We finally left Bosa a few days after I finished the installation of the new inverter and alternator along with a number of other “to do” items, I felt pretty worn out. For a few days after that, Brenda and I just relaxed and enjoyed Bosa.
The last day that we were there turned out to be a special holiday for Catholics with processions that wound through the narrow Medieval streets. Brenda did a wonderful post that gives a great feel for what that last few days were like before we departed. I won’t repeat all that here so click to see what Brenda wrote.
I will, however, put up this photo of her. We had stumbled on this lovely restaurant earlier that day. It turned out to be the best meal we had in Bosa. What a charming spot.
The streets were full of the faithful.
Definately check out Brenda’s post above or you will miss a lot.
We topped up the fuel and headed about 25 miles south to well protected bay that has been used for thousands of years.
For the first time since we entered the Med, we had a spectacular day of sailing. Hardly a ripple and a lovely breeze. I did a short video as we glided along on a broad reach.
You can see our location as the red spot about half the way down the coast. The end of the course is where we will head after our two day stay here.
The bay, the Gulf of Orisanto, is one of the few on the western coast of Sardinia, has been used for thousands of years as witnessed by ruins of a significant Roman settlement, complete with two reconstructed columns. Nice view from the bow of Pandora. Brenda told me that the bay was called the Dead Sea by the Romans as it was always “dead calm”. Calm is good…
We chose this spot in large part as a well sheltered harbor but as a plus, the ruins of Tharros are amazing. People have lived in this area for nearly 3,000 years, beginning with a Nuragic settlement before the Phoenicians established an important trading center here in the 8th century BC. It later came under Carthaginian control and, following Rome’s conquest of Sardinia in 238 BC, developed into a substantial Roman city.
The site is well organized with carefully constructed walkways winding through what was once an important Roman outpost. I found it humbling to know that as Pandora rides on a mooring (you can’t anchor here as it is a protected area and they don’t want anchors to damage the underwater grass areas) and it is humbling to share spot where boats/ships have anchored for thousands of years. The site includes the remains of streets that Romans walked nearly 2,000 years ago as well as foundations of houses, temples and baths along with an amazingly sophisticated water and sewer system.
Of course, what is a visit to Roman ruins without a shot of Pandora framed by the remains of a building thousands of years old. She’s a tiny spot on the right hand side of the left column. The view reminded me of our own insignificance.
The setting is spectacular on this narrow isthmus with remains on both the protected harbor as well as the sea on the narrow peninsula.
High above the Roman city is the massive stone Tower of San Giovanni, built centuries after the Romans left by the Spanish as part of a coastal defense system intended to provide warning of raiders approaching from the sea. I climbed the tower and can only imagine what it was like to be there when invaders were a constant menace.
Brenda watched, I climbed.
The view extends for miles along the coast and across the Gulf of Oristano. On the ocean side wide sandy beaches. The color of the water is hard to believe.
Tharros remained inhabited for centuries after the Roman Empire declined, but by about 1070 the settlement was largely abandoned and its inhabitants moved inland to what became Oristano. I guess that was because there weren’t as many bad guys pestering them. Standing above the ruins and looking out over the sea, it isn’t difficult to understand why this beautiful and strategically important spot attracted one civilization after another and is still a draw today.
As the sun rises in the east, the morning light casts a beautiful warm glow on everything. Not a bad view to wake up to.
But it really gets interesting in the evening as the sun sets to the west.
After dark they light it beautifully.
Made even more magical as the moon rises.
I’ll admit that after how hard it was to work my way through the equipment issues this spring along with the trials at the marina in Bosa, and not to forget getting attacked by orcas near Gibraltar, it is more than worth it now that we are underway and visiting places that I could never have dreamed of when Brenda and I started sailing together on our 20′ catboat back in the late 70s. She looked pretty fetching if you ask me.
As we sailed, what we thought was a long way, the 15 miles between Norwalk and Port Jefferson on weekends, the idea that someday we would cruise much of the US east coast, Cuba, the Bahamas, eastern Caribbean and now across the Atlantic Ocean, would have seemed like a pipe dream. And yes, it would have been.
And, as I have remarked, it really wasn’t until we landed here in the Med, that Brenda has felt at least a little bit “at home” visiting places we couldn’t have imagined when we were just starting out as a newly married couple. Actually, come to think of it, had I mentioned dreams like this I think that Brenda would have run for the exits.
So here I am, nearly two weeks after arriving in Bosa and Pandora is finally everyting is fixed and we are nearly ready to go. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I do have a few “tiny” projects to do but at least we are up and running.
Getting repairs done and Pandora back in shape was quite a project, more than one. The good thing is that Brenda and I had rented a room in in the old quarter, a lovely neighborhood. My girl decked out with a hibiscus in her hair and a really nice blouse that she sewed herself. Only God can make a flower but Brenda can make her clothes. Handy girl.
Projects are finally done and Pandora is safely on the dock with AC running happily. So last night we took the dink into town and had a lovely dinner. The atmosphere was magical and with cooler temperatures finally here, I even wore long pants.
After the two kilometer run up the river, skimming along, we tucked the dink into a spot on the dock between two local fishing boats in the center of town. We headed to our favorite bar for negronis made with local vermouth. They were fabulous and a great way to celebrate finally being ready to depart which we expect to do tomorrow, Monday.
While we were eating dinner later we saw a shrine to the Virgin Mary that had been set up on the town square fountain, not ten feet from where we were sitting.
Half way through our order of steamed mussels we heard a brass band in the distance. They emerged from a narrow alleyway and passed us. It was quite a spectacle.
The link looks nasty but give it a try and see what we saw. For some reason when I put up short videos and they end up in “shorts” they never render correctly here.
We also visited the big church in town and it was in full swing with a choir singing. We were both quite moved.
All and all, it was a magical evening and especially needed after so many days struggling to install the alternator and charger/inverter.
The city looks so wonderful in the evening, especially the fort on the hill.
The waterfront all lit up in a warm glow.
And on the river on our way back to Pandora.
It was a great way to finally celebrate being finished, at least for now, with repairs to Pandora.
I have written, and complained, about the lack of communication from Nautical Pinna, the yard in Bosa, Sardinia as well as the individual that I hired to keep things on track for repairs to Pandora in Almerimar, Spain last winter. While some of the needed work done, and was fine, getting information from the yards and contractors was excruciating. But the biggest problem is that the more complex jobs, like sourcing a proper alternator or charger/inverter was just not possible in Almerimar or Bosa.
When I agreed to bring Pandora to Bosa I had no idea how much work would be needed but as work on the charger/inverter never happened in Almerimar, Pandora arrived with a completely dead unit and a failed, the second one, alternator on the engine. And to add insult to injury, my starter battery suddenly failed. Thanks to the builder for putting a combiner button to start the engine with the house bank.
Anyway, by the time Pandora was hauled in Bosa the list of repairs was long.
After months of sending notes to the yard secretary, the only person in the yard that speaks any English, and getting only occasional replies, I realized that I had to bring along the alternator and inverter/charger as excess luggage and install them myself. That seemed to be a good idea but, as is always the case with boat jobs, getting the equipment into service was no simple task and has ultimately taken me a week and a half to accomplish.
I should note that while I am generally a handy guy, I am totally out of my depth when it comes to electronics and when a possible failure of the new units, from a bad installation on my part, and no way to source new ones on a timely basis, my anxiety was at an all time high as I began putting everything together.
Access to the alternator on the engine was the first step but the new alternator looked very different than the old one so the wiring was not obvious and Balmar’s information on hookup was marginal at best.
The new alternator didn’t quite line up to where the old unit was installed and some modifications needed and with having two fail in the last year, I could not risk a third.
To help sort all of this out, enter Chat GPT to help interpret the instructions. I subscribe to a low level of “thinking” and with a lot of back and forth, the alternator was finally in and functioning. Note that this photo was taken before I had tidied up all the wires so don’t think that I am a sloppy installer, just confused.
Putting the new alternator in place was only half of the job as the unit has an external controller to ensure that the alternator is not overworked, a problem when feeding lithium batteries which can accept power so fast that the alternator, in the hot engine compartment, can quickly overheat. I didn’t realize that when the yard installed the lithium batteries a few years ago, they did not install a temperature sensor on the alternator, a critical piece of equipment that will turn down the unit when it gets too hot. Well, as it turns out, that is likely what killed the two prior alternators and here I am still without a sensor on the new unit. I didn’t know then what I didn’t know. Now I do…
The first time I turned it on it ran up to full output and quickly reached dangerous a dangerous temperature. What I also did not fully appreciate was that the external alternator controller had not been set to limit output so the alternator was immediately working too hard. Now I know that the original lithium installers had not adjusted the unit appropriately, in addition to not installing a temperature sensor.
This was clearly another example of “I didn’t know then what I didn’t know.” Now I know that the best way to solve overheating, without an temperature probe, is to limit output to about half of what it is rated for. The settings are complicated but with support from AI, I was able to configure the controller and after several test runs of the engine, things seem to be ok. I will still have to get a temp sensor but for now fingers crossed.
This was the first time that I had ever used AI to work on something technical and in some ways it helped a lot and in other ways, made it much harder.
I was able to point it toward key installation instructions and after a few moments of “thinking”, it came back with a recommendation. Mostly, this worked but it often contradicted itself and asked for repeated testing, which became very frustrating. However, by the time I got to the inverter/charger, the stakes were that much higher and after a few days fussing over two wires and here they went, I upgraded to a higher level plan which did the trick.
Sadly, the inverter/charger is squeezed behind some complex cabinetry which had to be completely removed.
It took hours to remove all of it, nearly a whole day. Cabinetry removed and all the mess exposed. The Magnum is very heavy and I had to get someone from the yard to heft out the old one and put in the new unit. Along the way the backing board that everything is attached to came free so I had to have them re-epoxy the board back in place. That was a day long setback.
At the “height” of these projects, the boat was totally trashed. And with temperatures in the upper 90s, and Pandora on the hard with no AC, it was HOT working all day.
After getting someone to hoist the new unit into place, now my job was to put all the wires back where they were before I took the old unit apart. I was careful to take a photograph of the wires and where they were in the original installation. Simple enough but for one small detail. There are two blue and two brown and once I had removed them I had no idea where they should go back in the new unit. And that turned out to be a very BIG DEAL that took several days of back and forth to solve. Oh boy, what s..t show that turned out to be. I am generally pretty good about marking wires and taking photos but missed on this one badly.
See two brown and two blue. Oops for not marking which went into which slot. HUGE mistake.
Of course, my biggest concern was if I switched blues or browns incorrectly and caused a fault, my new $2k charger/inverter would end up in the trash and I would be here in Sardinia with no way to get a new one.
So, I consulted with AI. FOR SEVERAL DAYS and we went around and around, testing and retesting and never being quite certain if it was ok. Finally, fairly confident that I was good to go, I energized the system and it worked. Well, sort of worked and didn’t blow up, which was good. One of the cabin outlets worked but the AC, water heater and all the rest of the outlets were dead. Obviously one or more of the blue and brown wires were swapped. Which one?
I spent a day, or was it two?, on this question, with support from AI, with no solution. Was it ok to just swap one and see what happened? I wasn’t confident, nor was AI, that this would be ok and finally after hour after hour, testing and retesting, I decided to upgrade to a higher level of AI thinking, something that my son Chris had suggested a few days earlier.
Somehow in all the fun I had forgotten about that but finally did and within a few hours we had firm answer. Just swap two wires and everything worked. I could have cried I was so relieved and Brenda could have strangled me for taking so long to do the right thing.
I sure wish that I could upgrade my thinking. Alas, no luck with that and in the heat, even worse. What? How do I do that? Huh
So, when all is said and done, it seems that the primary issue with both the inverter/charger and the alternator was high temperature. In the tight cabinet the Inverter/charger was getting too hot and the cooling fan that had been there was no longer working. I didn’t appreciate the risk I was taking by not replacing it. Done now, of course and on a programable thermostat that turns it on and off as needed by a nifty devise I purchased on Amazon.
We all know that heat kills, something that has been coming up more and more with the warming climate. And, it turns out that the most logical explanation of what killed my alternator, or two, and my inverter/charger was heat. Hopefully dialing back the alternator output and putting in the fan for the inverter/charger will do the trick. An expensive lesson, to be sure.
Enough of that for now, I hope.
This morning we were treated to a beautiful sunrise and we will be off tomorrow to begin exploring Sardinia and other places to the south.
Yes, a beautiful day with no more fixing stuff that I don’t understand. But if I do, at least I can lean on AI to help.
Rick Steves, the travel guy, categorizes travelers into three distinct types: tourists, travelers, and pilgrims. Tourists seek relaxation and entertainment, often engaging in what some might call superficial experiences, while travelers aim for deeper connections and understanding of the places they visit. Pilgrims, on the other hand, embark on journeys with a spiritual or transformative purpose.
Simply stated, his categories fall into these areas.
Tourists — Tourists typically prioritize relaxation and entertainment, often focusing on superficial aspects of travel.
Travelers — Travelers seek meaningful experiences, aiming to connect with local cultures and communities.
Pilgrims — Pilgrims travel with a spiritual or transformative goal, often reflecting on their journey.
Cultural Engagement — Steves emphasizes that engaging with locals leads to a richer travel experience.
Budget Travel — A tight budget can encourage travelers to explore local alternatives, fostering deeper connections.
Over the years, I have often thought of what sort of travel Brenda and I have focused on, always zeroing in on the same category, “traveler”.
These days the label of “tourist” has become a category perhaps best illustrated on Instagram, where folks rush from place to place, taking selfies, in part to prove to their social media “friends” that they were there. I have to believe that when they return home they are probably ready for a vacation, exhausted from making sure that they did not miss anything and that they proved to their “friends” that there life is more full than others.
Of course, when all the time you have is two or three weeks a year, that might be the best way to travel so you will return feeling like you made the most out of your limited time away.
For “vacation cruisers” it seems to me that chartering in the BVIs is the perfect embodiment of this mentality. Don’t get me wrong, if I only had a week or two to go sailing, that’s exactly what I would do as cruising there is compact and predictable. The BVI is a nice manageable scale and you can get a bit of “cruising” in and not spend too much of your short week afloat moving around. A few hours sailing, or motoring, each day and lots of time to hang out on a mooring is the best approach when your time away is limited.
However, when you “cast off the docklines” and are lucky enough to make the transition from short term to long term cruising, time away begins to take on a different meaning, less focused on checking off a list and more about making the most of the experience of being away for months at a time.
Our first season in the Bahamas saw us cover 1,000 miles, and we visited as many islands as we could cram into our three months there. We carried this approach to Cuba during our two months there, also covering nearly 1,000 miles and into the Caribbean where we visited so many islands in our first season that we lost count. I have to admit to a bit of nostalgia as I looked back on my post at the end of our first season in the Bahamas in 2013.
After a few years cruising the Caribbean, we found ourselves staying put for a lot longer, enjoying the harbors that we enjoyed the most as opposed to striving to see as much as we could in a set time. A good example was the year we were in Bequia during the Easter week, participating in some local fun when Brenda competed with a local boy to see which team could “thread the needle” the fastest. Yes, a sewing needle. I wrote about this remarkable week in this post at the time. They won!
While covering a lot of ground has been our approach during our first season in the Med has been a lot about covering ground, that’s been more about our interest in cruising Italy and points east, where the winds are, hopefully, more consistent.
As I sit here, with only a day before we begin our journey back to Bosa, we are focused on a plan to spend more time enjoying the finer points of Bosa than what we experienced during our visit in May, the last stop on our two month journey. We hope to be less focused on “what’s next” and more on experiencing again what we loved the most about Sardinia, knowing that we have only scratched the surface.
Over the years Brenda has become more and more focused on spending time with “her people”, those that value working with their hands, especially with fiber. A great example of how anything fiber or sheep captures her attention, was the night we were having a glass of wine, or two, at a tiny cafe in Bosa when she noticed that one of the hand woven table runners had a pattern of sheep.
And anyone that knows Brenda, knows that she loves anything sheep…
She had to have that runner and asked the owner if she could buy it even though it wasn’t for sale. He snatched it from the table that had two other guests and agreed to let it go for 6 euros. It was hers and she was one happy girl, already knowing what it would become.
Fast forward and now it’s a handbag. Of course, she knew what it would become as everything in Brenda’s life eventually ends up as a handbag. Well most everything…
Brenda loves lace and found some of “her people” that did lace, even though they had never met. They didn’t even speak English but spoke the same “language” of lace.
In 2016 we visited Cuba for two months and before heading there, Brenda spent time trying to see if any of “her people” lived there and learned that there was a woman who did bobbin lace in Havana. When we arrived, she set out and found her, here wearing green, and did so on our very first day in the city. She was thrilled and wrote about what was a magical experience for her.
So, are we Tourists, travelers or pilgrims?
Oh yeah, there is also the question of spending money and while I will generally spend what it takes, I am always mindful of what we “need” to spend to enjoy ourselves and as the days we have left in what might be called “the go-go years” of retirement, I’ll admit that we are loosening the purse strings a bit but I can still be pretty much of a Yankee, true to my Scottish roots, making it tough for me to part with “the green”.
I agree with Steves that the more you spend you begin to loose connection with those who might, as Brenda might say, become “your people”, those chance encounters that lead to something more…
So, back to what category we fall into.
Brenda, I can say with confidence, is a blend of traveler and pilgrim as after knowing her for most of my life, nearly six decades, is always on a quest to better understand herself.
Me? I am a much simpler person and while I love to take photos, like a tourist, I am more interested in immersing myself in the culture and community wherever we are and really don’t care if we see all the hot spots, preferring to sit down in a cafe and do some “people watching” whether it’s over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine at the end of the day, and I’ll admit, sometimes wine at lunch…
When it comes to “finding myself”. Hmm… I’m not all that deep so let’s leave it at that.
Perhaps this chapter, our nest few seasons in the Med, I hope to more fully immerse myself in the culture and people of the areas we are visiting and perhaps, more important than that, is that this is a step in my attempt to replace the community that we have left behind, the community that we were a part of for so many winter seasons in the Caribbean.
And, to that point, over the more than 15 years and 1,200 posts on this blog, the response from my last post the other day about “community” has produced more response than any that I have ever written and it meant a lot.
I was particularly touched by this comment that I received a few days ago from someone who I have never met. It takes a lot of time to do a post and it meant a lot to know that what I have to say meant something to someone. He said…
“Hi Bob,
Your recent post about community spurred me to email.
Long time reader of your blog and I do not believe I have ever contacted you to thank you for the inspiration, information and entertainment. Thank you for all the efforts, pictures, adventure stories and entertainment! You (and Brenda) have been an inspiration to me. In fact, the context of your early retirement and boating has help shape my own goals. We live in Florida and have two high school aged kids. Soon, I strive to follow closely to your course with one deviation, no sails…we bought a trawler about a year ago.
Took me a few minutes this morning but figured you would want to know how I found your blog. About 15 years ago, I was reading a blog called Drift Away. That trawler blog had blog link to Ilene the boat who shared your blogs link since at that time you had the same type of boat. And now, your blog is read with coffee as I log into work.
Please excuse my delayed appreciation and hopefully your virtual community is accepting of non-sailors. You are an amazing adventure maker along with being a great writer so please know your blog is very much enjoyed.
Again, thanks for the inspiration and entertainment!
Brian”
Knowing that there is “someone out there” is important as it keeps me motivated and those that have followed me over the years may recall that for the first seven years of writing I did so for my parents who would often sit down at the end of a day and read my most recent post while having a glass of wine. When they passed, it took time for me to find my footing and now, nearly a decade later, I am happy to say that it is clear that there is somebody out there that is reading my posts. On the first page of my blog is a short piece that speaks to the “why I write this blog” and speaks to my motivation during those early years.
It means a lot to hear from you so please keep those cards and letters coming…
And think of us as we head back to Pandora and act one, scene two of our time in the Med.
We hope that you will follow along as we do our best to be true to what Rick Steves calls a “traveler”.
Brenda often has a very different take on the same experiences that I write about. Consider following along with her too. www.argoknot.com
So, do tell, are you a tourist, traveler or pilgrim?
Last week I hosted a mini-rendezvous at the Essex Yacht Club, one of many events that I have held over the years. This time, though, I tried something new. I used the “member maps” of both the Salty Dawg Sailing Association and the Ocean Cruising Club to identify boats and members within a reasonable distance of Essex who might be interested in joining us.
Sixteen sailors showed up, with less than two weeks’ notice.
It was a simple evening. Drinks in the bar, dinner, and lots of conversation.
Brenda and I split up so we could make sure everyone felt included, and by the time we left, it felt like we’d accomplished something by bringing like minded cruisers together in an informal and manageable way.
The ability to look at a map, see where our people/boats are and then reach out to them in real time was a new way, to me, for bringing folks together. A modern approach similar to what we used to do in an anchorage, moving from boat to boat to invite folks to get together. And it got me thinking about community.
Or, perhaps more accurately, about what happens when you move to a new neighborhood.
The New Neighborhood
In some ways, moving from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean has been like moving to a new neighborhood.
The houses and towns are older. Much older. The scenery is spectacular. Every town seems to have its own castle, fortress or church that has been standing for hundreds, often thousands, of years.
But we don’t know the neighbors yet.
That’s something I hadn’t fully appreciated when we decided to spend several years cruising in the Mediterranean.
For a decade, the Caribbean was our winter home. We didn’t have a house there, of course, but we did have a home base, Pandora, and we had our people.
When Brenda and I first started cruising, even if it was only for weekends, I can remember how disconnected we felt when we left the dock. We’d go away for a few days and suddenly we were out of touch.
Today, of course, that’s almost unimaginable.
We’re living in an always-connected world. Some people actually like the idea of disappearing for a while, of checking out and not being seen or heard from.
That’s not for everyone but I am definitely not one of those people.
I like to say, only slightly jokingly, that I don’t want to be alone except when I’m in the bathroom — and even then, that assumes it doesn’t take too long.
Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
For the last week, Brenda has been away at a weaving workshop in Vermont. For the first few days she had little cell coverage and even less Wi-Fi. I’ll admit that I struggled with the “where’s Brenda?” thing. Being cut off from her, even for a day, wasn’t much fun.
And that got me thinking about how much our idea of being “out of touch” has changed.
I’ve covered something like 30,000 ocean miles over the years, and until fairly recently, going offshore really did mean being disconnected. Sure, with my Single Sideband and limited email capability, I was SORT OF able to stay in touch. Now, with Starlink, that’s largely a thing of the past.
Being able to pick up the phone, send a message or get in the dinghy and go see someone, so much a part of our life for more than a decade was a treat.
It’s also something I need, probably more than most.
Our People
That’s really what the Salty Dawgs gave us.
For ten years of cruising in the Caribbean, a huge part of our experience was being part of that community.
There were sundowners and shared meals as the sun dropped below the horizon.
Cruiser events that I hosted at the Essex Yacht Club over the years.
Hanging out on the docks with close friends in St Lucia, during Covid when there was nowhere to go, always being sure to be upwind from others.
We flew various club burgees so other cruisers would know that we were “one of them.”
There were rendezvous with fellow cruisers, too numerous to count, including more than one particularly memorable birthday celebration. In particular, Brenda’s on our very first run south to the Bahamas, our first year in a “real” community of sailors.
There were celebrations when we arrived in Antigua after an ocean passage. I made that round trip eight times, I think, so there was always something to celebrate — sometimes more than others.
The Tot club, yet another community, that meets daily in Antigua, to share a dram of rum and toast the King.
There were island tours with friends. Someone would say, “Hey, want to rent a car tomorrow?” and somehow, an hour later, we’d have a plan.
And, of course, family visits along the way.
None of this was particularly difficult to arrange. Well, family visits can be tough to get on the calendar, but cruisers are good at finding each other. Put a few boats in the same harbor, fly the same burgee or recognize a familiar name and before long, you’ve got a group going somewhere for dinner.
That’s what I realized while looking at those member maps for the Essex rendezvous, that it was like looking at boats in anchorage, a community that I could invite for a visit, just like the old days.
The technology has changed, but the basic idea hasn’t.
The maps simply make it easier to find our people.
Sixteen People and a Dinner
The rendezvous was almost ridiculously easy to organize.
I looked at the maps, found members who were close enough to Essex, sent out an invitation and waited to see what happened.
Sixteen sailors showed up.
We had drinks in the bar, dinner and a great evening together. At the end, we all posed for a photo.
Bruce, the guy on the left in the photo and an OCC member, took the other photo of the clubhouse as he headed back to his boat.
It’s a great shot.
Bruce took this photo of the club as he made his way back to his boat.
What particularly struck me was how quickly a group of people could come together simply because someone made the effort to ask.
And it made me think about what we’ve given up by moving to the Mediterranean.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Med.
It’s pretty awesome to sail into a place where every town seems to have its own castle or fortress and where “old” often means a thousand years.
We’ve seen places and experienced things that would have been difficult to imagine when we were cruising the Caribbean.
But we don’t yet have a community there.
We have met some wonderful people, of course. We’ve made a few friends along the way. But we don’t have ten years of accumulated relationships, familiar boats, shared history and the simple knowledge that if we show up most anywhere, we’ll probably know someone.
We’re the new kids on the block.
And it turns out that moving to a new neighborhood is hard.
My People
Maybe that’s why I’ve found myself thinking more about this blog and how it fits into my community.
For years, writing about our cruising has been a way of sharing what we’re doing with people who aren’t necessarily sitting in the cockpit with us. It has been a way of keeping in touch.
In a sense, this has become another part of my community as I am able to have a conversation, mostly one way, I’ll admit, but I do hear back with comments regularly and it is nice to know that there is “someone out there” paying attention.
Recently, for my 71st birthday — how did I get that old? — Rob and Chris, along with Brenda, gave me a very fancy drone.
I plan to put it to use and hopefully “up my game” a bit by adding short videos to these pages.
I can’t say that I relish the additional complexity. I’m already discovering that there is a lot more to making a video than simply pushing a button and watching a drone fly around.
But I’m going to give it a try.
And, of course, I expect to call on ChatGPT to help with the editing so that this new hobby doesn’t take too much time away from the thing I actually enjoy: writing.
Because I suppose that’s really what I’m getting at here.
I don’t just write this blog to document where we’ve been.
I write it because I like sharing the experience.
And, after all these years, sharing the experience has always been a big part of what community is.
So, as part of my community, please say something so I know you’re out there.
A comment would be nice.
Better yet, write to me at bob@sailpandora.com so I know that SOMEONE is listening as moving to a new neighborhood is hard.
When I left Pandora in Almerimar last winter, I had a long list of things that needed to be addressed. I found someone who said he would handle them and, after lots of back and forth, I headed home feeling reasonably confident that things were under control.
They weren’t.
When I returned, quite a bit of the work remained undone.
I thought I had learned my lesson.
So, when it came time to decide where to leave Pandora for the summer, I spent considerably more time thinking about how I was going to manage the work from thousands of miles away. I made copious notes in a voluminous Word document, took photographs, annotated them with arrows and Post-its and tried to make everything as clear as possible.
This time, I was going to be organized.
What could possibly go wrong?
Choosing Bosa
We chose Bosa for fairly straightforward reasons. The marina was reasonably priced, no simple feat in Sardinia when I needed to leave Pandora there during high season. The location worked well for our plans, too, as Bosa is a beautiful medieval city.
And Nautical Pinna had been responsive and seemed capable, even if they were really the only game in town.
I knew going in that there was a language issue. As far as I could tell, only one person in the yard spoke English. But I figured that between WhatsApp, Google Translate and my carefully prepared instructions, we could make it work.
Once we arrived, I met the people at the yard and saw some very large yachts, upwards of 90 feet, that appeared to be receiving fairly sophisticated work. That was reassuring.
So, Pandora was hauled and I got her ready for three months of storage, and repairs…
I wrote up the long document detailing everything I wanted done, included photographs and annotations, and sent it off. They translated it into Italian.
And then…
Radio silence.
For nearly two months.
There were occasional exchanges, but very little information about what was actually happening. I followed up regularly, but as the weeks passed I became increasingly uneasy.
By late July, with only about a month remaining before I was due back in Sardinia, I finally sent a fairly direct message: I needed firm plans and at least some estimates within three days, or I was going to have to make other arrangements.
That got a response.
But not exactly the detailed work plan I had been hoping for. It was more along the lines of, “We hear you and will be in touch.” I wasn’t even sure if it was an answer or a brushoff.
So, what to do?
Plan B: Do It Yourself
The problem was that there really wasn’t another yard nearby that I could simply move Pandora to. And, besides, I was in the US and Pandora was in Italy. Bosa is a wonderful little place, but it isn’t exactly a major center for marine services.
That left me with the same solution that has served me so many times over the years:
Do it myself.
Fortunately, after more than a decade of cruising, I am reasonably handy.
Or, as I prefer to describe it, I have long understood what is not news to serious cruisers: this lifestyle is all about fixing boats, mostly yourself, in exotic places.
When I booked space in Bosa, I didn’t know what would be needed. But as we got closer to leaving for the US in June, the list of “to-dos” grew by the week.
The 70-Pound Suitcase
The biggest job is replacing Pandora’s inverter/charger, which had been giving me trouble even before I had her hauled in Spain last winter and simply wasn’t addressed.
It is a substantial piece of equipment and is buried behind a considerable amount of cabinetry. To get to it, I’ll have to take much of the cabinetry apart.
I could have tried to source one in Europe. But given the differences between American and European electrical systems, the need to configure it correctly for Pandora’s lithium batteries, and the fact that I would be relying on someone else to get all of that right, I decided that this was one job where I wanted complete control.
So I bought one here in the United States and will bring it with me, all 65 pounds of it.
Actually, by the time it was packed, it was closer to 70 pounds.
The box, when it arrived at our home, even had a label that says TEAM LIFT.
No kidding.
Airlines generally don’t want you checking a large cardboard box as luggage, even if it has a handle. Fortunately, I have a very sturdy duffle bag with strong webbing handles, so the inverter/charger is going to Sardinia as one very large, very heavy piece of checked luggage.
I’ve learned this lesson before.
A few years ago I showed up at JFK with a 50-pound 240-to-120 AC voltage converter in a sturdy box with a handle. I thought I was being clever.
The airline disagreed.
They wouldn’t accept the box, and I had to scramble around the airport trying to find a duffle bag big enough to stuff it into.
Lesson learned.
And Then There’s the Alternator
Pandora also needs a new engine alternator.
This is another substantial piece of equipment, although at about 15 pounds it qualifies as the featherweight compared with the inverter/charger.
It is a high-output alternator capable of more than 100 amps at 24 volts, and because it wasn’t something I had much confidence in being able to source quickly in Sardinia, I decided to bring that with me too.
So my excess luggage now exceeds 100 pounds, and that’s only for these two items. There is plenty more that needs to go with us.
Being a boat stuff sherpa is apparently my lot in life.
There is another reason for bringing the equipment myself. Pandora has an 850Ah lithium house bank from Blue Heron Batteries, and I want to know that the charging equipment is configured correctly for those batteries.
I contacted Hank George, the owner of Blue Heron Batteries, and he and his technicians helped make sure that the equipment would be properly configured before it was shipped to me.
That was particularly important because of my other concerns about the yard in Bosa. We’re dealing with sophisticated electronics, different voltages and battery requirements, a boat with both 240- and 120-volt AC, and a mix of 12- and 24-volt equipment.
I have known Hank for years—I took over as president of The Salty Dawg Sailing Association from him—and I trust him to get things right.
With Pandora’s combination of 24-volt and 12-volt systems, lithium batteries, European shore power and a boat that has accumulated years of modifications, this isn’t an area where I want to take chances.
The Wiring Forest
And then there is the wiring.
Pandora is a 2007 boat, and I am certainly not the first person to modify things.
There are wires everywhere.
Some go somewhere.
Some don’t.
Some presumably went somewhere once upon a time.
The photograph of the inverter installation above is a good, if most extreme, example. You may look at it and wonder, “Bob, what’s with all those wires?”
Good question.
I intend to spend some time figuring out what is still needed and removing what isn’t.
The operative word there is intend.
Removing what appears to be an abandoned wire is easy. Removing a wire that you think is abandoned and discovering later that it was actually connected to something important is considerably less entertaining.
So I’ll be proceeding carefully and probably end up still leaving some wires that I just can’t figure out what they are for.
However, one good thing about doing things yourself is that when it goes badly, at least you know where to start—or who to blame. You made the mistakes yourself.
The Real Problem
The real problem isn’t so much the work itself.
I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m perfectly capable of taking apart cabinetry, replacing an inverter/charger and installing an alternator. Well, I’ll admit that the electrical hookups make me anxious, but Hank’s group is generally available if questions come up.
The biggest issue has been managing a boat remotely.
When Pandora was in Trinidad, this worked remarkably well. I had “Amos,” a guy who was always there when I needed him, and he kept me informed every step of the way. Communication was easy. I could make a decision from home and generally know that the person on the boat understood what I wanted and would follow through.
Sure, when I returned there were still things that needed to be attended to, but mostly things were completed and done right.
Spain was different.
Italy has been different again.
And perhaps the lesson I’m learning is that leaving a boat somewhere isn’t the same thing as leaving a boat somewhere with reliable support.
Sure, that’s obvious. But I really thought my experience in Spain was a bit of an outlier.
It wasn’t.
When you are sitting on the dock, problems are mostly manageable. You can walk over to the boat, look at something, figure out what’s needed and sometimes find someone who’s an expert and have them figure it out.
When you’re 3,500 miles away, everything becomes harder.
A simple question can take days to answer.
A misunderstanding can sit unnoticed for weeks.
A part that could be found locally becomes something that has to be ordered, shipped internationally and perhaps cleared through customs.
And if the yard isn’t communicating, you don’t really know whether anything is happening at all.
That’s the part that has been frustrating.
Less Than Two Weeks to Go
So, in less than two weeks—ten days, if not to put too fine a point on it—Brenda and I will fly from JFK to Sardinia, where we have rented a room while Pandora is still on the hard.
The place, the Madalen Guest House, is located in the historic area of Bosa, the same general area where we stayed last spring. It’s an impossibly charming location.
And then I’ll get to work. After a croissant and cappuccino at least.
The plan is to replace the inverter/charger, install the alternator and tackle the growing list of things that I have decided I can no longer confidently leave to someone else.
With the planning I’ve done, and with the technical support from Hank and the Blue Heron team, I’m reasonably confident that the major electrical work will go smoothly.
At least that’s the plan.
We’ll see.
At this point, I’m not relying on the yard for very much, so it will be interesting to see what I find when I get back.
Just to be sure that we are on the same page, earlier this week I sent them a “revised to-do list.” I hope that being “on the same page” means the same thing to both of us.
Every week, it seems, another job moves from the “yard will take care of this” column to the “I guess I’ll do it myself” column.
Such is cruising.
Or perhaps more accurately, such is cruising when your boat is thousands of miles away and you’re trying to manage it from home.
I’m beginning to think that the most important piece of equipment I am carrying back to Sardinia isn’t the inverter/charger or the alternator.
It’s confidence that I have a plan—and the flexibility to change it.
And, of course, a very large duffle bag, or two.
Meanwhile, Back in Essex…
While I’m spending my time figuring out how to get Pandora back in the water, I’ve also been thinking about what I’ll do this winter when I’m stuck here in Essex.
There are a couple of fun things taking shape.
I’m working with Salty Dawg on a two-day event at the Essex Yacht Club tentatively titled “Making the Jump from Coastal to Long-Distance Cruising.” The idea is to help cruisers who are thinking about moving beyond vacation cruising, whether that means becoming liveaboards or simply doing more extensive seasonal cruising.
I used to run a three-day event at Essex Yacht Club every June for upwards of eight years, so it feels like it’s time to bring something like that back.
And then there’s Antigua.
I’m also working on a week-long trip to Antigua in early February with a group of artists, most of them members of the American Society of Marine Artists. Planning is going very well, and we already have about 20 people signed up less than two weeks after announcing it, double the number that we had last winter when I first organized an event with them.
So, while Pandora waits patiently in Sardinia, there is plenty going on back here.
And that doesn’t even count trying to figure out how I am going to pack all that stuff and still leave room for clothes.
Such are the many details of my life as a nautical sherpa.
