We have been racing our radio controlled sailboat for a few months and have gotten mildly better at it.  The end of the year results show us averaging 5th for the year in a twelve boat fleet but of course not everybody shows up each week.  Considering we are sailing mostly against “pros”, guys who race a different class boat most days of the week we aren’t doing too bad as part timers.  It has been suggested to me that I should get a couple more types of boats so that I can put in more time at the pond to increase my skill level but that isn’t going to happen.  One half day once a week is enough for me.

Our old hull was cracked and leaking so we bought a new one for the the astronomical price of $30 :). We also had to purchase the so called A+ rig earlier. The class made the larger A+ rig legal for racing earlier in the year. Before we came down in the fall emailed and asked if the local club was going to use the larger rig (optional) and got no response. Of course when we got here virtually every body had the larger rig except for us and it took a few weeks to get one.  We thought the red hull would be easier for us to see our boat on the water.  It is easier to see but we seem to have more of an issue with actually seeing the angle we are sailing at than the all white hull.

The marina electrician has been busy in our basin, replacing lights and installing electrical meters.  Our days of having free electricity are over, we use about $1 worth of electric/day at $0.18 kilowatt hour, typical marina mark up on electricity.  He has seen me carting around our RC boat on Monday mornings and offered me an RC Soling for free which is a bit bigger than our current boat.   Never being really able to resist a free boat I took him up on the offer but gave him a bottle of rum in exchange.  The boat is missing it’s keel as it fell off when it was sailing at some point but the rest of the boat is there including the servo’s and transmitter.  I found somebody at the pond who gave me a keel mold so I will make a new keel this summer once we get back to Erie.  What I am going to do with the thing is beyond me.  There is a large RC Soling contingent here, large enough to have to separate the boats into four classes of about ten boats each depending on skill level.  I doubt very much if I will get involved.  The boat really takes up too much room on Liberty so it will probably stay north.

We drove up to St. Pete to a Melanie concert.  Melanie was one of three female artists at that performed Woodstock and has sort of a cult following over the years.  The event was in a small place called the Hideaway Cafe and was packed.  We counted a total of about 70 people and it turned out to be her 71st birthday celebration with lots of people she didn’t know.  While the years have not exactly been kind to her she was still able to perform almost three straight hours.  The crowd was well behaved except for a few that had either too much to drink or smoke which is always the case.  This was the third time we have seen her perform; once at Erie Days and another time at the Warner Theater when her son was quite young and running around loose on stage.

Melanie performing with her son and daughter.

Even though we were only gone overnight Liberty didn’t take kindly to our absence as we came back to a toilet that wouldn’t flush as the joker valves in the vacuum generator needed changed.  At least this time we were fully prepared and had an extra set at the ready even though we swapped these out about a year ago.  Evidently sitting around unused during a Florida summer took it’s toll on these too.

It is a lot easier to work on holding tank parts when they are not in the bilge.

Another ongoing  “issue” we have had is that the sink in the head had too short of a spout so you always got water around the outside of the sink when you used it.  One of our overnight “guests” complained about it so we thought maybe it was time to fix it.  You always know who your real good friends are as they aren’t afraid to call a spade a spade.  Anyhow with a little digging (play on the spade word there if you are reading this in the early morning), we were able to find a faucet with a longer spout that was still low enough that our medicine cabinet door/mirror would clear it when open.

The water stays in the sink instead of dribbling on the edge and all over the counter.

We needed to access the trim on the bottom of the boat deck to continue our project of cleaning the black grime so we turned the boat around and backed into the dock.  As the water was fairly low we thought it would also be a good time to do a little dredging with the prop.  With the boat backed half way in we tied her off and ran the RPM’s up in forward.

Fully backed into our slip to allow us to do some maintenance.

I don’t know if we were able to blow out too much sand as the water was murky to start but I do know that the boat that was behind us was getting a bit of a buffeting.  There hasn’t been a boat opposite of us as the slip is shallow but a 23′ Ranger Tug showed up and with slips at a premium they opted for this one.

Ron and Libby’s 23′ Ranger Tug. They are a full time live aboard couple. How they do it is a mystery to us as Liberty seems incredibly huge when viewing the boats bow to bow.

This is a small sampling of some of the thirty some Ranger Tugs that were at Burnt Store a few weeks ago for a rendezvous. We consider ourselves lucky to get two Pilgrims together.

One of the guys on our dock who is a member of the Platnium Point YC gave us some free tickets to their annual pancake breakfast.  The breakfast was pretty good and in the end only cost us about $60, .   They were having a quilt sale outside the YC when we left and we ended up with one, a bargain relative to what they get for quilts in Amish country .

We bought this for our granddaughter Kate. It turns out it was made by Pete’s wife, Pete being quite a character and owns the 1937 vintage double ended trawler at the end of our dock.

The middle of February saw us leave the sunny climate of Florida for cool, windy, rainy Seattle for a week visit with son Brian, his wife Mischell and their son Bennett.  Bobbi will be returning to Seattle in May while Dave helps deliver our friend Bill’s recently purchased 56 foot sailboat from Annapolis to Erie.

Our daughter in law demonstrating one of her many talents to grandson Bennett; balancing five blocks on her head.

There seem to be no end to dinner engagements here, sometimes on boats, other times at houses and occasionally at commercial establishments.  Trying to keep from gaining weight is a constant struggle.  Even though our wine consumption has been more than halved and we have upped our daily walking we seem to be slowly loosing the battle.

Seafood boil aboard Liberty. Bobbi thought it would be fun to do things in a more traditional fashion. In other words just dump the strained corn, potatoes, sausage and shrimp onto the table. Left to right: Tim (“OK, I guess”), Catherine, Mike’s French wife (“Americans eat like this?”), Mike (“I am up for anything”).

After only being back in Florida for a week, Bobbi was off to Erie for ten days to help out with the grand kids while our daughter’s husband was off on a business trip.  It snowed every day but one while she was there.  In the mean time it gave Dave time and opportunity to get a coat of varnish on the cabin sole.

While the cats away the mice will work.

 

With only one person on board, if anybody steps on the wet varnish, there is only one to blame. Of course, like always, when we are done it doesn’t look really any different from when we started.

Bobbi has already started looking for our “next” boat.  The latest plan is to purchase a condo at Burnt Store and get a small, fast boat for here.  Liberty is really too big to get into the small creeks and inlets here as we found when attempting to go to a restaurant on the Alligator river a few months ago.  Once we have an on-shore residence Liberty will return north to Erie and the Marine Trader will be put on the block (once we have finished working on her as is our custom).  Even though this appears to be about two years out you never know if that time frame will become compressed.

Bobbi found the C-Dory line and the 22 footer seems to be ideal. Our Honda can tow it if need be, the boat will plane at 10 knots and at 20 knots gets about 5 miles/gallon. It is big enough to overnight in. The only downside is they are relatively expensive for their size.

We have dug out our folding bikes and are now using them.  This being Florida you tend to need to do your bike riding early in the day before it gets real hot and the sun gets too high.

Out for a bike ride with Denis (in the lead), his wife Laura and Bobbi. Denis and Laura have a Seaward 32 out on our dock and claim to be hunting for a Pilgrim, so we like them 🙂

 

Q dock St. Patrick day party, or any excuse for a dock party.

 

More varnishing on our private dock. We are careful to keep parts out of the sun until the varnish has dried.  The almost square piece is actually going to be a small table for the boat deck of Freedom, but when you are varnishing you do enough to make it worth throwing away a $1 brush.

 

We actually used one of our own boats to tour the basin a few days ago. We haven’t purchased diesel fuel in over a year if that tells you something.

Bobbi has been paddling a few times a week with the local Dragon Boat team.  They had a race in Tampa and the ladies won all five races that they were entered in.  The races were 1000 meters, two 500 meter races and two 200 meter races.  The YouTube video below is one of the shorter races, Bobbi is the second paddler from the stern on the port side of the boat in the center lane.

 

Sailing on Denis and Laura’s Seawind 32.

The live aboard contingent in the basin is slowly starting to fade north.  Today our Canadian friends Paul and Pip headed to a place next to Safe Cove to haul their Hunter sailboat out for the summer.  Tomorrow Ron and Libby put their Ranger 23 on their trailer to head to Kentucky for a bit before trailing the boat out to the Puget Sound area for the summer.  In a few weeks Denis and Laura will be haul their boat to Safe Cove and head to Wisconsin and we head north a few weeks after that at the beginning of May.  Doug and Carol will also be leaving at that time but we will see them a few days later at the EYC.  Eventually Mike will be heading into the hills of Georgia to begin building their summer place and Tim will also head north for the summer.

Dave and Bobbi