He who hesitates does not go sailing and has to be content with whippings

In yesterday's posting, I said I hoped to go sailing today. Winds were forcast to be 10 - 13 knots from the west - great sailing weather. But, when I woke up this morning, there was no wind - dead calm. I dithered between going out anyhow and hoping that the wind would pick up and thinking that I could do some little things to tidy up around the boat. I decided to start in on the little things and see how the weather progressed. Around 11 or so, there were a few breezes - light and variable, mosty from the north and northeast - but not worth the effort if that was as good as it was going to get. I decided to give up the idea of going sailing. Naturally, that means that the wind gradually shifted around to the west and by 1:30 it was great sailing weather - pretty much as forcast. But it was too late to go. It takes me an hour to get ready to go and another half hour to get out to the bay. I need to be in by 4:30 or so because some of my navigation lights don't work right.

Instead of a brisk sail, I got to spend the day whipping - ropes. No - no. Not whipping with ropes - just whipping ropes. A whipping is just a way of wrapping small line (large thread) around the end of a rope to make the end stay neat and not unravel. Like this.

To do this, requires whipping twine, a large needle, a pair of pliers and a sailmaker's palm.

The "twine" is waxed nylon thread. The sailmaker's palm (at the top) has a button on it that is used for pushing the needle through heavy material - like rope or sail cloth. As you might imagine, this is not rocket science - it just requires some patience and concentration. By late afternoon, all of the various halyard, sheets, running backstays, etc had neatly whipped ends. The last step in the process is to use a hot knife to cut the rope about 1/2" past the end of the whipping. The ropes are all made of dacron or nylon so they melt and fuse the little fibers together making a nice neat end.

Fascinating, eh? So what to do with the rest of the day...

I finished reinstalling the wheel steering - four nuts had to be put in place at the foot of the pedestal guard. No big deal. It did involve diving (once again) into the depths of the port cockpit locker, removing some panels and reaching into uncomfortable places.

While I was at it, I remembered that I had found a hose dangling loose yesterday when I was doing all the cleaning under the galley sink. I thought this would be a good time to find out where the other end was. The hose had a water filter on the end of it so it must have had something to do with the water system. After spending an hour of poking about, removing more panels and poking about in the engine area, I still don't have the answer. Ah, the mysteries that come with a 33 year old boat!

Tomorrow, I will be heading over to Davis to visit with Suzanne and then on up to Placerville for a couple of days to spend time with Judy and work on taxes. Hopefully, by the time I get back to the boat, I will have heard good news about a job. Hope springs eternal!

Mondays, housekeeping, phone interview and broken galley pump

Being retired, I figure I should do something to keep me in touch with that "Monday feeling" that went with being a working man. My solution is to make Monday my housekeeping day. It is a poor replacement - housekeeping on this boat is not all that big a deal. It takes about 15 minutes to do a good job of running the vacuum - and that includes going out on deck and vacuuming the cockpit. Then, its time to get out the bucket, add, hot water and detergent and do some wiping down. I do a quick once-over to get the obvious hand prints, scuff marks, etc.

Now, I have noticed that just about any job I do on the boat turns out to have at least one other little job attached to it. Cleaning is a good way to find some of those jobs. Something always pops up that seems a good candidate for a more in-depth cleaning or fixing - or both. Today's candidate for cleaning was the space under the galley sink. It is one of those places that is easy ignore. It holds a trash can, a dust pan and the dish drainer. It also holds a non-functional pump that is supposed to be the backup for the pressure water system. Doing something about it was the extra job for today.

Since a boat is not connected to the city water, there has to be some device on the boat to get water from the water tank to the user at the sink or shower. Laelia has a noisy electric pump that does this. One truism in boat life is that electrical things will fail. Salt air and moisture take a high toll on electrical things. The second truism is that it will fail when it is most inconvenient - like half way to Tahiti with fifteen days left until you get to land. Obviously, a backup system is a good idea unless you are good at drinking salt water.

On Laelia, the backup is a little pump that is mounted on the floor and is operated by stepping on a lever repeatedly until water spurts out the backup tap. This one makes sucking and gurgling noises but no water is forthcoming. As I was cleaning today, I noticed (once again) that there was a lot of grunge around this pump suggesting that it had been there for a long time. I thought today would be a good time to pull it out and see if it could be fixed. Naturally, it was bolted to the sole (floor) with the nuts in an spot sufficiently inaccessible to make it undesirable to access them. After a half hour or so of effort, I managed to get one bolt out and bend another far enough to pull out the pump.

I disassembled the pump figuring I could get an overhaul kit to replace whatever was broken. I couldn't find anything that looked broken. I did find a wood chip in one chamber. Possibly it was keeping one of the valves from closing - but it seems doubtful. What I did notice was that the inside of the pump was almost as grungy as the outside in several key places. I concluded that I didn't really want to drink water that had circulated through it. I could give it a good cleanup and rebuild it but it looks like it is so old that the parts are no longer available - at least not through my friendly local West Marine store, so I pitched it all out. The replacement costs $120 so I hope the electric pump doesn't break soon.

I had another phone interview today. This one was with Intel in Hillsboro, OR. It seemed to go well. I neglected to ask how soon they would be making a decision so now the wait begins. Wouldn't that be ironic - move to Placerville to retire then go back to work in the Portland area. I can't say that I'm too excited about spending another winter in Portland but if that's where the money is, I guess I will do it. It is a 12 month contract and would give me more than enough money to finish outfitting and get sailing.

It is supposed to be partly cloudy with 10 - 13 knots of wind tomorrow. (A knot is 1.1 mph.) If it is from the west, as promised, I should have no trouble getting to Alcatraz and back - finally. Sounds like a good day to go sailing and finish my housekeeping by having the holding tank pumped.

I will be glad to get the propane stove installed. I am using a single burner hot plate for cooking. Tonight's delicacy is rice with a can of vegetarian chili added for flavor. It requires getting 1 1/2 cups of water to boiling. It takes roughly forever for that to happen. My normal approach is to put on the water to boil and go off to do something productive - like write tonight's blog entry. I'm just about finished with the entry and I see that I neglected to actually turn the hot plate on so it will be another forever before I can start boiling the rice. Ah! The joys of primitive living!

One of the hardest parts of boat living is that I've gotten accustomed to Judy's outstanding cooking for the last eight years. My cooking lacks both imagination and flavor.

Well, the wind is picking up. I can hear it whistling through the rigging and something is making an annoying tapping noise at the base of the main mast. Off I go to fix it...

Sail and learn

2012-01-27 - Friday

Another foggy, overcast morning. It looks like is should burn off by noon or so. If there aren’t too many patches of fog floating around, I will go out for a short sail.

This morning’s question that floats around in my head is whether or not I am doing the most I can do to get the boat ready to go cruising. One of my friends from the Pearson Yacht Club (an online forum for owners of boats like Laelia) read my posting from yesterday and suggested that I am wasting my time fixing what ain’t broke (the steering system). He has a point and I might agree if time were the problem. But it is not.

The big sticking point at the moment is money. I have enough to get by on if I am very careful. To get enough money to go cruising, I need a decent paying job for 6 – 9 months. I spend several hours each day looking online for jobs and talking to recruiters who think they may have found a job for me. (Apparently, recruiting is another job that has gone offshore. Most of the people I talk to are obviously not US born. Most have heavy accents – Indian or Asian. It is hard to understand them and adds to the stress of job hunting.) I keep hearing that the Silicon Valley economy is booming. I get lots of calls from recruiters. I’ve gotten exactly one phone interview so far and no in-person interviews. I have one phone interview scheduled with Intel, Hillsboro, OR, for Monday. So far, all that tells me is that there are a lot of hungry recruiters out there.

OK – so I am looking for a job. What else can I be doing? I am picking away at little jobs that don’t require much money – things like leaky ports (windows), fixing up wiring, cleaning out the bilge (the basement) and the like. I am removing equipment that I don’t need or don’t want to have to maintain and I am trying to sell it on Craigslist. I am getting some responses but progress on that front is slow.

About the only other thing I can think of at the moment is to go out and practice sailing my boat. Yes, I know how to sail but every boat is different. I certainly can learn to make this one sail faster. I can learn how to handle the sails more efficiently when I maneuver – tack, gybe, etc. This part is fun so there must be something wrong with doing it, eh?

Evening

I did go out and sail the boat. It was a fine day for it. Too bad I didn’t start an hour or so sooner. I would have made it to Alcatraz. As it was,, I got within about a mile. Alcatraz is the darker chunk in the center of the picture.

I like having a tiller better than the wheel. It gives me a better feel for what the boat is doing, I can respond more quickly and precisely and I always know which the rudder’s position. The emergency tiller is not a very good tiller – it is too short, it is a cold, metal tube to hang on to, it is too short and it sticks up at an odd angle. But I can see that a proper tiller will be a fine setup. Hopefully, I will sell the pieces of the wheel steering soon so I can get the tiller installation in place.

I got a good workout in the first half hour or so. The wind was light and it was coming right down the channel that I was going out. I got in some practice tacking and grinding away on the winches. After that, it was easy going. The leg toward Alcatraz was just right to be able to make it on one long tack. When I turned around, I was headed pretty much down wind and I could kick back and relax.

I got back a little later than I intended, did the minimum tie down and clean up and headed over to Davis for a visit with Suzanne. I left here about 4 PM (beginning of rush hour) and it is Friday. It took 2.5 hours to make a trip that usually takes 1 hour, 15 minutes.

As always, it was a joy to talk to Suzanne, hear about her classes and the goings on at UCD. We had pizza and coffee. I dropped her at her apartment and drove home in the expected 1:15. I’m beat. Now off to bed.

2012-01-28 - Saturday

Mmmmm. Cold pizza for breakfast. Yum!

I've had the night to think about yesterday's sail. When I turned on the computer this morning, I also found some comments from other Pearson 365 owners. Between the two, I think I will just leave the wheel steering and forget the tiller idea.

When I was backing out of the slip, I had the rudder hard over to counteract the prop steering. When I shifted to neutral and tried to move the helm with the boat still coasting in reverse, it was all I could do to budge the tiller. I had to shift into forward and apply moderate throttle to get movement with reasonable exertion level. Given that I don't spend much time in reverse, I could probably live with it. But there is more.

My outing was in fairly light conditions of 5 - 10 kts with the boat moving at up to 4 kts (at least that's what the speedo showed). The helm was distinctly on the heavy side even with careful attention to balancing the sails. Some of that has to do with the short tiller and the rather awkward shoulder high grip on the tiller. But that is only part of the story. There's no getting around the fact that the boat has a big barn door rudder hanging off the skeg with no balancing portion. When the water is moving past it at a good clip, the steering pressures get high.

If yesterday's sail was as bad as it gets, I could live with it but one of the other owners commented that even with a wheel, the steering effort can get pretty high when the wind picks up. In the relatively minor gusts that I encountered and with the sails somewhat out of balance, the steering load got significant so its not hard to believe. All told, by the end of the sail, I had a sore shoulder.

So - that was an interesting exercise. I learned a lot. I have more respect for the robustness of the Edson steerer now that I've peered into the guts and looked carefully at what's under the cockpit sole. I will be putting it all back together. I noticed that the idler pullys are mounted on what appears to be a steel plate. The paint is flaking off and the base looks rusty. That will need some attention along with the rusty fuel tank top. It will help keep me busy until I get money for other projects.

Another day in Paradise and comments on emergency steering

2012-01-26 – Thursday

Another day dawns – patchy fog and overcast. The sun breaks through occasionally and it actually feels like it is warmer than the 53 degrees the marine weather guy is reporting. It is a wonderful day to be on the boat!

I awoke to hear the fan for the refrigerator condenser motor running full time. The evaporator plates in the icebox enclosure are room temperature. Drat! Anders, at Swedish Marine, says he will be back in this area mid-week next week and will look at it then. If I knew that the condenser was OK, I would just go ahead and strip the unit out of the boat and sell it. I don’t want refrigeration on the boat while I’m out cruising in Remotia. Repair people are hard to find and they are expensive.

I’m bouncing back and forth between boat projects and answering calls and emails about jobs. With all this activity, it seems like something ought to happen but I’ve been here before and it all evaporates like fog on a sunny morning. At the moment, I’m talking about positions in Alameda, San Jose, City of Industry and Hillsboro. Most of the recruiters sound like they are Indian (from India) and have heavy accents. It makes it difficult to know what is going on. I mostly have to make excuses for a poor phone connection and ask them to email the information. On top of that, my WiFi connection here in the marina is intermittent. It can take as long as 10 minutes to get an email sent after I finish writing it.

So, anyhow, I got the binnacle mount compass off the steering pedestal without doing any noticeable damage. Now I am trying to uninstall the pedestal guard. At this point, the cockpit has degenerated into chaos.

So far, I’ve done nothing that I can’t undo with a little work. I want to sail the boat using the emergency tiller to make sure that it isn’t so heavy on the helm that I have to have wheel steering. I doubt it – but better to check it out first.

At noon, the temperature is in the sixties and the sun is shining. Fragments of the coastal stratus drift across the ridge between here and the ocean.

Quite picturesque and comfortable. If it were just a bit warmer and I had a hammock, I would be napping on the foredeck. Someday…

Later...

OK – the following is slightly technical but hopefully not so boring as to cause you to fall asleep and fall off your chair. That could hurt!

I've been mucking about in the cockpit and the lockers most of today. The sun is now below the yardarm (somewhere) and it is time to reflect on the day's activities and imbibe some form of relaxant. Today it is a Merlot.

Somewhere I read that it is a really good thing to do emergency steering drills every now and then. For the non-sailors, this is a drill where you pretend that the steering wheel doesn't work and you have to go back to a more primitive form of steering known as a tiller - a stick that is attached to the rudder in a way that lets the driver keep the boat pointed in the desired direction. Interestingly enough, this recommendation comes from Edson, the manufacturer of the wheel steering system.

The first step is to go through the drill in the security of your slip. You know, make sure you have all of the pieces and you know how they fit together. The next step is to try it out while sailing. The first time should be under controlled circumstances - fully crewed, a full-time lookout, lots of sea room and light boating traffic. Then you can graduate to having random members of your crew declare an emergency steering drill at random intervals not to exceed once/quarter.

That's roughly what it said. Being the obediant, safety concious sailor that I am, I resolved to do that. It gets a little tricky since I usually sail single-handed but I figured I might entice a friend or two to come along and help me out. (Do I hear any voluteers out there?)

OK - Step one. Dig through cubbies and lockers looking for the key to take the cover off the emergency tiller access port. The Previous Owner (PO) had actually labelled it and put it in the storage area under the navigator's table. I took it out to the cockpit and found that despite all the bare-handed maneuvers I could come up with, the cover would not budge. Possibly, this has happened before and would explain why the key is bent. After generous applications of WD40, some gentle tapping around the perimeter of the cover and on the key handle, the cover began to turn. The key was only slightly more bent than it was before. Being the logical, safety concious sailor that I am, I took this occasion to clean out the grunge that had accumulated in the opening and in the threads on both part of the port and the cover.

Now to try out the emergency tiller. It has been living at the bottom of the port cockpit locker which is about a mile deep and full of stuff that would take an hour or two to remove in an emergency situation. No biggie. I excavated it and started to fit it into place.

But wait, I couldn't get it in place. That big shiny steering wheel was in the way. Not a big problem - the boss nut that holds it on the shaft is only finger tight. I unscrewed it, pulled off the wheel and listened to one of the tiny parts fall to the cockpit sole. Incredibly enough, it did not disappear down one of the cockpit drain.

Now the tiller fits over the top of the rudder post and begins to slide into place - until it clangs against the pedestal guard. Yep, fully seated, the tiller cannot be centered without grinding it against the top of the guard. (See the photo at the beginning of the post. The guard is the shiny, inverted, U shaped piece in front of the steering wheel.) Possibly the emergency tiller should be installed pointing toward the the back of the boat? I guess that would be more natural for sailors who are used to steering wheels rather than tillers but it is backwards for me - a sailor used to using a tiller.

Some of you may be aware that I am trying to sell off the components of my wheel steering. (Yes, you are not alone in thinking that this is weird and possible a desecration of the boat - but hey, it's my boat and my trip). So naturally this a good time to remove the pedestal guard. Now, this may sound trivial but it ended up taking several hours. I will say, that having looked into the guts of the Edson steering, I am impressed by how robust it is. I also am driven to wonder how many boat owners actually follow Edson's recommendations concerning lubricating the chain annually. Hint, you have to remove the binnacle compass to do it. That's enough to make many boat owners quail. Given the amount of grunge around the seat of the binnacle mount, I doubt that it has been done in recent history on Laelia.

Anyhow, I did finally get the pedestal guard, drop leaf table and drink holder uninstalled. The result looks something like this. The tiller is that big bent post behind the white pedestal. 

The binnacle compass is sitting on the navigator's table. I don't think I have broken anything yet - just in case I decide not to uninstall the whole system. Now the emergency tiller fits into place and isn't intefered with at any point in its travel from stop to stop.

But wait! Curiously enough, the tiller does not go equally far in both directions. When I push the helm to starboard, it deflects about 30 degrees before hitting the stop. Push it to port and it goes almost 45 degrees. I reinstalled the wheel long enough to verify that the rudder was centered (according to the piece of tape that I use to tell me when the rudder is centered) and then reinstalled the tiller. Hmmm. It is pretty close to centered. Why would this be? Possibly, I am wrong about where the tiller points when the rudder is centered? Tomorrow I will go out for a little excursion to find out a) when is the rudder centered and b) do I really want to convert to tiller steering.

Stay tuned...

A few (very few) small steps...

2012-01-25 Wednesday

Yesterday was an all-day Pity Party. I couldn’t seem to get started doing anything. I finally just gave myself permission to feel bad all day – on the condition that I get my lazy ass out of bed tomorrow morning and do stuff. I played a lot of Solitaire, listened to classic rock until I couldn’t stand it anymore and did one small job. I went grocery shopping and made a stop at West Marine to buy two items. I fixed rice and poured in a can of soup for flavor. It was flat. Added cayenne and catsup. Mmmm.

So today is payback day. The first job I had lined up was to remove the port light from over my bunk and rebed it so it won’t leak next time it rains. I can’t get it loose. Whatever they used to bed it last time is holding it in place pretty tightly. I had to content myself with cleaning it up as best I could and adjusting the screws that align the moving part and hope that it will help. I also discovered that the screws that hold it in place are the kind where the ones on the outside of the boat screw into the ones on the inside of the boat. I will have to wait until I have a helper to get them properly retightened. I hope that will be before it rains again.

Here is the inside view

... and the outside view

The refrigeration on the boat hasn’t worked properly since I moved aboard. About two weeks ago, I turned it off so it wouldn’t drain the boat’s batteries. Then I called the guy who installed it and asked him to come tell me why it wasn’t working. Today was the day. About two hours before he showed up, I turned the unit back on and it was working perfectly when the repairman arrived. He looked everything over, helped me figure out what kind of installation I have and shrugged his shoulders. That cost $50 – not unreasonable but I wish I had turned it on yesterday, cancelled the appointment and saved myself the $50.

When I was pulling stuff out of the cockpit locker so the repairman could look at the installation, I also pulled out some panels so I can start removing the wheel steering. This feels like a big step. It devalues the boat for the popular market but tiller steering is easier for me to deal with when I am sailing the boat by myself – which is most of the time. I started from the top – taking the drop-down table off the pedestal. I got the drink holder off but not the mounting bracket. Next I tried loosening the feet of the pedestal guard to see if it would easily lift out of its mounting. No go. The next thing was to try to remove the compass so I can see what the guts of the pedestal looks like. I’m drawing a blank. I looked online for instructions on how to install the compass on the Edson pedestal but no luck there either.

I got more calls from recruiters today. One says he has a really hot possibility – in City of Industry, one of the cities in the LA urban sprawl. I would probably take it but I would rather stay here in the SF Bay area.

Now it is getting dark. Time for Happy Hour, dinner, shower and a call to Judy. Not a bad day – but progress seems awfully slow.

It feels like Camp Granada

As the day went on, the rain lessened and then stopped. The sun came out. It got reasonably warm. My spirits rose. It reminded me of Alan Sherman doing his famous “Camp Granada” number.

I can’t say that I got a lot done – just plugging away at little stuff. I did laundry, including washing all the bedding that got soaked from the leaky port light. I took a shot at fixing the leaks but after taking a close look at it, I think I will have to take it all apart and re-bed it. It may also need a new seal. That’s what you get when you buy a 34 year old boat.

I put some more stuff on Craigslist and got one response. We shall see if it actually translates into selling something.

Dinner was an old standby – spaghetti. The sauce tasted moldy so I’m not keeping the leftovers. Clean up. Take a shower. I saw a shooting star on my way back to the boat from the shower. Now off to bed to read after I call Judy. Another day in the life…

Stormy Interlude

2012-01-23 – Monday

I left the boat last Wednesday for a visit with Suzanne at UC Davis. It was an upbeat, fun visit. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and caught up on happenings. It is great to hear her say that she feels really happy.

From there, I went to Placerville for a visit with Judy. The next few days were a roller coaster of feelings as we tried to understand what is going on and make our peace with it. We keep coming back to the process we went through to figure out what we were going to do with our lives after I retired. I did not do a very good job of looking within and figuring out what I needed. I knew I wanted to be near the ocean – I just didn’t realize how strong that need was. Agreeing to move back to Placerville was a huge mistake on my part. I felt buried alive. The boat and the trip were my solution – driven by feelings so strong I wasn’t open to negotiating with Judy. It is hard to believe. She has been my best friend, confidant and lover for the last eight years of my life. I’ve never felt so loved and so well taken care of. But somehow I’ve arrived at this place where I’m living 100 miles away on a boat and getting ready to sail away for a couple of years. It seems that there is no going back. I have betrayed her trust in me.

If I weren’t set on this venture, what would I do with my life? I don’t know. That is the question that got me started in this direction. The thought of trying to turn around, give up the boat and find something to replace it feels hopeless. It has the feel of stepping into the black abyss with nothing more than a vague hope that something will turn up to make life meaningful.

By Sunday, we were talked out and cried out. The weather had been complementing our feelings – dark and heavy with lots of wind and rain. Where are we? The words are still the same – friends, confidants, lovers – but there is a distance, a gap that seems immense when I look back at how we have been. It is my hope that we can continue to visit back and forth and find a way to continue to be friends, confidants and lovers. I’ve given up hoping that Judy would decide to join me fill time on the boat but she does seem to be willing to come spend some time “camping out.” I hope that these visits can be in various exotic locations as the trip progresses. All it takes is the desire to be together – and money for air fare.

Sunday, we drove down to Sacramento to visit with Judy’s son, Douglas. He is moving his ATV business to a new building – much larger and in a location where he can be easily found by his customers and there is a lot of drive by traffic. There is a lot of work to be done to make the move but he is just the man to do it. He has what seems like endless energy and enthusiasm. He has a plan and resources. I’m sure he will continue to do well. We spent the evening having a wonderful dinner and lots of conversation. By bedtime, I was ready to turn in and fall into (hopefully) a deep sleep.

But it was not to be. I may have slept for an hour before my eyes popped open and I knew that it would be hours before I could go back to sleep. After an hour or so of lying there, I decided to go back to the boat right away instead of waiting for morning. It was raining heavily along with lots of wind during the almost two hour drive. I got to the boat a little after 2 AM, fumbled around with the lock on the companionway hatch and arrived on board wet and cold.

It is a well known axiom that if there are any leaks on a boat around hatches and windows, at least one of them will be directly above the bunk(s) in use. The axiom held true. There was a leak above my usual bunk that had soaked one pillow and the spot on the bunk where my head and shoulders would normally lie. I pulled out some extra blankets and made up a bunk in the main cabin in a spot that had only a minor drip. The wind was blowing hard enough that the boat would occasionally heel about 10 degrees – even though it is securely tied up in a slip.

That brings me to this morning. The weather mirrors my feelings again (or vice-versa) – overcast and gray with bursts of rain. I feel suspended between the old life and the new unable to get traction to get moving. I am out of money for boat repairs and upgrades until I find work or sell some stuff. I have enough to be able to get by if I am careful – but not enough to make much progress. I am actively looking for work. I get lots of calls from recruiters but the best that has happened so far is a phone interview. In the mean time, I am picking away at the boat items that I can take care of with minute amounts of cash and lots of elbow grease and I do get to go sailing now and then. It brings me some measure of peace.

I got to go SAILING today

Any day I get to sail is a good day. Today, there were light winds from the south and south-east. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to keep the boat moving (most of the time). That is Angel Island in the picture below.

Never mind Taihiti, I would be happy to make it to Alcatraz. It is only about 10 miles. I've been out with the boat three times since I bought her in early December. Each day, I set out to sail around Alcatraz. There has been so little wind on those days that I haven't even gotten close. Oh well, these are good conditions for me to learn how my boat handles.

Alcatraz is that little bump just to the left of the ship. The San Francisco downtown skyline is to the right.

I saw quite a few seals/sea lions today during the time when the boat was mostly drifting. The dark spot in the water between my boat and the one in the background is a sea lion (honest).

Sailing days so far have taken about as much time to get ready and then to clean up afterward as I spend sailing. It takes about an hour to get everything put away so it won't fly all over the boat if it heels very far. I also have to take the covers off the sails and get the lines all straighted out. When I am in my slip, they are tied up in various imaginative ways to keep them from tapping against the aluminum masts when the wind blows. It sounds kind of like wind chimes when you are outside the boat but it sounds like living inside a steel drum when you are inside. Once the sailing part is done, the lines go back to their secure position, the sail covers go on and the boat gets a deck washing. Today was about three hours of sailing and two hours of prep and wrap-up.

We've had an idylic Fall/Winter so far. It looks like it is coming to an end with normal winter wind and rain due to arrive here Wednesday or Thursday. I will be getting some experience in more challenging conditions.

I got my slip rental statement for the past month. My electric bill is almost as bad here as it was living in a house. It all goes to run the heaters and the hot water heater. Bleah!!

Prologue

Prologue

No doubt you have heard of mid-life crisis. Possibly you have not heard of retirement life crisis. The latter is how my voyage with Laelia started. About five months after I retired, I finished the major upgrades to the house that Judy (my wife) and I had decided to retire to. I was hit between the eyes with the big question, "What do you want to do with the rest of your life?" The only thing that kept coming up for me was that I wanted to finish the circumnavigation by sailboat that I had started in 1975.

My first attempt started when I left San Diego on Christmas Day, 1975 on a beautiful Danish built wooden sloop named Chatelaine (pictured above).

It ended on Guam in May1976 when Typhoon Pamela pushed Chatelaine against a seawall and beat her to death. The picture on the right is the bow (the pointy end) after Chatelaine was raised. The storm surge dragged the bow up and down against the seawall and ground off the first three feet or so.

I moved on to Silicon Valley in 1977 resolving to build a new boat and try again. Sadly, I got distracted by the "Money, Sex, and Power" attitudes around me and lost my sailing partner and my focus on sailing. I remarried in 1985 and have two wonderful daughters who have taught me about a kind of love that I had not expected to find in my life. That marriage ended in divorce after 21 years together. I met Judy in 2003 and we married in 2005. I thought that the sailing dream was behind me.

It wasn't. It would crop up from time to time when I saw a sailboat that looked like a true ocean voyager or when I saw one advertised for sale. I would shrug my shoulders (figuratively) and push it into the background - until November 2011. Judy and I took a weekend to get away from the house and the 101 little fixup jobs to be done and went to Santa Cruz for a few days. That trip got into the "What do you want to do with the rest of your life?" question again. When "The Trip" came up, it was like dropping a bomb into what I thought was my settled way of life.

Needless to say, it has caused a great deal of marital strain. Judy has never spent time around cruising sailboats. She loves the house in Placerville. She was looking forward to gardening, raising chickens and taking short jaunts to the coast for walks on the beach. I am looking at living on a boat, making long ocean passages to exotic places and not returning to California for some undetermined number of years. We have not resolved how to make this all work out.

I have bought a sailboat, "Laelia." She is a Pearson 365 Ketch - 36' 5" long on deck, 11' 3" maximum beam and 4' 6" draft. I am living aboard in Clipper Yacht Harbor, Sausalito, CA while I get her ready to go on The Trip. More Pictures of Laelia

Unfortunately, I have underestimated the amount of work involved. More importantly, I will have to earn some more money to finish outfitting and buying supplies. I am looking for work - preferably a 6 month (or thereabouts) contract job. I've been looking for two months now and have had some nibbles but no job offer yet.

Laelia has been owned by a series of owners who have used her lightly. That's the good news. The bad news is that the most recent owners appear to have used her very little in the last few year. Sailboats do not do well when left to sit idle. The marine head (toilet) was non-functional. Stuff grows in the plumbing when left to sit too long. The plumbing was blocked. In addition, it involved a sewage treatment device that treated waste then pumped it overboard. That's legal in many places but not in restricted areas like marinas or in areas like Richardson Bay that are zero discharge zones. So that system came out and was replaced with a holding tank. $2800 later, I am legal.

The stove was an alcohol stove which I strongly dislike but I could have lived with if only it worked - but it didn't. The external alcohol tank had been removed and the stove itself looked sadly neglected. The burners were rusty and the other surfaces were pitted with rust and growth. I have had a propane locker installed - another $2400 plus some hours of my own labor. All the wiring and plumbing is in place. All I need is the stove. It will have to wait until I save up or earn some more cash.

Most of this work was done by KKMI Marine. They do good work but, as you can see, they ain't cheap. While all this was going on, I have been going through the boat pulling out years of accumulated junk that the previous owners didn't take with them when they sold the boat. I have done a lot of scrubbing down and replacing bits and pieces. The electric bilge pump promptly broke and the manual pump doesn't work. I replaced the electric pump and improved the setup so the bilge is mostly dry now. I removed the old, rotten dodger and sold the frame. I removed the old, non-functional autopilot and I am trying to sell the components that do work. There is lots of little fixup stuff to do with the rigging. The way things are set up makes it obvious that things weren't used much. The halyard leads, the sheet leads, cleats available, etc, are totally unacceptable for single handed sailing offshore. All that is required to fix it is time, work - and money.

I hope to update this blog on a regular basis so my family and friends know what is going on. We shall see how it goes.