Finally Leaving Brunswick

29 April 2109

We timed the tide and weather so there was little wind and current when we left, giving us an easy departure from the dock, and a good approach to the fuel dock. Heather was not too rusty after not driving the boat for 10 months. We topped off the diesel and got a pump out, but forgot to get more ice - rookie mistake.

After settling up with the marina we threw off the lines from the fuel dock, and finally passed under the bridge that heads to Jekyll Island.

There is only one bridge to Saint Simons Island (SSI), and we had been over it many times. Now, for the first time, we made it under the SSI bridge, the farthest north we have been in the boat.

As we passed by SSI, another boat called the Lynx was just leaving.

I started cleaning the dodger's clear plastic, which hadn't been touched since being installed a month before. Obviously this needs to be done a little more often. The amount of clear plastic on the dodger is much more area than I had on the convertible. To finally get a cool breeze back we tried taking out the center section.

There was some thin water and we were very out of practice. We couldn't have a high tide the entire time we were moving, but we could have timed that better. Still, we didn't touch bottom that we noticed.

Now that we're running the engine at speed it is doing a new thing. The engine temperature is typically from 168 - 170°F, but then it's popping up 10-15 degrees for a few seconds, then slides back down again, repeating maybe twice a minute. As a part of the engine work we acquired a new thermostat. Maybe the spring and the bellows are still learning to get along?

Or maybe not. We seem to be overheating a little when we push the engine too hard. We just had the bottom and prop cleaned again, so I'm starting to think we may be overpropped a little bit. We were there during the haul out for the survey three years ago when buying the boat, and the previous owner (PO) Hal had adjusted the MaxProp when we pulled the boat, but we don't remember what he did exactly and didn't know enough at the time to ask. Hmmm.

We anchored that afternoon next to Dog Hammock. I guess it is named thus because the anchorage is next to a hammock (in the "little island in a salt marsh" version of the word) which is next to Dog Island, but I like the mental picture the name evokes.

The new dinghy is so big we had to pick up the nose with the spinnaker halyard so we could open the forward hatches and get some airflow. There's no air conditioning away from the dock unless we start the generator, but there is almost always a nice breeze at anchor, away from anything that could block the wind. We had a fancy dinner of grilled cheese stuffed with thinly sliced leftover steak and tomato, and a caesar salad.

We were both so tired, having forgotten that boat travel days are full days. We watched videos until we fell asleep, early. There was little wind but quite a bit of reversing current. Nonetheless, the anchor stuck tight all night.

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Engine Jobs

23 - 28 April 2019

Well, once we had the engine working again we were ready for the final set of things to be done for departure. The oil change for the engine went well, best ever, but I still haven't done it the same way twice. I have some more changes for next time. The next day I changed the transmission oil for the first time myself. I couldn't reach the drain plug beneath and behind the transmission, so I had to pull the oil from the dip stick hole anyway. If I'd known this I really should have done the transmission right after the engine oil change for about half the cleanup.

We picked up more supplies and oil for the next changes, which should be closer to 100 hours for both. Due to difficulty finding single weight Pennzoil, I picked up Rotella 30wt instead, which is better anyway. I'll be switching to the Rotella multi-weight next change as well, as that is clearly what the manual describes. The 30wt is what the tech used for first oil change right after we bought the boat, so I've done it that way ever since, but I'm slowly getting a little smarter.

The last of the engine/ heat exchanger zincs arrived, some with with additional brass bases so I could rapidly swap them out while water was pouring in the engine sump.

The rigging folks came and installed the sail bag cleats. Now I can snug up the sail bag lines enough myself to keep the bag from drooping, which had allowed rain water to collect and mold the cover of the sail bag. Fortunately the main sail was not affected. They also installed a nice new mast step so I can get to the top of the main sail (when it is fully lowered), so now I can attach the halyard and such without extreme acrobatics.

The dinghy registration had finally come through online. Although I still hadn't received the official paper copy and the tags, I now knew our registration number. I got stencils to mark it on the dinghy. Unfortunately they may not be tall enough, so I bought more letters and numbers from West.

I kept checking the engine fluids and such each morning and running the engine each evening until everything was completely dialed in and topped up.

The final prep for departure is always a rush at the end. There was grocery provisioning to be done, then supplemented with whatever we forgot. We put up the aft part of the bimini with the nicely repaired clear window in the middle. Now we can see the main sail from the helm. We hung the solar panels from the side rails, then cleaned out the aft head they had been stored in.

Even Big Bird came by a few days before departure to say goodbye. I guess we weren't the only ones feeling nostalgic.

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SSI Farewell Restaurant Tour

Late April 2019

As we were preparing to leave we actually started getting a little nostalgic, mostly for Saint Simons Island, but a little for Brunswick as well. We started going to places for the last time. The best BBQ place we'd found there was Southern Soul, right at the end of the little airstrip in town. They definitely spend their money on the food, not the decor. The house made pastrami is pretty incredible, and I don't even like pastrami all that much.

We had the blueberry pancakes at Palmers one more time (third best in the nation!), and hot chicken again at their sister restaurant Porch.

We had steaks, Pittsburgh style, at Bennies.

Two of the things we like best on SSI are the park at the south end by the pier, which looks out over the channel and the Atlantic, and includes a lighthouse, and the roads with the overhanging trees and vines. We'll be back!

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Not Engine Chores

Late April 2019

While our engine alarm woes dragged on we continued with paperwork, bills, taxes, etc. We were nibbling away around the edges of our list, but were still in limbo until our engine alarm problems were resolved. I bought individual heat exchanger zincs at West until I got it right. The amount of corrosion on the original one in less than a month was pretty impressive, so I ordered a lot of replacements for about 15% of what West was charging.

I still had not been successful getting the dingy registered in GA, partially because we didn't really live there, yet they (and every other state) insisted it be registered somewhere. I finally got someone on the phone, and apparently the receipt from West was not acceptable proof of ownership (?), so I had to fill out yet another form. Finally, the day before we left we got the tags in the mail. Now all we have to do is mark the registration numbers on both sides of the bow and place the stickers.

We were running out of things to do until the engine was fixed so I even got to sorting our DVDs.  I'm sure you understand cable TV is problematic on a moving boat, and satellite for a boat is still outrageous (at least to us). We actually have the boat satellite equipment from the previous owner but have never turned it on, and in fact would sell it if we got the chance. So we watch disks, and a little bit of DirecTV on the iPad if we have a decent signal.

When we moved out of the house we lost the walk in closet for a DVD library. I finally gave in and got rid of all the DVD and Blu-ray cases, fitting all our disks in several binders. Before the boat I mostly had movies on disk, but on the boat TV series have dominated. I'm basically running a UHF TV station on the boat (although I don't accept any advertising). But even without all the cases the number of disks in the main cabin bothers Heather as clutter.

With all the new series we had acquired we needed couple more cases. Only the newest case had removable sleeve pages, so adding a page in the right spot to keep things organized was possible without moving 100 other disks. I ordered a second case with the removable sleeves, even bigger than the first, and it now holds all the series we've already burned through at least once over the last three years. It holds 400 disks and it's almost full.

This made room in the other binders to get the movies back into alphabetical order, and another for active series that I had already ditched the cases for. Now I like to keep active series seasons in the case until we finish so I can keep them straight. That leaves a few dozen cases around, so I cleared the bin above the printer to hold them all when the boat is traveling, since they might fall off the shelves from wakes or waves. All this DVD organizing took over six hours straight, and I now know that we have over 1500 disks. Yikes.

The next week we got the new ignition switch for the engine. It got rid of some of the twitchiness during starting that had been present since we bought the boat, but it did not fix the low oil pressure alarm not alarming. After more delays getting the techs back on the boat they finally dug around using the electrical schematic. In chasing down one idea they found two wires near the fuel lift pump behind the heat exchanger that had not been reconnected. Success, although I'm still a little foggy on the wiring connection between that pump and the oil pressure sending unit. The delay was annoying, but I learned a bit more about the engine electrical system.

While we were waiting and doing chores a Santa Maria replica docked down by the office. Heather did the tour. One of the actors involved with the tours was missing a leg and had this incorporated into his costume. Pretty impressive.

We got the diver to scrub the bottom of the boat one last time, and Heather scrubbed the topsides. Our boat was looking much better. Time to leave!

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Punch List

08 - 23 April 2019

When we left the boat last month it was still mostly cool to cold in SE coastal Georgia, but we returned five weeks later to much warmer weather, which also meant the bugs were again out in force. Within the first day or two we got et.

We had left the boat a mess. The engine had been in pieces because the heat exchanger and exhaust manifold had both been removed for inspection, but not yet replaced. Large parts of what we stored in the back cabin were redistributed everywhere else to provide better access to the engine while we were gone, when it apparently became an even bigger mess. Multiple flushes of the coolant were needed to get all the salt out of the freshwater side of the cooling system. So for our first full day back, which is usually pretty non-productive, we had to be a little better just to have a place to sit, much less lie down.

We paid up for the engine work (ouch) and also the month's dockage. We're paid up now through the end of month, but really don't want to be here that long (ha!). We went back to Porch for hot chicken, appreciating it a little more now that we knew just how closely it followed the Hattie B's in Nashville. I put the back cabin back together, with better inventory marking of the bin contents this time.

The new dodger was already on the boat when we returned and it looked good, so we paid the canvas folks at Topstitch. The picture below of it is problematic since the dodger is mostly clear plastic, but we like it for just that reason. I'm wearing the shirt Madi gave me for Christmas.

The sail bag still on the side of boat confused us, but it had been repaired and returned. We got the guys to come back to help us reinstall it. They determined that cleats for the sail bag lines would keep the rain collection in the bag from happening again. Also, while we were drilling holes in the mast, a second mast step, on the right slightly higher than the one on the left, would make managing the top of the main sail area much more pleasant. They left to order some parts.

After a couple days, when the boat was largely sorted out, we went to the yard to get some more details on the engine work that had been done. We wanted to confirm that the engine was ready to start up, the number of coolant flushes done, and the best way to flush it in the future (and now annually). Also how to change the zincs in the new heat exchanger. They noted on the engine work ticket that apparently now the engine alarms weren't working. Since the alarms had saved our engine at least once, I kinda wanted them to continue doing their thing. We got a follow up visit arranged, and after some quick diagnostics, ordered a new ignition switch, since it had been a little twitchy since we first bought the boat.

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LA AL FL GA

05 - 07 April 2019

After crossing Texas, again we had dinner at Parrains in Baton Rouge (below). It was a Friday night and busy as hell. Just getting a parking space took about 10 minutes. We had a nice dinner amongst the birthday party celebrants, then continued down the road that night all the way to Slidell, forgetting to get gas first. We were deep in the red by the time we made it to the next gas station. We had stayed in a hotel across the road from another we had stayed at during one of our recent crossings.


We hit a bagel place in the morning then we were back on the road. They just opened a Buc-Ees in SE Alabama in January, the first outside of Texas. I'm sure this was to stem the tide of Busy Bees, a poor imitation, but still better than most places, which were going up everywhere in Florida. The pictures below still don't completely capture the scale of these places.

We made it to Tallahassee for dinner at the 4 Rivers BBQ. They must have caught onto people ordering the four meat feast to share between at least two people, because that was off the menu. Also off the menu was the bread pudding made from Krispy Kreme donuts. My arteries aren't going to clog themselves.

We got back in the car not sure how much farther we were going to make it that day. As we continued down the interstate we started to see some aspiring stunt drivers. Welcome to Florida! We were almost to Jax, just after dark, when traffic came to a standstill. We checked online and all lanes had been blocked a few miles ahead for a crash about 20 minutes before. After Florida Man led the way across the median we followed, back down the I10 west a couple miles to bypass all this. Even if it doesn't buy us much time I prefer to keep moving. We took SR 90 for a few miles past Baldwin, then got back to the I10 E. A little over an hour later when we arrived at our hotel in Jax they had just reopened the left lane past the wreck. Please be careful out there.

In the morning we went to a place called Jax Bread, which was so good we brought home a sliced loaf. We hit the used book/DVD store, then the Costco across the parking lot for some of their bacon, chicken salad, and a few more essentials, then we were back on the road north to Brunswick. The I95 traffic was the heaviest we'd seen crossing the country, and the driving even more aggressive. Yikes.

We got to the boat, almost five weeks after we had left. We turned down the AC, turned on the fridge and freezer, then settled in for the night, watching the first four episodes of Life (with Damien Lewis), followed by the first episode of Season 4 for Sherlock.

In the morning started working our boat departure lists.

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Back to the Boat

02 - 05 April 2019

At the dentist I was pretty nervous. The last tooth I had pulled had finally caused me to abandon my old dentist, who everyone had said was awful, but I really didn't get it until that last tooth. He spent about 40 minutes trying to pull that wisdom tooth out before he finally succeeded, but by then the tooth was in several pieces and the back of my jaw was shredded. I ended up with a dry socket and it was painful for a long time.

This new guy was great. Got me really numbed up, a couple of strong wiggles (with two other people holding my head and jaw) and it was out. I think the whole thing took 10-15 minutes, with most of that me waiting for the numbing to set in. This time I actually filled the scrip for the pain meds with the one for antibiotics. I figured the antibiotics couldn't hurt because I was still getting over the last little bits of the lung thing and I was still concerned about another dry socket. After the scrips were filled I took one of each, and I was off to lala land while Heather drove us back to Cruces.

After the third pain pill I was done with those and switched over to ibuprofen, not good, but good enough. We left Las Cruces on Thursday, heading east.

Our trip was almost cut short when in El Paso a white F150 decided it needed our lane more than we did. After changing lanes, regaining control of the car, and a few curse words my next instinctual reaction was to flip the gentleman off. Being instinctual, and me being right handed, I attempted this with said right hand. Of course my middle finger could no longer support this endeavor, so I ended up making some sort of weird claw fist shaking thing at him, which to be honest, I think confused him more than anything. Heather at least tried not to laugh.

In west Texas a semi blew out a tire about 150 yards in front of us, blowing bits and big chunks of tire all over the roadway. Leave those semis lots of room! The car got 19 mpg from Las Cruces to Van Horn, then 20 from there to Ft Stockton, a first. We did have a little tailwind, but still. We had dinner again in Kerrville at the Floating Dragon, just before closing, then continuing on into San Antonio. The Drury rooms were pretty reasonably priced, I guess because of the construction, which began promptly at 8a.

The hotel construction was the most effective wake up call we've received, and after a long day before, we really needed it. After a good breakfast at Pancake Joe's we were back on the road, all the way to the Buc-Ees east of San Antonio.

In one go we continued all the way through Houston to the Bucc-ees on the east side in Baytown, following the Buc-Ees archipelago across the hostile waters of Texas. While driving we talked about buying the boat outside of Houston almost exactly three years ago.

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