Another Boat (sort of)

Since returning, we have been living the good life.  Pretty much relaxing and taking it easy being careful not to go to the bank and the post office in the same day, so to speak.

Gecko’s fall out of the sky, well at least out of the trees and land on your windshield.

 

Out for a cruise of the marina in the dinghy you have to be careful not to run into any manatees. There are a few areas in the basins where they like to congregate and we have seen eight at one time. Another boater says they counted thirteen in one area.

 

We are members of the bow-in group. It is a little more private and the scenery is better. If we were stern-in every body walking down the dock would be able to pretty much look through the boat.

 

We finally went out of the basin one evening simply to watch the sun set over the Gulf. Shutting down the engine and drifting, a dolphin was quite content to keep circling the boat, probably looking for his evening snack.

 

On Friday the 20th, there was an Inauguration party for the deplorables. Originally it was to be held on the dock next to ours but had to be moved to the Tiki Hut near the marina restaurant as the turnout was expected to be greater than could be accommodated on the dock. The Donald showed up as well as Hillary; it was actually a fun event.

 

There is a radio controlled model boat club here that is pretty active, having 80 members. As we haven’t done this in almost 40 years we thought it might be fun to give it another try.   They sail six different classes here, we chose one of the smaller boats (65 cm long) as we don’t have a lot of room on Liberty to store another boat and the fact that a new boat in this class costs a shade over $200 including the radio. We raced only one morning so far and didn’t come in last. The other day we stopped by the pond and they were “practice” racing the Soling class models. We counted 38 boats on the water at once. Races are held four days a week, morning and afternoon. Can you guess that virtually everybody involved is retired?

Yesterday was a busy day as we visited a marine consignment store (bought nothing), checked out the yard that will store Liberty from May through October for us, had lunch at the south end of Gasparilla Island and did a quick tour of downtown Boca Granda.   We decided upon covered storage rather than leaving Liberty sit out in the sun or having her bake under shrink wrap.  Since these shelters sell out quickly for summer storage we gave them a deposit so as to reserve ourselves a spot.

Covered storage at Safe Cove off Charlotte Harbor about 15 miles from Burnt Store. $25/month gets you jack stands and power so you can leave fans running in the boat full time. They will let you stay aboard for a few weeks while the boat is out of the water for $5/person/night.  A few miles from the marina you need to pass though a lock that you operate yourself.  Once inside through the lock the water is fresh, which will flush the salt from the raw water system as you motor through.

 

Besides changing out the engine zinc, today’s excitement was visiting a bird rehab sanctuary in Punta Gorda.  We also finished the starboard fuel tank install on the Pilgrim Destiny the other day.

We need to get to our varnishing and it turns out there is a gremlin in our bilge pump monitor panel.  This keeps track of how many times our bilge pump cycles (which should be never as our bilge is dry).  For some reason, sometimes (but not always), when you have the light on in the head and run water in the sink (fresh water pump running), the light comes on saying the bilge pump is running and it increments the counter.  Obviously there is something going on with our 12 volt electrical system, giving me something else to think about.

Dave

The joys of multiple boat ownership

Early in the morning on December 19th we hopped into our rental to head north for the Holidays.  We left Burnt Store at 0700 in pea soup fog (100% humidity) and the temperature at 70 degrees.  As we traveled north the temperature of course dropped and after an overnight stay at Bobbi’s friend  Nancy’s house in Charlotte we arrived back in Erie after sunset on the 20th.  We actually brought slightly warmer temperatures north with us as it was 12 degrees a few days before we arrived and temperatures stayed above or at freezing for a good part of the time we were home.

Since this is a boat blog we will keep to boating “activities”.  The first order of business was to check on our up north boat (still un-named).  We were happy with the fit of the cover we had made but weren’t too happy with the strong smell of diesel under the cover.  As we couldn’t see in the boat we came back the next day better prepared and found diesel fuel in the bilge, up to the bottom of the engine.  We thought we had left leaking fuel tanks back in Florida (the Pilgrim Destiny, not Liberty).

Careful examination of the tanks revealed a pin hole leak at one of the welds in the tank bottom. This hadn’t leaked all summer while we worked on the boat but chose to weep fuel the three months we were gone.  We hadn’t quite expected this as the tanks had been replaced a number of years ago and were only 11 years old.

We pumped 10 gallons of diesel out of the bilge and found a few inches of ice under that.  We found that odd as we had poured antifreeze in the bilge before we left and the cover went on the boat at the beginning of November.  Could one of the water tanks not have been winterized and leaked?  Time will tell.

Noticing that a bilge pump hose penetrated the bulkhead that was forward of the engine compartment we wondered if diesel had entered the forward bilge.  Yes it did, to the tune of 14 gallons.  We cleaned up that mess to find four inches of ice under that fuel.  Fortunately the days had been somewhat warm melting most of the ice.  Hot water poured into the bilge got the rest of the ice out.  Using a smaller pump and oil absorbent pads cleaned up the rest of the fuel.  We then sprayed a lot of tea tree oil into the bilge hoping that the fuel smell will be gone by early May on our return.  That is the short version of the story, as it took the better part of three days to sort out the mess.  As I wasn’t exactly prepared to do any “dirty” work I didn’t have a sacrificial winter coat with me, only my nice LL Bean jacket.  Making a trip to Goodwill I was able to procure a nice work coat for all of $5 allowing me to roll around in diesel fuel with abandon.

It turns out the tanks were totally empty, all the fuel being in the bilge. Fortunately they didn’t have much fuel in them. They have been removed from the boat and will be replaced with a singular 58 gallon plastic tank. This will give us a range of about 25 running hours or 175 miles, more than enough for the type of cruising we will be doing with this boat.

The foam on our current “booster” chairs on Liberty was too soft so it was off to the Remnant Store for firm foam. We still have a bunch of the upholstery material left over from when we made new cushions so we used that to cover the foam.

Another project was making a fixed screen door for the saloon as we weren’t happy with the magic screen we have been using. This folds in the center for storage and allows us to insert it into the upper and lower channel for our sliding doors.

Leaving Erie the day after New Years we headed south to the warmth.  Fortunately we were in another warm spell but the forecast called for a lot of rain down the east coast.  We avoided most of the showers but there were a lot of low clouds and going through the mountains of Virginia we drove through some pretty dense fog.  Dense enough that traffic was moving at 15 mph on I77.  As night was falling and visibility was poor we called it quits for the day, getting a hotel room for the night.  The next day was better although the drive through Florida was hampered by typical Florida rain showers, the driving rain that wipers at high speed can not keep up with followed by clear skies.  We arrived well after dark once more and were glad to be back aboard Liberty once again.  Finny had chirped her little head off heading north but was as quiet as a church mouse on the way south.  Maybe she was also exhausted from all the activity over the holidays.

Arriving back on the boat we powered up all the systems and found that the head would not generate a vacuum.  What this means is that you can’t flush the head.  Great.  Thinking that we are in Florida with lots of boat supply places around, replacing the four duck bill valves in the vacuum tank wouldn’t be that big of a deal, except for removing the tank and mucking around in you-know-what.  It turns out the four local West Marine stores didn’t have any in stock, nor did other marine supply places.  The only thing to do was to order from Defender in Rhode Island and wait for a few days for them to be delivered.  We made the attempt to clean up the old ones and re-install the tank while we waited but that didn’t work.  The nearest head was about 500 yards from the boat so we got our “steps” in.

Vacuum tank maintenance on the dock.  Some probably wonder why we don’t keep spare valves aboard.  They are almost $75 for a set of four and they don’t have a long shelf life.  Normally you get a lot of advance warning when they start to fail.

Screen door in place on the boat.

 

We did a little more “decorating” with the addition of one of those laser light things set on our anchor pulpit.

The 49′ Pilot Boat Polaris showed up while we were gone. They are on the end of our dock, the owner is quite a character. The boat was built in 1937, the hull being planked in 2″ cedar. This picture doesn’t do the boat justice, it is double ended and is rather unique.

Today we went out for a quick five mile ride to exercise the engine and get some of the growth off the props.

Sunset from the south basin of the marina.

The golf carts start to arrive shortly before sunset. You have to get here early to get a good “seat”. 🙂

Now that we have a full time ride down here, having brought our truck down, we have the ability to come and go as we please.  This has made our life a lot more enjoyable.  If I could just get rid of this miserable cold that I brought back with us, life would be really, really good.

Dave