Dock antics

Welcome to the C-dock Carnival!!

The people had gathered, anticipating a grand show!
In the center ring (the middle of C-dock around slip #26, to be exact), we have the Reeves trying to accomplish feats of large and small projects on their sailboat---Fiesta.
Oh, but wait, where are they?  Oh yeah, it's September in Florida; it's sticky, like sweaty cotton candy?  They must be hunkered down inside with their AC, because it's the middle of the day and the humidity has them disabled (jeesh, what wimps).  

Yanmar 35HP maintenance--oh boy!

But all is not lost, as they find there are plenty of indoor projects as well.   There's the stuffing box nut to juggle....there's thru-hulls to jiggle....there's engine belts, filters and impellers to wiggle----not to mention oil and trans fluid to re-fiddle....and THEN....the finale.....will she start?  Yes! 
But alas, not for long....she dies.....dang.  
Our Yanmar Guru, Kevin, showed our simple mistake: before changing fuel filters, we forgot to shut off the diesel line, so all the fuel had drained back into the tank. Learn something new everytime/everyday.   A re-prime in the Racor fuel filter and off she went---yippee!!!  Yahoo!!!  (a real crowd-pleaser)  

Amongst other projects,  our luckiest find on the dock last winter in the "free-box" was these little companion-way screen doors. Lo and behold, they fit our boat perfectly!  But what good are screen doors when the air conditioner is running?  So, with a little creativity (and borrowed tools), we cut two plexiglass trapezoid panels to inset with swivels so they can be removed. Sometimes, wimps can be smart too.

Companion-way doors to the cockpit

The new upholstery has been ordered (big applause) as well as new Explorer Charts for the Bahamas. There are three of them: Near Bahamas, Far Bahamas and Exumas. These beautiful charts give our cruising dreams gusto, like a treasure map to paradise.  Though we have our trusty Garmin chartplotter, it's electronic and there's nothing better than paper to back it up.  

New Tri-Color light

But let's get back to the Big Top Show....ladies and gentlemen...cast your eyes way up high (approx 48 ft) on top of the mast, we have Miller, the swinging trapeze artist, hanging for hours in a bosun's chair trying to replace the defunct Tri-Color light.  Not for the faint of heart, especially in gusting 20mph winds.









And off to the south over on E-dock we have the truly talented Bill from Solo performing a variety of well-known songs on his portable piano.  The amazing talent here is that he plays from ear; he doesn't know how to read music.  "MacArthur Park" shall never be the same... cake in or outta the rain.

E-dock's piano man---Bill from S/V Solo

And now, circus fans, in the center ring we have a dueling birthday bash on C-dock---
Leslie (Oct 14) and neighbor Larry (Oct 13)

We decided that the sum total of 124 candles would have burned the dock down, but as all C-dock-ite residents know, one more party on the old pilings might take it down anyway.  

B-day buds

Speaking of going "down", I had a one-act clown show that next morning (which no one actually saw).  At 7:30am, while stepping from the boat to the dock, I slipped and fell between the two into the water....KER-splash!  (more like Ga-dunk!)

A demonstration of the gap

Barnacle-crusted pilings under dock----aka meat shredders

Tim heard it and thought I had dropped something. Thank goodness I didn't have the cellphone on board the body AND thank goodness I didn't hit the razor-sharp barnacles encrusted all over the pilings. 

It was therefore quite humorous. I crawled out like a drowned rat onto our swim platform. Happy birthday, Leslie- baptized by the Manatee River (which fortunately is not the typical sludge harbor water).

By the time the rumor ran around the marina gossip circle and got back to me that afternoon, it declared that I had gotten drunk-as-a-sailor the night before at my b-day party and fell in trying to get back to the boat. Not true, but it would have been a humorous story as well.  Yep----we live in a three-ring circus on the west coast of Florida!

Robert and Joanie on "Rest-A-Shore"

Wednesday afternoon found us peacefully sailing out on Tampa Bay with our friends Robert and Joanie on their Catalina 385.  We slept on the hook (anchored) at Emerson Point with the dolphins that night.  Thank you, Robert, for a wonderful breakfast the next morning!
After being dockside for two months,  it was free sailing on a picture-perfect day!

While we wait for temps to cool down and hurricane season to pass, I have been caught up in a geeky kinda syndrome called "Paralysis by Analysis".  There are so many decisions to be made that require hours of research on the computer, which results in analysis-paralysis, which means nothing decided or accomplished---that's me.  What we have decided is that, like an artist painting a piece, it can go on and on, never perfect or finished.  We got a strong, well-outfitted boat that will take us where we want, without more expensive (not totally necessary) add-ons. So outside of a few more tweaks, twerks and twaks...(and the new upholstery), we're ready to go, or at least we think we are. But are we ever REALLY ready?  No, we're not, but we're going anyway.  

"Bones" our newest crew member, though not the most dependable.

Summer of 2015

Greetings again!   It's been four months since we last blogged an entry, so here's a quick update:

Back a year ago, in July 2014, when we first left Taos, we had vague dreams and ideas of what we wanted to do or pursue.  Bucket List was to travel across the US in a camper van---check mark. And then, to buy and live aboard a sailboat --- checkmate.

All the while, we were also looking, searching, exploring for what is next in our lives.  Would something pull us in and say "Turn left and live here!"  or "Hard to starboard and drop anchor here!"  We kept an open mind, totally widened our perception so we wouldn't miss that potential fish hook, all the while following our heart, living the dream.  When we left Taos, we didn't want any responsibilities (i.e., hot water heaters, roof leaks, frozen pipes, etc.); after all, at the BnB we had eight hot water heaters and 72 faucets for 25 years.  We knew that living on a floating home on the water would have enough of its own leaky issues. But in the back of our mind, we wondered if the "all-water-life or nothing" approach would be the path for us.  

My life's motto has been----everything in moderation, including moderation itself. So sometimes ya have to tie one on with a bottle of rum to realize just where that middle line is. I guess it's my Libra thing to strive for balance.

The point of all this philosophy is that we had decided to revisit the idea of establishing a balance in our life with some roots back in Taos.  Half a year as dirt-dwellers and the other half (or more) on the water?  It sounded pretty good, but in the back of our minds, we reserved the right to follow another dream (even over a rainbow into the for-sea-able future :)

So in May, after six months on Fiesta, we left her contentedly tethered in a slip for the hot-hurricane months of June-Oct at Regatta Point Marina in Palmetto, FL (west coast Tampa area).  Our first stop was up to Burlington, VT for Krista's UVM graduation celebration. 

Reeves sisters :)

Krista, Krystina, Moriah

So proud of her success in securing a job at the University Hospital as a Mental Health Technician.  Afterwards, we headed back to Taos for some high-altitude adjusting; love and miss those mountains too.     

Northern NM was chilly, with snow still clinging to the mountainsides.  We dug up our jackets and flannels from the storage unit, covering up the Florida tans we had acquired and settled in for a while with our daughter, Malia (moving in with the kid---a reversed situation for wayward parents).  But we had a mission; we were dog-sitting our boy Rusty while Malia left for six weeks for her job in Costa Rica. 

She had set up a cozy home in an old adobe house on the Yaravitz ranch way up in Des Montes overlooking the Taos Valley. It was an old childhood stomping ground for her with family friends. Not to mention the convenience to her job up in the Taos Ski Valley. 






For four months we visited old friends, picked up a few odd maintenance jobs here and there (to feed the cruising kitty), including a couple of inn-sitting jobs.  The July 4th weekend found us filling in for our old job back at the Old Taos Guesthouse for the new innkeepers who had a family emergency.  

Good times...good friends with Ric Speigel and Mary Collins at the OTGH

Lo and behold, there were several of our old friends staying there, like we didn't miss a beat.  It was a time warp and I had to ask Tim, "Didn't we buy a sailboat? or am I just dreaming?"  No problem jumping back into it with a July 4th backyard party and 24 guests for breakfast the next morning; don't even have to think about it after 25 years of doing it.

  

  We took hikes, played disc golf and seriously explored the idea of owning a little house in Taos; but alas, it did not grab us.  The roots/responsibility thing weighed heavily on us. All we could think about was being carefree on the ocean with Fiesta.  For now, Taos has not drawn us back into her power; maybe in the future.

 We "strayed" long enough to catch one of our favorite annual music festivals, "Michael Hearne's Big Barn Dance"----a three-day event of nonstop music and songwriters---as a matter of fact, here's Tim's latest video:

 Afterwards, we said ADIOS! to Taos

and its amazing sunsets. We said adios to Malia and took a bus, rode a train, and flew in a plane back to Tampa. Then we took a shuttle to Regatta Pointe Marina and Fiesta--it felt so right!

We took a bus...

                                                    

we took a train....and then a plane

                      

Ahoy! the gang is still (mostly) all here!!!

                    

back to Fiesta!!

 

Our plans have us here dockside for a couple of months as our list of "to-dos" is long, but not too arduous. We had the bottom sanded and painted, reefing system adjusted, and now we'll look at a new tricolor light atop the mast, lazy-jack mainsail system, new upholstery for the salon, SSB receiver, new Bahamian paper charts, new Garmin Platinum Chartplotter chip, rebuild the head system (ugh), basic maintenance on our 35HP Yanmar engine, etc etc. By December, we will be on our way south again to the Florida Keys and then onward to the Bahamas and then perhaps far-off island destinations beyond, to the dragons and pirates of the ancient Caribbean lore. 

 We'll keep on going as long as we're having fun! 

Sailing Her Dream

Ahoy!  We're back on our boat in Florida again, and until I can get a new blog up and running, here's a great video Tim made for those who haven't seen it yet; it kept me going all summer while back in New Mexico. It's called "Sailing Her Dream," with one of our favorite singer-songwriters, Chuck Pyle singing "Sailing"----------------cheers!!

One more adventure.....

But wait, it's not all over yet. We last left our story with Fiesta still floating in Boot Key Harbor, tethered to a ball like a patient horse to a post.

Waiting for a freshwater bath

We still had one more long adventure heading north, back up the west coast to our marina home in Palmetto, FL.







But first, Malia arrived from the cold northern NM mountains of over +7000ft down to the Florida Keys sea level and humidity. Can one suffer from lower-altitude sickness?  Maybe, but not this mountain girl., she took it in stride.

A few days waiting for the weather window in Marathon allowed us to visit the beach and Crane Point Nature Museum, where we found a multitude of these Golden Orb Weaving spiders that measured up to 5 inches long, hanging everywhere. It was not for the arachnophobic, needless to say.

Spider sisters :)

On Tuesday, May 5, with small craft advisories still lingering, we cast off mooring lines, motored under the Seven Mile Bridge, and headed north across the shallow Florida Bay, with not as many crab pots as when we had sailed here over two months ago.  But this time, with double reefed sails and an impending dark horizon, we sailed in steady 18-20 knot (20- 23 mph) NE winds with 24-knot (27mph) gusts. Tim, Leslie and Fiesta said "yippee!" But first-time sailor, Malia, said "oh shit". The rails weren't in the water, but the heeling over can be daunting for first-timers.  But like the true adventurer that she is, 

she hung on and rode that horse all the way back to the barn. 

Mosquito bait in Shark River

At 3:30pm that first day, we pulled into a wonderful cove on the Little Shark River in Everglades National Park on the mainland Florida peninsula and dropped the hook.  My research on ActiveCaptain.com told me it was good anchor holding with great sunsets and wildlife, but to be aware at dusk of the gazillion no-see-ums and skeeters. It was all true.  We were thankful for screens on all our portals and hatches as we dove inside with only a few bites.

Up early the next morning with fair skies and light to moderate winds, we decided to run the whole enchilada back to the Manatee River, no unnecessary halts.  The winds came and went as they do, and we motor-sailed most of it.  

We sailors sometimes feel like we've bought a motorboat with sails (because we motor more than we like to), but when the wind is on the nose or too wimpy, we're all grateful for the engine.  Out of the 50 hours underway of moving back up the west coast of Florida, we got to experience 18 hours of no-motor, pure sailing. 

Cute story... on our way past Sarasota, we were sailing along about six miles offshore when we noticed a small yellow songbird following us.  Poor things get blown out to sea sometimes and get exhausted trying to get back. This brave lil' fellow boldly perched on our lifeline and closed his eyes for about 20 minutes.  We kept still and quiet to let him rest, hoping he wasn't gonna keel over and die on our deck.   Pretty soon, his eyes opened; he preened a couple of feathers and proceeded to explore our vessel for the next 45 minutes.  He found the little dish of fresh water I put out, ignoring the bread crumbs but delighted in a squashed bug instead.  He visited the salon below deck a couple of times, and even checked out Tim's curly grey-haired chest. Just when I began to wonder if we had a new live-aboard buddy, he took off from the bow of the boat towards land with a series of thankful chirps. We were all happy :)

It took three days and two and a half nights to meander back up the west coast to our home at Regatta Point Marina in Palmetto, FL.  You could drive it in 6 hours, but when you're averaging less than 5mph, ya gotta have patience... and time.  

Coming back to our marina in Palmetto was like coming home to our neighborhood/village of friendly faces. It felt right. It's here we'll leave Fiesta amongst our dock buddies for the hot summer months of May through October.           Then we'll return refreshed and prepare for our next big adventure into the unknown turquoise waters....thar be dragons! Until then, dear blog followers, we'll return to New Mexico (via Vermont first). Stay tuned, there will be more! Thanks for reading and encouraging us to pursue our dreams!

Viva la Fiesta!!

Plundering PIrate

And as promised, here's a link to Tim's latest fun video titled "Plundering Pirate".

He always has way too much fun with his active imagination in the creation of all his videos, but this one is possibly the craziest yet.  He also wanted to show the interior of our boat and the large brick fortress on the Dry Tortugas... enjoy!

Dry Tortugas

On a beautiful Sunday morning around 8am, we departed Key West with perfect 10-15kt ESE winds and following seas of 2- 4 ft, finally on our way to the Dry Tortugas in what was a long-planned rendezvous with our Regatta Point Marina (Palmetto, FL) fellow dockmates. The first leg of the journey was about 20 miles to a group of islands called the Marquesas; uninhabited except for the birds and dolphins and the abandoned Cuban chugs onshore.

(a borrowed pic from the web)

(a borrowed pic from the web)

Chugs are the handmade-with-anything-ya-got boats that the Cubans risk their lives with in the name of freedom.  It's unknown how many don't actually make it, but judging by the examples, it's probably on the high side.  These boats will carry around 15-25 people for the 90-mile journey, but crossing the Gulf Stream is not for wimps- unbelievable.  If they can set foot on American soil, they get to stay and start a new life.  If they're caught out in the water, they're sent back with humiliation to Cuba.  This leads to some of them frantically swimming to shore when land is sighted. So close, yet so far.  

We personally have mixed feelings about the bridge being open to Cuba in the future.  
We hope for "grace" in their evolution, not revolution.

We were all alone in this world when we dropped anchor in 12 feet of water around 3pm on the west side of the Marquesas in protection of the land from the easterly winds that night.  We had heard about the north/south strong current here, so we gave our Rocna anchor 60 ft of chain rode (5:1 scope) and she held well as we flipped directions a couple of times that night.  Magic visited us that night, as the shifting waters carried globs of neon phosphorescence by our hull, like little glowing green alien beings in a flotilla on their way to an all-night party.  Maybe that's my Roswell roots reminding me where I came from.

  

At sunrise we upped anchor to yet another beautiful day of 10-15kt winds directly behind us outta the east as we're heading due west.  Without a spinnaker or whisker pole for our genoa sail, this meant we had to tack with the wind----to the northwest and back to the southwest. We had 40 miles to go (as the bird flies), and at an average of five knots per hour, that would take us eight hours, as the bird flies.  In the end, since we can't fly like a bird, we got some help from our Yanmar 35HP engine to get us in the last eight miles. It's called motor-sailing and we all admittedly do more than we really want to. It ended up taking about nine hours. But we had contacted our yachtie friends on VHF channel 16 and knew they were already in the anchorage. That cold beer was gonna be the best ever!

Dry Tortugas National Park

It's in the middle of nowhere in the Gulf of Mexico, 70 miles from the nearest bag of ice and flushing toilet.  It was a group of islands inhabited by turtles when Ponce de Leon first discovered it and named it Las Tortugas.  Later, it was renamed by another explorer (can't remember this one) to reflect the lack of water on the charts, hence the Dry Tortugas.  We went into this adventure with open-minded expectations and when we first spotted it on the horizon, we thought it was the island----land-ho!  But as we got closer, we realized it was a manmade brick monstrosity, called Fort Jefferson.

Ft Jefferson from a mile out

Fiesta anchored with Ft. Jefferson....and the perfect clouds

We pulled into the anchorage south of the fort and found four boats----our dock mates from Palmetto, already set on the hook and recuperating from their long 29 hour overnight-wild-ride down from the Ft. Meyers Beach area, about 110 miles north. So fun to see them all again!!!

Left to right---me, Bill from Sola, Margaret/Jim from Well, Why Not?, 

Chris/Linn from Annie-C, Joni/Robert from Rest-A-Shore

Interior grounds of Fort Jefferson

A lighthouse was first built here in 1825 (lots of wrecks in the area), but in 1846, the US started building its largest fort, named after Pres. Jefferson on Garden Key Island.  It's this unbelievable hexagonal mammoth fortress of 16 million bricks...complete with an array of cannons all the way around......and a moat.....WITH a proverbial 7ft crocodile resident--no one knows how he got there.  We saw him, but he was shy of my camera.

 So the million brick dollar question is.....why?

  

A.  To defend the Mississippi River to NY commerce route---yes.

B.  To defend the Gulf Coast corridor to the Atlantic---yes.

C.  To defend las tortugas (turtles)----not yet...they were actually a main meal

D.  To defend from Cuban Chugs---nope.

It was in Union hands as the Civil War raged, and by 1875, without a shot ever fired in defense, the construction had stopped, because the coral/sand foundation began shifting as much as a foot in places and the million+ gallon-rain-collecting-underground-cisterns had filled with salt water.....oops.  Alas, Mother Nature wins again. 

As we wandered around the property in our shorts and T-shirts, slugging down bottles of water in the 80+ temps, I wondered how the population of 2000 inhabitants dressed in their wool military uniforms and women in layers of long skirts survived these hot and dehydrating conditions.   

    

  

Tim and Margaret

Our fleet of boats amongst the daily tourist seaplanes taking off

The only way to get here is via boat or seaplane.  There is a large National Park ferry that comes over for about 5 hours every day from Key West with a hundred or more tourists.....they're the ones with splotches of pink on white skin where the sunscreen missed.  By the way, the turquoise water around the park is a protected marine sanctuary, making the snorkeling a big attraction holding up to our expectations.

A very unique aspect of this particular National Park is the mostly unrestricted roaming freedom they give to the visitor. There are no guardrails when you walk around the third-story ramparts or "watch your step!" signs with the uneven, toe-stubbing floors. There's no grate over the open shafts to the water cisterns. There's not even a "WARNING! Live crocodile in the moat!" sign!?!!

Masonry marvels

Margaret hiking the upper ramparts

More Cuban Chug boats and stories of survival this time

Watch for Tim's next video filmed here--coming soon!

On the island next to the fort is a designated bird sanctuary that is filled with thousands of Sooty Terns (gulls) and Pelicans.  The raucous was all day and all night. But one of my favorites was the large hovering Magnificent Frigates over the fort with their 7.5ft wingspan and forked tails. They reminded me of prehistoric pterodactyls from the dinosaur age. 

All in all, this was one of our most exciting adventures yet. We stayed five nights, but could have easily stayed another month.  Don't know if we'll ever go back, because there are so many other adventures to cross off the list.

Our 70-mile return trip back to Key West was one of those "forgettable" motor-slogging- no sail-into-very-large-waves-with-the-wind-on-the-nose trips for two days. 

But, alas, every day is not without an adventure. So about an hour east of Fort Jefferson, Fiesta sprang a fuel leak in a low-pressure fuel line between the lift pump and secondary fuel filter. Though it was pinpoint small, it was shooting out about six inches all over the galley floor. OFF! with the engine, and UP! with the sails.  Jim, on Well, Why Not?, radios us asking if we have any "rescue tape" to try and wrap it?  No, we didn't think so; we couldn't think straight about this yet. We tell the other boats to go on; we'll have to sail our way back to Key West; it'll only take four days---or four months.  

Jim and Margaret, not willing to leave us behind, figured out a way to get us this rescue tape in a dry bag, floating on a buoy and attached to a long line.

SuperJim to the rescue

Picture this... we're all in HUGE waves, 4-6 ft (maybe more? largest yet, anyway), hobby-horsing from the top of one to the bottom of the other.   We manage to get Fiesta hove-to in these waves (a sailing maneuver that allows us stability and to pretty much stand still). Meanwhile, on Well, Why Not?, Margaret is at the helm and Jim on deck; they make three totally heroic passes within 25ft of our boat (watching that our masts don't meet up in the rolling waves) while we stand ready with a boat hook. First try, tossed too soon.....2nd time, fouled line.....3rd time-the charm with a lobbing Hail Mary toss and we got it!  

Margaret, dear Margaret, omg, you ROCK behind that helm!!! I know it made the grey hairs go white or even fall out, but the rescue tape saved the trip and we all persevered for two days motoring back to civilization via another beautiful night in the Marquesas.

Margaret & Jim, retired llama ranchers from MN on their stalwartly Morgan 44 Well, Why Not?

 

Chris and Linn, retired truck drivers on Catalina 34, Annie C

Katie says "What a pretty girl" but is learning "Land-ho!"

We spent a few days in Key West wandering the streets looking for key lime pie and West Marine (the expensive chain store for marine supplies).  While we waited for our Yanmar fuel line to arrive in the mail, our yachtie friends left a day before us for Marathon. On Friday morning, April 17, we left Key West harbor.---but, oh no!  We had totally forgotten it's taboo or bad luck to leave a harbor on FRIDAYS!  But luck was with us that day, as we had THE best day ever for sailing up to Marathon. Winds were a gentle 15-17kt off our starboard beam and gave us 5.5-6 knots speed; waves were like bucking broncos at first and then calmed down to 2- 4 ft. One tack the whole 8 hours, passing about ten sailboats heading west (so much for taboo laws). It was payback time after all the motoring.

Currently, we are all three moored side by side tucked back into the bosom of Boot Key Harbor in Marathon for the next week or two, getting our always inevitable repairs and upgrades done. The weather has turned really warm, actually kind of hot, but by the time the harbor residents blow their conch horns at sunset every night, it's cooled down and so lovely to be floating here in Marathon.  Many boats have left this harbor, heading back up the east coast for summer or off to Bimini and beyond to the Bahamas.  

We have finally laid out our future plans.  Our older daughter, Malia, will be flying to the FL Keys on May 1st to check out what her crazy parents have done now and to assist in getting Fiesta back up north to Palmetto to Regatta Point Marina near the Tampa Bay area, where she'll stay through the summer under our friend Mike Fauser's care. Then in mid-May, the three of us fly up to Burlington, VT to attend Krista's graduation, a double major in Psychology and Global Studies. We are so proud of her!  She has been offered several jobs in health organizations around Vermont and just needs to decide which one.  Tim, Malia and I will then fly back to Taos to live for the summer into fall, working in some part-time seasonal job (got one?) to replenish the cruising kitty for another high seas adventure into the Bahamas next winter.  

What a year we've had. 

We have no regrets----only excitement for what's next!