| Falcon's Log 9 |
| April 4, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida Every time I see the big heading at the top of a new page, I wonder if it's needed, or just silly. I will give it a bit more time and consider a change to something I like better. Donny called last night from the public dock at Venice. He had a hell of a time getting through the Stickney Point Bridge. The bridge operator was obviously drunk. All Donny could keep saying was that, "There was something wrong with him." And all I kept saying to Donny was, "He was drunk!" For those of you who don't know, I'm an ex-drunk. I spent the portion of my life from age 13 to age 38 going round and round with booze and drugs, and I don't mean in the dose-doe dance, but in the brutal alcoholic/heroin addict bottom of the social ladder way. By the Grace of God I have been clean and sober since September 29, 1985, but I've spent thousands of meetings in AA getting what I need and hearing others tell their tales, and I'm telling you, if that bridge tender wasn't drunk, he'll do until drunk comes along. I'll be doing lead today. It's so old and tiresome that I believe I will post the LAST segment from the old Sailing Tales pages. But first, a couple of pictures from something somewhere. |
| The first is a shot of me while I was in Naples a few years ago. The second is a picture I found on line, and I have to admit, I'd date her. I know she seems a little close to the edge, but I'd give it a shot. |
| ~~~~~~ Moving Falcon To Palmetto ~~~~~~ |
| You know those days when you're looking out the open boxcar door and see mile after mile of golden fields of waving grain rolling past and you finally decide to jump out in it and roll and when you do the train enters a tunnel and you hit a wall of stone and splatter like a bug on a windshield? Yeah. Well. Once upon a time . . . . I was working my way toward completing Falcon and retiring from the regular work to move on to the retirement work of cruising and writing. Naples is south, and I mean that in the oppressively hot sense of the word. Headaches and dehydration from a relentless sun and stifling humidity are the daily fare. Place any tool in the sun for more than three or four minutes and you simply can't pick it up, even with the coarse and calloused hands of a lifetime of building and mechanics. Everything bakes and boils and the heat sucks the life and energy out of you. I became discouraged and depressed, think old age had stampeded up on me like a herd of buffalo. I had to lie down in the afternoon and get some sleep. Pulling myself up a mast was hard and exhausting. I had to concentrate and push at every project, and I began to think I couldn't do it. It was too late. I was so near the finish line, and I was somehow dying. My ears started ringing pretty good and a friend, another vet, said that I should check out the new VA place in Naples. They were good, he said, and didn't treat you like crap they way they used to. I was pretty happy to have escaped with my life after my last visit to the VA, up in Massachusetts, and was in no hurry to offer them another bite at the apple. Still, the ringing was annoying, so I stopped in to see if there was anything they might be able to do, quick and dirty, so to speak. No poking and prodding. Well, they were nice and they did a whole barrage of tests and this doctor called me in and sat me down and told me I was right - I was dying - but it was a long, slow process and not completely carved in stone. I had Hepatitis C, a gift from my last visit to the VA, and the parts of my insides they were supposed to fix were tore up so bad it was a miracle I was still alive. I also had some raging internal infections and must have been in considerable pain. Well, yeah, but it was better than being dead. I told the Doc I knew about the pain and the damage, the Hep C was a surprise, but what can you do about the ringing in my ears? It turns out I'm also supposed to have PTSD, or whatever it is, from Viet Nam. I said it wasn't from Viet Nam, it was from the VA and what can you do about the ringing? Well, they began to treat me. Actually, the Fort Myers VA treated me and did a much better job than before. Cleared up the infections that I'd had for a dozen years or more. Stopped the pain, without meds - turns out the infections were most of it. I did a bunch of Internet research and found what people with Hep C were doing to help out and I started taking some critical vitamins and minerals and modified my diet. The VA had some changes going on and the Fort Myers VA could no longer treat me for Hep C, though they hadn't yet started, so they said I had to move to St. Petersburg to get treatment at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center. They also said that I couldn't anchor out off the property (they are right on the water with several anchorages adjacent) because I would need refrigeration for the medication. So, there you go. Now you know why I had to take an unfinished boat without an electrical system 160 miles up the Gulf Coast of Florida. Wait 'til you hear about the train tunnel and the wall. The boat was in no condition to leave and if I left, I had nowhere to go. I needed to find a berth somewhere with power that would allow a liveaboard. That is a condition becoming increasingly rare in Florida these days. No one wants liveaboards anymore. I finally found a marina in Palmetto, a little town on the southern mouth of Tampa Bay, that not only would allow liveaboards, but they were anxious to trade off a slip, plus money, if I was willing to clean the facilities bathrooms and laundry in exchange. Done, dudes. I'll be right there. I went up for an in-person interview, was hired and was up-front about my reasons for being there. The one catch was, the woman who interviewed me was the manager. She was presently coming in at 5AM to do the heads and she wanted me there RIGHT NOW! If you know what I mean. I promised I'd be there in ten days. Keep your eyes open . . here comes the wall. |
I prepped the boat as fast as I could, working 16 hour days and making sure I could catch the semi-annual moon tide that would make it possible for me to get Falcon's 5 foot draft out of Haldeman Creek. The window of adequate water was a slim one and if I missed it, it could be six months before the next. On the last day at the last moment I could wait there were fifty knot winds blasting up the Creek. The one good thing was that the wind wouldn't allow the water to flow out. All the rest of the things were bad. I untied between gusts and got Falcon out of the slip. It was a Sunday at noon and I was alone in the yard. After seven years at Royal Yacht Service in Naples, when I left there was not another soul around. The strong engine and big three bladed prop had no difficulty pushing Falcon through the canyons of Mangroves that walled Haldeman Creek as it wove it's way to Naples Bay. From there, I knew I was in for a beating. I could see the wall the train was racing into and had to jump anyway. The tide was roaring out through Gordon Pass while a sharp thirty or forty knot wind tried to blow it back in. The fifty knot winds that came with the front had dropped some. Still, a hundred foot sunset cruise boat hedged in the safe zone inside Gordon Pass and a 55 foot Sportfisher hedged outside the pass, just staring at it. I didn't see any options for me and steered for the center and the standing eight foot chop and pushed the throttle forward. It was a ride to remember, I promise you that. The bow shot skyward then plunged for the bottom, once twice, again, again. Falcon's 18 foot boom broke loose and tried to swing wildly side to side, so I had to hold it with one hand while I steered with the other. The tarp over the boom to keep me out of the rain shredded and streamed behind Falcon in buzzing and snapping strips. I found myself holding my breath, not out of fear, though there was a bit of that, but because the seawater I was swallowing was making my stomach turn. Falcon clawed her way past the narrows of the channel and began to settle down. I tied off the boom in two or three quick lunges and looked behind me. The hundred footer had seen enough and turned back. I lined up forward with the channel markers further out. The man at the helm of the Sportfisher had seen enough as well. He rammed the throttles full open and aimed at the middle of the channel. When he passed me his eyes were straight ahead, wide open, and he leaned forward over the wheel as he gripped for the ride that was coming up. It was not until that night that I understood his concern - about $25,000 dollars worth of running gear that might hit the bottom if he didn't stay up on top of that chop. I'm thinking you might have guessed by now why there are so few pictures of this happy tour of the Gulf Coast. Once I passed the Gordon Pass entrance markers, I turned north and motored northward, sideways to the seas and rolling pretty badly. I thought the wind would ease and the weather clear. It always had. I'd been here for all these years and the weather always cleared as quickly as it fouled. By now I was wet to the core and not at all happy with the sky and the horizon. For the next seven hours we (Falcon, me, and whatever bugs down below had survived Gordon Pass) steamed northward into a wind that now was clocking about 300 degrees northwest. The seas were mixed. Some from the west, some from the northwest. At least they were generally about two to three feet and only the odd one broke against the bow and showered me with brine. At least five more squalls roared over me - absolute white-outs with fifty to sixty knot winds and horizontal downpours, or 'side'pours, as it were. Another little thing I had to deal with. Since Falcon NEVER took on water, and the weather NEVER did this in Naples, I was not concerned that I had no cockpit floor, except for a loose piece of plywood, and my bilge pumps were not at that time connected to switches of any kind. That meant that every once in a while in these downpours or when waves boarded the boat and poured into the cockpit, I had to take it out of gear, jump down below, and hold the bilge pump wires to the battery terminals. Then clamber back to the helm, get her back in gear and turned back in the right direction. I kind of enjoyed squatting next to the hot engine for a few minutes every now and again. As the absent sun set and a serious darkness began to settle over me, I selected a spot along the coast that had two things - an absence of traffic and a smooth, sand bottom. I dropped a 25 pound CQR on 25 feet of 5/16 chain and 5/8 nylon three strand rode and let out about a hundred feet. I also had a 45 pound CQR on all chain, but since the windlass control circuit was not yet connected and I had no wish to struggle with all that weight and wet chain by hand, I used the smaller unit. It locked into the bottom and held fine. I ate cold ravioli out of a pop-top can and didn't get much sleep. The wind and waves never eased and I waited for first light to get on my way. I'd planned to go out around Sanibel Island to avoid the mess that was a section of Intracoastal Waterway known as 'the miserable mile'. I wasn't sure why they called it that, but if they'd called it 'piece of cake pass', I'm sure I would have felt differently. My stomach wasn't hungry when I decided to raise anchor, but I ate anyway. I'd been up checking Falcon's position a half dozen times. I knew full well what was waiting for me on the ocean floor - the 25 pound CQR was probably many feet below the surface of the sand. We'd been pummeled by wind and surf all night and Falcon hadn't moved. That could only mean the tough little anchor was buried beyond recall. Still, I thought if I could get it close and cleat it off, I might get it up a little at a time by letting Falcon's action in the waves jolt it loose. I fired up the engine and let it warm as I went forward. Almost immediately, and odd wave threatened to toss me overboard. Falcon had no lifelines, no handrails, and nothing to prevent my taking a dip if I wasn't careful. And it was too rough for me to just climb back aboard. Still, I thought I could do it anyway. I sat on the foredeck and braced myself and began to bring in the anchor rode a little at a time. With a great deal of effort, I was able to get to a position with only about three feet of nylon rode still hanging down off the anchor davit before it turned to chain. That's when I noticed the sharp edges of the davit cutting into the rode. I went aft and put the engine in forward, at idle, then scrambled forward again and found the rode too tight to work with. I hurried back and dropped it out of gear and went forward again, un-cleating the line and wrapping it around my left hand before grabbing it with both hands and putting my back into it. A large swell suddenly lifted Falcon's bow and I was JUST barely able to free my left hand before it was crushed through the bottom of the aft horn of the cleat. I quickly cleated it off with my right and glanced at my left hand. It was snow white and starting to swell but it didn't hurt. I went aft again and put the engine back into gear, then started forward. Too late. The rode had severed and the anchor was gone. Well, that's that. I quickly secured the line and went back to the cockpit, aiming Falcon for the Gulf waters west of Sanibel Island. My hand was white and swollen and stiff to move, but unbroken. A close call. For the next nine hours I forced Falcon uphill into white-out squalls, 25 knot steady winds, and a current that finally reached five knots. I never knew about that current. No one ever told me and I never thought to ask. By two o'clock in the afternoon I was only about halfway up the side of Sanibel. The engine hummed along willingly. The bow crashed through wave after wave. I swallowed too much seawater and was getting close to heaving my guts and my progress along the shore was nil. Not a bit. I was absolutely standing still with no hope of getting closer to Tampa Bay and now there were the fins. Nice, big triangular fins cutting in all directions around the boat, mostly in the mile or so between me and the beach. It was too nasty to let go of the wheel to pump the bilge and I had no idea how much water was down below. I'd been through another half dozen squalls already today, and while it looked like that aspect of the weather might be clearing, the wind wasn't dropping and the current surely wasn't going to ease. Disgusted, discouraged, and tired to my bones, I turned Falcon south and began to shoot along the coast of Sanibel at about ten knots over the ground. I couldn't believe it, but I liked it. Then I noticed the big fins were coming in pairs. They were huge rays doing their wingtips up mating dance, not sharks waiting to gobble me up. Rays don't even gum you and that's all they can do. Oh well. Part of my death defying drama has dissolved. After nine hours of thrashing to get up the coast, it took me all of an hour and a half to get all the way back and be anchored in Matansas Pass in Fort Myers Beach. |
| I motored up into what I thought would be a good spot in the anchorage and dropped the 45 pound CQR off the bow, let out enough scope for a good hook-up and locked down the chain. I took a look around and 'whadda ya know?' There was 'Magnolia', a 44 foot Gulfstar motorsailer owned by Bill Dietrich and the centerpiece of Bill's cruising log "Retire Onto A Sailboat". I also noticed that I'd come uncomfortably close to a boat behind and to port of me, so I busied myself hooking up the control circuit for the big windlass and hauled in the 45 and re-anchored in a better spot just a little further forward. Then I laid down and got some real rest. After a little while, I did a quick hook-up of the stereo and listened to the radio while I dozed. I didn't stir much until the next morning, when I called Mid Island Marina, another mile or so down Matansas Pass, and got a slip for a day. It cost about $88 or so, but in the long run, it was worth it. The folks at Mid Island Marina were nice and the best thing about the place was that it was in the back yard of a Publix supermarket. The marina has recently been sold and is now being converted to a three or four story forklift storage facility for small boats. Time marches on. The new name is Snook Bight Marina and the new people also treated us well when I was there with a friend while he was buying a new boat. I should ALWAYS carry my new digital camera with me and take pictures to post here. The running dialogue seems so dry without photos. Maybe I could draw in some line drawings and leave crayons for the kids. I restocked the food bag and had a fat cheeseburger and fries and several cups of real coffee while I was there, as well as wiring up the bilge pumps, radio, running lights and anchor light, got engine oil and other supplies and made my cockpit seating more comfortable. The next day I left, this time heading for the Sanibel Causeway Bridge and the Intracoastal waterway. At the time, the bridge was old and needed to be opened and the bridge tenders had a reputation of being surly, unpleasant little men who saw there position as an opportunity to torment people whenever possible. They were so disagreeable that the City of Fort Myers and the residents of Sanibel and Captiva Islands got together and paid for a new, much higher bridge and fired the bridge tenders. At least, that's what I've heard. Or not. The exit from Matansas Pass is well marked and if you're familiar with the spoil area between that exit and the channel under the Sanibel Bridge, or if you have a nice sunny day and can actually see the shallow water, you won't run hard aground on the huge mound of crap they dredged out to make the channel. I ran aground. The spoil mound is marked by three buoys - I only saw two. Thud, drag, thud, drag, errrrk, dead stop. Oh, goody. More adventures. Lucky for me the tide was coming in a tiny little bit more and the wind was still howling. I dug through the tons of stuff crammed inside of Falcon and came up with a suitable jib and rigged it to the bowsprit. This was after an unsuccessful hour of trying to back off or turn south. With the wind from two points off the starboard bow, I sheeted the jib in hard and Falcon heeled slightly and began to twist around, pivoting on the aft tip of her keel, the lowest part. I played the sheet to maximum benefit as Falcon rotated and used both the sail and the engine to power off the spoil and back into the channel. It took two hours to get off. I raced around the spoil area and up the channel as fast as Falcon would go, but when I was 150 yards from the bridge, the tender closed it and I had to wait for another half hour for the next opening. Of course, he saw me aground for two hours just a quarter mile south of him and knew exactly what he was doing, but there's nothing that says he HAS to be decent, but he was one of those nasty little trolls that enjoy tormenting people for no reason. I didn't mind that much. It gave me time to stow the sail and clean up a bit. Once through the bridge, I navigated a series of channels surrounded by nasty shallows in a place that I'd never been before, and sure enough, here come the white-out squalls again. In 7 years of living here, there was NEVER a stretch of weather this bad, and to make matters worse, they started talking about a hurricane named 'Charley' that was way down south somewhere. I headed for the section called the 'Miserable Mile' just in time to see another wall of white stampede toward me from dead ahead. I took a mark on a buoy far ahead and held that compass heading while the wind and rain thrashed me for a good ten minutes. When it passed, I was relieved to still be in the nasty channel with the buoy dead ahead. As I followed this route, I had some confusion that a few of the channel markers were improperly marked. Still, I continued on and wove my way along another channel for the first time. Five miles after the squall, I ran hard aground again. I couldn't believe it. I tried to back off with no luck, so I shut down the engine and walked around the boat, looking over the side at water that was no more than 2 feet deep at the bow. How in the HELL could there be only 2 feet of water here? I checked and double checked the chart. There was marker 37. There was marker 38. I am right dead center in the channel where the chart says there is EIGHT FEET of water at low tide! I was dumbfounded and sat down, staring stupidly at my surroundings. There was nothing to do but wait for high tide and try to get off. I called ahead to Regatta Point Marina where I had the slip and job waiting and told the woman, Laura Rojas, that I was aground and would be there as soon as I got off. She said that she couldn't wait any longer and I couldn't have the job. She had someone else. I called SeaTow to the south and TowBoat US to the north and both said they'd need $1000 to pull me off, and no checks - cash or credit card. I was broke, so there'd be none of that. I called my sons, Matt and Ben, just to talk and pass the time. Now that there was no job, there was no rush, so I could afford to relax and wait for better tides. Of course, of the two high tides each day, the ones at dawn were best, and the one the day after tomorrow was not only the best of them, but the last good tide for a month. I didn't get off that night, and I didn't get off the next morning. I'd called the Coast Guard to give them the heads up that I was aground in the Intracoastal between Pine Island and Sanibel Island and they issued a Notice to Mariners so people who might consider giving me a tug off would know where I was. Other than that, there was nothing they could do. I also noticed that I had oil in the bilge and that my engine was out of oil, or at least, there was no oil showing on the dipstick. I was into investigating this when I heard a hail from outside. The tide was so low that Falcon was lying on her side, and a young couple came by in a small Bayliner of about 24 feet. "Are you the guy that's aground in the Intracoastal?" The young guy asked. I said I was and he told me that this is not the Intracoastal. He said that I'd taken a wrong turn in the Intracoastal and that I was on the other side of Pine Island, next to Cape Coral, and everyone had been looking for me on the other side of the island and figured I must have got off, or my call was a hoax. Then he announced on the radio that he'd found me and where I was, but he was real nice and didn't say that I was an idiot. They asked me if I needed anything at the marina store they were heading up to. I asked for diesel engine oil and a cold Coke and gave them $20. In a little while, they dropped the stuff off and wished me well. Again that evening, I didn't get off, but I did get an idea. I moved everything possible from the rear of the boat to the bow, packing the most forward areas solid with the heaviest things I could find from the stern. Falcons keel drops continuously from the forefoot to just before the rudder mount, reaching it's full depth only at the very rear. If I could bias the weight further forward, I'd have a better chance of breaking loose the next morning. High tide was at 7:05AM, and I'd had the engine running and in gear since 6:30, probing with a boathook off the transom and measuring the water depth. At exactly 7AM, I knew the water wasn't rising any more and I was still stuck solid. Then a Bass Fishing miracle happened. Three guys who all very much resembled The Cable Guy comedian from Jeff Foxworthy came by in a sweet Bass Boat, toasting me with smiles and their beers held high, knowing me for the down-home party animal I surely must have looked like. We all said 'Hi' and waved and they passed. About thirty seconds later, while my engine was still running hard in reverse, their wake hit Falcon, and she rocked, and moved backwards a foot! Great googely moogely!! I revved the motor, but no more aft movement. I put it in forward and she went ahead a foot, then back and she moved aft a foot, but stopped in the same place. I tied the wheel quickly, revved up the motor and ran forward, climbing all the way out to the very tip of the bowsprit, where I turned facing aft, held the forestay and started bouncing like two year old on grandma's couch. It moved! Then crunched and ground and moved some more! Then Falcon started backwards in deep water! I ran back to the cockpit as she turned to the right in a big prop-walk arc, untied the wheel and brought her back to idle, and got her in forward just as the keel touched ground again. This time, when I put her in forward, she went right back down the channel after the Bass Boat boys, who I will forever owe a debt of gratitude. I put the throttle up into the 'get me the hell out'a here' position and ran the 5 miles back down this swamp trail. This time, when I got back to the Intracoastal, I was extra careful to watch the markers. Once I'd turned the corner and headed north into Pine Island Sound, the Intracoastal was wide and deep and not a problem. There were two or more of those squalls though and the radio was full of reports about Hurricane Charley coming this way. The oil pressure slowly faded until it hovered around 15 PSI. I still didn't know where it was leaking, but silently prayed that it was something I could find and fix. I had to keep using the bilge pump from time to time and seemed to be taking in water from somewhere. At about 1PM or so, with warm sun and improving weather, I pulled into the Useppa Island anchorage that was right on the side of the Intracoastal and dropped the anchor and shut down the engine. Immediately, I heard a trickle of water. A quick look showed that the packing nut on the packing gland assembly had backed off during my 'get afloat' antics in the morning and had been leaking all the way for the past five hours. I pushed it back up to the threads, but found the threads on the inside of the nut had been damaged from the pounding and it wouldn't screw on more that a quarter turn or so. Once again, I was not so much in a mood to take pictures, so all I have are the pictures of how I corrected the position of the packing gland later on, when in Cortez. |
| Originally, the packing gland was waaay back there in that tiny channel and almost impossible to reach, let alone adjust. I always figured I'd just make a couple of special tools and that would be that. The problem is, the hose used to connect the packing gland to the cutlass housing is a special, very thick hose, and it only comes in very short sections. When I first installed it, I just didn't have any good options available. Now it had come back to bite me on the ass. In the pictures above, the battery rack and batteries were not installed, as they had been specially removed to facilitate this rework. You can see the area is covered with all kinds of dust and debris. I'm going to see if I can find a photo that shows how bad the situation really was. Okay, I found one, but this was taken in East Boston and you have to picture it with one more 8D battery right in the middle. The packing gland is directly below the rear edge of the battery rack, about six inches down, and there is not enough room to get your arm in the space between the top of the batteries and the cockpit floor beam, so you have to lay on the batteries and squeeze one hand in on each side of the middle battery. Why not remove the batteries to make it easier? Because they weigh 170 pounds each. As it was, I think I did put the middle one up on the rear cockpit floor, now that I think about it. Still, it was a four hour job to fix the gland. |
| I know the mechanics are seeing the kinked hose into the muffler, and yes, I did change that before running the motor. Something else that can be seen in this shot is the umbilical to the engine, all tie-wrapped and neat. I later on taped this tightly and removed the tie-wraps as I went. This brings up to the oil leak, and the next thing on this days list. Also in that bundle was the small hard nylon tube that fed the oil pressure gauge. A little 'follow the oily trail' work led me to this bundle and once inside, to the split line. Well, that was easy enough to fix. I removed the line and installed a brass plug. I put the rest of the oil I had aboard into the engine and still didn't see it on the dipstick. A wire longer than the dipstick showed I had enough oil to make it to the Gasparilla Marina, some 13 miles north. |
| When I got under way in the morning, I was REALLY beginning to like the way the Windlass just hauled in the chain and big anchor from the cockpit with no effort at all. I still went forward with the remote control switch and watched carefully as the anchored cleared the bobstay, but there was never a problem and it has worked flawlessly ever since. At Gasparilla Marina I again ran into a bunch of nice people who helped me dock, get fuel and oil and anything else I wanted. I naturally had to get some ice cream and savor that for a while. They docked me neatly to one side and walked me back and around when it was time to leave. A good place. I didn't stop again until I reached the anchorage at Venice just inside the entrance channel. It's a tad dicey getting into it if you don't know about a certain shoal area, but the minute I turned toward the shoal, a kid in a powerboat with an air horn sounded a blast to get my attention, then pointed to the shoal, yelled, "Shoal area! Go around!" and pointed to the channel in. I thanked him and easily made it to the anchorage. I always try to anchor early to be able to relax and enjoy a little bit of the local boat traffic and recently, to fix the daily mechanical woes. I didn't have any tonight and checked everything I could think of. I started early the next morning and had a fairly uneventful run through all the bays along Sarasota coastal region, then past the Anna Maria Island Bridge on Manatee Ave and into one more blast from the weather. Another vicious squall came from straight behind me and totally blinded me. Luckily, it didn't last too long and I stayed in the channel. A bit further on and I was picking my way through a narrow channel called 'the bulkhead' and into Tampa Bay when I noticed a huge waterspout not a quarter mile from me. And I mean one big-ass, nasty waterspout from the surface all the way to the clouds. Obviously a product of the squall that had just passed, so I reasoned that it was traveling away from me, but it didn't look like that. I turned north and headed for the mouth of the Manatee River and kept my eye on the waterspout. It lasted a good 20 minutes before vanishing and I won't be sorry not to be that close to one again. I made my way into the marina and called the Harbormaster for a slip. The girl on the radio asked who I was and I told her. Next thing I know, Laura Rojas is on the radio, giving me a slip number and asking if I can start work in the morning. I said I could and asked for a hand docking the boat. Mostly because I had no idea where the slip was and wanted to see someone there pointing me to it. I backed in and tied up and met a couple of the other guys that worked there. Well, it wouldn't really have been a disastrous trip if it didn't end with a perfect exclamation point. As I was sitting on the deck straightening up the docklines, out of nowhere I suddenly upchucked a mouthful and watched my brand new $1000 upper plate sink into the brackish, tannic water. The current was so hard and I was so unfamiliar with the area that I asked a diver who was right in the area to retrieve them. He was laughing so hard that he refused any money, but I gave him $20 anyway and thanked him. He's still a friend today. That's how you like to meet people - gumming out a plea to find your false teeth. |
| April 4, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida |
| I kicked keel ass today and removed another 75 pounds of lead. That leaves only 135 pounds left. Falcon is beginning to look pretty square on the waterline, too, which makes me wonder how I could ever have guessed exactly the right number to remove. I mean, I only really added about 500 pounds of fuel and tank over the old fuel and tank arrangement, but for some reason I set the number for lead removal at 900 pounds - not 800 or 1000, but 900. It looks like that will level the boat perfectly. Dumb luck. What is left is just about six inches of the aft section of the keel. First thing I do now is mark off that six inch line, then start working that last section with the finish line in site. That's inspiring. The lead is six inches wide there, so a square section is all that is needed. Got a few shots of a pretty good sunset last evening from the bridge on Ken and Sandy's. |
| April 5, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida George called last night and invited me over to Palmetto for the monthly get-together tonight. Last night I was pretty excited about getting the last lead out today, so I said I might not, if I worked all day on the lead and was too tired by evening, but I don't see that happening. My right elbow is suffering some - probably from the relentless hammering that thrills my neighbors so much - and it is in rough shape this morning. We'll see what a little time does for it this morning. Still, I don't have to try to FINISH the lead today. I suppose if I just made significant headway into the last section, I would be fine with knocking off early, getting cleaned up and heading over to a food feast. I've started on the lead this morning. It's coming. 11 AM, 35 pounds. 100 pounds to go. 12:30 PM, 15 more, 85 to go. I took a break. 1:41 PM, 27 more, 58 to go, and, oh yeah, another break. Back to work. 1:59PM, 11 more, 47 to go. Well, yeah, short time, short tally. It marks the end of one of the slices. One more slice will do it. 2:38 PM, 18 more pounds, 29 pounds to go. Damn, I'm tired. 3:23 PM, 9 more pounds, nine hard, awful pounds. That's it. That was the last of the last slice. There would be 20 pounds left if I was mentally disturbed, but it's close enough. 880 pounds of lead removed. I need a snack and a nap. |
| April 6, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida I went to Palmetto last evening and had a great feast and visit with Kim and George, and was able to say goodbye to Bill, who is off to start cruising with Ashley, a friend and acquaintance with everyone at the marina. They have both been here for years. Or there, as it were, at Regatta Point Marina. Having recovered from yesterdays siege in the bilge and slipped back into a state of mental instability, I have decided to trim the top edge of the aft lead to better accommodate the lower bilge pump that I'll be installing there. Because of the difficulty in reaching under part of the deck with the 6 foot chisel, instead of the forward edge of the lead being vertical ( l ) like that, it's sloped forward like this ( \ ). I have a need to clip off that sharp corner at the top to route the bilge pump discharge hose to the rear, where it dumps overboard. Espin is back from the panhandle. A sad trip that involved burying his Mother. He is instantly busy with charters on Lil' Toot. |
| In the first shot Espin is giving the standard safety and itinerary talk and a minute later they are on their way. On a good day, he will have four to six charters and also be tipped well. Lil'Toot is a good, dependable work boat that Randy is willing to sell in a package deal with his house, business and all. I already clipped off the extra lead from the keel. It took all of about fifteen minutes and resulted in another 3 or four pounds. That brings the total to within 16 or 17 pounds of the 900 pound goal. I'm satisfied. I probably sucked that much out in little chunks with the vacuum cleaner during the whole process .On a side note, during most of the hammering I was concerned that I might miss the great chisel and swing the hammer right into a knee or a foot. It never happened. Not even close. During the last few minutes this morning, I swung the hammer into my left knee twice. Both times, hard enough for me to stop, hold the knee, grimace and suck air in through clenched teeth. Sweet. Just freakin' sweet. Anyway, lead is done. I am getting two gallons of single-part polyurethane topcoat enamel to mix with the old Brightsides hull paint I mixed up for Falcon. This should result in a very light blue color that I will begin coating the bilges and exposed hull sections inside the boat with. In my mind it represents 'finished' areas of the boat. |
| April 6, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida After getting the last of the lead out, I went to work on the website. I've looked at the multi-colored buttons long enough to be sick of them, so I've changed every single one to standard little gold bars. It's more work than it looks. For each item, I have to remove the link, delete the button, install the new button, and link it to it's destination. Sounds easy until you realize there are 152 presently on the site and at least 180 more coming. I almost won the Powerball and the Lotto on Saturday night. I got 1 number on one and two numbers on the other. It doesn't seem like 'almost' until you calculate how much closer it was than all the times when I don't buy tickets at all. I get a ticket or two about once or twice a year. |
| April 7, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida I ran out of energy yesterday. While outside, taking some sunset and moon shots, the camera's battery gave up the ghost and so did mine. Here are the shots. Both taken at the same time in opposite directions. |
| I'm going to change the page headers today. It shouldn't be as hard as the buttons were and I'm hoping to end up with something I like better. Well, I've been working on changing the headers and so far, I like this better. I'll keep going for now and be back later. Okay, then. I've changed most of the headers and added the other 180 buttons and it's still not 10 AM yet. |
| April 8, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida The wind has been howling for the past two days, but it seems calm this morning. Yesterday I downloaded Linux Ubuntu 8.10 and divided and formatted a 250 gig hard drive in preparation to set up my computer with a Windows/Linux dual boot arrangement. Setting up Linux can be a pain in the ass, but it doesn't have any spyware for the Government or Microsoft already installed, it's incredibly fast and stable, and more programs are being released every day with Linux compatibility. For those systems that are not yet including Linux OS options, I will install a Virtual Box element that will allow XP to exist in the middle of Linux, for those tasks I need to do beyond the restraints of Ubuntu. There is also a Kubuntu release due out on the 23rd of April that uses a KDE GUI instead of the Gnome feature found in Ubuntu. All these programs are free, by the way, and can be downloaded with Windows and burned directly to CD's or DVD's to utilize when setting up Linux on your computer. Well, we'll see how it goes. My friend, Jammer, who's picture I need to get up on here in case the FBI is looking for him, (they're not, but it makes him feel better to think they MIGHT someday) has the system up and running on his screaming gaming system, so if I need help getting it debugged, we'll do a midnight conference call. |
| Cold and blustery last evening, with 40 knot gusts and racing clouds, we had one of those neat 'sun rays through the clouds' sunsets that makes it look like the sun is RIGHT THERE just above the clouds. Awesome. The cold and wind has caused me to avoid opening up the boat to work, as well as the fact that Kim and Mark, on the 37 foot Endeavor next door, have had a huge family gathering for the past week or so and the dock has been a little busy with folks fishing and visiting and just relaxing. I suppose I also needed a bit of time to slip back into a sedentary lifestyle and allow my muscles to atrophy and dissolve after the lead mining siege. Besides, I REALLY do need to get the computer tightened up and tidied up once in a while. Randy will be bringing down the 2 gallons of Interlux Brightside white this morning, so I anticipate having plenty of boat work to do again soon. I'm also thinking about constructing a 'Contents' page for the site or doing something on the Home page that allows visitors to 'one click' straight to any page they wish. Something is brewing in my head. We'll see. Randy brought down the paint and I divided the lead into 4 100 pound buckets to make it easier to move - BUT I COULDN'T!! I couldn't because the last bucket had 120 pounds! Awesome. Somewhere along the line I miscalculated or forgot to add in about 36 pounds of lead, because the best I could do was make 4 105 pound buckets. So, I DID pass the 400 pound barrier. Damn, that makes me feel better. I was HATING that I stopped just shy of it. Well, not hating it all that bad - the boat was sitting right and the job was done, it was just the count that was off. I am also working on the site some today, as the outside temperature slowly climbs into the 'warm' range, but the boat is opened up and it's getting warm here. I've worked over the Home page to add a sort of 'contents' effect with yellow blocks all numbered for the individual pages in the site. Some people have acted surprised when I told them there was more on the Home page than they'd seen, so I wove the contents section around the picture icons in a sort of 'yellow brick road' intended to alert viewers that there is more to the page. We'll see how it works. I hope not to find poo on the brick path where people are walking their dogs. |
| April 9, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida We got a surprise visit today from the FDEP (Florida Department of Environmental Protection) consisting of an attractive woman with a professional demeanor and a young man COMPLETELY taken with his o-thor-o-tee. Like Cartman on South Park, he was pretty sure we should be shaking in our boots at his presence. Nobody did and he got sad and somebody mocked him and he got grumpy. What are you gonna do? Sometimes a new little bureaucratic snot gets all huffy at the drop of a snicker. Figuring he would go sniveling back to the office demanding a Navy Seal team and assault helicopters, we cleaned up the docks. At least I did. My mess is probably the most offensive. Tomorrow I'll get the last of the loose stuff crammed into my truck and take a couple of pictures. It'll be memorable. |
| April 11, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida I got a lot done yesterday, in some respects. I made a run to the Post Office and Walmart and picked up a bunch of stuff and got the rest of the dock cleaned up. I'm going to post pictures of that because it is astounding. |
| The chairs, I will leave behind when I go, as well as the vice. I'm giving the handcart to Paul, the table is just barely surviving and will go into the dumpster lot, and the dock boxes will be broken up and tossed. As far as the stuff inside the dock boxes, well, there's still work to do on Falcon. The white bucket under the chair is waiting to be scrubbed out and used to combine paints so I can start painting the inside areas of the boat. Hope I don't gas myself to death. I took about a million miles of various lines I've been saving and loaded them all into the four aft storage areas on Falcon, then put all the pints and solvents into the red dock box, as well as the contents of a dozen or so 5 gallon plastic pails. I can't make believe it was organized - the stuff was just poured or crammed in. The thing is, it's time to trim. For years, I have accumulated TONS of parts and materials to either use or consider using on the construction of this boat. Now, I'm nearing the end. Most of the issues have been resolved and I'm beginning to know exactly what I will use and what I won't. So, it's time to either give the extra stuff away or toss it. Yesterday I took my huge pile of wood and selected a few pieces, then dumped the rest. I have already started giving away the extra line, rope and cord I won't need. Extra paints, varnishes and solvents will be tossed or handed out. I'm am nearing that point where, whatever I might need from here on out, I can go and buy, a little at a time, and I can forever lose the enormous pile of crap that I have been dragging along after me for the past 25 years. Seriously. When I got to Florida, I had to rent a 15 by 15 storage locker with a ten foot ceiling. From there, I went to two different 10 by 20's. Then a 10 by 10, and finally, the truck. By the way, the truck is packed full. I'll be working on that situation soon. The black dockbox past the green one is also mine, but it's filled with sail material and canvas and those issues will also be addressed soon. For the next few days, I will be mixing paint and painting inside Falcon, thinning the supply pile, completing the fuel tank vents, tabbing the center aft storage lockers and painting them. Also, I'll need to install whatever cable runs are left. The pieces are made and only need to be installed. The pictures below show them. They are made of 2" PVC pipe and all I have to do is drop the cables in as I run them, then wrap a single cable tie around the whole piece, once every 3 or 4 sections, to keep the cables in place in any conditions. It keeps wiring out of the bilges and easy to get to. I will be making diagonal panels to cover them with the 110 volt outlets built into them. Anyway, once the last cable runs are installed, I can lace all the wiring for the rest of the boat and also get rid of the huge piles of extra wire that are waiting in the green dock box. Right now, I have to go next door and help Ken sort our his stereo speaker wiring before he gets all floopey and has an extreme eyeball bulge on one side. I'll be Back. Back. All that was required was to remove all the extra wire that several monkeys had applied to the system, identify the correct wires, remove all wire-nuts and replace with butt connectors, and reconnect everything properly. No sweat. |
| April 12, 2009 - Seafood Shack Marina - Cortez, Florida I did manage to get some things done yesterday, mostly in sorting out and getting rid of some stuff, fixing Ken and Sandy's stereo aboard the Schucker, and discussing with them the disagreeable and negative aspects of having a name like 'Mother Schucker' on the transom of your boat. While they have already removed the 'Mother' part, I finally was able to impress upon them the need for a nice, clean, short name with no other use than to identify your vessel quickly and easily to other mariners, quick to identify over the hailer, non-political, non-pretentious, and fully user friendly for six-year-old grand daughters. Sandy was there ahead of me, of course, and highly favors 'Nemo', which the boat was named prior to the owner before them, who renamed it 'Mother Schucker'. I love the name 'Nemo' - it fits the boat perfectly, is fairly rare and totally kid friendly. No one will ever cringe when hearing it over the radio. Ken would still like to have Shark, Dragon, or Barbarian Horde. I don't know - he'll come around. I'm going to start calling the boat 'Nemo' until he realizes it's not an emasculating slur - it's just a boat name. It is the boat and it's owners that make the name noble - a glorious name can not lift the reputation of a boat - the boat lifts the name. Kim and her extended family had a great dock party last night. It all went well and there was good food all around. I had a plate of fish that couldn't be beat. It was all over and cleaned up within an hour of sunset and was so quiet I thought it was over, but when I went outside to go up to the head, the adults were still all standing around talking up the dock. Today is starting off for me with a killer headache - sinus related - and I've already taken half a Benadryl and a couple of aspirin. It should back off enough for me to sort out some more of the extra stuff - line and odds and ends - before I have to attend to the grueling duty of watching the Masters in Augusta. It's a brutal life, but someone has to live it. I heard from Donny yesterday, just when I had a mouthful of lunch. I promised to call him back in 20 minutes, but got so caught up in things that I forgot and didn't call back for 3 hours. Of course, I was disappointed in my actions and took myself outback and kicked the crap out'a me, so it's alright now. He and Barb are in Miami, tied up in a slip. They had to get water because they have somehow gone through 100 gallons of fresh water in five days. How the hell do you do that? My headache is starting to ratchet down now and I'm going to get on with whatever I can get done for the day. |