Monthly Archives: December 2013

We’ve been here in New Smyrna Beach for nearly a month. We’ve had a great time visiting with Nannie in this year’s winter residence, did a few boat projects, had a great time with Ed and Marybeth, and a memorable Christmas.

This section of Florida is famous for being able to drive on the beach. My idea of going to the beach usually includes circling the neighborhood looking for a parking spot and then lugging all kinds of gear for blocks to the shore.  Here you can play right next to the car.

Nannie’s little house is on an acre of land full of orange trees.

My favorite is the tangerine tree in the back corner of the yard. The tangerines peel easily, are always sweet, and low enough to pick without a ladder or kid to climb the tree.

We also found an ancient juicer in the cupboard and had fresh squeezed juice.

New Smyrna Beach has a long list of monthly events.  We took the dinghy down the canal to the Holiday parade.

The floats just kept coming over the bridge.  The fire and police were adequately represented along with several marching bands from nearby schools, many local businesses, scouts and social groups.

Eric likes jeeps, so this one is for him.

Boats on trailers made a great float.

Not only is the boating industry represented but agriculture as well.

We attended a Christmas production where children in costume reminded us of the Christmas story and  Marybeth’s choir sang many beautiful songs of praise.

We set off to New Smyrna Beach without a solid plan for where to keep Makai.  Along the way we had contact with Ed, another Leopard Cat owner asking for advice.  To our surprise and delight, he offered us space on his dock.  Esprit de Mer was in the shipyard for a few weeks and after returning we managed to raft up the two boats.  Wow, together we are 45 feet wide and the canals are wide enough that our raft doesn’t create an obstruction.

Looking up and down the canals, besides one small sailboat at the entrance, Ed has the only dock with masts.  Everyone else has power boats.

I can’t express how wonderful it has been having Makai on Ed and Marybeth’s dock.  We’ve met many of their friends and neighbors, attended a few Christmas events with them, did quite a bit of fishing off the dock and shared quality time that makes me feel like I’ve known them forever.

Besides all the fun and games, there’s always some work to be done.  Luckily Eric did his own technical post because other than watching him dig in and out of lockers with a bag of tools I never quite know what mysterious new addition or repair he’s making. I on the other hand tackled more obvious projects.   How about the 13 year old toilet seats with thin finishes from all those years of scrubbing.

Yucky, they did not look like something I wanted to be in the same room with.  A week of sanding and painting really spiffed them up.  No more nicks, scratches or bare places that looked like mold or worse.  Now they shine and sparkle bright white.

The same can of paint took care of the cockpit table as well.  At some point in Makai’s past the table had been cleaned with something that damaged the finish, the table was really and eyesore in the middle of the cockpit.

I also dragged all my sewing gear to Mom’s garage and finished up the cockpit cushions.

When Eric screwed the table leaf back on he thought of our friend Herb and made sure to line the screw slots up.

Ed and Marybeth have two cute little dogs.  Daisy was captured by the sisters and dressed in doll clothes.  Poor little thing.

We enjoyed all kinds of great food this month.  I felt that most of the fall we were either traveling or working too hard on projects and I neglected my kitchen duties.  I made up for it with several home cooked meals in December.  It’s nice when Mom is here to help chop veggies, stir pots and clean up afterwards. We also had some good take out food like Chinese, subs, Mexican, drive thru, but no one wanted to eat at Scruffy Joe’s.  Hmmm.

 
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Everyone loves Christmas Cookie season.  We had two cutters on the boat, a tree and a gingerbread boy, so that’s what we made.  Mom made the frosting which was a real treat for me because the taste is a blast from my past and she does it just right.

We joined Ed and Marybeth for a Christmas Eve party and Church to celebrate Jesus’s birthday.

It was great fun for the kids to have time with other children.

Then of course there was the main event, the morning everyone has been waiting for.  The gifts have been piled in the corner for weeks, new ones added here and there, occasional rearrangements and re-stacking.

The stockings were filled by the tree, the living room was tidied up and off they went tearing into packages.  Actually they went really slow, carefully opening and testing out each gift.  Hmm, that’s new.  They used to dive in for the shear enjoyment of ripping the paper off.

In the end everyone was pleased.  The kids each received a kindle for reading library books (thanks Grandma Beth!), Roy has a load of fishing gear, a few toys, books and movies.

The sisters each have a mermaid tail made from delicate swim and dance fabric sewed on the same machine that chugged through bolts of canvas, webbing and plastic window material. Genny’s gifts are a little more on the artsy side as well as a few dolls and books.

Marie had a higher than usual concentration of cute little animals.

One sunny afternoon she sat out on the porch painting rocks with the kits Grandma Beth sent.

Sailmakai.org received a new camera. Last winter we struggled with underwater photos.  The GoPro didn’t have a flash or viewer so the photos came out dark and the colors were faded and I had no way of sharing the beauty we enjoyed while snorkeling. In April the Annonson’s came for a visit in the British Virgin Islands and brought along their new camera.  We were so impressed it got put on the list of necessary equipment for this winter in the Bahamas. To see examples of the photos they took with the Olympus T2 Tough, check out the Annonson Family Visit post.

On Christmas Eve we made a traditional dinner supplemented with several dishes from Tracy our neighbor.  The dogs carefully guarded the left overs so the Bumpus Dogs from the Christmas Story wouldn’t come and take the turkey away.

The rest of Christmas was spent at the water.  Mom and I took the dogs to the beach and for a swim in the pool, then we spent the rest of the day at the boat.

The mermaids spent the day keeping their tail damp.

Roy and Ed got in quite a bit of fishing.

Dock fishing seemed to produce more bites than dinghy fishing, but it’s nice to go for a ride.

At the dock Roy pulled in the Jack one after another, it was great fun.

but cleaning after dark proved to be a chore.

 

Spending as much time with a line in the water as Roy does, you are bound to pull up all kinds of sea monsters.  This is the first eel we’ve seen on the line.

Our plan is to anchor near the channel entrance tomorrow and head out just before dark for an early morning arrival in Port Canaveral on Dec 30. We’ll spend about a week there visiting with the Aanonson’s at their Grandparent’s house nearby. Then as quickly as the weather allows get ourselves down to the southern Bahama Islands

We run our outboard in salt water all year long.  Our tell tale stream was getting pretty weak.  We flushed the system with Barnacle Buster using our kitchen trashcan.

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Tell tale stream is running strong again.  We are good for another season.

This summer we added a third membrane from Cruise RO  to our watermaker system.

 

 

When we had 2 membranes we saw 40 gph.  With the third membrane, we hoped to increase our output a little more.  The membranes are added in series, each membrane is good for about 20 gph.  When they are in series, the output isn’t quite additive because each downstream membrane sees saltier water from the previous membrane.  We knew we wouldn’t get another 20 gph, but we would be happy with 10 gph.

Here is output at 48 gph

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When I went to shut down the watermaker about a half hour later it was reading 50 gph.  This was with a water temp of 60 degrees.  We should get a little more output as we move into warmer water.  We were making good water, with a PPM reading of 124 ppm.

We are very happy with this latest modification to the system.

 

 

Wow, What a Passage. While most people were eating turkey, we set off sailing.  One of our friends in Maryland asked how much we sail compared to motoring.  That’s a hard question to answer. Of course it would be great to sail 100% of the time, but we’re not in control of the wind especially on a passage that covers several days and a few hundred miles.  To get from Maryland to Florida we spent about 6-7 days underway and 6 days waiting for weather in North Carolina.  Of that time we motored about 40 hours of the total 130. My upper level math skills show we motored about one third of the trip and consumed 68 gallons of diesel.

The other two thirds was a crazy wild ride.  South from North Carolina we were no longer frozen even when bundled up, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never sailed with such wild weather for three days.

 

The new front and side enclosure did it’s job in keeping the wind out of the cockpit and the passengers dry.  To decrease sail area we had  two reefs in the main sail, rolled in the jib to the size of a handkerchief and still shot across the waves at 8 knots.

The waves were HUGE, or at least I thought so.  From the helm I could see them peaking in front of me.  One morning it was pouring outside and dolphins were jumping for joy and leaping off the top of these waves.  Behind us the wave looked like a cliff I didn’t want to fall off of.

I took Topaz out back to do her business on the back deck and she couldn’t believe I was jeopardizing her life for a pee.  No Thanks, I can hold it.  The water washed up our back stairs and swept the back deck clean.  We had three nights at sea.  The kids curl up in the aft cabins with a pile of blankets and unlimited movies on their iPods taking time out to retrieve crackers and water for their daily meals.  Eric and I have a loose watch schedule during the day.  He prefers to sit at the helm and take extra watch time while I rustle up grub for the crew.  This week the weather was too bad for anything more than hardtack and gruel to wash down Dramamine.  Hey, no one threw up, there’s a tidbit to celebrate over.  Once the sun goes down watches get serious, two hours on and two hours off. Our sleep time was regularly interrupted by some crazy crashing wave or something, it was really hard to relax.

I gave myself a lesson in faith.  The Bible talks about faith in God and I just haven’t figured out how to find a life and death situation in my cushy American Lifestyle to test this faith. But in these conditions, when I get scared I put my faith in Makai to keep us safe.  Bingo, there you go, that’s faith in God.

One morning I woke up from my 2 hour nap to find big purple splotches on the radar screen.  Our radar can pick up nearby squalls.  I guess that’s a good feature, especially at night, however if I just look outside I can see the dark sky and pouring rain.

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We had a rider for several hours.  This bird tried everything to get a free ride.  He tried landing on the spreaders but when the mast rocked back and forth he got bonked.  Eventually he settled on the deck.

Topaz was a good girl going potty when the weather allowed it and staying close to the helm for pets.

We arrived on Sunday morning and the kids were packed and ready to jump off like a bunch of rats on a sinking ship.  Nannie was waiting for them at a nearby fishing pier, so off they went.

Now Makai is safe on a friend’s dock.  We visit her everyday to do projects and spend the rest of our time and Nannie’s house.  The property here is owned by a family that has two small apartments and the house next door on a nice big lot.  There is a beautiful lap pool as well, but it’s not heated. Like most Florida pools, a screened structure covers the pool to keep out bugs and debris.

Besides Eric’s list of maintenance projects we had cleaning projects.  For the last few weeks the boat has been dripping with condensation, which is a perfect environment for mold.  The kids and I wiped down surfaces, removed all the bedding and searched for mold.  At Nannie’s house the washing machine got a workout.  The kids washed Topaz’s bed with a little soap, oxyclean and bleach we managed to clean it up like new.

We’re in New Smyrna until just after Christmas.  Back to driving around in a car, stopping at the supermarket, trips to West Marine, Home Depot and Walmart.  It’s not cruising, but it is over 80 degrees.