It has been almost six months since out last update, one would think we have given up boating as a way of life.

Actually, we have been quite busy.  The major project this summer was finishing work on the Marine Trader so we could sell it.  Our good friend Bill, came to us mid summer and offered to buy the boat, kindly letting us continue to live aboard for the rest of the summer while we finished off our reconstruction projects.  We managed to “drag” out these project until a day or so before we pulled the boat out of the water for the winter.

With all the painting and varnishing complete she looks pretty good and now has a new lease on life.

 

The hiking harness from the Star sailboat came in handy allowing me to work with two hands on this part of the boat. For some reason I could never get Bobbi to use it when we were sailing.

In late July we made a quick trip to Florida just to check on Liberty and visit our land based acquisition that we had probably only spent a maximum of an hour inside up to that point.  During that trip we moved all the contents of Liberty from the garage to the second bedroom of the house as the AC runs all summer and the garage is hot.

While in Florida we drove up to Clearwater to check out the Pilgrim Diogenes. The owner had recently passed away and we wanted to give his wife and son an idea of the value of the boat as they are putting it up for sale.

 

The Tripp 56 that we helped deliver early in the summer finally got rigged and sailing. The entire crew for her first race consisted of Bill, the owner, his girlfriend Kas, Bobbi and myself. We managed to foul out before the start, went slow, hit what we suspect was a submerged car in deep water with our 14′ draft keel and dropped out of the race after fouling a boat in another class. Things can only get better.

 

We gave Bill a piloting and docking lesson during the season so he did get to go out in his new boat (once). When we took Freedom out of the water I drove her over to the haul out well and once she was lifted out the yard crew handed me the gun for the pressure washer. I immediately turned that over to Bill and stood back allowing the owner to experience more of the fun of boat ownership.

Now it was off to Florida and our condo, as well as Liberty who’s main human contact over the summer has been the diver who cleans her bottom once a month.   The first order of business was buying a golf cart as the marina complex is roughly one mile square.  It seems as though almost everybody has one for transportation.

 

Top speed is 19 mph with only one aboard, more than twice the speed of a Pilgrim.

Burnt Store has a association wide garage sale twice a year.  The big one is in the spring when all the snow birds are still here but the fall one is still well attended by people in local communities.  We did a sweep of the entire condo (and storage space above the garage), going through every closet and cupboard to get rid of everything we didn’t want.

We pretty much filled the entire garage with items for the sale and spent a day sorting and pricing items.

The next day we moved stuff onto the driveway and rearranged the garage so you could walk though it and spent six hours collecting dimes and quarters (most expensive item was $5) from the crowds of people that came through.  The grand total was a net of $74 for all of our items and we only had a few small boxes of trinkets that needed to be taken to Goodwill.

We were doing good until the neighbor brought over this lamp for us to sell for him. He was asking $100 which Bobbi quickly gave him before anybody else bought it. Very Florida-ish.   Our net loss for two days “work” was only $26. Bobbi was able to find the exact lamp for sale on-line for $640 although we are still wondering how many they could sell at that price.

Bobbi had a Dragon Boat regatta to attend about a three hour drive north of us so we booked a room at an AirBnB that was close by.

The AirBnB we stayed at was only $65. Local hotels seemed to raise their rates as they knew rooms would be in short supply for the weekend and requiring a two night stay for $140/night. As we didn’t want two nights this seemed to be a better option. The house was wonderful, they had a nice deck and pool (that we didn’t use) and had quite the bar (that was off limits), it being more a focal point.

 

The ladies team did well, ending up ??????????

We have been looking for a C Dory to replace Liberty as she will be going back to Erie come late spring.  This isn’t the Pacific Northwest so these boats don’t come up for sale to often in Florida or the East Coast for that matter.  While Bobbi was paddling I was able to drive about an hour west to the coast and check out one that was for sale and ended up buying it even though we know we have to store it for almost a year.  If you wait until the last minute to find a very specific boat you will either overpay for one, end up buying one that isn’t in the greatest shape or do without.  The best time to buy a boat is when you really don’t need one :).

We went back up a few weeks later, picked her up and towed her home. The following day we emptied her out, gave her a good scrubbing and took her up to a storage yard that is seven minutes away. We will ramp launch her once in a while just to exercise her before laying her up for the summer. We essentially traded even a 36 foot trawler for a sixteen year old 22 foot outboard although the engine is six years newer. We could have purchased a center console or bow rider of the same vintage for half the price as those are the predominate boat types in southern Florida.

Liberty hasn’t been totally neglected while all this has been going on.  We gave her a good scrub down, put everything back aboard, re-rigged the boat deck and un-hurricane proofed her.

We built a “spray booth” in the garage to spray the wheels and got some varnish on the flybridge seat structure.  The cap rails on the boat got some much needed varnish as six months seems to be the maximum time you can go in Florida between varnish coats.

One of the projects was cleaning the heat exchanger core.  Ours has 1200 hours on it and it was due.  After pulling it out we called a local radiator repair shop (at least that is what they called themselves) and asked if they could acid wash it.  They said they didn’t do that and didn’t know anybody local that did.  We then spent $6 for a gallon of muratic acid, $1 for baking soda (to neutralize the acid) and $6 for some good gloves and did the job ourselves.

When we finished our acid wash the tube stack ends up looking almost new although it really wasn’t bad to start with.

 

Our daughter’s in-laws (Barb and Dean) have a winter home three hours north of us (by car) and came down for an over night visit. This gave us an excuse leave the dock.

 

We ran all systems (except for testing the windlass) and everything checked out normal including all the electronics. As the bottom was scrubbed a few days before we were able to verify that all temperatures and pressures were what they should be.

Our niece Lea and her family came down and we took Liberty over to Cayo Costa for an overnight stay, meeting up with her husbands family who chartered a 44′ catamaran for a ten day excursion from St. Pete to Key West and return.  With weather delays and short travel days during the winter they were struggling to get the boat back to St. Pete by their deadline so only stayed in the anchorage overnight.  They may have hit something with one of the rudders which made maneuvering problematic coming into the anchorage.  It turns out a bolt sheared off that keeps the rudder post aligned with the steering gear.  Fortunately within Liberty’s stockpile of stainless fasteners were some 3/8″ bolts that fixed the issue and they could continue on their way with out having to call TowboatUS.

You can’t see it in this picture but the helm station is above the cabin roof, with the top of the wheel even with the roof. It must have been pretty choppy coming up as the driver was totally soaked from spray coming over the bow. That is the fun of sailing (actually motoring straight into wind); cold and wet.

 

Liberty from the deck of the catamaran. Yes that is an anchor ball in the rigging off the starboard spreader, making Liberty the only legally anchored vessel out of ten in the anchorage.

One of the traditions of the Dragon Boat team is to paddle through the marina singing Christmas Carols. Evidently the drill is to meet at somebody’s house for drinks, then go to the boat and have another drink before paddling and singing your way around the marine before pulling the boat out and having another drink. After this there was a cocktail party on P dock that we attended before going back on Liberty for a spot of wine with dinner and then back to the condo. This is getting to be a lot of work.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we start to wind our way north.  Stop one is overnight just north at Tampa for a graduation party for our niece who just earned her PhD, then the next evening we head a bit south to stay at our friends John and Mary and attend a concert to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  The next morning it is off to Charlotte to visit Bobbi’s friend Nancy finally getting us back to Erie on Tuesday evening.

Dave & Bobbi