Out of the yard, On to the Mooring

Some thoughts from Brady:  Last blog post we were in a boat yard, but after 3 weeks of back breaking work we finally managed to get the TravelLift to lift us up and into the water.  Now we are in an anchorage and tied to our mooring ball.  A mooring ball is a floating ball attached to a chain and then the chain is attached to a concrete block on the bottom of the ocean.  Here’s a picture: 

The dinghy.

Life in the anchorage is fun most of the time.  When we need to go into shore we get in our dinghy, start the outboard engine and ride to shore.  At night we haul our dinghy up a halyard so no one can steal it.  A halyard is a rope that goes up to the mast and back down to connect to whatever you are lifting up.  We attach one end to a winch and put a winch handle on the winch and crank it up.  Now you know more about life in an anchorage.

Our boat in the Travelift.

And, some thoughts from Jamie:  As you know the boat has been out of the water so we can work on it.  You are probably wondering how you can fix the bottom of our boat.  Well, there is a big machine called a Travelift 

The "ditch".

that picks up your boat out of the water.  Here is a picture of one.  Those straps on the Travelift are the things that pick up the boat.  But the straps move down and up.  A guy controls the Travelift by getting in it.  There are controls by where the guy sits.  The Travelift moves on airplane tires because the Travelift is heavy so it needs strong tires.  There is a ditch where the travel lift goes in.  It lowers the straps down and moves the boat in or out of the water.

****

Yes, folks, at long last we have made it out of the boatyard, and into to water.   As Brady mentioned, we did, indeed, put in days of “back breaking work”.  We sorted through piles of odds and ends,  sanded and painted the hull with toxic paint,  painted a new boot stripe, buffed part of the hull,  put in a new depth sounder thru-hull transducer, replaced the bow-sprit bolts, replaced the drains in the galley and head sinks, re-caulked the chainplates, replaced the dinghy hardware, replaced the cutlass bearing, installed a prop-cutter (to cut thru any line that would otherwise foul the prop), followed by our newly shiny bronze prop...and probably a few things I have forgotten about. 

Sorting odds and ends.

Buff and Buffer.

Roller King, making Darth Vader noises.

Drain work.  

Transducer removal.

Boot-striping.

The new bulkhead, model number 6.

Drilling out the hole for the new transducer.

Caulking the chain-plates.

Shiny prop, new prop-cutter, cutlas bearing,and prop shaft assembly completed.

Don’t ask about the things that we DIDN’T get finished.  OK, ok, since you’ve asked... here’s a partial list: fix the watermaker, rebuild the head, replace the oil-change pump, mount the new bilge pump switch, install the new Nauta tank, figure out what instrument will work with our new transducer; buy and install said instrument, install the new bulkhead behind the refrigeration; a bulkhead, I might add, that has been built and rebuilt no less than six, (yes, 6!) times due to strange warping issues.  And I might be forgetting a few things.  Like buying several months worth of food and provisions, for example.   We’re tired.  But we are in the water now, and safely tied up to our mooring where we will continue to knock projects off the list until enough of them are completed for us to call it good enough to drop the mooring ball and head out across the Gulf Stream.  For now, however, we’re gonna take a nap.

Prop Doc

After a morning of “boat school”, in which Brady complained incessantly about having to learn some geometry,  (Q: Do I really have to learn geometry?  I’ll never use this in real life!  A: Yes you do, and Yes, you will.),  we headed off to “The Prop Doc” to pick up our propellor.

Props at the Prop Doc.

The previous week we had dropped off our three bladed wonder to have it adjusted and cleaned/polished.

Jamie checking out the equipment.

While there I asked the genial “Dr.” if he would be willing to show the boys the machines he uses in his work.  He happily pointed out several different machines, how they work and what his job entails.

"So this thingy does this..." **

"...and this thingy does that."**
 (** maybe not a direct quote)

He showed us the special molds that he uses to make sure the prop blades have the proper shape and angles, at which point I practically shout, “Hey wait!  Did you just say ANGLES???  As in GEOMETRY???!!”,  as I give Brady one those raised-eyebrow-what-did-I-tell-you looks.

Props, Doc!

Brady with the prop, and the Doc.

 “Oh yes”, says the good Dr., “I use A TON of math, and lots of geometry, all day long!”   Yes! Thank you!  Schooled by the Prop Doc.

Showing Jamie the, uh, prop-er way to carry a prop. 

Next stop: The Ice Cream shop.  For a nutrition lesson.

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Boat Yard Blues

View out to sea, from the boat yard.

Our boat is presently sitting out of the water in a boat yard - “on the hard” in boat-y parlance.   And it must be said: this is NOT an enjoyable place to be.  Boat yards are by nature dirty, sweaty, uncomfortable places filled with hard working people and a menagerie of machinery: engines, cranes, forklifts, travel-lifts, and tools of all types.  And boatyards are inhabited by mostly grimy humans working on boats of all varieties, and in all sorts of disrepair (both the people, and the boats).  At every turn you find people grinding, sanding, polishing, scraping, bonding, glueing, pounding, drilling, screwing, unscrewing, sweating, and often swearing.

 

Jamie checks out the travel-lift.

Our boat, On the Hard

There’s a certain camaraderie in boat yards, a certain conviviality that comes from shared misery, especially in “nice” boat yards where “nice” people are working on “nice” boats.  Unfortunately, this is not a nice boat yard.  Nope, this place is a pit.  Yes, there are a few nice boat-owning folks scattered about (especially at the moment, as Key West Race Week begins in a few days), but this is not a place you want to spend an extended length of time.  

Julian: Hard worker.  And dirty.

Local color.

"Nice" boat owner.  Slightly dirty.

Some guy from Norway.  Also dirty

Did I mention that it’s dirty?  Mike Rowe needs to film a segment of “Dirty Jobs” here.  And, might I add, there are no amenities in this yard.  Although, they have made some improvements here since we last visited: there are now toilets. That flush.  And showers!  (Yes, a shower sounds lovely after a day of semi-toxic grime has accumulated on the flesh....except that the shower room has no ventilation of any sort.  A steam-pit hot-box, in a place where the temp hovers around 82 degrees with 82 percent humidity so that you are just as sticky after the shower as you were before.  But at least the water is wet, and you smell a little less.)

To add insult to injury, a phalanx of no-see-umms and mosquitos inhabit the nearby mangroves.  And the bugs are hungry.  We have the welts to prove it.  

Jamie and some boat yard junk.

Crane lifting a mast on to a boat getting
 ready for Key West Race Week.

And so, here we are, in a place that on some days feels a bit like one of Dante’s Nine Circles.  We are here because we have work to do; maintenance that needs to be done so that Points Beyond can keep it’s “nice” boat status, with amenities.  Tasks that need to be done so that the boat is clean, tidy, and organized.   Projects to be completed like a nicely polished prop, a fresh coat of bottom paint, a perfectly purring diesel engine, new solar panels, an updated refrigeration system, and fully charged batteries.  And, yes, working toilets and showers.  

Dante's detritus.

Here are some thoughts on boat yard living from Brady:

Life in a Boat Yard - by Brady

Life in a boat yard can be difficult or fun but sometimes it’s miserable!  Like when it is 90 degrees and extremely humid while you are breaking your back, sweating in the engine room.  But it all pays off when you get to go and see awesome and new places.  Now it’s not that miserable.  Now it’s perfect and sunny , but the mosquitos are the biggest problem and we put on bug spray to stop them and that seems to work.  

Lots of people wonder how we work on the boat out of the water.  Well I will tell you.  There is a huge machine called a travel-lift that lifts up boats and puts them on wooden blocks.  The boat is kept from falling over  with metal stands.  Here is a picture of some boat stands.  

 We took our boat out of the water because we need to work on a couple of jobs, like taking off the propeller because it needed to be worked on.  We also need to paint the bottom with bottom paint.  Bottom paint is a special kind of paint that keeps barnacles and other stuff from growing on the bottom of our boat.  Here are some more pictures of the boat yard. 

Air Conditioned.  And Landscaped.

Road Trip

This week we took a little road trip up the coast of Florida to visit a few old friends.  It was great to visit with David, a high school friend who now lives in Satellite Beach with his two boys.  The kids had fun playing, and David and I marveled at how we look exactly like we did 30 years ago. See?  Ok, Not.

2013

1980

The boys with David and Zeus, super-cool cat.

While on the "Space Coast" we visited the local beach, and a nice nature trail where the boys chased lizards and tortoises, and discovered spanish moss. 

Mossy.

After a few days we hit the trail south.  We stopped in for a visit at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, the site of a sea turtle rescue/rehab facility.  

Each little turtle baby has his own little container.  The scientists here are doing research on gender.
Warm nests tend to produce females and cooler nests produce males.

Looking down on the baby turtle area. 

Nearby is a nature trail with a 360 degree outlook point, up about 4000 stairs.

Almost 40 feet up, and a 360 degree view!

A launch pad this high is a great opportunity to see how far spit can fall.
(If you look closely you can see the spittle.  Soooo cool!  If you are a boy.)

The spittle brothers enjoying an Atlantic Ocean view.

Becca and the boys, 2013.

From there we headed to Ft. Lauderdale to have dinner with our dear friend Rebecca.  We became friends with Bec back 20 years ago when we were cruising on our boat in Mexico.  Cruising tends to create deep friendships very quickly.  Bec is proof of that.

Rebecca- at the back of the inflatable, back in the day - 1993.