Building Falcon 3
The groove at the bow is where the bowsprit nestles when Its installed. I had to grind and fit the edges of the deck strips
coming into this groove over and over, fitting the bowsprit, then epoxy and glass, then do it again until I got the right fit. It was
a pain, but I didn't want it to be loose. It has to be a snug fit. It's an area where you might not be able to check or work on for a
long time. Between the deck work and working for Wally's yacht service to catch up on rent and get supplies, the first year in
East Boston went pretty quickly.
I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this area while I was there. Boston is a great town. I took this picture with a 35MM
Canon A1 that was a lot better than I could use. I scanned the photos years ago and tried to put them together with only
moderate success, but you get the picture, so to speak. Ha ha ha ha I crack me up. Not really. Okay, a little.
I was the only
person living
aboard on this
dock the second
winter. Dana was
on a much more
protected dock on
the opposite side
of the big pier.
The foot prints on
the dock are mine.
During that long, cold winter, I designed and made a lot of components for Falcon's rig. I'd accumulated a lot of stainless steel
rigging wire from too many sources to remember, but suffice to say I had about 500 pounds of it in coils in the boat. Long
before this, before I'd even started framing the deck, I'd designed the rig. Now I had to make it and make it work. I designed
the rig in two stages. The First stage was the core of the function and strength, the second was a combination of whimsy and
convenience. All of the first stage rigging was 1/4 inch 1 x 19 stainless wire, except the bobstay, which was 5/16 inch. The
first stage ran from the bow eye at the waterline to the tip of the bowsprit, which is the bobstay. Then the forestay from the tip
of the bowsprit to the top of the foremast. A triatic stay runs from the top of the foremast to the top of the mainmast, and that
might not be the correct name for that stay, but I like it so I'm keeping it. Also, two combination shrouds and backstays come
from the sides of both masts to the hull. The boat can sail on these alone, but I think it lacks color and character, so I threw in
the secondary shrouds. They are what I call 'the triples' because each assembly consists of a single stainless eye at the top
and three shrouds coming down each side of each mast. With deadeyes and lanyards, the whole thing just looks great. Add
ratlines and I can run up the masts at any time with the greatest of ease. Of course it doesn't point well and has a lot of
windage, but so what? It's pretty.
I started the triples in the top picture
by taking 3 lengths of 3/16 inch 7 x
19 flexible stainless wire and
seizing it with .020 inch stainless
safety wire. I also laid in some 1/16
inch 1 x 19 in the grooves to make it
a little rounder and tighter. Then I
wrapped it tightly around a heavy
stainless thimble and seized it on
with woven nylon cord. The 6
individual cables were paired and
each pair was spliced together at
the bottom and seized around a
deadeye. Later on, I parcelled and
served all the wires to protect them
and make the easy to climb.
Two items I might have forgotten to mention were the sprit shrouds.
They were also 5/16 wire with swaged on eyes at the forward end,
but in the aft ends I constructed a modified Flemish Eye splice of
my own design. To do this, I would unlay the outer 12 strands of
the wire well back, exposing the next six wires with the single wire
core. I would then unlay every other wire form the center six, arch
the center back to a point about a foot past, and relay the three
unlayed center wires, backwards, back onto the core into the same
three gaps they'd come from. If you do this right, you end up with a
strong and perfect little eye core at the end of the wire. The tricky
part here is making sure the finished product will result in a shroud
of the right length. Next, I begin to relay the 12 outer wires around the eye, one in one direction, the very next wire to it in the
opposite direction. It's tedious work and hard on the hands, and you have to be careful not to bend any of the springy wires
as you work, or you'll have a fine time trying to bend the back correctly and have them lay flat and grip tight around the
finished eye itself. The next thing I did was to seize the entire eyesplice loop with .020 SS safety wire, pulled as tight as I
could with my bare hands. Last, insert a heavy SS thimble and seize with tarred Marlin Twine, for a perfectly strong splice
that will probably outlive me. The photo above on the left is of one of those splices. The one the right is of the same kind of
splice, but at the bottom of the upper mast shrouds, in 1/4 inch wire, and seized with a hard nylon braid to provide a bit more
cushion for the wire against the wooden deadeyes. I eventually replaced these with some made of white starboard.
I was a long, cold winter and I spent most of it sitting in front of a grainy 13 Inch TV splicing wire rigging and seizing the
splices, subconsciously counting the turns to prevent the TV rotting my brain.

I had a sort of picture in my minds eye of these fixtures that comprised the lower deadeye assemblies for the mast shrouds,
but I had to devise a way to make them that would inspire confidence in their strength. I tried about a half dozen different
methods to form a solid ring with 1/4 inch 1 x 19 wire, as it was the most abundant in my supply. I finally settled on a
re-weaving method I'll describe here.
1990
The second winter in East Boston was mostly spent working out the rig and rigging and hand-splicing everything.
I started with a 20 foot (exactly) section of wire and carefully unlaid the 12 outer wires, coiled them gently and put them aside.
Then I cut the center, made up of 6 more wires and a straight wire center core, right in half so I had 2 ten foot sections. I
unlaid the twisted wires off both of these, ending up with 12 - same number of 20 foot outer wires I had (see a theme here?) -
and put those aside as well. Next, I carefully measured and cut the two 10 foot straight center wires into 6 equal pieces each,
measuring exactly 20 inches each. Now, I wanted to be sure none of the outer wires could end up running short, so I cut 1/2
inch off each of the center core wires.

I started wrapping one of the 10 footers (that were originally wrapped around the center wire anyway) back around the
straight 19 1/2 inch straight wires, starting at the middle of the wire. When I got to the end, I'd bring the other end of the
straight wire into a complete circle, and just continue to wrap the 10 footer, around and around, 6 complete times, until the
two ends overlapped, where I would snip them off and butt the ends together on the inside of the 6 inch diameter ring. One of
the 20 foot outer wires came next, doing exactly the same thing, only wrapping it 12 times. Once again, I'd terminate the wrap
by snipping the ends and pressing them into the layup on the inside, as shown in the photo below. I was pretty pleased with
these, as you can tell. They are strong, light, and should last forever.

I made 24 of these rings, but 8 of them were for inner shrouds that were there only because my first free masts were so
skinny that I felt they needed bracing. They really needed replacing, and that is what eventually happened, so I got rid of the
inner shrouds.

I seized each of the 24 rings with (yes, I counted) 320 wraps of hard nylon braided cord, just as I'd done on the bottom of the
shrouds where the terminated into the deadeyes.

I thought I should be able to squeeze the centers of the rings together and tighten up some heavy tarred Marlin Twine on
them, but no dice. I had to come up with a jig to help, and even then, wrapping the middles to hold the whole thing together
was no easy task. Below is the temporary jig I made, and the first photo above shows the finished products. Most people who
saw them said they were too pretty to put on the boat and I should give them one for their desk.
As the rig began to come together, another problem needed to be solved, and that was the mast steps. I was lucky enough to
have gotten the original cast mast steps with the J24 spars that were given to me, and I considered myself very lucky at the
time. However, I wasn't then completely aware of the real stresses on the spars, and thought I could make them work by
bracing them with lower shrouds and a coating of carbon fiber tape. Not so, but for now, I marched blindly ahead.

The two biggest plates in the pictures are 1/4 inch SS plate, and I cut those out on my lap with a hacksaw, if you can imagine
how long that took. Everything in the first picture are the parts to assemble the forward mast step. It is fairly complex, but very
strong. Later on, I even strengthened it considerable more. The second photo shows it assembled, prior to installation.
Another benefit of working for a yacht service was free hauls and free use of the boat shed during the summer when it was
empty. The stipulation being, be neat and be fast. Get in, get out and don't leave a trace. I put Falcon in the shed and
prepped the entire hull and deck, then rolled and tipped a pretty fair paint job on using Interlux Interthane Caribbean Blue.
I painted the deck and cabin roof a light gray - fine in New England, bare foot blistering in Florida - and put my last two coats
of TBT white on the bottom, then put two coats of Interlux 44 Shark white, which was really light gray, over that. Those four
coats of paint held up for 6 years.
Falcon looked great going back in and even Wally was impressed at how fast it was done and how good it looked. I also went
against my better judgement and used the advice and computer program recommendations of the best local prop shop in
sizing and purchasing a new prop. Looked great. Worked like crap. It was way too flat and needed the engine to be
screaming to move anywhere, but cavitated so quickly that it just wouldn't accelerate. It was an 18 inch diameter with an 11
inch pitch. So far, the best prop I've had on the boat has been a 16 x 16.
Back at the dock looking all shiny and reflective, it was time to put on the name. This is one of those ideas that looks better at
the booth in the Boat Show than it does on the boat. You have to be a little high and cockeyed to recognized the first letter as
an 'F'. I ordered the name sets, read the instructions and did the best I could putting them on. It was sometime around this
that I also documented the boat, and thinking that I might want to commercial fish out of it, I documented it for recreation and
fishery. The fishery thing meant I also had to have the name in four inch letters on either side of the bow. Thinking I would
someday be putting fancy, carved wooden trailboards on the bow with the name carved in, I temporarily used some cheap
stencils and a can of white spray paint and slapped the required names on the bow. With a little overspray. Looking a little
cobby. Okay, more than a little.
It seems I was almost right in my timing. I actually had the foremast
stepped when I documented the boat. The word 'temporary' seems to
mean something different to me than other people, as my temporary
fixes hang on for years.

I forget if I mentioned it before, but I overtightened an injector in the
engine when first putting it together and I knew by now that the
temporary fix of welding it was not an option. First, I searched for a
cylinder head - that's all I needed. Junk yards were willing to sell me
a stripped down casting without valves or a cam or anything else,
used, for $300. They also mentioned that they could get me one
completely reconditioned and ready to bolt on for somewhere around
a thousand. I got all choked up and a little weepy in the face of such
generosity on their part. That they would sacrifice those parts and that effort for me was just so freakin' touching. Instead I
went to the next place and bought a whole engine, all together and running, for $250. It took me about a days work to pull out
the old motor, strip it to a bare block and head, saving all the extra pumps and injectors and pulley and such for spares, and
toss the junk into a dumpster. By supper time I was finished putting the new engine together and ready to drop it in place.

This was the new $250 replacement motor in the morning when I brought down to the boat with a two-wheel dolly. Below is
the new engine together and in place the next day. The Volkswagen diesel 'Pathfinder' conversion engine is, in my opinion, a
great power option.
As much as this recall type photo diary seems a complete and faithful accounting of the building of the boat, it as far from
everything that happened and I just didn't take pictures of every stage. I tried, really, but there were times when I just kept my
head down and pulled at the traces and wondered if I would ever see this thing sail. One of those things that completely
escapes me is the aft floor section in the cockpit. I sort of remember making it and putting it in, but not really. Still, there it is,
big as life. I did make the battery tray at this time, and it served for quite a while, but was eventually replaced with a fiberglass
and aluminum unit of much greater strength and resistance to rot. Battery acid is rough on wood. Now, I have 3 8D Gel cells
and 1 4D Gel cell on the battery rack, and another 8D and 4D down below the cabin floor. Nothing like power.
If you think that masts need a great deal of stiffness, well, there is that element, but the main strain on them is compression.
As the sails try to lay the boat on it's side, and the keel weight tries to prevent this the resulting strain of the rig is tremendous
pulling on the upper shrouds, and to a lesser extent, on the lower shrouds. Since the mast can't pull  the shrouds out of the
hull, the force is exerted straight down toward the keel. If you push down hard enough, the mast will try to buckle, and that is
where stiffness comes in. Well, I wasn't really up to speed on all that and thought stiffness was the primary concern, so, even
though I had these skinny little J24 spars, I thought I could stiffen them up by laminating carbon fiber filaments to them. I got
1000 feet of parallel endless carbon fiber filaments and prepped the masts properly with acid etching and everything, then
epoxied the CF to the masts. If education is beneficial, then it wasn't a complete waste of time and money. Oh, well. I
eventually peeled it all off, sold some of the spars and used one for a boom.
There was more tricky parts manufacture than I expected concerning rigging and installing the bowsprit properly. I had to cut
and drill 1/4 inch SS plate to accommodate the forestay, the bobstay, the bolt for the sprit shrouds, and the tack for the jib.
The first splices for the aft end of the sprit shrouds were sort of ugly and I did them over. An error in measuring somewhere
along the line resulted in my having to use two toggles so the turnbuckle would have adjustment in both directions.
One night over coffee at a local café, I mentioned to a friend that I
needed to get a healthy length of 1 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch SS bar stock
to start making my 16 chainplates. He asked me to sketch out on a
napkin exactly what I needed, having me spec out holes and sizes
and all significant dimensions. He stuck the napkin in his pocket and
told me to chill on the subject for a day or two, until he could get
back to me. A day or two later, my friend, Charlie Ingersol handed
me 17 finished chainplates, explaining he had his guy make one
extra in case I dropped one overboard. Turns out he was the
manager of a big machine shop somewhere at some University and
wouldn't take any money for the parts. Score.
The chainplates each had five countersunk 5/16 holes for flathead machine screws. I located and attached them each with
only the single top bolt, so I could align them with the direct pull of the shrouds to equalize the strain on each bolt. Once the
entire rig was up, I aligned them and tightened them, then drilled the rest of the holes and installed all the fasteners. The last
thing I did was to walk around the boat with a 3 pound sledge and tap the tops in, bending the chainplates at deck level to
match the angle toward the mast of the shrouds. Piece of cake. Anyone would have thought I'd done it before.

This was a big day. I was alone and it was time to raise the foremast. It took a degree of thought and preparation, but the
raising itself did not take that much time. That's because the system really needed a great deal more thought and
preparation, but It was a long time before I adjusted to that and worked it out into a much better system. This first time was a
tad bizarre by comparison. I set the base of the foremast at the rear of the bowsprit with the aft upper shrouds connected and
the forestay tethered to a line leading through a block attached to the tip of the bowsprit. Then I hoisted the top of the mast
off the deck and walked it upward until the angle of the forestay was wide enough to take over lifting by pulling the line.

This is where it got silly. I had no way of preventing the mast fro swinging from side to side except to hold it as best I could
from the bottom. This got increasingly difficult as it went up and swells from the main harbor worked their way through the
marina. Also, it was EXTREMELY hard to haul on the lifting line with only one hand and my teeth. I caught a small calm spot
in the motion of Falcon and released the mast, then bolted aft and set it upright in one quick movement. Now it was supported
by the two aft shrouds and the tethered forestay. At this point, I began a slow, careful process of tightening and loosening
lines and lanyards until I'd moved the mast base aft to it's step, and actually lifted the mast straight up the 6 inches or so to
set it on the step. That was the last time I did that, I promise you.
A couple more hours of installing rigging and adjusting everything
and the mast began to look right. This was kind of a big day for
me, but I have lost sight of the big picture and have always known
what was left to do, so no one ever caught me celebrating small
advances.
Rats. The spars were skinny and the lower shrouds
looked just as cobby and ready to trip me as anything I
ever saw. There was nothing to do about it then, though,
and I readied the mainmast for raising.

One scary part of this was climbing the foremast for the
first time to connect the triatic stay between the tops of
both masts. Man, these sticks really look thin here, and
too tall as well. I corrected all that later.

There was plenty more to do with the booms, gaffs,
lazyjacks and everything else. I loved it.

I finally had the entire rig lashed onto the boat, though the
rest of the chainplate bolts still needed to be installed,
and the chainplates needed to be bent over, and the gaffs
were just lying there, and the cutter halyard was just tied
to the bowsprit, but all in all, it was a good start.
Another winter was upon us. I began to see them as periods of hibernation where not much of anything useful got done. I
watched mindless TV and tackled odd jobs and wished for warm sunny days and spring. It slowly began to occur to me that I
might just be in the wrong part of the country to be doing what I was doing, but the financial resources to make a move a
thousand miles or more south were simply out of reach. Besides, I kind'a liked it here in the northeast.
Ice on the boat and ice on the docks. What could I do? I built a dockbox and put a bunch of stuff I'd been climbing over down
below into it. Now I had to dig through it to find the things I couldn't find any more, but it looked good and some of the others
at the marina wanted me to make one for them. No deal. It was time to get back to work on the boat because it was time to
leave East Boston. The yacht service I'd been working at was moving to a cheaper facility in Winthrop, a small town just north
of the Boston Harbor entrance, and just south of Revere.
This unusual photo is of the huge drydock with the endless lights that was docked right next to the Boston Boatyard Marina
where Dana and I had our boats. We both made arrangements to move the boats to Crystal Cove Marina in Winthrop, and
this was the last night under the glare of these lights. To tell the truth, I never minded them - I had no portholes and couldn't
see them.
A couple of shots of my new berth in Crystal Cove Marina. This facility was owned by an ex-convict who prided himself on his
dirty deals never tired of blowing his own horn as a tireless and aggressive negotiator. He was actually a petty white collar
thief and aspiring Rush Limbaugh sycophant named Dirty Dan Curtin who was held in contempt by everyone who knew him.
He was the kind of guy that made you feel like you were watching a guy eat live maggots when he spoke. The best thing I
can say about Crystal Cove has to do with its location and surroundings. It really was a nice place and had the potential to be
a great little marina. Luckily, I didn't stay long.

My first attempts at gaff goose necks might be considered somewhat shy of stellar, but in my own defense, I was working at
something never done before so there was no tried and true method to study or even investigate. All known gaffs were
constructed in the old, original configuration, as a huge yoke that fit around a tree trunk mast with a half-hoop of wooden
rollers holding it on and big wooden blocks hoisting it on twisted manila line. I started with two graphite masts from wind
surfer's, scratched my head and went at it. The first try wasn't bad at all and I liked the way they looked in the setting sun.
The second try was better, but the best was the third and last arrangement.
Perhaps there are some snap decisions left unmade, but what with all the
profound folk wisdom fluttering around the clarity of hindsight, we will
leave that subject alone. I saved and cut up a huge supply of old closed
cell foam that I salvaged with the intent of someday using it to insulate
under the deck between the beams and under the cabinroof between the
laminated arched beams. I stubbornly carried this stuff around from place
to place for years before realizing I could buy new stuff, that was
probably better, for next to nothing at Home Depot. I finally tossed it out
while In Cortez. I also crushed and tossed out the mold I'd made for a
sweet little dinghy at the same time. Oh, well.

The first winter at Crystal Cove found me alone and 'house sitting' the
yacht service while the owner, Wally, and his wife and Dana all went to
Florida for three or four months. Boat work in Boston has a nice big slice
of death in it called winter. It was the winter of 1992. I bought my first
computer and a bunch of new equipment for the boat after a lawyer
named Pulaski went south on me on a law suit and settled it for quick
money by forging my name and putting the check in his own bank
account. He then tried to ran the scam past me and it didn't fly, but I was so disgusted, and completely unwilling to start
another five year battle to get him disbarred, then start my lawsuit again for another five years after that, I stripped out his
bank account instead and told him to hit the bricks. He cried and begged a lot. I was very disgusted.

I got a computer that was, at the time, the epitome of blazing desktop speed. It was a Gateway 486 processor at 66 mhz. Holy
crap! This thing warped the space/time continuum when you booted it up! I fragged it 12 times in the first 10 days and had to
get into DOS Debug code to make the crippled piece of crap work, but I was having the time of my life. It came with a Torrey
Pines Golf game. I also got a flatbed scanner and the brand new Hewlett Packard HP-4 laser printer with a $500 ram option
and a $500 Postscript option. All in all, I spent $12,000 jumping into the computer age. It was expensive at the time, but I
knew I had to do it sooner or later if I was ever going to do any serious writing. I wrote my second full novel, first on a word
processor in three weeks, printed it out and sent it off.

When Wally and the rest came back, Wally got a new computer and software program and spent a couple of months getting
completely boggled in it. The original Peachtree Accounting program was a nightmare of poor tries and bad ideas, none of
which cared much to work with the others.

I worked on Wally's boats and writing all that summer and did another house sitting stint the next winter, with little or nothing
getting done on Falcon. This time, during the winter, I rebuilt two old ship models for Tim Ropes and his brother. The boats
were made by their long deceased Dad when he was a boy. Tim gave me the old toy to get rid of it, and instead, I repaired
and finished it and gave it back to him. He was so touched that he got the other one from his brother, so I did that one as
well. Also, I then built a big wooden boat model for myself, and a case to put it in.

Wally Rogers was a drinker and a foul-tempered, abusive jerk at times, which was about once a week. One time he came into
work and fired the entire crew. I mean it. I'm serious. He came back from Florida that way and I had to rent a shop at the other
end of the building so I could work on Falcon, or anything else for that matter, without having to be in his shop listening to his
cheap crap. Once I got the other shop in a workable condition, he freaked out and thought I was going to start my own yacht
service, so he came down to my place and started a big row like a junkyard dog. It was not a good move on his part and I was
in no mood for it. He left the shop the loser for it and I was once again out of a job. I didn't care at this point. I'd do odd jobs
out of my own shop. Meanwhile, it was time to parcel and serve Falcon's rigging. The photos below were taken right about
that time in the new shop.
1991
1992
I slapped together this long, strange contraption to stretch each shroud, one at a time, so I could parcel, which is to wrap with
tarred canvas strips, and serve, which is to wrap over the strips with Tarred Marlin Twine, which is a real product that you
can just go out and buy if know the last place on Earth that it's made, which I discovered from a monk in a cave in the Tibetan
Alps who demanded a copy of the words to Bob Dylan's 'Rainy Day Woman' in exchange, which I faked on the spot figuring
he'd never know. Anyway, I ordered a case of it. Are there Alps in Tibet?
Now, I did a little math, which I cannot bore you with here, but just think of this: 2 sprit shrouds of 12 feet each, 8 lower
shrouds averaging 11 feet each, 8 forward shrouds of 25 feet each, and 8 main shrouds of 30 feet each. Okay, I apparently
will bore you. Add it all up and I had about 562 feet of rigging wire that needed to be parceled and served. I decided to used
standard friction tape for the parceling, and that worked out great. The old tarred canvas was to protect iron and plowsteel
rigging wire from the elements. My purpose was to get character and make it easier to climb. The SS wire didn't need
protection. Next, I had to make a 'gizmo' that I could assemble around the stretched cable, outfit with tarred Marlin Twine and
a counterweight, add a friction device and a crude guide, and spin as fast as I could.

It's amazing how good this thing worked. I couldn't believe it - nobody could believe it. I just got the wrapping started, put the
thing on, adjusted it a bit, and started spinning it. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. It moved itself. It only required slight
adjustments to the friction setting and the counterweight - which was no more than lead flashing wrapped on in several
pieces for easy adjustment and held in place with a little electrical tape - to make it go from one end to the other in ten to
fifteen minutes. More time on the longer ones. First thing you know, all parceled and served.

Things at Crystal Cove ran out of control for the next couple of years. As spring approached, some of the people in the
marina who owned boats started coming to me to work on their boats. I explained that I wasn't working for Wally anymore,
and even though we were not on good terms, I didn't want to be the kind of guy that would sneak around and take his
customers. They said that they would not have been going to Wally if I hadn't been there, and that the whole thing was to get
ME to work on their boats, and they wouldn't go to Wally if I didn't. Oddly enough, Wally had a thriving business before I ever
arrived, but I was prone to believing their bull and enjoying it. I told one guy that I'd do his boats hull repair, under the table,
so to speak, because I just didn't want to get all caught up in that crap, but I knew I was the only guy in the area who could fix
it correctly and match the gelcoat so the huge repair in the middle of the starboard side was undetectable.

I did the job, and everyone saw me doing it, and it came out perfect, and there was now no chasing the customers away. I
went down town and got all the necessary permits and licenses, got the insurance and tax forms and next thing you know, I
was 'Falcon Eddie' yacht service at Crystal Cove Marina in Winthrop. Rats. Now I NEVER got to work on Falcon, and I had
way too many dealings with Dirty Dan.

Within a month, I had almost all of Wally's customers and Wally's Yacht Service closed the doors and moved away in short
order. Now Dan was on my like a prison tattoo to move into the ex-Wally facility. He offered me the same rent I was paying at
the small shop at the other end of the same building. I now had a secretary and about a dozen employees, so I made the
move and completely refurbished the other facility, cleaning thirty years of dirt and old crap out of the place, painting
everything, building new benches and a storage loft, and finally, punching a 16 foot by 24 foot hole in the back wall and
installing giant doors to allow bringing in big boats. I got training from U.S. Paints and started doing Awlgrip paint jobs.

Dirty Dan reneged on the old deal, even though I'd invested all of my own money to improve the property, and suddenly
increased the rent to $2500 a month, 5 times what I'd been paying. It could have been fair if he'd made the improvements, or
even paid for any of them, but he hadn't. He mistakenly assumed I'd painted myself into a corner and would have to pay the
increase. Instead, I ran another 8 months there without paying any rent at all, then moved out on Christmas Eve.

I paid part of my crew to load up the biggest truck I could rent with everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, and left at 8PM into
a blizzard. I had no plans and no destination other than that I would drive south until I couldn't see my breath anymore and
stop and start again. 24 hours later, while fueling up in Jacksonville, Florida, I could still see my breath and asked the gas
station attendant what was going on. She shrugged and accused me of bringing the cold down with me. I continued on,
crossed over toward Tampa, but kept going until I reached Fort Myers. I unloaded everything into a storage facility, hiring a
tow truck to lift the last few really heavy items out of the truck and put them in the storage garage, then returned the rental
truck and caught a flight back north.

A friend, Steve Papuchis, gave me a registered and insured truck to go back south in, asking only that I take off the plates in
six months and dispose of them. A girlfriend gave me a gas card and best wishes, and after I'd gathered a little more stuff, I
headed back, this time to Naples, where other friends had connections and said I would like better than Fort Myers.
1993 - 1997