by Judy Handley | Aug 23, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 306, Year 9: Not the Day We Planned
Date: Saturday, August 23, 2014
Weather: Partly Cloudy, High in the Low 70’s
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
Today was a good day; it just was not the day we planned. Mark got a call from West Marine just before 8 am asking if he could work this afternoon. Since we didn’t have definite plans, he said he’d be in 1 o’clock. We then turned on the engine to charge the batteries and I immediately heard a groan from Mark. The problem that he thought he had fixed yesterday was back. The Balmar alternator generator was once again locked. We weren’t charging, so we switched over to the generator to charge the batteries and Mark launched into problem solving mode once again. The alternator regulator is programmed by using a magnet. More specifically, the switch that is used for programming is activated by a magnet. So today, like yesterday, Mark used an even stronger magnet to get it to unlock. But we’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see if it is still working. Then Mark turned on the instruments just to make sure the various instruments were still talking to each other. Another negative. He was so sure he had found the loose connection causing the problem, but obviously not. So he once again started tracing wires, and sure enough, he found another loose connection. Hopefully this problem is fixed, but we shall just have to wait and see.
While Mark was working on this, I did a little dinner prep and some reading about the west coast of Puerto Rico. I was doing this because the ‘pirate camp’ on Culebra is no more. Our son Justin called yesterday afternoon to tell us that they had made a decision to shut down the pirate camp and move on. Another tropical depression came through this past week and dumped loads of rain on them. It was just too much, so they made a very quick decision to ‘get out of Dodge’. They found a tourist rental in Rincon on the west coast of Puerto Rico and off they went. We’re not sure why they chose Rincon, but they are renting there for a couple of weeks while they find something more permanent. Here’s what Jo wrote on her Facebook page late yesterday: “We’re packing! We are leaving for Rincon on the west coast of PR. Time to move on out to the west side, live in a house sheltered from the elements, move forward in our dreams and visions, plug in and play music, rogue it and love it and real it somewhere else. Our wings are like our hearts – big and strong – gotta fly. We are excited for the unknown as the next chapter unfolds and we make some bold and exciting choices for the coming times for our family… Culebra, thank you beautiful island. Thank you for the lessons and the growth, your beauty and elementals. We have been thoroughly exhilarated! And grounded. And inspired. We’ll be back, for sure.” In my reading about Rincon, I found that the humpback whales that summer in the Cape Cod Bay head to the west coast of Puerto Rico near Rincon in the winter to have their babies. While I was on a walk with Jonah and Ollie this afternoon I mentioned this to Jonah. His little eyes almost popped out of his head with excitement and he said, “It’s so cool that Ziggy will get to see the babies and then we’ll get to see them here next summer.” What a great connection for our grandchildren here on the Cape and in Puerto Rico. And best of luck to Justin and Jo as they make this move.
I spent my afternoon playing with Sam, Jonah, and Ollie. Heather and Jed are in the midst of renovation projects in the house so I helped out by entertaining the kids. We biked in the neighborhood and then Jonah, Ollie, and I walked to East Falmouth Elementary to play on the playground. But Jonah made sure we took footballs with us. He is obviously in training for the upcoming football season! He had me pass him the ball and then he would run in the sand and slide in for a touchdown. And Ollie was always right behind him. The three of us had a really nice time together. Jonah will be starting kindergarten at this school the week after Labor Day and he is very excited about that. School, football, and cooler weather . . . fall is in the air.
by Judy Handley | Aug 22, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 305, Year 9: Cowboys and a Cowgirl
Date: Friday, August 22, 2014
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, High in the 70’s
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
It was great being back with Sam, Jonah, and Ollie today. These little guys let you know what life is all about and today it was all about camping out in the backyard and dressing up as cowboys. Well, there was one cowgirl as neighbor Molly joined us for the day. The Sam, Jonah, and Molly trio decided to turn themselves into being cowboys and one cowgirl and they kept themselves in character for hours. The younger crowd, Ollie and Molly’s little brother Joey, didn’t get into the cowboy show. Ollie napped through most of the cowboy mania and Joey went somewhere with his mom. But the other three had a great afternoon lassoing pretend cows. They set up a feed trough for their horses and then sat around a pretend campfire roasting pretend marshmallows. It was a fun day.
Mark unfortunately missed out on the fun as we had an early morning boat problem that kept him on the boat most of the day. When we got up we started the engine to charge the batteries. But they weren’t charging. He did the usual checks to make sure connections were tight and that there were no blown fuses. But everything looked fine. He drove me to Heather and Jed’s to say hello to the boys and then he returned to Windbird. Our regular and alternator are both Balmar’s, so Mark called and emailed them for help. After waiting for hours for a call back from them, the result was that something had caused the alternator regular to lock up. The tech guy said a magnetic field had obviously gotten too close the regular. He recommended moving it away from the magnetic field (which Mark said didn’t exist) and if that didn’t work, he said we would have to buy a new one. Mark moved it and that did nothing. So Mark decided that he would take a magnet and try to unlock it. He had nothing to lose since the tech guy said we needed to buy a new one—at great cost. Well, Mark’s strategy work. He played and played with a magnet and finally got the regulator to work properly again. Amazing.
by Judy Handley | Aug 21, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 304, Year 9: Boat Work Wins
Date: Thursday, August 21, 2014
Weather: Partly Cloudy, High in the Upper 70’s
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, Massachusetts
In last night’s log I was fantasizing about what we would do with a ‘free day’ today and I have to report that boat work won. We didn’t go for a sail, we didn’t paddle about in the kayak, and we didn’t just sit in the cockpit and read. Shortly after breakfast I noticed that Mark was taking things out of cabinets and pulling out wires from here and there. I had no idea what he was working on, but I just kept out of his way by getting in the dinghy and rinsing the salt water off the top sides from the trip here from Fiddler’s Cove. When you are out on a mooring, you can’t just turn on a hose and spray off the boat, so I used one of the 5 gallon jerry jugs of water we keep on deck. When I came back onboard, Mark explained what he was doing. He was trying to track down a connection problem that has not been allowing him to share data between the different navigation instruments. Sometimes the connection works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And this morning he would think he had found the problem, and then all of a sudden it didn’t work again. Finally he found a bad connection behind all of the equipment at the nav station. One success! Then he decided to tackle another problem. Last summer we bought an Airmar heading sensor in order to get more accurate headings out of our autopilot. But Mark has never been able to hook it up so it works. Last fall he talked to the service people at Airmar and at Raymarine. He talked to Raymarine because that is the kind of course computer we have that the heading sensor needs to work with. They all tried to be helpful, but nothing worked. So today he called iMarine which is where he bought the unit to see if he could return it. We both doubted they would take it back after almost a year, but this time they recommended one service person that they were sure could help make it work. Mark was doubtful, thinking he’d already worked with the service people, but this time he thinks it worked. We won’t know until we can take the boat out on a calm day to test it, but hopefully the different way of connecting it will work. So maybe a second success!! Then he set to work on electronic navigation. Our old navigation software won’t install on Windows 7 and all of our old computers running Windows XP have bit the dust. So he has been trying various free or inexpensive programs that provide good charts for US coastal areas, but they don’t have good charts for the Bahamas or the Caribbean. Last night Mark emailed some cruising friends to get ideas and today he got all sorts of good suggestions. Our friends Jon and Heather Turgeon who are currently sailing around the world emailed back to tell us that the latest and greatest thing that cruisers out there are using is no longer a computer but a tablet with a Navionics app (either an IPad or Android tablet). It is free and the charts for specific regions cost about $40. You have to make sure your tablet has an internal GPS and Mark’s does. He downloaded a trial subscription and found the charts to be very detailed. So he’s thinking this is the way we will go. Thanks to all our friends who got back to Mark today with their best ideas on navigation software. All the advice was super helpful and we think we have a third success for the day!!!
My day was not nearly as productive as Mark’s, but I did start reading a book that arrived yesterday. It is the 10th edition of Bruce Van Sant’s “Gentleman’s Guide to Passages South.” You might think that since we have sailed around the world that sailing to the Bahamas and down to Puerto Rico would require no new ‘learning’, but this is just not true. We have sailed north from Puerto Rico directly to Little River, SC, and that went smoothly, but sailing south is a different ball game due to currents and weather patterns. When we started our circumnavigation, we had the roughest sail of anyplace around the globe from Norfolk to St. Martin. We certainly don’t a repeat of that, so we have lots to learn. In addition to reading, I drove to Heather and Jed’s to pick up my sneakers so Mark and I could take a walk. I did some food shopping and then came home and cooked another gourmet vegetarian dinner from the ‘Forks Over Knives’ cookbook. We marinated and grilled portobello mushrooms and had them over a bed of wilted spinach drizzled with a cauliflower hollandaise sauce (all plant-based, no dairy). I wouldn’t call it hollandaise sauce, but it was good and the portobellos were the best we have ever had. And with this we had a red curry brown rice chocked full of veggies. The veggie recipes from this cookbook are always good, but they do take a couple of hours to fix. So I’m limiting myself to one ‘Forks Over Knives’ dinner per week. The great thing is that one dinner always has enough left-overs for one more dinner.
Heather, Jed, and boys got home tonight. We can’t wait to see them in the morning. We have tomorrow with the boys and all of next week, and then school starts. So we have to pack in all the fun that we can.
by Judy Handley | Aug 20, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 303, Year 9: Fiddler’s Cove to Quissett Harbor
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful . . . Again, High in the 80’s
Location: Back Home on Windbird in Quissett Harbor, Massachusetts
Mark and I are back on Windbird tonight. She was put back in the water yesterday and we motored her home this afternoon. The weather was just gorgeous, but unfortunately we had 12 knots of wind right on the nose all the way home. So we didn’t put up the sails. We simply motored all the way. We stopped at the fuel dock at Fiddler’s on our way out and filled up with diesel. Somehow since last summer we have used 88 gallons of diesel going nowhere! But the price was right. We only paid $3.69 a gallon which seems very cheap. But the bottom line is that we are fueled up and ready to go. If the weather cooperates, we are going out over Labor Day weekend. Hopefully we’ll have wind and get to sail and save the fuel for the trip south. When we are full we hold about 150 gallons of fuel and we motor for at least 750 miles before needing to fill-up again.
We had a very nice time staying at Heather and Jed’s this past week, but there is no place like home. We are glad to be back aboard. We are not on the same mooring we have been on all summer as there was another boat on it when we came in. We picked up the closest one to it that was available and then Mark went to shore to check with Weatherly, the owner/manager. She said to just stay where we are until the other mooring is free again. She also told Mark that there was such a high tide while we were gone that the water was half way up the tires on our car that we left in the yard parking area. Yikes! She said it doesn’t happen often and thankfully it didn’t get any higher. When Mark got back from shore, we then both zoomed to shore to go to Fiddler’s to get Heather and Jed’s car. We thought Heather and Jed would be home tonight and that Heather would need the car early in the morning to head to Boston for her Thursday ‘tv’ day. When we got to H & J’s they weren’t home yet, so we called. We reached Jed and found out that they had decided to stay in Maine for another day. So Mark and I have another vacation day. What shall we do? Work on the boat? Go for a sail? Do more research and planning? Go for a long walk and then for a paddle in the kayak? Just sit in the cockpit and read a book? There are just too many choices, but my bet is that we won’t go sailing and will do a little bit of all of the other choices. We shall see.
by Judy Handley | Aug 19, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 302, Year 9: The World is a Book
Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful, High in the Low 80’s
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
Today was a quiet day. I worked at this and that while Mark worked at West Marine. I was on the computer checking the Facebook pages of family members to see what’s been happening in their lives recently and came across a grand-nephew’s new blog called The Satori Exchange. The blog is written by my nephew’s son, Josh Martin. Josh got his masters at Clemson this spring and has just returned from a two week trip to Europe with friends. I was reading a blog post about the trip called “Oh, The People You’ll Meet” which he ended with a quote from St. Augustine. “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” Love the quote and really enjoyed Josh’s insights. If you’d like to read what he calls his ‘cattywampus ramblings’ you can find them at:
“Oh, The People You’ll Meet:” Part 1 of our European Adventure
While on the topic of travel, I’ll mention my friends Linda and Mike Stuart who are in the beginning phase of their bike around the world adventure. Since August 3 they have made it from Saratoga, New York to northern Pennsylvania. I sent Linda an email late this afternoon and not long after I got a phone call. She was just talking about me when she got the ding on her phone letting her know a new email had arrived. She was talking about me because she thought I might be able to identify a bird they had just seen. So she called to see if I could. It looked like a bald eagle but was fatter and didn’t have the same wing span. After some searching all I could come up with was Northern Goshawk, but who knows what it really was. But the important thing was that I got to talk to Linda. They are really enjoying each day and are finding people to be so welcoming and kind. Sure hope they continue to find that kind of hospitality as they continue on this trip. They are headed to Pittsburg to pick up the Great Allegheny Passage and then on to Cumberland, Maryland to ride on along the C&O Canal to Washington, DC. Traveling in a sailboat with a stove, refrigerator, flush toilets, and a shower is one thing, but traveling on a bike carrying your food and shelter with you and hoping you’ll find places along the way to shower and sleep is quite another. Linda is really enjoying the trip but is struggling with the hills. She is having to walk her bike up the hills as the bike is so laden with their stuff. I told Linda about the passage in the Dr. Seuss Book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. “We like our bike. It is made for three. Our Mike sits up in back, you see. We like our Mike and this is why: Mike does all the work when the hills get high.” I thought it fit their situation perfectly and I have attached the photos I sent to her. Mike and Linda are quite the adventurers. And they are certainly reading more than one page in that world that is a book. If you would like to follow their travels, you can find Linda’s blog at:
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=Sh&doc_id=13549&v=Ih
Now this blogger is going to turn in for the night.
by Judy Handley | Aug 18, 2014 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 301, Year 9: This Way or That Way
Date: Monday, August 18, 2014
Weather: Mostly Sunny, High in the Low 80’s
Location: Staying at Heather and Jed’s, East Falmouth, MA
Mark and I both spent a great deal of today continuing the research and planning for the trip south. Whether to go this way or that way has our heads spinning. There are advantages and disadvantages to each route. And just as you think you have found the way to go, you find yourself saying, “On the other hand.” Fiddler on the Roof is one video we keep on Windbird and now I know why. It is so Tevye can keep reminding us that there just might be another way. What we have learned so far is that it will take us at least two weeks to get from South Carolina to southern Florida using a combination of Intracoastal Waterway and going outside when the weather is favorable. It will then take another month of day sails to get from Miami to the Turks and Caicos south of the Bahamas. And then we still have another 650-700 miles to go—the hardest part of the trip. Different ‘experts’ have different ideas on the best way to go. Going through the islands from Florida through the Bahamas to the eastern Caribbean hasn’t been called “The Thorny Path” for nothing and the recent article in Cruising World entitled “A Path Without Prickles” hasn’t convinced me that there is such a thing. You can just go offshore from South Carolina and arrive in Puerto Rico ten days or so later. You might be a bit battered and bruised if the weather turns on you, but you have saved yourself at least a month of travel time. On the other hand . . . you miss the Bahamas. Here we go again. Lucky me to have to make such decisions.
Have you ever had a bee try to fly up your nose? Well, I have now had this experience. I really don’t know if it was a bee or a wasp, but what I know is that I was out in the bee garden filling the bird bath when an unfriendly critter started buzzing around my head. I thought it would go away, but it kept buzzing, sounding angrier and angrier. When I got to the back deck, it was still with me and I attempted to swat it away so it wouldn’t go inside with me. That was a mistake and it ramped up the buzz. I stepped into the kitchen and it followed, so I hurried back out and that is when this friendly creature tried to fly up my nose. I panicked and tried to stop it causing it to sting me right at the base of my nose. Ouch! Did that ever hurt. Mark got the stinger out, but I had a numb nose and numb front teeth for hours. In fact, they still don’t feel quite right. What a weird experience!
