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Bimini ….I was starting to call it Neverland

Because I thought we were never going to make it………

Kim, buying $2 conch…because you can’t get them that cheap counting your fuel and time if you go get them yourself !!!

She’s one shiny gal…..in the slip at Brown’s Marina, Bimini

The entrance to the “Compleat Angler Bar” formerly Hemingway’s home in Bimini Oct 1995

Same spot 22.3 years later…..and 15 years after the bar burned down….

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As many of you know, we are often graced with the company of our good friend Mike. In addition to being a good sailor, generally handy and a lot of fun, he likes to write. So, I proposed that Mike write a few articles for the blog and I told him they could be about anything he found interesting……so, from time to time we will be posting entries from Mike….some will be technical, some anecdotal and some with his own unique blend of views of the sailing life, philosophy, plus some comedy along the way……there may even be some illustrations to go along with some of these entries…….the names will be changed to protect the (innocent/unaware/clueless….haha)

So, without further ado, the first installment of what I guess we will call the “Life of Crewman Stoopid”….Or “Stoopid Crew Quarterly” or something like that…….maybe we should have a contest to name this storyline……???

—————————————————————————————————————————–

“Something’s wrong” the Admiral said to the captain. “Stoopid crew has been sitting on the deck for an hour looking at nothing.”

The captain looked up from his coffee, looked toward the bow at Stoopid crew, then back toward the Admiral. ” Looks normal to me” he said. ” No, it’s not” she said. “Go talk to him!”

Knowing that arguing with the Admiral when she had THAT tone in her voice was not only unlikely to be successful, but also potentially dangerous, the captain sighed, got up, and went forward to where Stoopid crew was sitting, staring out to sea.

“Everything ok?” the captain said, hoping against hope for a short affirmative reply. ” Well…”said Stoopid crew, and the captain’s heart sank- not from anything he was about to hear from Stoopid crew-but from the sure and certain knowledge of the smug look that would appear on the Admiral’s face as she was once again proven correct in her judgement and intuition. Well, he thought, she was The Admiral for a reason after all. ” Go on” he said to Stoopid crew,” what is it?”

Stoopid crew looked for a moment at the captain, and then resumed his stare seaward. “You know how we’ve been trying to get to the Bahamas for almost a month now, but every time we think we are ready, we break something else, or the weather turns bad?” ” Yeah” said the captain, who had silently been referring to the Bahamas as “never land” because he was beginning to think they would never actually land there, as it was usually the bad weather AND breaking something that actually was preventing them from leaving.

“Well” said Stoopid crew,” while we’ve been here, we had great times with good friends, fantastic meals and great music from bands. We’ve seen whole pods of dolphins, a huge manatee and sea turtles. Osprey and pelicans hunt for dinner right off the bow of the boat. We find crabs in our traps and fish in our nets and there is always cold beer”

The captain looked at Stoopid crew for a moment, reflecting that this was all true, but that he had never before heard this type of coherent thought from Stoopid crew, and said “so?”

And then it happened. Stoopid crew turned from his seaward gaze, looked directly at the captain with bright intelligent eyes, and said ” It really IS about the journey and not the destination isn’t it?” With that, Stoopid crew got up and began washing the deck, whistling a happy tune with what could only be called a contented smile on his face.

The captain looked at him for a moment, and then got up and made his way back to where the Admiral was anxiously awaiting his return . “Well ? Is he all right ?” she said. The captain looked at her for a moment, and then at Stoopid crew happily working away, and then back at her. “Yeah…yeah he is” the captain said. And then he picked up his coffee, and slowly turned his eyes to the sea, a small, yet contented smile slowly spreading across his face.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

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How do you know where you’re going? Or…..Guess what? You’re a Navigator too

We get this question ….A LOT….

“How do you know where you are or how to get where you want to go?”

The question makes complete sense. After all, most people are, at a minimum, accustomed to having at least a road map, road signs and street name signs. Add to that a Tom-Tom, Garmin or other turn by turn GPS, either hanging on their dash or in their phone. On top of that, whether they know it or not, they have had a subliminal geography course going on their entire life. Some people may not be able to find New Jersey on a map, but they can navigate their local area pretty reliably.

What most people don’t realize is that they use a form of marine navigation in their every day life….it’s commonly called Dead Reckoning or D/R for short. D/R is essentially estimating your position based upon your known direction of travel, your speed, the elapsed time and use that to determine a point between where you started and where you are headed. You didn’t know you were a Navigator, did you? Just imagine if someone put you in a car on I-75 (that runs North and South between Detroit and Miami). Pick any spot…assume a speed of 70mph and an lapsed time of 5 hours….where are you ? Ta-da !!! A D/R “fix” or estimated position (EP).

Many people, when they imagine marine navigation envision the use of a Sextant and some pretty complicated calculations based on the angles of the sun, moon or stars coupled with other fancy techniques. Frankly, the sun and stars aren’t always visible, so navigators need a method they can use reliably when they can’t see either, that’s where D/R comes in.

Take a look at the snapshot of the chart below. That’s an image of a “rhumbline” or direct course from an area South of Miami called Angel cut to Cat Cay (Cay is pronounced like “key”) in the Bahamas. That rhumbline is 48 miles long.

For the purpose of the example, let’s use our boat. Kitty Hawk averages about five knots per hour under power. If you average out the sailing speed, 5kts is also a safe number unless the wind really dies, at which point for this example we would fire up the diesel and still maintain 5kts. A knot is 1.152 miles per hour, much in the same way a nautical mile is equal to 1.1 statutory miles.

We will also assume, just to make things simpler and avoid calculating “tacking” (which is changing the course of the boat to take advantage of the direction of the wind) the boat, that the wind is coming out of the South at 10 knots. That means we could sail straight across our rhumbline course on a coinciding magnetic course, using our helm compass and autopilot to be sure we stay on that heading. A course is an intended route….a heading is the actual direction the boat ends up going based on current (like the Gulfstream), wind or other factors. In this scenario we would need to make a slight course adjustment to the south to stay on our rhumbline course due to the Gulf Stream that flows to the North in this area at about 1.5 to 3 knots. (That would be a dream crossing to the Bahamas by the way.) If we left Angel’s Cut at 7pm we could estimate our position on the rhumbline at any given time by multiplying the number of hours passed by our speed of 5kts and our ETA at Cat Cay would be ????

Drumroll please………….

If you said anything close to 9.5 hours later or around 4:30am….you’d be exactly right!!! Congrats !!! You’re a navigator !!!

Generally speaking, there are “road signs” out in the water as well. That way you have a visual confirmation of when you’ve arrived at your intended destination. While the U.S. has the best marked and best maintained system of waterway navigational aids, (called ATONs, as in Aid To Navigation, in the boating world) the Bahamas don’t do as bad a job as some countries. Most of these markers are colored (red or green) and numbered so you know when you are approaching the first or last in a line at an inlet, channel, or where you might be in a waterway. While Cat Cay doesn’t have any channel markers, you have to navigate this inlet by sight. In contrast, Bimini to the North, is marked by lighted red and green buoys numbered 1 for the green and 2 for the red. When numbered, Greens are odd and reds are even.

In this day and age, GPS and chart plotters have made navigation even simpler. Our chartplotter is capable of displaying our course, our speed though the water, speed over ground, heading and our position on a chart simultaneously. It’s always a good idea to have a non electronic backup method, and use it underway, in the event of a catastrophic failure though. That’s where D/R comes in to save the day.

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Key West Part Two….

Well, here’s part two…..as promised….sort of…haha. As I began to assemble the remaining photos of our weeks in Key West, I realized we didn’t have as many shots of us “partying” as I thought. Perhaps it’s a sign of our age, our recent change in lifestyle or maybe we just forget to be camera happy once we hit the happy hours ? Either way….I need to remember to get a few more shots once happy hour starts !! This post, while shorter on “party” than expected, still has a lot of new, never before seen stuff !!! ENJOY !!!

This scene above seemed a tad bit like overkill. We had an issue with our outboard engine “deadman” switch/ kill switch. We had contacted the Garrison Bight Marina to check on the availability of the parts to repair it. Since our outboard was originally purchased overseas, they couldn’t guarantee the part number they had in stock would fit. They offered to have their mechanic test fit both versions to make sure it was right. Since it was only a few more dollars to have them replace it and get a full warranty for labor, we decided to let them do the work while we had lunch at the Thai restaurant next door. I thought the mechanic would just walk down to the dock, but they opted for a full blown haulout of our 9′ dinghy, for which we also weren’t charged, but was fun to watch.

Me giving the fishhook to the guy that was hitting on Kim !!! (See a few photos down!)

A shot from Mallory Square at sunset….that might be the America 2.0 out there …..

Bar hopping !!!!

Me as....well....me in front of the Bimini Barrelhead Bar — Me as….well….me in front of the Bimini Barrelhead Bar….(a repeat but I like this one !!)

Happy Hour at Alonzo’s Oyster Bar ….our favorite

This guy is part of a semi permanent outdoor exhibit at the Key West Museum of Art and History on Front Street at the Old Customs House.

The Old Customs House, as it is known historically, opened in 1891. It currently houses the Key West Museum and History Center. It has been, and continues to be, one of the most striking structures in Key West. It somewhat reminds me of Music Hall in Cincinnati design-wise, despite their technically different styles and size difference. The photo above is the “Lunchbreak” a bronze statue by John Seward Johnson II. Johnson, an heir of the Johnson & Johnson talcum powder empire was, ironically, fired from J&J in 1962 by his uncle. That didn’t seem to affect him much financially. He is also a first cousin of the actor, Michael Douglas, on his mother’s side. Seward was initially a painter and turned to sculpture around 1968. His work has received a lot of criticism since many were simply sculptures based on impressionist paintings or iconic photographs and have been described as “kitschy”. I seem to recall reading an article somewhere that his larger sculptures were constructed by teams of fabricators under his direction, which may have generated some other criticism. Johnson was a diagnosed dyslexic and attended the Forman School which specializes in the education of people with Dyslexia.

These shots are actually the light house on Loggerhead Key west of Dry Tortugas and a nearby sunset, but I thought there were so nice I’d post them again…..

One of our neighbors in the Garrison Bight Mooring Field was a seaplane that would usually arrive on Monday, tie up to a small floating platform that was tied off to a mooring ball. It was met by a small powerboat that was either picking up or dropping off the passengers for the plane. It was pretty cool to watch him land and take off especially since the prevailing winds were regularly at least 15 from ENE to ESE or so.

This was beautiful moon view in the mooring field …..it only photographed so-so unfortunately…..

The Crew !!! In search of live music and happy hour

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Trying something new with Amazon.com

Recently, I discovered the Amazon Associates program. Since we order a LOT of stuff from Amazon and have found it a great source for parts at affordable pricing, I was pleased to discover this.

Essentially, whenever we mention a product in a post, we now have the ability to add a clickable link in the post for the product that will take you directly to Amazon where you can purchase it. It isn’t limited to products but may also be an ad for Amazon Prime (which I’m not sure how I lived without) or some other promotion being conducted by Amazon. We will still have the Google Ads in the posts as well, but the Amazon links will be clearly marked “Amazon” at the borders. Even if you don’t buy the specific linked item, you can use our link to access Amazon and help support our blog since we still get a small commission when you buy items or gift cards through one of these links !!!

MOST IMPORTANTLY …..IT IS AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU !!!

like this …..

Or this…

In the interest of full disclosure, if any of our visitors use the link AND purchase the item or a gift card, we do get a small commission…..

Please let me know if you think it makes the blog less enjoyable……I’m not a fan of too much advertising, but I also like saving time by avoiding research to find a recommended product I see online, outside of a retailer. I’ll do my best to keep them at the end of the posts to avoid clutter, but please let me know if you’d prefer them nearer to where the product is mentioned.

Thanks for reading, supporting our blog and I hope you enjoy the posts and any products you might buy !!!

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Key West…..Part One

When we arrived in Key West, after our overnight stay at Looe Key Reef,… (See that post here …. https://learntoliveaboard.com/2016/07/scenes-from-along-the-way-to-dry-tortugas-via-key-west/ ) we spent about 90 minutes navigating the entrance to Key West from the South. There was no shortage of small and large traffic including a departing cruise ship. We had called ahead and arranged for a mooring ball in the Garrison Bight Mooring Field.

We made our way around Fleming Key, which is the home of the U.S. Army Special Forces Undwerwater Training Center which is located at it’s north tip. The island also has a waste water treatment system and a Dolphin Training Center !! You do see a conspicuous number of dolphins cruising between the boats anchored on the west side of the island. There are A LOT of boats anchored on either side of the channel in the area between Key West proper and the channel on the west side. There are a great many people who find it cheaper to buy a boat and live at anchor than to rent an apartment or commute from the upper keys when working in Key West.

This was the first time we tried our tactic of picking up a mooring ball from the stern swim platform (Kim’s idea). I have to say, it worked really well and avoided all the extra stress and strain of leaning over the bow to snag the pennant. The bow of Kitty Hawk is about 5′ above the water line. Our initial concern was that the weight of the boat would make getting the pennant from the stern to the bow impractical. We used our “Grab-n-Go” (a special spring loaded, gated, stainless steel hook that attaches to an extendable boat hook) to grab the pennant and lead it forward to our lines. Here’s a diagram for anyone unfamiliar with a mooring ball….

The 2′ to 3′ white, floating ball, usually has a blue line running horizontally around it, is attached to the bottom by a piece of heavy chain. A steel rod or chain runs through the ball to the chain that leads to the bottom. At the top, is a steel loop or large eyebolt that attaches to the pennant. On the bottom of the body of water there might be a large concrete anchor or really anything heavy, sometimes there is a helix style pin screwed directly into the sea or lake bottom. The pennant is the (normally) yellow tether, usually a heavy nylon rope with a loop covered by chafe guard on the free end.

The mooring ball was about $300 for a month, as opposed to $1700 a month for a dock in Key West. If you plan to stay on a ball more than 17 days it is actually more affordable to just pay for a month on the ball. The downside is that the mooring field is a 15-20 minute (sometimes pretty wet) dinghy ride in to the city dock and about a mile walk to downtown. We didn’t find that too bad most days since we counted the walking as our exercise for the day.

We spent just over three weeks in Key West not counting our small break for our trip to Dry Tortugas.

Here’s some shots from Key West…..I took these with my iPhone 4S….I either need a new phone or a dedicated camera…..

Kim in front of the Kapok tree aka Ceiba Tree considered sacred by the Mayans

I would have liked to enlarge these remaining photos but the software for the blog seems to be wiping out the rest of the post every time I try to do so. Sorry…I’m afraid you’ll have to click on them to see greater detail…..

While we were in Key West the “America 2.0” was in port making daily sunset cruises and short local charters. She’s a model of the original Schooner America that won the first America’s Cup in 1851. She’s 105′ overall with 3600’sq of sail. She also has freestanding carbon fiber masts.

Kim with “shot cannon” at the entrance to Fort Zachary Taylor.

A cannon restored and mounted inside the fort.

There’s a pretty cool story about the restoration of the fort in Key West. Construction for the fort was begun in 1845. It was originally constructed by the army and used heavily in 1898 in the Spanish American War. In 1947 the fort was turned over to the U.S. Navy and was used for storage. It was basically a dumping ground and most of the historical parts of the fort were buried. In 1968 a local named Howard England recruited volunteers to excavate the fort walls and restore the cannons. It was discovered that the fort contained the largest number of Civil War Cannons anywhere. England invested ten years restoring the fort. Thanks to his efforts and his volunteers nicknamed “sandhogs” the fort went from abandoned dumping ground to tourist attraction with a beach covering 87 acres.

Some photos from around the fort ……

Next time ….Key West Part Deux…..or part drunk?

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So,….How much does it cost to live and travel on a Sailboat ????

Aspiring cruisers frequently ask the question “What does it cost to do this?” …..that’s tough to answer unless you keep records for a few months, at least. Plus it can be difficult since boats and their systems come in various sizes and levels of complexity. The larger the boat and the more systems you have on board the greater the associated costs. We feel like we live pretty well on Kitty Hawk. She has a nice balance of systems and amenities without feeling like you are camping on the water.

For us, generally speaking, we run between $3,000 and $4,000 per month. Some months if we don’t have an upgrade or repair and we anchor out more, we are closer to that $3k number. Some of our friends who cruised in the 1980’s have told us they could get by on as little as $300 per month !!! Looking back, my first car in 1982 cost me $400 !!!

Kim, fortunately, is becoming meticulous when it comes to documenting our expenses on a daily basis. Now that we have a full year under our belts, I thought it was time to put all of her hard work together into a post. Since the process of categorizing expenses has taken some time to refine, I decided to limit this first accounting to the last six months. That should help to make this more understandable.

Unfortunately, the app we use to track these expenses can’t export the information. We have to use screen shots of the reports, so the resolution isn’t the best but you’ll be able to see how things break down percentage wise.

It seems like the first half of the year is always the most expensive. Since hurricane season starts on June 1, that tends to be the time when we get any professional assistance with any needed repairs started. We also pay for our annual hurricane haulout reservation in May, which adds between $250 and $500 to the budget. There was also about $2,000 of extra expenses, due to some poor work we had done in North Carolina in 2015, that not only required corrective repairs but caused some damages that needed repair also. There are some front loaded services for the year that come up and we are in the process of dividing these up over the whole year. The average for this last six month period was about $4,480.00 per month. Adjusting for the extra repairs this number should be more like $4,100.00. I feel safe in saying that this number will continue to go down as we move forward. Our rough numbers for the twelve month period was closer to $3,000 per month. I hope our upcoming years will be closer to that $3,000 mark, or less !!

Our largest category, Entertainment, covers anytime we eat out, away from the boat, or any other land based excursions (Parks, tours or the like).

The second largest, Monthly expenses, includes set, recurring expenses. Things like XM Radio subscriptions, cell phones, our MiFi hot spot, DAN insurance, Boat/car/life insurance, personal property taxes and membership fees fall into this category (our old sailing club dues, our current marina association, Elks club, etc).

In third place we have Miscellaneous, that includes things like income taxes, laundry, health/vision, other supplies, fishing gear, scuba gear, and hotels.

Transportation includes, taxis, buses and rental cars.

Fuel includes both the diesel for the boat and gasoline for any vehicles we use along the way, plus the gas for the dinghy and dive compressor.

“Lowes” is our catch all category for any hardware store expense.

The Marina category covers any docking expenses or other fees incurred while at a Marina or private dock (Wifi, water, electricity etc).

The Alcohol category covers wine, beer or liquor that we buy to keep on the boat. (That 2% is much lower than anyone anticipated, I bet !!)

We will compile another report like this in another six months and include both periods to see how the expenses shape up once we have all the categories locked in.

Never fear….the Key West Post is still coming…..it’s still in the draft phase….

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THE DRY TORTUGAS !!!!!

So, we spent about six weeks traveling from Tavernier, FL to the Dry Tortugas with a stopover in Key West. Along the way we made stops in Islamorada, Long Key, Horseshoe Key, Indian Key State Park, Marathon, Looe Key Reef, Key West and Marquesa Key. Listing all of those here, I feel like there should be an entry for all of those stopovers as well….so stay tuned!!

Random facts ……

The United States aquired Florida and the Keys from Spain in 1821.

The fort originally had a sewage system that drained into the moat….yuk

The fort had a bakery and a chapel.

The fort served as a prison.

Over 16,000,000 bricks were used in the construction.

Three days is about all you can spend at the fort before you’ve seen everything….haha

The invention of the rifled cannon and armored ships made the fort obsolete since it’s brick walls could be easily penetrated from greater distances.

This turned out to be an odd vintage type shot without intending to be one.

From the National Park Service website about the Fort….

“The fort’s remote location, the extreme summer heat, disease and hurricanes all hindered construction. Materials for construction of the fort came from as far away as Maine (bricks), and as close as Pensacola, Florida. The only local materials were sea water, sand, and coral. Coral for the concrete was mined from nearby Bush Key by slave labor. Typically, local slaves from Key West composed 20% of the workforce while most hired labor came from the north in the form of Irish im- migrants. This civilian workforce was overseen by o cers from the Army Corps of Engineers.

The most famous prisoner to reside here was Dr. Samuel Mudd. He was one of the four conspirators sentenced to life imprisonment for their participation in the assassination of President Lincoln. Mudd re- sided in the fort until 1869, when he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson.”

read the full information here…..

https://www.nps.gov/drto/planyourvisit/upload/sgftweb.pdf

Samuel Mudd was the Doctor who set the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth…..and the origin of the phrase ….”your name is Mudd”. He serve three years at Fort Jefferson.

They discovered something interesting as they tried to build up some of the walls of the fort. The weight of the bricks couldn’t be supported by some of the underlying sand and seabed…..so, they left the outer moat wall much lower than intended ….according to one of the park rangers anyway…..

This is the view from Kitty Hawk, of the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key which is west of Fort Jefferson.

The view from one of the observation points from inside the fort.

Another observation port.

Kim popping out in the powder magazine (gunpowder storage bunker)….

A view of the parade grounds….and the lighthouse

These passages were used for communications between the different gun batteries in the fort.

The “hot shot furnace”…..This is where the projectiles (cannonballs) were forged….it s a pretty cool design where the metal was poured in at the high end and it rolled down a chute to shape the cannonball.

Kim popping out again….this time from the lighthouse ….

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Random fun photos and places we have been….

I had a few photos that weren’t really related to each other. Each, on its own, didn’t seem to be enough to warrant a full blog entry. I thought I’d share these together with a little note about what each one is.

The Lobster Crawl bar at the Fiesta Key RV park in Long Key / Layton, FL

This is a great hot sauce. It is sold at Dunn’s Ocean View resort (aka the OV)and restaurant/bar in Islamaorada, Florida (mile marker 84.5). It is a Datil Pepper sauce that has a hint of sweetness to it and isn’t so hot you can enjoy it AND your food. The owner Gary Dunn, who is a super nice guy, played for the Pittsburgh Steelers 1976 to 1987.

The nice bartender at Dunn’s Ocean View aka The OV modeling the bottle of hot sauce for the blog

Fun things we find wrapped around the prop….this was an old crab pot line….not fun to remove….

Me snorkeling….well….sort of snorkeling anyway….

Kim taking an important call from Jimmy Buffett…..

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Fun with Visitors …..and what’s a “Toilet Seat Pass” ???

Over the last month, or so, we’ve had quite a few visitors….some for a short stay and some for longer…..some weren’t staying close enough to get more than a quick meal together before they had to depart…but we have enjoyed seeing them all…here’s a few shots of what’s been going on……

Johnny and Shari with Toilet seat pass in the background

Sunset at Lorelei's — Sunset at Lorelei’s

One life ring speaks 1000 words.... — One life ring speaks a 1000 words….

So, toilet seat pass is an area that was originally marked by locals and fishermen to show an area where boats could pass through the shallow area near the end of Tavernier and Islamorada. Somewhere along the way, decorated toilet seats began adorning the PVC poles that were driven into the bottom to mark the small channel.