Where are we now?

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

New Smyrna Beach

07-08 July 2017

Since we needed repairs to our engine we wanted to be at a marina slip instead of on the hook as previously planned. We called the city marina and they were kind enough to make room for us on short notice.

I looked at the new pump and couldn't see what was wrong with it, so I took it apart and put it back together again. Still nothing. I had the idea of taking the old leaky pump off the engine and comparing the two side by side. Off went the bolts again and I pulled the pump off the engine, about an eighth of an inch. I pulled. I tugged. I started to pry and stopped myself. Something was clearly different because the pumps had always pulled right on and off, other than aligning the shaft with the drive gear off of the engine, seen to the left in the picture below.


We asked about a diesel repair guy and were told that their equivalent of Diesel Don was currently in the Bahamas. Our second choice was Al. We called and he was over that afternoon. He had never seen anything like it in 30 years of doing this, but it had to come off, so he advanced to the higher level of prying and pushing. It finally popped off and he observed that the pump shaft was chewed up. He looked into the engine and saw that the little drive gear for the pump was trashed on the inside.

We looked at the new pump and the shaft had some less significant rounding of the corners. The gear had failed and ceased to engage the shaft so it could be driven. It was nothing but dumb luck that when I slid the old pump on in Mosquito Lagoon it had somehow engaged with the damaged gear, but semi-permanently, which is why I couldn't remove it.

Well, we knew what the problem was, which was good, but Al had only seen this a few times in 30 years. It was unlikely that the gear was sitting on the shelf near us, if at all. He gathered up the pumps and the gear and went off to find new ones.

We were clearly going to be here for a while. We were supposed to be in Brunswick in a week, and Heather flew out in less than two. Maybe not.

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Sunday, July 23, 2017

Mosquito Lagoon

07 July 2017

We left Cocoa Beach in the morning. There was little if any wind, and the water was glassy. The building below is I believe part of the NASA launch facility. It is miles away, so it is much bigger than it seems in this picture. We need to try and do the tour there on the way back.


We plugged along north under bridges, and then entered what is called Mosquito Lagoon. It was still mid afternoon and hot, so the mosquitoes were not out in force, but there were lots of bugs, big ones. There were also lots of manatees, mostly because we were in the middle of nowhere.

I was driving (why do most of the unintentionally interesting stories start that way?) and I heard a slight change in the tone of the engine. I started looking around and saw that we were no longer belching out water from the engine exhaust. A glance at the temperature gauge showed it was above 200°F and still moving higher.

I yelled for Heather to come up and drive, and we drove out of the ditch to the lagoon alongside. We oozed to a stop in the thick mud while I got the anchor out, then we quickly turned off the engine. The overtemp alarm hadn't gone off but it would have within seconds. We had turned into what little wind there was, and it was enough to slowly unground us from the muck, but at the cost of drifting closer to the ditch, which still had a fair amount of traffic. The hook set and we stopped right at the edge. Not too bad for an emergency drill.

Since we were far from much of anything we would probably not be able to get a tow today, which meant spending the night here. It was not appealing to wait for dusk and the namesake creatures to come out and play. I went below to try and figure out what was going on. The water pump had less than 50 hours on it. The most common issue with no raw water flow is a broken impeller, which is a little rubber waterwheel shaped thing that drives the seawater thru the pump. I took off the cover and the impeller seemed new, which is was. Okay, upstream or downstream.

I looked guiltily at the raw water strainer which I had never cleaned. I took off the lid, but other than a few twigs, some strands of sea grass and a little algae the basket looked pretty good. I cleaned it anyway with a small brush and put it back. I took off the intake hose and could blow bubbles underneath the boat, so no water intake clogged with a grocery bag or jellyfish or whatever. Water could get to the pump. Maybe the exhaust elbow for the engine was clogged, similar to the generator. I could blow in the exit hose freely, so nothing stopping water from proceeding downstream.

I asked Heather to turn over the engine while I watched the pump. The weep hole that was leaking on the old pump also allows you to see the shaft turning in the pump. The shaft wasn't turning even though the engine was. All I could think of to do is pull off the new pump and slide on the old pump. Better leaky than nothing at all.

Heather started the engine with the old pump on it. We were spitting water out of the exhaust again, and the engine temperature was back down where it should be. The old pump was still slowly leaking but should get us to our next stop - New Smyrna Beach, home of Bob Ross. That guy's soothing patter while he painted could put me to sleep in record time.

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Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Cocoa Beach

06 July 2017

We anchored just north of the bridge in Cocoa Beach, setting the anchor quickly in the thick mud and shell on the east side. It was too much trouble to deploy the dinghy for one night so we stayed on the boat and had dinner. It was a quiet night and we moved very little.


Up came the very messy anchor in the morning and we headed north to New Smyrna Beach.

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Monday, July 17, 2017

Velcro Beach

02 July 2017

In the morning we departed and headed north to Vero Beach. It has become a major spot for cruisers to gather, getting the nickname Velcro Beach because it is just too easy and pleasant to leave. While there is quite a bit within walking distance, there is also a little local shuttle bus to drive you to the grocery or the movie theater. They pick up, fill then return propane cylinders. Everything a cruiser could need.

A breakfast place we went to more than once was Mrs. Mac's Fillin Station. It was cute and good and cheap. I learned that you could grill a biscuit (along with everything else).


We stayed for a few days and I gave the freezer coolant a go. I had some trouble with the fittings and hoses, and am now convinced I removed more coolant than I added at first. I gathered some more hoses and adapters and gave it another try the next day. It took a couple hours, but I finally got it just right (filled but not overfilled) and the temperatures in the fridge and freezer began to plummet to new lows.

We were in Vero Beach for the 4th of July. There were at least five fireworks displays visible from the boat, with the biggest one just on the other side of the bridge.


And finally a public service announcement, an important safety tip. What is the most important sign in the picture below? That's right, the warning about the previously referred to crab holes. Enough said.


On the 5th we headed north to anchor near Cocoa Beach. Reaching Georgia before we needed to head back to Arizona started to seem within our reach.

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Saturday, July 15, 2017

Palm Beach

30 June 2017

We headed north on the ditch for the Palm Beach area, leaving FtL behind. While there are not as many bridges heading north compared to south of us, there were still quite a few to clear.


It was also the beginning of the 4th of July long weekend, and there were party boats everywhere.


We ended up at a marina at a place called Riviera Beach. We had a nice dinner at a restaurant next to the marina and called it a day.

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Friday, July 14, 2017

North to Stuart

01 July 2017

In the morning we packed up again and headed back up the ditch toward Stuart. We got a slip that was a ways up the river from Stuart adjacent to a Club Med, next to a boat named "Broke & Drunk".


We walked around the Club Med but it didn't really seem worth buying a day pass for one dinner and there was very little else around. There were quite a few rabbits running around.


Back to the boat we went for dinner and a drink.

Once again we were back at it in the morning, enjoying making some progress north.

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Ft. Lauderdale

27 June 2017

We were able to start the engine right up in the morning. Over to the fuel dock we went. There was a powerboat in the way so we had some time to float around and plan our approach a little more. We topped up with diesel and headed back out the way we came, past the Cape Florida Light and back into the Atlantic.

We were going outside into the ocean instead of inside along the ditch through downtown Miami and such primarily because of the Julia Tuttle bridge. All new permanent bridges on the ditch will clear at least a 65 foot mast or so. Not the Tuttle. It mysteriously will clear 56 feet, not 65. The urban legend is that a dyslexic typo in the engineering resulted in this one different bridge height, but no one has ever fessed up. I've reviewed enough engineering drawings to believe it's possible.

Compounding this is the fact that we were not entirely sure what our mast height really is. After proceeding this far were were certain that it was less than 58 feet. Several bridge tenders had expressed doubt that it was even that. Even when you clear a bridge by a few feet, looking up from 50 some odd feet below it looks very close.

I didn't want to be the second person to drive this boat into a bridge. Not a typo - second. The previous owner, after a very long and stormy day managed to drive into a bridge on the gulf side of the ditch. That is why our boat was one of the very few 20 year old sailboats with standing rigging that was only a few years old, which was good. But our mast was no longer necessarily a factory configuration.

We had a good day sailing up to Ft. Lauderdale. The picture is of the Miami skyline from a mile or so offshore.


The Ft. Lauderdale channel is straight and straightforward, but there was quite a bit of traffic. A tug tender cleared the channel in front of a big freighter coming out. The first bridge we approached was new since I had been thru a few years before on the Bahamas trip. Although it opened it cleared at least 58 feet closed. We requested an opening of the bridge anyway on the VHF radio and the bridge tender kindly suggested we get a little closer and consider going thru with the bridge closed. As he said, it wasn't in his interest for anyone to hit the bridge either, and he felt that we were clearly less that 58 feet. We got closer and he said we would definitely clear the bridge. As we went thru he estimated we had more than four feet of clearance, putting us at less than 54 feet. It sure didn't look like we cleared by four feet watching from 50 feet below. But now we were confident that we were less than 55 feet, which is an important metric for boats and bridges on the ditch. We will continue to refine our estimated mast height.

We went further up the river to the Las Olas city marina. We had some difficulty backing into the slip with the current, but Heather hung in there after I would have bailed more than once. When we have to abort an approach or miss a turn or such we call it a victory lap. The piers were concrete and fixed, and the tide was very low. Heather could't even get off the boat until the tide came in some, but we were finally here.

We had a few tasks scheduled for FtL. We had been carrying a couple of sails all the way from Texas that we had very little use for at this time. There was a genoa that turned out to be a deck sweeping 170% (70% bigger than the distance from the bow to the mast). Kind of an old school sail at this point, and way to big for us to handle. There was also a spinnaker that the previous owner says had flown for about 5 hours total. We had never flown a spinnaker and weren't about to anytime soon. Each sail filled the biggest duffle bag you have ever seen. Since FtL is one of the world boating centers there were multiple businesses we could sell these sails to. We picked one, loaded them up in a rental car, and both sails were layed out in the loft. The spinnaker was very colorful and even had a snuffer to aid in deploying the sail and bringing it back down. We got several hundred bucks for the cruising kitty and a whole lot of space cleared up in our lockers.

We also thought there was someone here that could look at our freezer. Maybe that was just during the boat show. We called the manufacturer and there wasn't anyone here specifically to look at it, and he emphasized the coolant charge rather than the thermostat this time. I looked at his videos online and decided to take it on.

There was also a delightful french bakery just on the other side of the parking lot from the marina. The only business that was closer was a liquor store, which are usually not far from most marinas. We rented another car and topped up with groceries, visited Bluewater Books for some more cruising guides, and hit a Costco. After a few days we were ready to get on the move again.

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Thursday, July 13, 2017

Can't Start - Again

25 June 2017

We had planned only a quick stopover in Dinner Key as we made our way north. We reluctantly prepared to leave, turned the engine key, and again were rewarded with the sound of silence. I poked around for a few minutes, but given that we had just replaced the starter and the battery I was quickly at a loss. I did find this one wire near the starter that was loose, but I couldn't for the life of me find where it went, even though that had to be within six inches of where I found it. Or maybe it was made redundant with the new starter.

As usual, it was a weekend. I asked at the office and they gave me a name of a guy in the mooring field. He was no longer doing boat work on the side, given a day job and a new baby. He referred me to another gentleman who was out in an hour or so, but quickly ascertained that he didn't know what the problem was. We started cold calling businesses but it was the weekend and nobody was answering.

Down the dock strolled an older gentleman rocking a pair of blindingly white jeans, Hawaiian shirt, mirrored sunglasses and the kind of hat hipsters had taken to wearing. I had the feeling he had been wearing one since the 50s. He was walking a bulldog with one hand, and had a poorly disguised beer in a paper bag in the other. We had seen him several times and exchanged pleasantries. He asked what the problem was. It turns out his name is Armando.

He listened patiently to my tale of woe, then he explained that he managed 19 boats here while living on his own. Once I explained that I thought it was an electrical problem, he recommended a gentleman named Carlos. Carlos arrived a couple hours later, on a Sunday, because he was already visiting a boat a couple down from us. Out came the multimeter and he traced the electrical path from the battery to the switch at the binnacle and back to the engine. He opened areas on the boat I had never seen before. After about 45 minutes of that he crawled under the engine and told us to try and start it. It turned right over.

Satisfied that he had found the problem, he explained that the loose wire was indeed from the starter. There was a coolant hose just above the starter that might not be OEM, and it seemed intent on occupying some of the same space as the starter, which was definitely not OEM. The conflict could be coming from the hose, the starter, or a combination of the two. Regardless of cause, vibrations from the hose were being transmitted to the top of the starter. Soldered to the top of the starter was a spade connector which you could now only see if your head was on the floor looking up. Sure enough, inside the connector at the end of the errant wire was the spade which had fatigued off.

After expressing some reservations Carlos trimmed the end of the hose so he could hike it up and get some air between it and the starter. He managed to do that without even removing the hose (and having to drain the fresh water coolant). Next he soldered a wire to the pad where the spade connector had been, and connected a new spade to the end of his wire. The two were connected and we were in business again - except.

Carlos observed that our raw water pump was leaking. It had had a minor leak out of the appropriately named weep hole for some time, probably since we had bought the boat, but it seemed that the rate was increasing. There was salt on adjoining areas. Carlos explained that while he would return to port with such a pump, he would not leave.

We decided it was time, and he was able to get a new Westerbeke pump in the morning. His assistant George installed it as I watched. I'm not just looking to have the boat fixed, but continuing education as well. It was a smooth, easy job to swap out. So easy that I thought I could do it next time. This turned out to be important. I wrapped up the old pump so it could be rebuilt and become a spare. The new pump spun and pumped with nary a leak.


By this time a Monday departure was shot, so we paid for another night and set our sights on Tuesday. Next stop Ft. Lauderdale.

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Monday, July 10, 2017

Don't Call Me Late for Dinner - Key

23 June 2017

In the morning up went the anchor and we departed Rodriguez. We were in the protected Hawk Channel for most of the trip north, but as you approach Miami the reef falls away and you are directly exposed to the Atlantic. It got a little rolly.

We were headed in just south of Miami, west in the channel which is south of Biscayne, then across the bay to the Dinner Key approach. South of Biscayne is what's left of what's called Stiltsville, which seems appropriate given the appearance. These houses have a great view but seem problematic to insure during hurricane season.


Into the Dinner Key marina we went, and Heather backed into the slip well even though it had been a couple months. When we were in boat shopping mode we looked at a couple of boats here, two or three years ago. It was nice then, and since then they have rebuilt the main marina building. Like most Miami new construction, it's up on stilts, about 20 feet or so.

It was nice to do laundry, take a shower, or even just go to the bathroom ashore without getting into the dinghy. Many of the benefits of civilization are just a stroll down the pier away. A short walk from the marina is a very nice little area with restaurants, and even a movie theater that shows more than one movie at a time. You can see the downtown Miami skyline in the distance. A couple days of this could spoil us.


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Leaving Marathon

22 June 2017

We finally managed to escape the clutches of Marathon. Since Miami and/or Bimini are too far for a day on a sailboat, Rodriguez Key is a popular anchorage for the night in between. It's a ways south of Key Largo. We hadn't anchored in a while and it took us four tries to really set the hook to our satisfaction. There were already two pairs of sailboats rafted up in the anchorage. Before dark they split off on their own anchors for the night.



In the morning one pair headed east to the gulfstream and probably Bimini. The other two headed south towards Key West. We headed north to Miami.

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Thursday, July 6, 2017

Lazy Bird

18 June 2017

A couple days before we left Marathon it was very windy. Since our boat on a mooring points into the wind, the dinghy at the back is relatively out of the wind. One day we had a stowaway who needed a rest.


He was so tired that he wasn't scared off by me taking pictures, or even turning the generator on. 


After a couple hours he left  a present on the dinghy, which was thankfully washed off by the rain that night.

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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Wildlife in our Back Yard

28 May 2017

We have seen lots of sea creatures in our time in Marathon. A good-sized ray jumped out of the water while we were in the dinghy and scared the crap out of us. Lots of fish I struggle to identify by anything but size and color. Sea turtles twice and dolphins pretty frequently. But we still hadn't seen any manatees.

Well one day right off the dock outside the office I'm looking down towards our dinghy and I think to myself - why is there unexploded ordnance in the canal?


After a second look, and then they pop up for some air, it looked like a baby manatee and its parents.


OK, now I get the name sea cow.

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Monday, July 3, 2017

Exhausting Elbow

2nd Week of June 2017

We were trying to leave Marathon but the boat had other ideas. The generator had been a little finicky more than once, and just before we were going to leave it started belching out black smoke again, then threatening to die. We didn't really need the generator while we were on the move, but we had a world renowned diesel mechanic, the aptly named Diesel Don, as a neighbor. As we proceeded up the coast who knows what kind of tech support we would find? As it turned out - good, but that's another story.

We decided to stay and fix it now. This thing is buried deep inside our starboard lazerette (normally under a ton of crap we have stored in there), which is in turn inside a sound enclosure. The valve cover is off in the picture below, and Don tsked the state of our valve adjustment, but moved on to our primary problem. This was a little gadget in the lower right hand corner of the picture, below the black hose.


Since people started putting engines on boats a fundamental issue has been what to do with the exhaust, which is at fire starting temperatures. There is the dry stack approach used for bigger boats, where you treat it like a chimney, and direct the heat out of the boat with as little loss into the boat on its way. Smaller boats like ours tend to use simpler process with one big side effect (well, two but that's for later). To cool the exhaust the raw (sea) water first goes thru a heat exchanger for engine heat, what would be a radiator in a car. Instead of transferring engine heat to a coolant then into the air, the heat exchanger takes the hot coolant and transfers it to a steady stream of sea water pumped into the boat for that purpose.

Anyway, after exiting the heat exchanger the sea water is warm, but it still has one more job to do. A cast elbow forms the first part of the engine exhaust. The sea water is sprayed into the exhaust, cooling it dramatically. Now you just have relatively cool exhaust gas and warm water that collects into a muffler, which then uses the back pressure to gurgle out the collecting fluid every few seconds. This is a pretty elegant solution except for the horrible life of that exhaust elbow. Exhaust at hundreds of degrees mixed with a very corrosive sea water and steam mix doesn't add up to a very long life.

In fact they're only supposed to last for 500 hours of operation or five years or so. Now that Don is taking things apart ours appeared to be the original with over a thousand hours and more than a decade old. Oops. After one of the nuts which had corrosion welded in place was surgically removed the elbow was off. Pieces were falling off, so we were just in time to prevent at least a big mess, if not a fire, as exhaust would start to find its own way out of the boat.


The picture below is looking from the engine side. You should see daylight from the other end, but it is completely clogged with corrosion products, exhaust residue, and who know what else brought in with the sea water. It's amazing that the generator ran at all. This is the classic banana in the tailpipe (Beverly Hills Cop). The engine can't exhale, so it can't breath.


Below is the shiny new exhaust elbow for the low, low price of of $330. Who knows where we will be 500 hours and or five years from now.


Installation went much faster than teardown, and after a quick valve adjustment and a swap out of the air filter we were back in business. The generator is actually much better than we ever knew, and with everything on the boat switched on, including the battery charger and two air conditioners, the generator chugs along just fine. Like many things, it turned out to be nothing that money couldn't fix. In Don's case, cash only.

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Sunday, July 2, 2017

Radar Love Part Two

3 June 2017

As previously discussed our radar had decided to go topless with predictable results to its reliability. Again I'm drawn to similar narratives in high school. During engine repairs Jason and I had agreed to sell the other their working half of their radar, but we had not decided who was who yet. Jason was stoked to get his new chartplotter so now he was on a boat electronics bender. Drugs might be cheaper. He agreed to sell me his dome for a few hundred bucks.

As it turns out his was kind of a Frankenstein unit already. A refitter had had a stack of these domes and Jason was able to choose among them for the best. Below is a shot of the innards. It's amazing that this technology has gone from secret, war-winning, cost is no object technology to commercially commonplace in 75 years, with new features needed to get people to upgrade. Below is a picture of the inside of Jason's dome. Ours looked like a bucket of rust.


As a part of the deal Jason did the install as well. My tubby butt wasn't going up the mast. He removed the dome from his boat and headed over to ours. Up he went with Water Bob manning the lines because I had tweeked my back. Water Bob and his three (and a half) legged dog had delivery of water to boats in the lagoon as one of his many jobs while he racked up hours towards his captain license.

After some connection iterations the box at the binnacle started to recognize the dome. A few more restarts and they were fast friends. We had planned to try and swap out the tri-color light with an LED, and the anchor light with a automatic LED, but that didn't get done this time because the parts weren't available at the local West Marine. Next time.

But now we have radar again. Although we don't need it during the bright daylight of southern Florida we've been running it to get more used to the info it provides. Imagine if you saw things using only light that originated from you, and that you could only see the first object the light contacted, maybe. The world looks a little different that way. It's better than nothing in the dark and fog.

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