Not the Easter Cruise we had planned

Friday, April 11, 2020

This weekend was supposed to be the Easter Cruise to the Beaufort, NC docks BUT, that got canceled because that town doesn’t want us.

So instead of that, we’re doing some maintenance that’s been on my list for a while, namely replacing the coolant pump on the engine.

Everyone that’s ever worked on a boat will tell you that everything takes twice as long as normal.
Well, when the town your boat is located in is on a Covid-19 lockdown that prohibits non-residents from basically going into town, that makes things even more challenging.

Fortunately, everyone in the boating community in Oriental is awesome and willing to help as they can. So we can still call businesses, place an order, give a CC number and they will deliver to your slip! Shout out to Pat, Lori and Teresa at IWPC, and Jim at Bow to Stern Boating!!

The front of the engine had some surface corrosion and missing paint, seemingly from leaking coolant at some point in her past. While the pump and belt were off, it seemed to be the right time to wire brush and enamel paint those areas. Walmart was out of Yanmar Grey engine enamel so black will have to do.

Deciding to do this certainly added a lot of time, but it was worth it since everything was accessible. I also wasn’t thrilled using a spray can inside, but we opened some hatches, turned on a fan and it was fine.  Given the challenging work conditions, it came out pretty good!

A lot's happened in a year of not posting...

What will hopefully be the only Annual Update

Given that aside from healthcare workers, grocery store/food delivery chain employees, the entire planet suddenly has a lot more free time, what better time to try to get in the habit of updating this Blog!

Going forward, I'm going to create at least three types of posts, which can be filtered on the right side, under "Pages".  The current three are

• Sailing Related Posts - Kind of obvious
• General Posts - Basically all posts that are not sailing specific
• Technical Articles - For the dorks out there

So what's happened in the past year.

• Found and bought a boat (1997 Beneteau Oceanis 40 CC in New Bern, NC)
• Moved it to Oriental, NC "The Sailing Capital of NC"
  Amazing place, BTW.  Great for a weekend trip.  People are super friendly and it is super relaxing to go there.
• Had it "on the hard" (out of water) at Deaton Yacht Service to do some work, bottom painting, etc.
• Named it Betelgeuse. (Brightest star in the Constellation Orion *normally)
  Those that understand how to hail on a marine VHF may get a kick out of this name...
• Set it up for charter from Bow To Stern Boating.
• Sailing over several weekends, taking trips to various spots on the Neuse River
• Went on a weeklong charter with friends down in the British Virgin Islands.  Amazing, amazing trip that I can't wait to do again.
• Finished out a very successful 2019 at Closet Factory.
• Returned to the Miami Boat Show.
• COVID-19 happened, forcing us to move everything to Virtual appointments using screen sharing, eventually stop all of our Closet Factory Operations, temporarily lay off our employees and spend a lot more time at home.

I'll see about posting some more information on some of these bullet points over the coming days/weeks as I have a chance to create posts that include some pictures from along the way.

Thanks for reading!

Step 5 - Buying a sailboat so we can sail more?! - 1998 Beneteau 381

We've sailed a few times, we want to sail more and we want to find out if we can actually live on a boat.

After speaking with Jim at Bow to Stern Boating, we had learned that they would like to be able to have a 38ish foot monohull to add to their charter options.

This is an interesting size boat.  It's plenty large enough to have a comfortable salon and galley, a nice cockpit, two decent size cabins and long enough to be able to reach a respectable speed (see my Tech Article to learn more about boat speeds), but not so long that it is hard to find a dock and not so deep a draft that would make sailing it in the shallow waters of the Pamlico Sound a problem.

The one notable downside is that in that length it is usually not quite long enough to have 2 heads, and at the end of the day, everyone wants their own bathroom!

So, I went onto a few sites to start looking for used boats, surprisingly, quite old used boats (that happen to have been well taken care of).  YachtWorld.com seems to be the go-to source for finding a used boat.  It allows for very easy filtering on Length, Age, Location, Price, etc and really allows you to quickly find whats out there that matches your wants.

What I found were a good number of Hunters and Catalinas.  Both are fine boats, but since Jim knew that we would probably only want to own this particular boat for a few years, he suggested we try to search out a Beneteau or Jeanneau, since they tend to hold their values better and are a little more rare/sought after, making then easier to sell when the time comes.

I focused my search on the southern and mid-atlantic coastal states, hoping to find something that I could, with some help, sail from wherever it lay to Oriental, NC.

Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars (Day 6)

Wow, very delayed in posting this; got stuck in "Drafts".

End of an amazing trip

We ended up doing some work from the saloon in the morning on our laptops, packed up our belongings and tidied up our cabin and then we all headed to West Marine and Sailorman before being dropped off at the airport. 

The flight back to Raleigh was easy and Chuck and Lucy were happy to see us a day early. 

Reflecting back on this trip, we learned quite a few things, aside from just building our sailing skills. 

First, Sue and I don’t get seasick easily.

Second, we never felt claustrophobic or like we didn’t have enough room. 

Third, the Leopard 45 is a beautiful boat and I could easily call it home. 

Fourth, Bob, Melinda and Andy were super easy to spend a week with on a boat (and we’re looking forward to circumnavigating Vancouver Island next year even more!)

Fifth, and most importantly, this trip didn’t push us off of our retirement plan; if anything it has further convinced us!

Sailing with Bob and Melinda on SV Counting Stars! (Day 5)

Wow, very delayed in posting this; got stuck in "drafts".

Favorable Wind!!!

This was a great day to be sailing!  We were able to leave No Name Harbor with daylight, so we were able to take the tighter, quicker path out to the Atlantic, passing behind Stiltsville. 

We decided to sail ESE to the 3 mile line to empty the holding tanks. We then turned North to head up to the cut at Ft. Lauderdale. The wind was variable, but was mostly coming from the NW, given us just enough angle off the wind to be able to sail along the Southern Florida coast without having to tack too often. 

We played around with the auto helm and learned how to use the auto tack feature, which let us press one button and switch to the other “side” of the wind, the same angle off the wind. We would press the button, then easily move the Genoa from one side of the boat to the other, quickly and easily right from the helm. 

The trip took about 6 hours but only required a few tacks. We were close hauled and fine tuning just how close we could sail to the wind, to limit our number of tacks.