In less than a week Pandora will go back in the water to head to Hampton and the Salty Dawg Rally to Antigua.  I’ll admit that I am pretty excited about hanging out with what will be a capacity crowd including nearly 125 boats heading for points south.

Pandora is currently on the hard in Annapolis with a number of techs swarming over her dealing with paint issues, electrical and rigging details that need addressing.

Last weekend I headed down there for about 4 days to work on the many things that needed doing before she goes back in the water.  I am hoping that her splash date will be Monday October 24th but if weather is not looking good for the run to Hampton, I’ll have to stick with an earlier date.

One of the issues that I had to address was the instillation of the replacement for my corroded aluminum tank that sprung a leak last winter, dumping all 35 gallons of precious fuel into the bilge. I was able to save about 10 gallons but the rest went away.    I had the new tank constructed at Luther’s Welding in RI.   I have to say that they do really great work.

I picked up the new tank at their shop.  The new one looks a lot better, that’s for sure. I have now learned a lot about corrosion and what can happen when aluminum lays in the bilge.  In such a dank area salt sitting on the metal will raise hell with it over time.  The “new” leak was pretty apparent.   No wonder that it didn’t take long for all that fuel to leak out.  Nasty… The replacement tank was constructed to be about 1/8″ smaller, in each direction, than the old one, just to be sure that it would fit, and it does. 

In order to avoid another failure down the road, it was recommended that I support the new tank with some 2″ square plastic spacers bedded with 3M 5200 to keep the tank from being in direct contact with the hull and any salt that might accumulate under it.   Sadly, I neglected to purchase “fast cure” so the glue stayed wet and the spacers slipped and slid all over the place while I tried to put the tank in place.  After a few false starts, I was able to secure it and get the floor joists installed as well. I was also having difficulty with the boom gooseneck that was working the fittings loose and needed some love.  It is generally a bad thing if the boom works itself loose while underway.  They removed the boom, did some surgery, and now it’s back in place.  It was a pretty big job in spite of there being only a few new screws showing for their efforts.  Better now. I also had small but persistent leak around the deck joint for the mast.  I had no idea how they would address it but they did.  It looks pretty elegant.  So much, I hope for the SLOB, Slow Leak Over Bunk.  And under the “so simple, even a child, or Bob, can do it”, I installed two new faucets in the heads.  The old ones were pretty corroded.  I don’t expect that these will last decades but then, nothing does in the marine environment.  I am also having the underside of the hard dodger repainted as the old finish was peeling and looked terrible.  It’s turning out to be a very difficult job with some adhesion issues that have come up and I am anxious about what the bill will be like and how it will turn out.

For that matter I am DOUBLY ANXIOUS about how big the bill will be overall.  It was certainly a good plan on my part to also focus on the kitchen and guest bath so I can say to Brenda, “well, we spent a LOT on BOTH the house and boat.” I cling to the belief that this gives approach will give me at least a bit of cover.  Probably not, but I am sticking to my story.

Oh yeah, remember that nasty cold that I caught from my adorable little granddaughter?  It turns out that when I headed to Annapolis for four days of work on Pandora, well I had bronchial pneumonia.    Fortunately, I was on a heavy duty antibiotic which helped, well helped a little as I hacked my way through three days of work on Pandora.

I can tell you that sanding the bottom of Pandora, all 47′ of her while, suffering from pneumonia is no fun, but at least that’s done.  Really glad that I had a brand new full face respirator.    After sanding the entire boat, I can now see that it’s time for to get the bottom soda blasted to remove years of too much bottom paint off and begin anew.

Well, Pandora is getting closer to launching and she sure has gotten her pound of flesh, and phlegm, out of me this year.   I am beginning to think that I may be getting too old to do all of this stuff myself.

However, I am getting excited about heading to Antigua.  Lots of fun to come.

Perhaps I’ll close with this photo of Brenda.  Truer words were never put on a pillow.

It’s hard to believe that Pandora is nearly ready to go head south to Antigua with the Salty Dawg Rally, leaving from Hampton VA on or about November 1st.  With a capacity crowd of 125 boats, it’s going to be a blast.  And, with 100 heading to Antigua, I can say that everyone I know in Antigua are thrilled to be on the receiving end of the rally.

It’s always a struggle to get Pandora, or any boat for that matter, ready with so many issues that need addressing, new or updated equipment and any projects that I have in the works to make Pandora a better home on the water.

Much of my time has been consumed this summer by remodeling the kitchen and the third of our bathrooms.  While I did only parts of the kitchen, it was still a big job and that combined with doing the full bath remodel, it was a very busy summer.

Add to that the interminable delays with Pandora in Deltaville and the frustration of working with a completely non-communicative project manager.  To say that this was frustrating and expensive doesn’t begin to do justice to the details of what made the whole process so repugnant.

I was successful in moving Pandora to yet another spot where an electrician finished up the work and installed the wind generator.

After a few weeks with the new tech,  I was able to move Pandora up to Annapolis where she is now having a number of rigging issues addressed including some new running rigging and other important upgrades needed to make her safe to make passage on to Antigua.

Here she is about to be hauled at Jabin’s yard in Annapolis.  They pulled her out a day early and by early the next morning M Yachts was aboard beginning the work they needed to get done in the few short weeks available.  That’s the sort of support you expect from a quality vendor, so different than the first few months this summer.  I also installed some new solar panels, four 150 watt units replacing the 80 watt panels that were in the boat when I purchased her.  This increase in wattage, combined with the fact that the old panels had lost a lot of efficiency has nearly doubled my output.  I am not enough of an expert to wire them up and put in the new regulator so M Yachts is doing that.   They do look pretty impressive. And contrast that to the old panels in the photo below.  The new ones do not hang over to the sides of the supports at all and only overhang the front of the supports from the old panels by about 6″.    Of course, a big change is that they are each 150 watt, more fully utilize the space available and at $150 each, were a mere “rounding error” in the grand scope of the job. And the wind generator.   I have no idea how that’s going to work out but based on what I have heard from others that have the same unit, I am optimistic.  This photo shows the unit with a slight port list but I will be adding some plastic shims under the mount to deal with that.   It’s because the arch itself is sloped outboard and the installer didn’t have shims on hand.  Combine the upgraded solar, the wind generator and a lithium bank and we have more than doubled our charging ability, I hope, and usable power storage for Pandora.

I don’t want to even think about the cost of making all of this happen.  All I can say is that next year better be a light one for “boat dollars” as this year has broken a number of records on that front.  If not, I’ll be facing serious marital distress from Brenda and we don’t want that to happen, do we?  Good thing that we did the house upgrades this summer and didn’t put those off as it balances things a bit, if not completely.   Fair is fair?  Oh boy, I guess you’ll have to ask Brenda on that font.   

Anyway. even though I have to drive half a day to get to her, at least Pandora is nearing completion and I should be able to have her mostly ready to go after a few more days of work.     With Brenda away visiting some friends on The Cape this weekend, I’m planning to head to Annapolis with all my stuff to begin a dash to get ready for the run south.

Perhaps along the way I’ll be able to stop and see our son Rob and our three adorable grandchildren.

This one, Emme, is one of the two younger twins.  Here I am “Tipi”, what they call me, walking with her to the bus stop to meet her older sister.  Scary as it is, tell me you don’t see an 18 year old trapped in that little girl.  I am so glad that I am not her father.  Scary stuff to come. It seems that alive and well in that adorable little body is a tremendous selection of cold viruses, something that she gives me and I bring home with me after nearly every visit.  As I write this I am hacking away more than a week since my last visit.

With only a few weeks till “lift off” time for taking Pandora to Antigua is flying by.  Wish me luck.  Now, if I can only get over this cold.  Thanks Emme!

 

Ok, ok, perhaps the headline for this post is a bit of an exaggeration but the Salty Dawg Rally to the Caribbean is gaining unprecedented interest.

In a “normal” year, as in “pre-pandemic” the rally generally had about 80-90 boats participating and even during the Covid years, in spite of all the restrictions, we still had 50 boats, pre-vaccination, and 80 last year in spite of boats facing pretty steep restrictions and a lot of unknowns in the islands.

This year however, is a LOT different with over 130 boats applying to join the rally.  And, what’s even more interesting is the number of folks joining us that have never done a rally before, about half.   Additionally, catamarans make up  nearly half of the fleet, the largest percentage yet.

I’ll admit that if I was just moving into cruising now I would buy a cat and not a monohull as they are just so much more comfortable.  I do worry about them in difficult weather as while they are indeed stable, once they start to go over, there is no stopping them and they don’t come upright again.

With so many more cats out cruising the ocean now, I expect that we will begin hearing more about them flipping, especially in the hands of cruisers that don’t have a lot of big boat experience.   So many of the boats in the rally are owned by folks that moved up into much bigger upon retiring from their careers.

In the “old days” the transition to “big” was to purchase a boat, sail it for a few years and then sell it and get a somewhat bigger boat.  Now it’s more like sail a small boat and when you retire, get a 40-50′ cat, and head out.  This means that there are more boats out on the water with owners that haven’t had a lot of practical experience on the ocean, especially on big powerful boats.

I expect that this is contributing to a greater interest in Salty Dawg, an opportunity to have additional education and support at a very low price.

Where else can you get dozens of targeted webinars, 24/7 shoreside side support during the passage and a near instant community of cruisers to hang out with for about $300, the cost of the rally and SDSA membership combined?

I did an Antigua and eastern Caribbean webinar the other evening and we had about 200 attending.   Additionally, as many more signed up than were able to watch the program when it was live, I expect that many more will look at the recording.

All of this is very rewarding to me as I have been “beating the drum” for years now to get folks to head to Antigua and now they are going.  It feels great.  Who wouldn’t want to make landfall at a place like this with dozens of your closest friends?I think that while a big part of all this is that many have emerged from the pandemic with a renewed belief that life is short and they want to use their remaining time wisely .   And, as Salty Dawg has shifted to almost totally online presentations, the material is accessible to many more than could every participate at an occasional live event.

In many ways Salty Dawg has been helped by the pandemic and I’ll admit that it feels pretty good to be working with a group that is growing.

There weren’t many years in my career that saw things on the up and up for several years so this is a nice change of pace.   I am under no illusion that the good times will continue for ever but it does feel like the renewed interest in cruising isn’t going to fizzle too soon.

The other night I did a presentation at our local yacht club and was astonished that nearly 70 showed up.   It was a particular thrill to me as I had not given a presentation “in person” for several years and it was a treat to see “real” people.

Along with the talk about cruising the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, I hosted a “tot” featuring “official” rum from the Antigua and Barbuda Royal Naval Tot Club, of which I am a member.

The rum…The setup…The toast, following a reading of some brief passages from a book covering happenings  on “this day in British Navy History”.   Interestingly, that night, October was the anniversary of the opening of Nelson’s dockyard in 1725, the destination of the Salty Dawg Rally each year.I supplied the rum for the tot, brought to the US aboard Pandora, of course.  And in spite of more than 60 taking part, it didn’t put much of a dent in my supply.  I will admit that this is an alarming cache of rum by any standards.   Don’t worry, I a plan to give a lot, well some, away. It was a wonderful evening and I do wish that I had taped the program as it’s the first one that I have done in a few years that hasn’t been “archived” for others to see.

No recent post would be complete without an update on the work being done on Pandora.  The short update is that the work is mostly done, well all of the battery work and the installation of the wind generator are done, as of yesterday, nearly 17 weeks after being dropped in Deltaville in May.

That’s ridiculous, I admit but finally…

Today Brenda and I head to MD to see our son Rob’s family including our three wonderful grandchillen.   I can’t wait.

On Monday I head to VA to bring Pandora up to Annapolis where there will be additional work done including some scratch repair on the hull, compliments of some small boys in Guadeloupe last winter and some work on the boom.

I’ll also be installing four new solar panels that should bring my solar capacity to a full 1,000 watts an increase from about 600 now.  That combined with my newly installed wind generator will hopefully be able to feed my new lithium bank all winter.

Doesn’t this look great?  I’m excited.  And yes, I too am looking forward to “getting out of Dodge”.  And I will, I hope.

For sure, I won’t be alone in Hampton with hundreds of my closest cruising friends.  Annapolis first…

Fingers crossed… Wish me luck.

 

 

A few years ago I read an article in the NY Times about a society out of the UK that was all about clouds.  I could not resist and joined.  It seems that this “society” has tens of thousands of members.  In fact, I am member #54,749 and that is a lot of members given the fact that the society was founded in 2005.

The goal of the society is to celebrate clouds, something that really resonated with me. Anyone who follows this blog, knows that I love clouds and what better way to build on that than to be a member of a group that celebrates what I love.

The best part of this group is that the daily cloud photos that they share with their members are submitted by the members themselves. However, they don’t just take a photo and send it out.  They make an extra effort to provide context to the cloud that it illustrates.

I have no idea how many photos that they receive each week but I am trilled to have one of mine chosen and published yesterday.

Last spring, as I sailed out of Jolly Harbor Antigua on my way to St Barths, the beginning of my run to the US for the summer, I took this spectacular photo of the sunrise as we headed north. Here is what the society had to say about my photo.

“Those familiar with the adage ‘Red sky in morning, sailor take warning’ might consider this fiery sunrise of Altocumulus undulatus with smoky Stratocumulus silhouettes to be an ominous start to the day. But the sky, spotted by Bob Osborn (Member 54,749), appeared over the Caribbean, just north of Antigua, where it turns out the red-sky warnings don’t apply. This ancient piece of weather lore is backed up by some solid science – but for the middle to higher latitudes of the globe. At latitudes above 30 degrees in both hemispheres, the prevailing winds and jet streams mostly drive weather systems from west to east. This direction of travel, and the fact that storms tend to arrive as fronts with gaps of more settled weather in between, form the basis for why the weather proverb is often accurate. A morning of bright red cloud cover suggests that the sky is clear off to the east where the Sun is on the horizon so that its light can shine uninterrupted up to the cloud cover overhead. This suggests the gap of settled weather has passed and the illuminated cloud might be the start of the next lot of stormy weather arriving. For these reasons, the phrase and its evening counterpart, ‘Red sky at night, sailors’ delight’, both work pretty well in temperate, maritime regions of the world. But winds blow differently in the tropics where Bob spotted his morning red sky. At latitudes below 30 degrees, the prevailing winds, known as trade winds, generally blow the other way: from east to west. A red sky in the morning, therefore, is of little concern for a low-latitude sailor like Bob, who told us ‘it marked the beginning of a beautiful day sailing in steady trade winds’.”

You see, it turns out that a red sky in the morning isn’t bad at all when you are in the tropics.  I will admit that I have often wondered what the day might bring as I see such a fiery sunrise.  Now I won’t have to fret any longer when I am cruising tropical waters.  Whew!

I encourage you to consider membership in this group.   For me, receiving that cloud photo every day is somehow grounding in a world that sometimes seems so terribly complex and distressing.   I’ve submitted a few dozen photos over the last two years and today I celebrate either the fourth or fifth of my photos that they have chosen to send out to their members.  I do wish that I had kept better track of the ones that they chose to share.  Such is life.

You might be interested in checking out this post that I wrote when I first learned about the Cloud Appreciation Society.

And, it’s not always about clouds as I found when they published my photo of a “green flash”.  I thought that I knew plenty about this phenomenon but I was wrong.  See if you learn something.  I did and expect that you will too. So, there you have it.  Not only is there a society for every imaginable interest but you can now rest easy when you are confronted by a “red sky in the morning”.  Well at least as long as you are in the tropics.

Just in case you are interested in hearing what Gavin has to say about clouds and how they fit into our lives, I encourage you to watch this short Ted talk by “the man”.  I think it is inspiring and his encouragement that we stop for a moment, lie in the grass and look up, into the clouds.   Perhaps we need to think of clouds as an opportunity to stop for a moment to celebrate the simple things in the world around us.I expect that I’ll be seeing many more clouds soon as long as I can finally get the work done on Pandora and spend time on the water again.

Antigua, red skies in the morning and of course, clouds, on my mind…

 

 

Socie

It’s early September and Pandora is now in what I hope are the final stages of getting her new lithium house bank installed.  Yes, STILL.

Last week I decided to pull the plug on the marina in Deltaville and move Pandora to a friend’s dock nearby.  There remains more to do so I am bringing in another electrician to review what had been done to date and to recommend what would be needed to finish the install.

I made this decision as when I arrived in Deltaville to consider next steps earlier in the week as I just could not get a straight answer about how much time it would take to get the job done and how many more hours at $100/hr would be needed.

It’s worth noting that when I received my last double digit bill the yard  threatened to haul and impound the boat, when I questioned the number of hours that had been billed.   To me, that seemed very aggressive given the fact that it had only been three days since I had even gotten the bill.  Well, I paid it, under duress I assure you, but it is still not clear to me as to how they had managed to spend literally weeks working full time on the boat, with no clear completion date in sight.

Recall that what has become a very painful saga began in mid May when I brought Pandora back from the Caribbean.  It is hard to believe that it is now Labor Day, an entire summer has gone by and the job is still not completed.    There remains some work to be done on the AC side of the system as well as some troubleshooting on the DC side along with programing of various contr0llers.  And, we are nowhere on the install of the wind generator.

Here’s Pandora at my friend’s dock, a very lovely place to be sure. My plan, all along, was to get the work completed and bring her back to CT so I could get other work done before I headed south to Antigua at the end of October.  Additionally, the Salty Dawg Rally is now offering a departure from Newport and I wanted to give that a try.

Alas, the original delivery date for getting Pandora back was mid July and the yard totally blasted by that.  Silly me, I should have known I was being hosed.  Now it’s September, Labor Day, and the job was still not completed.  My only regret is that I didn’t pull the plug weeks ago and move the boat.

Ok, so now that there is a new tech focused on the boat, I am cautiously optimistic that I will have Pandora’s electrical and wind generator work by mid September when I will run her to Annapolis for some rigging and hull scratch repair at M Yachts.  Steve, the owner, is being very supportive and expects to turn the boat around quickly.  I’ve had work done there in the past and believe him.

With our son Rob and his family, complete with three grandchildren, only an hour from Annapolis, I am looking forward to visiting them when I am working on Pandora.  Tori, in the middle, the oldest, is starting kindergarten, flanked by Emme and Rhette.  Adorable.After I get Pandora ready, I will head down to Hampton to join in the fun leading up to the departure for Antigua and the Salty Dawg Rally to the Caribbean.

And, speaking of the rally, registration is running ahead of any year on record and I expect that we will soon be forced to cut it off.  It pains me to think that we may have to say no to some boats that delayed in signing up as in past years we have taken registrations up until a few weeks prior to departure.   However, this year, it seems that just about everybody that has considered heading south is doing it NOW!

As the pandemic winds down it looks like many are adopting YOLO, you only live once, and have decided to get out of Dodge and head for warmer climes.

This departure time in Hampton will be thrilling for me as president of Salty Dawg and I am SO looking forward to addressing all of those enthusiastic skippers and crew as they prepare to head south, many for the first time.

The bulk of the boats, upwards of 100 or more, will be heading to Antigua, my favorite island, and some to the Bahamas as well.

This winter will be a milestone for me and Brenda as we embark on the beginning of our second decade of seasonal cruising that has taken us the entire length of the US east coast, the Bahamas, much of Cuba and most of the islands of the eastern Caribbean from the USVI south nearly all the way to Grenada.

I have to say that I am very excited about sharing the islands with so many other cruisers, or Dawgs as we like to call them.

All I can say is that I sure hope that getting the rest of the work done on Pandora, abbreviated though it may be, goes smoothly.

I’ll be sharing the “lessons learned” about all this in future posts.   One thing for sure is that this turned out to be the most frustrating process EVER in getting work done and, for me, crystalized what the phrase means when someone says BOAT, Break Out Another Thousand…

Let’s hope that all of the expense and frustration pays off and that the new lithium bank and upgraded electrical system lives up to it’s promise.

Perhaps I’ll focus on what is to come, a winter of sunshine in the islands.   Yes, looks like it will be fun.  I can almost taste that rum punch at sunset with friends aboard Pandora. I guess that I have to say that the SAGA continues but hopefully, no more surprises await.

That’s all for now.  Time to head to the farmer’s market.