About us – Page 3 – Interested in Learning How to Find, Select and Eventually Live On Board Your Own Sailboat? You're in the Right Place….

Just so Jan doesn’t feel bad about her first Conch horn attempt….(VIDEO)

A still shot from the video…..link is below

IMG_0270 <—–click this link to watch the video ! There may have been a few beverages consumed prior to the making of this video…..

Since we had an extra Conch horn lying around, I was convinced to give it a shot with the veterans here at our marina. Not my best work…..we can’t wait to see your video Jan !!

Some Conch related facts…..

The tradition of blowing a conch shell in the Florida Keys began hundreds of years ago. In the 1800s, when the local economy was largely based on salvaging cargoes from ships wrecked on the nearby reef, sailors attracted attention by blowing piercing blasts on the shell.

There is a yearly conch horn blowing contest every March in Key West.

Conch horns are used in religious ceremonies around the world.

Conch horns are also listed by the US Coast Guard as an approved sound making device under the requirements of Rule 33.b and Annex III (C).

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Accessing the whole blog….and prior posts…using most tablets

I was asked by someone who was reading our blog on an iPad about the link to access the posts. Since I use an iPad I realized that link is not overly obvious and that a photo highlighting the button might help folks out….I’m not sure where it appears on other devices so if anyone uses a Samsung or other tablet and has a different display please let me know. Thanks !!

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We officially have 101 subscribers !!!🎉🎁🍾🎶👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Well, it’s official, we have over 100 subscribers….I’d like to thank each of our subscribers and since it’s a bit of a milestone ….I’d like to commemorate it in some way…..any suggestions ? Maybe we can randomly pick someone by assigning numbers to the subscriber list and send out a gift to the lucky winner ?

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As Ice Cube would say “Today was a Good Day”

I look pretty happy there, don’t I?

I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t that smiling fellow earlier in the day. When I opened my eyes yesterday morning, I was already irritated. There wasn’t a real reason, I just knew that I was in a bad mood and wasn’t really feeling up to much of anything. It can happen, even when you seem to be living the dream. I think everyone just has those bad days. I knew I was going to have one.

I had just renewed my fishing license and optimistically added a lobster permit. Kim went for a run early in the day and I went back to bed. After about a 45 minute nap, I woke up feeling slightly better. I decided to go for a run as well and stop for a Cuban coffee. This all elevated my mood and I returned to our boat feeling much better….not quite 100% but not bad….maybe 75%.

I spent some time reading and taking it easy and at about 5:45 I heard a knock on our hull and one of our neighbors was looking for some dinner companions. Kim was in the middle of a few things so I decided to go.

I snapped this photo as we were about to head down the dock….(that was sign #1)

this day just wasn’t going to go down without a fight…..

I reached the end of the dock and spotted four or five lobsters poking their heads out of the sea wall….(sign #2). They tend to be more active during a full moon and it’s about half way there now. One of these was a good sized male. One of our friends at the Marina had a lobster “bully net”….

you lower this net holding a string attached to the pointy end of the net which keeps the net vertical to the handle, and once the ring at the lower end is around your lobster, you release the string and then the lobster, as it attempts to scurry away runs into the pointy end of the net.

A short time later I was holding that lobster and it was the end to a “bad” day…..that was sign #3 and with that the day won….then I saw this….a Nurse shark right where I saw the lobster…..no need to spike the ball “day” I get it ……you win

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Approaching a milestone….of sorts

As we approach the end of our first year as an official blog I have become curious about how many visitors we have had to our little site. As many of you who know me personally are aware, I can be somewhat technologically challenged. This hasn’t been an easy learning curve for me and I’m certain that I am missing out on a lot of blogging shortcuts and probably money making angles in this whole venture. I had hoped our Google ads program would have been more successful, but maybe that will come in the future. Kim mentioned that the ads don’t seem to show up in the posts when she views them on her iPhone? If anyone else isn’t seeing them, please let us know and let us know what device you are using.

That was in part, responsible for my curiousity about where we stood visitor-wise. I had hoped that the ads would have generated more income or maybe the services we offer might have generated more, by this point. So, I thought “maybe we aren’t getting enough visitors?”. It took me about an hour but I finally figured out how to wring the numbers out of the tracking programs that watch our blog 24/7. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we have had……drumroll please….over 1800 visitors to our blog!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Now, before we get too worked up…..a “visitor” can be the same person who visits more than once but, a little more digging, and I learned we have also had 969 unique IP addresses, which means almost 1,000 different people (or at least devices) have seen our blog….and that’s pretty exciting…..or maybe one person who travels…..a lot…or owns a LOT of routers ……haha.

This data has somewhat buoyed my optimism. Since we don’t spend a lot of time in the same place it can be tough to get repeat marine services business so we are counting on the ads program to a large extent. Doing the simple things like cleaning boat hulls or replacing zincs in the water is a pretty saturated market anywhere we arrive and advertising outside the blog in each place isn’t feasible. I have received a few calls for repeat business, but unfortunately, we had moved on when the customer need had arisen again or for a new service.

I’d like to thank everyone who has visited and supported us in this last nine months and I hope we can continue to post things you find interesting…..please feel free to send us suggestions of any topics or photos you’d like to see. I am considering adding marina reviews to the rotation of posts or maybe even restaurant or location reviews of areas we visit if that might be of interest?

Thanks again for all the support!!!

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It’s been a while…..how have you been ? Or ….Mermaids (?) but no Dolphins

Well, we have made it to the Keys 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 !!!!!!

We spent a few days motoring south on the ICW in order to reach Lake Worth where we planned to leave Florida and re-enter at Biscayne Bay just South of Miami. We enjoyed a visit from my youngest sister and even convinced her to pilot the boat for a short period …….sadly, it was the first time we can recall not seeing any Dolphins or Manatees…..it was weird. My sister was understandably disappointed, but that just means she has to come back sooner. Hurry back Sis!!!

We we spent an unexpected three days in Ft. Pierce due to the New Year holiday (who knew some marinas closed all day on New Years Day?) and discovering that the wind was going to be pretty heavy plus we had developed a stalling issue with our diesel. We discovered the issue while trying to pick up a mooring ball in Vero Beach…..it is a VERY SMALL area with two and three boats on some mooring balls…….a pretty exciting few minutes there…..my apologies to the residents of that mooring field….we couldn’t slow down and when I did, we stalled so I had to come in at about 4 knots and then once we went to neutral we stalled and coasted up to the ball.

We did get to meet a VERY nice and professional TowBoatUS Captain named Al, the next day in Ft. Pierce, which was our first ever tow….if you don’t have BOATUS Towing insurance I highly recommend buying the best package you can afford….we use the unlimited Gold and its only $180 per year and worth every cent….this tow alone would have been $370.

A great by product of this mechanical misadventure was that we discovered what we have decided must be manufactured from voluntarily donated unicorn blood, or some other mystical creature. Our diesel started fine….ran fine for hours…..then when we tried to shift for neutral we would stall……after some research and consulting with the folks at Trans Atlantic Diesel (a big Thank you to our diesel guru Marcus Neville) we acquired the magic juice…..

It’s called “Stanadyne Performance Formula” and your diesel can actually run on just it, but it’s about $80 a gallon, so if you have that kinda coin, can you float me a little?? Long story short, we drained our fuel filters and filled them with this additive, ran the engine at varying RPM’s for an hour ….and …..VOILÁ !!!! SHE RAN LIKE NEW !!!!! We couldn’t even cause a stall…..

We left Ft. Pierce on January 2, 2016 after ringing in the New Year at Cobb’s ….a great restaurant and tiki bar in Ft. Pierce. If you ever get near there I highly recommend that stop. We made a quick one night stop in Stuart where the winds howled again that night. We had the chance to catch up with some friends from our old sailing club, Rick and Cathy.

We arrived arrived in Lake Worth the next day and spent five days in a Marina since the winds kicked up yet again and were blowing 30 knots. Once that settled down we proceeded on our trek where we anchored just South of Peanut Island (where the JFK Cuban Missile Crisis bomb shelter was built) and we spent five days there again riding out 20+ knot winds…. And rain….and heavy chop…..did I mention that I think the wind is following us ? Lake Worth stretches between North Palm Beach, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach…..

Peanut Island is a man made island constructed from then dredged material created from the digging of the Palm Beach Inlet and Basin and is also the home to JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis Nuke Shelter. It seems his family owned a home nearby and the Secret Service chose this spot in the event of a nuclear attack to protect the President.

Kim seated at JFK's Bomb Shelter Desk — Kim seated at JFK’s Bomb Shelter Desk

Me ...running for the bomb shelter!!! — Me …running for the bomb shelter!!!

We we noticed after four days of the bucking bronco that our anchor snubber …(snubber: a device made of dock line and a saddle or slotted plate that rides on the anchor chain that is used to absorb the shock of the boat pitching and pulling on its anchor)

….had worn through the starboard side thimble ….(a thimble is curved section of metal fitted into a loop of spliced line to protect the line from strain and chafe)….so we had to get that replaced at Florida Line and Rigging….another great cruiser friendly place in Palm Beach and Erin really hooked us up, had the new line done in an hour and did a great job on our new snubber line.

See the really rusty loop at the end of that line ?? Rust bad….

The winds and tides at Lake Worth so often ran against each other that our boat and anchor line looked like they were practicing yoga or twister…..I made a rough diagram of how it looked on one day……the yellow line is our anchor chain…the red part is the chain and anchor that was buried in the sand……its no wonder people often think their anchors are set when their boat doesn’t drift away but many times it’s just the tide and wind working against each other plus the weight of the chain and anchor holding you in place….that’s why we always back down (i.e. Reverse and pull) against our anchor to be sure we are set.

We left Lake Worth and cruised down the coast with 15 to 20 knot winds behind us and following seas…..sadly, not as comfortable a ride as the old saying would lead you to believe. After we came into Biscayne Bay and crossed over into Key Largo, we stopped over at Gilbert’s resort for a night and met a nice couple who worked there, they are also interested in living on their own sailboat….it was great to meet you Lorenzo and Kate…..

Well, that’s it for now……

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Two heads are better than one….or so we’ve been led to believe…

First and foremost…..Merry Christmas from the crew of Kitty Hawk……

The casting net Christmas Tree ….an ingenious design by our friend Joan….

Well….this month has been a busy one….we’ve had a total of seven visitors on board Kitty Hawk and have two more on the way. We’ve done a lot of work to Kitty Hawk to get her ready for the next leg of our journey. Like any aspect of life on board, using any system can and eventually will, expose any deficiencies or lack of maintenance.

During this month, we rebuilt both pump assemblies of our forward and aft heads. For those not up to speed on nautical terminology, a head is a bathroom and also the name of the actual on board toilet. So if you say “I’m going to the head” you just mean you’re going to the restroom. If you say “the head is clogged” you mean that the toilet has failed to deliver whatever was deposited in it to the intended destination, decided to stop the flow of other materials in the future and by extension, ruined the Captain’s day.

Now, you may ask yourself, “Why call it a head?”….good question. In the old days when ships could generally only sail downwind, the placement of the head was in the very forward most area of the ship. Also, near the figurehead that many ships of that day sported for numerous superstitious, decorative or identification reasons. The natural wave action of the boat moving through the sea provided a “flushing out” as the seawater moved into and out of that space through openings in the hull just above the waterline. Also, since the vessel was sailing downwind the smell was being carried away from the rest of the boat.

During our rebuild of our heads, (which are Raritan Compact II manual heads, which means they must be manually pumped to drain and introduce water as opposed to electric heads which just require the push of a button) we ran into an issue where the pump assembly, simply would not stop leaking. We disassembled and reassembled the unit about a half dozen times. It had what we thought was just a difficult seal around one of the bolts that holds the pump to the base. My brilliant wife said “could there be a crack in that we can’t see?” Well, long story short even thought we couldn’t see or feel a crack…there was one…..once we we replaced the pump housing….voilá…no leak.

Once the pump was removed we could see the hairline crack on the backside….it looked like a mark from a wrench…..we made sure to inspect all of our spare units and discarded any with a similar mark….so we threw away three of them….which will cost about $110 a piece to replace….ow.

Since we had two sets of visitors it was only right that during each visit one of our heads clogged. Our aft head was first during the first set of visitors and then our forward head lines clogged. Maybe two heads really are better than one ? Haha….you don’t want to be without a head at all. I had even made the comment that “if the aft one has clogged the forward one can’t be far behind” how regrettably right I was. We were glad it happened where we were, rather than away from easy access to transportation and parts. Plus, I had assistance from one of our guests when the forward head clogged. The upside is we have rebuilt pumps and brand new lines for both heads now. These clogs are mostly caused by calcium build up from using salt water to flush the heads. We are considering changing to composting heads in the future but for now they are just too expensive plus we should get four or five years of use after this rebuild.

On the upside…between clogged heads…..a neighbor and I landed an enormous Redfish….so two heads did work better than one in that instance……sadly, it was over the size limit to keep but may have been a state record…..

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The psychological struggles of living aboard……

“The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.” – Samuel Smiles

I have felt, at certain points in my life, that I had been successful in certain aspects because I had chosen some paths of lesser resistance or perhaps only attempted things at which I already knew, or felt, I could succeed. Right or wrong, I think everyone has these feelings at one time or another. During these times you can doubt your abilities to adapt or overcome adversity, to learn and comprehend new ideas and master new or unfamiliar technologies. The important thing to remember is that no matter how alone you feel, help isn’t far away. This help may come even from within through exercising some patience and the study of your “enemy”.

Once you have committed to live on board a boat of any type, you will almost certainly be faced with a situation, repair or replacement of some system or component with which you are unfamiliar or unskilled. This can make you feel very overwhelmed and even helpless. It can even make you want to abandon the dream if you hit a really low spot. A combination of challenges or gear failures can test even the most hearty among us. You will question your decision to pursue the dream you have committed to and wonder if you have done the right thing. After all, for many cruisers, embarking on a long term cruise or to live aboard full time requires a tremendous sacrifice of stability, financial and physical. These feelings can be compounded by the distance from assistance of any type and a lack of readily available support, whether it is technical or emotional.

It is important during these times to remember that patience pays off. The seemingly insurmountable problems of today can be overcome with some time and even the slightest change of perspective. Don’t be afraid to take your time, walk away from the project and take advantage of the time it takes to have parts delivered and recharge your batteries. You can’t reasonably expect to be an expert in every field, unless of course you happen to be an ABYC Master Certified Techinican in a variety of fields, in which case, do you have any free time to stop by Kitty Hawk ? Haha….(no, seriously, swing by..)

Whenever I am faced with a repair of a system with which I am unfamiliar, I always take the time to conduct a “reasonable” amount of research on the system or component before I try to tackle it. This can relieve a tremendous amount of anxiety. Dealing with the unknown only adds a layer to the stress of the situation. Many systems on a boat, sail or power, have evolved to be reasonably user friendly. The research tactic can also translate to the planning of a trip to a new cruising area. Reading the cruising guides, thoroughly reviewing the charts and comments from others who have visited the area before you can make the unknown much less intimidating. If you are anything like me, knowledge reduces stress. Don’t be afraid to contact a professional and get their input. I was initially surprised how many will give you free advice (not unlimited) on how to best tackle your problem. I have even enlisted professionals to evaluate my repairs for as little as one hour of their normal labor rate to be certain I hadn’t missed anything. You’d be surprised how generous they can be with their time in these circumstances.

I can’t imagine how some cruisers make it. I have seen many online requests for help because the people living on their boat didn’t know how to fix or maintain their engine, outboard, dinghy or any other systems and were apparently unwilling or unable to research the repairs and couldn’t afford professional help. Their first and only recourse was an online plea through social media for assistance. Most of these requests are from the same people over and over again. Living with that degree of uncertainty would most certainly diminish my enjoyment to the point that I might surrender and I’ve seen almost all of those cases end up in a “Boat for sale” posting.

So, how do you avoid that?

Research. You know how they used to say “Reading Is Fundamental” ? Well, it wasn’t just a catchy slogan. If you know going in that you can’t afford much (or any) professional help, learn as much as you can about your potential dream boat’s systems.

Take “baby steps”. There are tons of seminars (online and real time) being given away out there. They cover everything from repairs and maintenance to upgrading and even boat handling skills. Go to (and watch online) as many as you can. Be prepared to get a “starter boat” and move up from there adding complexity as you go. If you can’t resist buying your dream boat right out of the gate, limit your cruising until you can become versed in the systems and their upkeep/maintenance. That way you don’t end up stranded in a remote location.

Be realistic. Don’t make your first boat a Pandora’s box of systems you know nothing about and assume nothing will break or go wrong. The learning curve can be steep and you don’t want to break the bank (or your spirit) in the process.

Finally, remember it’s supposed to be a fun adventure, not a soul crushing grind. If you don’t rush things and learn as you go, even a complex problem can be an enjoyable challenge.

And now, a moment to relax after discussing all those stressful obstacles…..

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Wind, wind and more wind…..

IMG_0148

Above is a link to a short video of the windy conditions at our good friend’s house on the other side of the Neuse River…..

A still shot from the video…..

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Always Learning….But don’t let that stop you

I often think we should have named this blog “Learning to Liveaboard”. After all, despite our lengthy research process, extensive reading, our numerous inspections of sailboats and our experiences on sailboats there is always something more to learn.

On top of that, conditions are almost never as calm and easy as you would like them to be. Swirling currents, wind, vessel traffic, equipment failures, weather and tides contribute to the challenges we have and will experience on a daily basis.

I recently read a quote that said something like “if you aren’t nervous about going out there, then you haven’t done enough research”. I don’t think that means that you have to be petrified of taking a vessel out to sea, it just means that you should be aware and concerned about your boat, gear, the constantly changing conditions, how to react to them and developing the skills to do so. I once met a fellow in Florida who had bought a Hunter Cherubini 27. Shortly after we met, he was recounting the details of his first offshore trip….that occurred three days prior and two weeks after he had bought the boat in North Carolina !!! His engine had failed about 20 miles offshore between Georgia and Florida and he didn’t have the ability or parts to fix it…..while recounting this story he basically shrugged his shoulders and said …”we just put up the sails and got as close to shore as we could until we could get someone to tow us in”….I was floored by his nonchalant attitude about the failure of his engine and his lack of preparedness, yet he and his boat survived, unscathed. At least a thru hull didn’t fail……that might have been a different result.

I suppose the the moral to this entry is….learn as much as you can, don’t stop learning or think you’ve learned it all. Most of all, don’t let it stop you from doing what you love and enjoying the process……

Kitty Hawk on the hard….getting some much needed upgrades…..and TLC ….isn’t she shiny now ?

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