April 17-May 15, 2017
When you go to cruising seminars, read blogs, or watch video
blogs, you often hear that one of the “bad” words for cruisers is
“Schedule”. Having a Plan is good,
because this gives you a direction and goals to shoot for. A Schedule, on the other hand, might push you
to make decisions based on a timeline rather than on whether conditions would
make for enjoyable cruising. As Captain
Ray Newcomb says, traveling when predictions are for “doable” conditions
increases the likelihood of running into “I wish I’d waited” conditions, so he
doesn’t like “doable” – he’s willing to wait for “as close to perfect as
possible”. Since we generally have the
luxury of not really having to be anywhere in particular, we try to follow his
advice not to settle for “doable”.
As I said in my first April blog entry, while we had a
general Plan to head south from New Bern, NC, in November 2016, we weren’t dead
set on a Schedule and so were willing to adjust our Plan as things came up and
changed our priorities. Once we started
south in early April, we were still debating whether or not to try to make it
to the Bahamas. Since getting to Key
West somewhere around the first of July and having family and friends visit us
there was also in our Plan, we became concerned that going to the Bahamas would
make our Plan look too much like a Schedule.
When I got a text from Halifax Health Center asking me to
fill in for a few weeks for someone who was having a medical issue, we felt
that surely it has not been just a coincidence that we keep running into
circumstances that have made cruising to the Bahamas less and less likely for
this year. We called both Daytona Marina
and Boatworks and Halifax Harbor Marina to see if they could accommodate us for
up to a month, and both places had slips available for us. We ended up making a reservation with Halifax
Harbor Marina because, all else being equal, our slip would be on a floating
dock rather than a fixed dock.
On our trip from St Augustine to Daytona Beach on April 17th,
we noticed that an intermittent vibration we had noticed on our Atlantic
passage was now constant and was associated with the starboard engine/running
gear. The next day, Rob dove in our slip
to check the running gear again, and again didn’t notice anything amiss.
When he painted the bottom and running gear
in New Bern, he had noticed that the starboard propeller blades were thinner
than the port blades, so we began to wonder if it was just time to replace the
propellers. We still had the original
propellers in the galley hold, and when Rob pulled them out to look at them, he
found that they were sitting in the box for the current propellers. He figured out that the current propellers
had been installed in 1975 (42 years ago!), so this meant that the original
propellers had only been used for about 10 years.
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| Our propellers have a cone which covers the nuts that help hold them on |
We decided to have the boat hauled out at Daytona Marina and
Boatworks so that we could properly inspect the running gear and change the propellers
back to the originals in the hope that this would take care of our vibration
issue. Since Rob would need to paint the
propellers prior to the haulout, it would actually take most of the time that
we would be in Daytona Beach to get them ready for the switch. This was because the hard anti-fouling paint
we use requires several coats of primer as well as several coats of the
paint. Since Rob painted one side of the
propellers to completion at a time and had to wait 24 hrs between coats, it
took about 2 weeks to get them painted.
Since I take a lot of call while I’m working, we couldn’t schedule a
late afternoon haulout because I couldn’t count on getting off of work on
time. Therefore, we decided it would be
better to wait until I was done working to have the haulout, inspection, and
propeller change done.
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| One propeller off, one to go! |
Once the boat was hauled out in the slings and we could
inspect the propellers properly, we found that one of the starboard propeller
blades was bent and therefore out of alignment.
Since the rest of the running gear looked fine, this was surely the
cause of the vibration. We might have
bent the propeller slightly when we ran aground on Camp Lejeune, but we figured
that most of the damage was done at St Augustine Inlet. Thank goodness -- and Bill and Libby Krumrey
(our fabulous PO’s) -- that we had spare propellers! Daytona Marina and Boatworks did a great job
getting our propellers off and changed out, especially since there were a
couple of unique features with our 52 year old propeller shaft assembly. The main mechanic was very knowledgeable and
thorough, and he took the time to figure things out rather than just bulldozing
ahead.
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| The port propeller required a bit more persuasion to loosen its hold after 42 years |
Once we were back in the water and back out in the AICW
channel, we cranked up the RPM’s to test things out. Sure enough, the vibration was gone! We had thought about leaving to head south as
soon as the haulout was done, but I had ordered new eyeglasses, which did not
come in until that afternoon due to a machine malfunction at the lab. We weren’t able to pick them up until after
we were done with the haulout, so we went back to our slip at Halifax Harbor
for one more night. We had already taken
our car to the storage lot in New Smyrna Beach and would have to load the
scooter on the roof once we were done getting my glasses. You can see that if we had been tied to a
Schedule that we would be totally stressed out by all of the circumstances that
caused glitches here and there.
After I was finished with work on Friday, May 12, it was
time to start the task of staging our vehicles in the Keys. We drove both vehicles to Rotonda West to
visit with Butch and Barb (Andy’s grandparents). Sasha had a great time with Daisy as usual.
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| Picture painted by Barb (talented!) |
The next morning we picked up our 22 ft power
catamaran from the storage lot in Venice and took it to Marathon. We rented a storage space there so that we
will have the truck and catamaran while we are in the Keys, as well as a place
to store the boat trailer once we get there and are able to put the catamaran
in the water. Since we still had some
preparations to make prior to being hauled out on Monday, May 15, for the prop
change, we decided to go ahead and drive straight back to Daytona Beach.
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| Taking our truck and power catamaran to Marathon |
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| Sasha does great with the long driving days |
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| Stored in Marathon, FL, until we get there on Lorelei IV |
We really enjoyed our stay at Halifax Harbor Marina this
time in comparison with our stay in January 2016. Perhaps this was because the weather was nicer
and there were more transient boats since it is the time of year that a lot of
boaters head north for hurricane season.
It seemed to us that there were more people on their boats and around the
dock this time, so we were able to interact more and to make new friends. Rob said that he visited with at least 4-5
people each day while I was at work, so he felt that there was more of spirit
of community on the dock. It’s probably
just our perception, but the marina grounds also felt more secure since we
didn’t notice as many vagrants and panhandlers around.
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| Halifax Harbor Marina. We were on the far side of the dock closest to the bottom of this picture. |
Sasha enjoyed her walks on the marina grounds and her
Frisbee sessions at the “Field of Dreams”, a well-lit grassy area near the
marina office and public boat ramps that we could take her to even after
dark. She met quite a few other dogs at
the marina and even a couple of cats on our dock, including a transient boat
cat that walked on a leash. There were
quite a few ducks around, including Fred and Ethel who had been “adopted” by
one of the boats on our dock. We
generally try to discourage her from chasing wildlife, but since she is our Chief of Security, she felt it
was her duty to occasionally let the local squirrels and ducks know that she
was keeping a sharp eye on them.
I enjoyed my time working with the Open Heart/Vascular team
at Halifax Health Center. The doctors
and CVOR staff are skilled and great to work with. We even got to exercise our scuba skills,
with Rob teaching the daughter of one of the surgeons and me doing a scuba
review with one of my teammates. We are
hoping that some of the staff will take us up on our offer to visit us while we
are in the Keys – particularly the scuba divers!
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| Sasha kept 4 month old Lulu occupied while we did our scuba lessons |
We are also hoping that our families and other friends will
also take us up on our offer to come visit us either in Marathon (June) or Key
West (July, August). You all know who
you are and how to contact us, so get your reservations in early!
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