After the reunion we left Vegas for Phoenix. We passed through Boulder City and by Lake Mead.
Past the Colorado winding through the desert.
And through the Joshua Tree Parkway.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
The adventures of Dan and Heather as they travel on their sailboat, "Hiatus".
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Vegas to Phx
7 July 2018
After the reunion we left Vegas for Phoenix. We passed through Boulder City and by Lake Mead.
Past the Colorado winding through the desert.
And through the Joshua Tree Parkway.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
After the reunion we left Vegas for Phoenix. We passed through Boulder City and by Lake Mead.
Past the Colorado winding through the desert.
And through the Joshua Tree Parkway.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Monday, February 11, 2019
Reunion
Around 4 July 2108
So the second biennial (new word!) Ramsey family reunion was held in Las Vegas. Since a big branch lives in Vegas most everyone was hosted at someone's house. There was a pool and a continuous array of food and drink, so the four-day event went by quickly. In going through our phones it became clear what a bad job Heather and especially I did remembering to take pictures. A sampling is below.
A fine time was had by all, and the bar is high for Heather organizing the next one in 2020. I appear to have little decision making ability and seem to be largely a roadie.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
So the second biennial (new word!) Ramsey family reunion was held in Las Vegas. Since a big branch lives in Vegas most everyone was hosted at someone's house. There was a pool and a continuous array of food and drink, so the four-day event went by quickly. In going through our phones it became clear what a bad job Heather and especially I did remembering to take pictures. A sampling is below.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Friday, February 8, 2019
To Brunswick
Late June 2018
We got a slip arranged back in Brunswick GA and raced the boat up there over five days. Since we didn't have a dinghy it was either a marina or anchoring out for us.
Approaching New Smyrna Beach the was a squall heading for the same marina we were. We thought we might make it into the marina before it hit, but when it became clear we wouldn't we slowed down. When the storm was almost about to overtake us, we finally agreed to throw out the anchor where we were in the ditch and stay put. If we had agreed 60 seconds sooner we wouldn't have gotten wet, or perhaps in the confusion had the anchor drag us right past a marker piling until it finally bit. More room for improvement. After the storm passed Heather docked us beautifully, and we had dinner at out favorite pizza place.
We were in a hurry so we were pushing the tides, or more accurately, mostly ignoring them. As a result we managed to run aground in the same god-damn place as last year, completing a daily personal best of three times in one day. On the plus side, by necessity and practice we are getting much better at quickly getting ungrounded. Had we picked our tide times better, the mud flats in the picture below would have been about 6 feet below the surface.
One of the islands we passed had wild horses on the beach. There are several islands like this up the East coast.
The day after arriving in Brunswick we rented a car and drove back down to Vero to pick up our car. After a day and a half of boat hurricane prep we rolled west, picked up Chelsea in Phoenix, and continued up to Vegas for Heather's family reunion over the 4th of July holiday. Now that I write it down it doesn't sound so bad.
We got a slip arranged back in Brunswick GA and raced the boat up there over five days. Since we didn't have a dinghy it was either a marina or anchoring out for us.
Approaching New Smyrna Beach the was a squall heading for the same marina we were. We thought we might make it into the marina before it hit, but when it became clear we wouldn't we slowed down. When the storm was almost about to overtake us, we finally agreed to throw out the anchor where we were in the ditch and stay put. If we had agreed 60 seconds sooner we wouldn't have gotten wet, or perhaps in the confusion had the anchor drag us right past a marker piling until it finally bit. More room for improvement. After the storm passed Heather docked us beautifully, and we had dinner at out favorite pizza place.
We were in a hurry so we were pushing the tides, or more accurately, mostly ignoring them. As a result we managed to run aground in the same god-damn place as last year, completing a daily personal best of three times in one day. On the plus side, by necessity and practice we are getting much better at quickly getting ungrounded. Had we picked our tide times better, the mud flats in the picture below would have been about 6 feet below the surface.
One of the islands we passed had wild horses on the beach. There are several islands like this up the East coast.
The day after arriving in Brunswick we rented a car and drove back down to Vero to pick up our car. After a day and a half of boat hurricane prep we rolled west, picked up Chelsea in Phoenix, and continued up to Vegas for Heather's family reunion over the 4th of July holiday. Now that I write it down it doesn't sound so bad.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Dinghy
June 2018
A picture of our split floor dinghy is below. This is a serious violation of the keep the water on the outside of the boat rule. I didn't even try to repair it, and West Marine didn't want to try either. Everyone cautioned us about PVC in the tropics, but that we should at least get two summers out of it. Well, we didn't quite get even that.
After some wrangling back and forth we got good credit for the old dinghy, like two years of use for less than $300. We applied our credit to the biggest, nicest (but about heaviest) Hypalon dinghy they had, which should just fit on our foredeck. It was a RIB with a fiberglass hull, in fact double hulled, with a step/storage compartment in the front (which Heather really wanted). Hopefully our last dinghy purchase for at least a decade. We rang it up, waited for the weekly delivery to the store, and ... nothing. Oops, didn't make it. Well, shit happens. Double checked everything and it would definitely be there the next week ... except that it wasn't.
At this point Heather and I were out of time. We needed to get the boat to where it was going to be for hurricane season and get to Heather's family's reunion in Las Vegas on the 4th of July. We left Vero and made our way back to Brunswick in record time. We'd have to get the dinghy another time, in another place.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
A picture of our split floor dinghy is below. This is a serious violation of the keep the water on the outside of the boat rule. I didn't even try to repair it, and West Marine didn't want to try either. Everyone cautioned us about PVC in the tropics, but that we should at least get two summers out of it. Well, we didn't quite get even that.
After some wrangling back and forth we got good credit for the old dinghy, like two years of use for less than $300. We applied our credit to the biggest, nicest (but about heaviest) Hypalon dinghy they had, which should just fit on our foredeck. It was a RIB with a fiberglass hull, in fact double hulled, with a step/storage compartment in the front (which Heather really wanted). Hopefully our last dinghy purchase for at least a decade. We rang it up, waited for the weekly delivery to the store, and ... nothing. Oops, didn't make it. Well, shit happens. Double checked everything and it would definitely be there the next week ... except that it wasn't.
At this point Heather and I were out of time. We needed to get the boat to where it was going to be for hurricane season and get to Heather's family's reunion in Las Vegas on the 4th of July. We left Vero and made our way back to Brunswick in record time. We'd have to get the dinghy another time, in another place.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Vero Beach
May - June 2018
After our return from the Bahamas somehow almost a month slipped by, as Velcro Beach is wont to do. We rented a car and drove down to Lauderdale to pick up our car from the storage unit. We sampled our favorite restaurants and a couple new ones.
I fixed the air conditioner a half dozen times, finally going through the whole system from end to end except a section of hose about two feet long. Of course that's where the real issue was. Some shells and such on the outside of the boat were broken up during bottom cleaning and sucked up by the water cooling pump. For some reason the design had two inch hoses contracted down three little inlet slits to the pump, which were almost completely sealed with shell fragments, with the the remaining pinholes filled with bits of sea grass. On one of the couple nights when the AC was out, we were attacked by those little black biting flies. They are small enough to even get through our screens. Heather as usual took the worst of it.
Heather had a quick trip home to Phoenix to help Chelsea and Travis. When I got back from the airport the boat next to us in the marina had sunk. A lightning strike a few weeks before had blasted some tiny little (undetected) holes in the hull, which over time progressed to larger holes. Yikes. Below are some of the local fauna, what passes for pigeons in Florida, the great American squirrel, and the other, other white meat.
I fixed the air conditioner a half dozen times, finally going through the whole system from end to end except a section of hose about two feet long. Of course that's where the real issue was. Some shells and such on the outside of the boat were broken up during bottom cleaning and sucked up by the water cooling pump. For some reason the design had two inch hoses contracted down three little inlet slits to the pump, which were almost completely sealed with shell fragments, with the the remaining pinholes filled with bits of sea grass. On one of the couple nights when the AC was out, we were attacked by those little black biting flies. They are small enough to even get through our screens. Heather as usual took the worst of it.
Heather had a quick trip home to Phoenix to help Chelsea and Travis. When I got back from the airport the boat next to us in the marina had sunk. A lightning strike a few weeks before had blasted some tiny little (undetected) holes in the hull, which over time progressed to larger holes. Yikes. Below are some of the local fauna, what passes for pigeons in Florida, the great American squirrel, and the other, other white meat.
The picture below is of posted instructions for acceptable behavior at my favorite donut shop in Vero. Three generations of a very nice family cranking out great donuts seven days. Words to live by.
Finally rested up we prepared to make our way north, returning the boat to Brunswick GA to hide out for hurricane season again. My right hand was still far from useful, but no longer sensitive to as little as a breeze. We were ready to go and I was up on the fore deck when something caught my eye. The dinghy was upside down on the deck forward of the mast for travel but something was different. What I realized after a few seconds was that the center seam of the floor had split at least a couple feet. This delayed our departure yet again and began the dinghy saga.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Friday, February 1, 2019
Trying to Catch Up
May 2018
Okay, after smashing my hand, and with the loss of a significant percentage of my typing fingers, I stopped updating this blog. Time went by, and my hand is taking longer to recover than I would have ever imagined. Now I'm so far behind that catching up is intimidating, and starting to feel a little bit like work. So... maybe I won't. Or at least not in as much detail. A lot of this time is a blur now, with big chunks of time spent just trying to appease my hand.
In the spirit of the Princess Bride, "Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
It was more than a week before we could even think of leaving the MH marina. My hand was still very painful, and once the middle finger stopped hogging all of the attention, it became clear that my entire right hand was messed up, all except the thumb (thank goodness). I still couldn't use my right for much of anything, so I spent much of my time rediscovering my left hand. It's good to have two of important things.
Okay, after smashing my hand, and with the loss of a significant percentage of my typing fingers, I stopped updating this blog. Time went by, and my hand is taking longer to recover than I would have ever imagined. Now I'm so far behind that catching up is intimidating, and starting to feel a little bit like work. So... maybe I won't. Or at least not in as much detail. A lot of this time is a blur now, with big chunks of time spent just trying to appease my hand.
In the spirit of the Princess Bride, "Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
It was more than a week before we could even think of leaving the MH marina. My hand was still very painful, and once the middle finger stopped hogging all of the attention, it became clear that my entire right hand was messed up, all except the thumb (thank goodness). I still couldn't use my right for much of anything, so I spent much of my time rediscovering my left hand. It's good to have two of important things.
In mid-May we finally started limping back across the Abacos towards the states. On the way we were attacked by a swarm of bees while still a half mile off from the main island. I'm somewhat allergic to their stings, but it had been so long since I had been stung we really didn't know what would happen. Heather bravely fought them off armed only with a back scratcher and a squeegee.
As we reached the western side of the Abacos we headed into another storm that was at least five miles across, based on the radio traffic. It was wet but not bad at first, but then we spotted a waterspout behind us. As we approached Little Grand Cay the wind became worse, 30 or 40 knots gusting apparent, but against the prevailing wind of maybe 15 knots, so it was really blowing. We weren't going to make the tricky entrance to the marina in this weather so we decided to just toss out the anchor in 10 feet of water a half mile off and wait it out. What we probably should have done in Fishers Bay.
As we reached the western side of the Abacos we headed into another storm that was at least five miles across, based on the radio traffic. It was wet but not bad at first, but then we spotted a waterspout behind us. As we approached Little Grand Cay the wind became worse, 30 or 40 knots gusting apparent, but against the prevailing wind of maybe 15 knots, so it was really blowing. We weren't going to make the tricky entrance to the marina in this weather so we decided to just toss out the anchor in 10 feet of water a half mile off and wait it out. What we probably should have done in Fishers Bay.
It was very bumpy, but after 45 minutes or so the weather broke. The sun came out and the water practically glassed over. Little did we know at the time, but this was our only chance to get into the marina. The remaining bit of storm was countering the prevailing wind leaving little net. But we were tired and missed our chance before the prevailing wind came back up. It was bumpy all night where we were, like Dean Martin lying on the floor but still needing to hold on bumpy. We couldn't get into the marina in these conditions, so we decided to get on the other side of the island out of most of the wind and the bigger waves.
We had picked this location because it had the last cell tower on the northwest corner of the Abacos island chain (seen below). We needed to get weather updates to pick a crossing time. It was several days before we got a decent window then left in the mid afternoon. We wanted to be off the banks and near the gulfstream before dark. We chugged west toward Florida all night.
Usually I was a little urpy during crossings, but the seasickness meds we picked up in the Bahamas worked great for me. This was fortunate, because for once, Heather was not so good. I ended up doing almost all of the crossing, resorting at last to the single handed technique of napping for 15 minutes at a time, looking around for five, then dropping back to sleep again. I woke up once to the strong smell of fish. I looked up and there was thousands of flying fish zooming all around the boat for the next couple minutes, then they were gone.
About mid day we reached the Florida coast (below). Once we made the inlet and were on the ditch again Heather was better, took over, and I collapsed. I was never one of those stay up all night people. I woke up three hours later to help us dock back at Vero Beach, then I went back to sleep again until the next morning. We did little but eat and sleep and maybe read a little for three days.
Well this is a little long for summing up, even for a few weeks, but better than usual for me.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
Thursday, January 31, 2019
THNGVBD Part 2
Well, obviously I'm way behind, due to the loss of a significant percentage of my typing fingers among other things. I'll work on catching up while we are getting the boat ready to head out once it's warmer.
May 2018
In the last post our fearless retirees were headed back to Marsh Harbor, Abacos, Bahamas. While the storm was clearly breaking over Fishers Bay, the weather in the direction of Marsh was a mess. With the situation in Fishers Bay moderating, if we had just chosen to do nothing and wait 15-20 minutes things could have been different. Another error - assuming things will continue on the path they are on, until they don't. Relearning this became useful sooner than we thought.
The choice to head to MH was made quickly, mostly from a desire to reach decent medical care without having to wait in line with livestock. We were more than a couple hours away from MH, but it was the largest town we were going to get to before dark. While it had a population of only about 6,000 folks we had noticed several private clinics in our walks around town.
My middle finger had swollen well past breakfast sausage and was on its way to resembling a brat. Despite everything maybe I was hungry, or maybe I'm just hungry now. Within an hour the adrenaline buzz was wearing off, and the limitations of four ibuprofen were becoming apparent. I started getting cold and was probably a little shocky. Heather got me a hoody and placed it over my shoulders so we didn't have to play any armies in sleevies games.
Heather called the marina on the VHF radio. They made space for us and had a couple folks there to meet us. I tipped them, perhaps over-generously, but it was about all I could do to help. And it came in handy as my convalescence wore on.
The doctor the marina front office recommended didn't think the middle finger was broken, but it was disjointed so far out and around the middle joint that he initially thought the knuckle had to be at disjointed, too. When asked about the pain I was mixed. Four to five with streaks of six or seven. Not fun, but not even in the same league as some of the back pain I had experienced in the past. At least not yet.
He took an xray of the hand (old school - film) to get an idea of what we were looking at and confirmed that the knuckle was still in, but the first joint of the middle finger was all the way out and around over to the side.
I knew that whatever pain I had felt so far was nothing compared to what was coming. The doctor was now prepared to pop it back into joint, but I wasn't. He said that since he had lost the element of surprise that he was going to do some sort of ring local anesthesia to block the two major nerves going down the finger. I couldn't look at the needle. Weirdly this hurt more than anything else, and I was clenching my left hand so hard it cramped up, but I'm sure it was better than the alternative. Before he finished the last of maybe half a dozen injections I could feel the anesthetic taking hold.
I looked away as he started getting a grip. He started talking about doing the same thing to his wife and popping it back into joint without any indication in his voice. He tried the old are you ready bit. Even though it didn't hurt that much through the local I could still feel it squish back into the socket.
He taped my middle finger to my ring finger and wished me luck. His receptionist/nurse charged me $205 for the whole thing, xrays, anesthesia, unscheduled visit, the works. I don't think I could have gotten an xray for that in the states.
A few days after he had popped the middle finger back in was it clear that the other fingers and knuckles were messed up as well, to one degree or another. Only the thumb, which was completely upstream of the mooring line, seemed untouched.
The shot below is from the waiting room before I saw the doctor. I was clearly a little punchy at this point. The lady in the background waiting for her grandchild was not impressed (but her grandchild was!). Now that I know better what I'm looking at, I can see in the picture why the middle finger was never going to be the same.
May 2018
In the last post our fearless retirees were headed back to Marsh Harbor, Abacos, Bahamas. While the storm was clearly breaking over Fishers Bay, the weather in the direction of Marsh was a mess. With the situation in Fishers Bay moderating, if we had just chosen to do nothing and wait 15-20 minutes things could have been different. Another error - assuming things will continue on the path they are on, until they don't. Relearning this became useful sooner than we thought.
The choice to head to MH was made quickly, mostly from a desire to reach decent medical care without having to wait in line with livestock. We were more than a couple hours away from MH, but it was the largest town we were going to get to before dark. While it had a population of only about 6,000 folks we had noticed several private clinics in our walks around town.
My middle finger had swollen well past breakfast sausage and was on its way to resembling a brat. Despite everything maybe I was hungry, or maybe I'm just hungry now. Within an hour the adrenaline buzz was wearing off, and the limitations of four ibuprofen were becoming apparent. I started getting cold and was probably a little shocky. Heather got me a hoody and placed it over my shoulders so we didn't have to play any armies in sleevies games.
Heather called the marina on the VHF radio. They made space for us and had a couple folks there to meet us. I tipped them, perhaps over-generously, but it was about all I could do to help. And it came in handy as my convalescence wore on.
The doctor the marina front office recommended didn't think the middle finger was broken, but it was disjointed so far out and around the middle joint that he initially thought the knuckle had to be at disjointed, too. When asked about the pain I was mixed. Four to five with streaks of six or seven. Not fun, but not even in the same league as some of the back pain I had experienced in the past. At least not yet.
I knew that whatever pain I had felt so far was nothing compared to what was coming. The doctor was now prepared to pop it back into joint, but I wasn't. He said that since he had lost the element of surprise that he was going to do some sort of ring local anesthesia to block the two major nerves going down the finger. I couldn't look at the needle. Weirdly this hurt more than anything else, and I was clenching my left hand so hard it cramped up, but I'm sure it was better than the alternative. Before he finished the last of maybe half a dozen injections I could feel the anesthetic taking hold.
I looked away as he started getting a grip. He started talking about doing the same thing to his wife and popping it back into joint without any indication in his voice. He tried the old are you ready bit. Even though it didn't hurt that much through the local I could still feel it squish back into the socket.
He taped my middle finger to my ring finger and wished me luck. His receptionist/nurse charged me $205 for the whole thing, xrays, anesthesia, unscheduled visit, the works. I don't think I could have gotten an xray for that in the states.
A few days after he had popped the middle finger back in was it clear that the other fingers and knuckles were messed up as well, to one degree or another. Only the thumb, which was completely upstream of the mooring line, seemed untouched.
The shot below is from the waiting room before I saw the doctor. I was clearly a little punchy at this point. The lady in the background waiting for her grandchild was not impressed (but her grandchild was!). Now that I know better what I'm looking at, I can see in the picture why the middle finger was never going to be the same.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
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