computer died. It had been my constant companion for the last six years and it was hard to lose it. But I had some warning and had backed up most things on an external hard drive that I brought in North Carolina in June. The new external hard drive is the same brand as others we have that have been so very reliable. So everything . . . all my posted photos from the last six years, my logs, all of the writing I have done since I have been home, and on an on are on that drive and no where else. And this morning when I turned on Mark’s computer, it didn’t recognize the drive. I was sure the problem was in his computer, so I hopped on a bus and went to the only place I could find in Falmouth to have it checked. At the end of the day I was told that Mark’s computer is fine. The new WD external hard drive is dead. And buried with it are six years of my life. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The logs in their original form and some of the posted photos are backed up elsewhere. But I have spent countless hours getting photos from Year 1 renamed and put into Picasa. And I had completed a summary of the first two years of our journey as well as recommendations to cruisers on provisioning for long-distance sailing, and those Word files are gone. It costs $100 to start investigating whether or not they can retrieve the data on the drive, and as they explained the cost goes up from there depending on the difficulty of retrieval—up to $1,000. I know I can’t pay $1,000, so I am just hoping there is some other way. Mark will be gone with the car the first three days of next week, so it will be late in the week before I can continue to figure out what can be done. I have always had two copies of everything–one on my computer and one on an external hard drive. But since I have been using Mark’s computer which is already overburdened, I thought I’d be okay with the only copy being on the new hard drive for now. Very bad thinking.
On the brighter side of life . . . Yesterday I wrote about Ziggy and his pink furry boots. Well, today Jonah gave Ziggy a run for his money. Jonah usually takes his pants off and naps in only his shirt and diaper, but today it was cool and he wanted to keep his pants on. His diaper didn’t quite do it’s job and he woke up with wet pants. So off they went. When it was time to leave the boat and go to the car, he really didn’t want to put those wet pants back on, so he put on his bright red ladybug boots. As I looked at him in the cockpit, I realized that he was definitely in serious competition with Ziggy for cutest two year-old in a diaper and boots. Jonah had on his fleece jacket which made it even funnier. So he tromped out to the street in diaper, boots, and fleece with no care. Heather immediately sent a post to Facebook, so the battle of the “booties” is on. It’s all about being two.
by Judy Handley | Oct 20, 2011 | Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 361, Year 6: More Electrical Problems
Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011
Weather: Partly Sunny and VERY Windy, Gusts to 40 knots
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Do the problems never end? We seem to be having one little boat or car problem after another. Tonight the issue is the inverter . . . again. A new inverter/charger is on order, but won’t arrive until next week. So in the meantime, we just have to make do. Tonight’s problem was a new one. All of sudden the inverter was buzzing and we were getting no reading on the volt meter. The pass-through switch in the inverter that should automatically allow shore power to flow into the system was not working. We’re all back to normal now, but since we don’t know what caused the problem, who knows when it will return. We’re just hoping that things will settle down by Monday when Mark leaves for the conference he is attending as I am surely not the handyman that he is. When we lived aboard in Boston, Mark was traveling a great deal and I can remember trying to deal with similar issues. Not easy. I love living aboard, but without my very own Mr. Fix-it, I don’t think I could do this.
Our new alternator regulator has been installed for a while but it has been using default values instead of being properly adjusted for our battery bank. Today Mark spent a great deal of time trying to adjust it. He bundled all the wires he has recently run for the new system monitor and wire tied them to keep them neat. He also cleaned the back of the hull where the diesel exhaust comes out and constantly leaves a gray area. We started the day fixing another problem. Mark had to go up the mast to deal with the flags we put up to shoo away the birds. One of them fell during the night and he needed to sort out the lines. While up there, he put a new block on the top of the mast and ran the spinnaker halyard through it. This is the one that broke on the way to Nantucket. So now we have no flags up but we do have a spinnaker halyard.. If the horde of birds are back in the morning, then we will have to raise those flags again. The heating and air conditioning repair man came while Mark was up the mast. Instead of a leak in the system being the problem, he thinks the relay that starts the compressor is bad. Unfortunately he didn’t have one and has to order a new one. Once that comes in next week we’ll find out if that is the only problem or if there are other issues.
I don’t even want to go into the car issues we have been having, but the bottom line is that the car goes in tomorrow morning for repairs and hopefully after that it will pass inspection. On the positive side, it was warm today and Sam and Jonah were absolutely delightful. Ziggy also brought sunshine into our lives today. Mark got a notice that Justin and Jo had posted some photos of Ziggy on Facebook, so we went in to have look. Ziggy evidently fell in love with a pair of pink boots with a furry lining. The photos of him in his diaper and pink boots were adorable.
by Judy Handley | Oct 19, 2011 | Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 360, Year 6: Rainy, Rainy Wednesday
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Weather: Overcast and Rainy, Temp in the mid-60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Pouring, pouring rain. That’s what we’ve had since sometime during the night, but the intensity keeps increasing. By sometime tomorrow afternoon, the radio weather forecast tells us, it will be sunny. But at this point that’s hard to believe. In the meantime, the temperature keeps rising, so at least it is not a freezing rain. It is supposed to be 70 degrees tomorrow but then the temperature slowly drops to give us daytime highs in the low 60’s and nighttime temps in the 50’s heading into the mid-40’s by late next week. Now that we are on a dock, we can actually plug in a heater. We haven’t needed that yet, but by late next week I think that will change. So the good thing about being at a dock is the electricity and the ease of getting ashore, but the negative is that Windbird no longer points into the wind, whatever direction it might be blowing from. So if the wind and rain are coming from behind us, it blows right into the cockpit. And that is what it is doing tonight. Tomorrow we will get out the plastic curtains for the back of the cockpit to keep this from happening again. But this one snuck up on us. We knew it was going to rain, but we forgot that we no longer point into the wind as we did on the mooring. I guess the moral of that story is that we are slow learners, and slow learners get wet.
We had a delightful lunch in Woods Hole today with Jane and Bruce Wooden. Bruce works with Jed and when we came here to visit while sailing around the world, we often stayed at Bruce and Jane’s. They are headed south on Friday to Florida and from there on a cruise for a few days. It was great to see them and we will be anxious to hear about their travels when they return. We are waiting for the arrival of Jon and Heather Turgeon who will be sailing here from Maine as soon as the weather calms down a bit. Their cruise (on their sailboat) south will eventually take them around the world, and we will look forward to hearing about their travels as well. I guess we are becoming armchair sailors, at least for this winter. But that’s okay. We’ve had our turn and now it is our turn to enjoy the adventures of others for a bit. No worries, however. We aren’t done with our travels. We’re just taking a GK (grandkid) break.
The next few days are going to be busy ones, especially for Mark. Tomorrow morning the same man who repaired our refrigerator a few weeks ago is coming to check out our reverse-cycle heater and air conditioner which seems to have a leak. We haven’t used it since we lived in Boston, but we tried it out in North Carolina. It turned on, but didn’t cool. We no longer need it to cool, but soon we will need it to heat, so hopefully that will get going tomorrow. Mark works on Friday and Sunday, and on Monday he goes to Boston to Mass General and from there to Springfield, Massachusetts for a two-day public media conference. We’re contemplating driving to Concord on Saturday to get our dock steps and some warmer clothes and shoes. We’re still wearing our sandals with wool socks, but when it rains, that is no fun at all! And in there somewhere, we hope to be visiting with Heather and Jon. And we’d like to go off Cape to pick apples. There’s just never enough time.
by Judy Handley | Oct 19, 2011 | Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 359, Year 6: Visit to Fiddler’s Cove Marina
Date: Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Weather: Partly Sunny, Temp in the Upper-60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Our day was split between work on Windbird, taking care of Sam and Jonah, and a morning visit to Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina (latitude 41 38.808 N and longitude 070 38.160 W) that will be our winter home. I’ve been there before, a few years ago, and Mark was there last week, but he wanted me to see the place before we signed on the dotted line for the winter. It’s tiny as marinas go with 130 slips and most of the boats are motor boats outfitted for fishing with only a few sailboats scattered here and there. The entrance is narrow and can be a bit shallow at low tide, but it was dredged to seven feet mean low tide a couple of years ago and the manager, Fred Sorrento, says we should have no problem getting in. We’ll just make sure we don’t go in on a super low just in case. We’ll be docked close to the gray-shingled clubhouse that houses the laundry, multiple private bathrooms with showers, and a huge lounge with a fire place. The lounge side of the building will be closed in the winter, but the lounge and the bathrooms have to be kept heated so the sprinkler system won’t freeze up. We will be the only live-aboards, but there are houses all around, so we won’t be totally alone. It is located in a lovely area and I can see some wonderful, long walks exploring the area in our winter future.
Mark is working on wiring in a new system monitor so we can get accurate information on the state of our battery charging system. Our Link 2000 wasn’t giving us reliable information. And our Freedom 2000 inverter/charger is just not working. So we ordered a new inverter/charger today (a new Freedom SW 2000). The SW stands for sine wave and this means that we will get electricity that is the same as you get in your home. What we were getting previously was modified sine wave and some things that we would plug into an electrical socket would work and others would not. This was a special problem with AA, AAA, C, and D cell battery chargers. None of the standards like Eveready and Ray-o-Vac would work for us unless we were plugged into shore power. Only a Maxell charger that I bought in Panama has kept all of our rechargeable batteries charged for us for the past six years. Mark is not quite finished with the rewiring for the new system monitor, but he is already getting readings that show a more correct picture of our battery bank. Now we just have to wait for the new inverter/charger to arrive on the 25th. Our AGM batteries have lost some of their capacity because they are three years old and have been heavily used. Once the new inverter/charger is installed there is some chance that we might be able to bring some life back into them. If not, the next step will be to buy new batteries. The current battery bank cost us over $2,000 in Singapore. I don’t even want to think about what they will cost here.
by Judy Handley | Oct 17, 2011 | Sailing Logs Year 6 |
Day 358, Year 6: It’s a Good Life
Date: Monday, October 17, 2011
Weather: Rainy Early, Then Mostly Sunny, Temp in the Upper 60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
As we were running with Jonah and Sam in the little park along the waterfront in Woods Hole late this afternoon, I heard Mark say to himself, “This is a good life.” And indeed it is. Now that we are on a dock, I can just walk up to the school to pick up the boys. We have a slow walk home, kicking fallen leaves all the way, and then after nap, we can walk back into Woods Hole to play along the waterfront or go to a nearby playground. It is just so special to be here with Sam and Jonah-just wish Ziggy were here as well. It would be perfect if the weather could stay like this year round and we could keep Windbird right here in Woods Hole year round, but we’ll just have to adjust to the changing seasons and find a way to enjoy them all equally.
As we stepped off the boat early this morning, I heard birds singing. We looked up and saw that the birds were perched on our rigging. Uh-oh. Birds mean pooh on the deck and on the canvas, and that is exactly what we had. Later in the day we sprayed off the boat and then hoisted a couple of flags that have seen better days in hopes that the movement of the flags will keep the birds away. I guess we’ll find out in the morning. After the bird encounter, we drove to Harwichport to pick up the tail light panel for the car at the only auto salvage yard on the Cape. On the way back to Falmouth, we stopped in Hyannis at Home Depot and Trader Joe’s and then it was back to Woods Hole to pick up Sam and Jonah. While the boys napped today, Mark took out the inverter/charger to look for these mysterious fuses that we have been told might be the problem. Fortunately, Mark found the two fuses in the circuit panels, but unfortunately for us, they were both working fine. So we’re not sure what to do from here except buy a new inverter/charger. B-O-A-T . . . Break Out Another Thousand.
Six years ago today, we had hoped to leave Boston Harbor and begin our trek around the world. We ended up leaving on the 18th, but then as now we’re thinking of my nephew Tommy on this day. He had his 43rd on October 17 in 2005, but today is more ominous as it is his 49th. Happy Birthday, Tommy. We’re thinking of you.
