Memoirs of the first trip of a lifetime

It has been 3 months since we got back from our sailing trip to the keys.  It feels like a lifetime ago.  It feels painfully long ago.  We have not used the boat since.  For the first month it was ok that we hadn't been back to the boat. In fact it was expected after spending so much time on her.  Now changes in work situations are preventing us from sneaking down and spending one or two glorious nights on her.  Day sailing just won't cut it.  We are both dying to get back out on the water, relax, unwind, and get that different perspective on life that you can only achieve by being taken out of the day to day grind and being placed on a sailboat.

The bad part is we've gotten a really good taste for "the life."  Living free on the water. Exploring and moving on whims and at will.  On the sailboat 90% of the things you do during the day are for your own survival. By this I mean making sure you have food, water, and shelter.  We take all this for granted on land.

Food: Do we have food? Is it spoiled or wet? How can it be cooked? How long will what we have last before all the dry ice or regular ice melts and there is no way to keep it cold. What order should stuff be eaten in. Etc.

Water: Do we have water. How much? Is mold growing in that container?  If we get stranded how long will the water last before things get desperate?

Shelter: Where are we? What condition is the boat in? Where do we need to go? How do we get there? Whats tide condition, wind direction, depth? What happens if we run aground? Capsize? Get a large leak? Sail rips? Motor breaks? Etc.

Normal life on land is cushy and relatively safe.  Only probably 10% of your regular life thoughts and activity go towards making sure you have food, water, and shelter.

I miss the meaning and purpose I got from regular activities during a typical day aboard a sailboat.

Compressing 3 months into a few paragraphs

I haven't done a post since September 18th.  "What have I been up to," you ask yourself? A lot. A lot is the answer. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. I'll mainly stick to the highs because there are enough terrible prime time TV dramas for your daily dose of negativity.

The reason for not writing much on the blog is because Instagram has absorbed the entirety of my social networking life.  It's fast, elegant, personal, and relatively low on bull shit.  I like it a lot. You think up a clever (or not so clever) sentence or two to go with your picture, add related hash tags, and bam, done! If you want to see me on Instagram look me up at "Kasey_Clyde_dot_com".

-So I just looked back through my Instagram pictures for the past few months and we really have done a lot.-

Here's a walk through:

• Golfing: 
• Got some silver hawk clubs from Amber's dad that were quickly replaced with some Callaway Big Bertha's also from her dad. Score!
• Transmission rebuild: 
• I dropped the tranny from the 02 Silverado and I'm currently in the process of rebuilding (which is almost done) and reinstalling.
• "New" truck: 
• Got a flat black 93 chevy 1500 single cab step side truck to drive while the 02 is being fixed. Its pretty awesome and has a nasty v8 in it with straight pipe exhaust. Love it!
• Divorce: 
• Woohoo! Time for a new chapter of life!
• Sailing: 
• Trips on Happy Day and I took the kids out on the Buck Board and the 8ft Pram dinghy. All awesome trips!
• Farm animals: 
• The compound slaughtered meat chickens, which were delicious. 
• We added meat ducks, which we are currently picking off systematically. And I have to say these ducks are by far the stupidest animals on the farm and I feel like we are putting them out of their misery when we harvest one.
• A brown chicken that we thought got picked off by a predator turned out to have been hiding in the barn and emerged with 8 baby chicks in tow. Unfortunately, Hercules (being the cold blooded wiener dog killing machine that he is) took out two chicks. He was on the compound shit list for about two weeks after that. 
• Lastly we lost our goat guard dog "Tank" to cancer and had to get another. The new dog's name is "Chewie" and he is doing a fine job so far even though he is still a puppy.
• 1965 Chevy C10:
• We finally got Pop's Dad's chevy truck from it's tomb in the woods where it has rested for 20 years.
• Epcot:
• We drunk it up at Epcot for Jonah's Birthday and got to see Smash Mouth again in concert!
• K1 speed Orlando:
• For Austin's birthday we went to K1 speed in Orlando to race electric go karts. It was a lot of fun. You might be thinking that electric go karts wouldn't be that fun but I assure you they were faster than your skill level could make use of. It was a blast!
• Animal Kingdom:
• For Aaliah's birthday we went to (you guessed it) Animal Kingdom. Another awesome Disney adventure thanks to little sis Carey.
• Longboarding:
• Not boarding as much as I would like but I plan to fix that soon
• Bicycling:
• Inverness has a great biking trail, and great restaurants ( like Mcleod House Bistro) that Amber and I love to visit.
• Weightlifting:
• I've gotten pretty serious about weightlifting because I have never been very muscular and I want to change that. With the aid of the phone app. Jefit, I have been steadily working out 3-4 days a week and i'm really hooked.
• Car Shows:
• Ah, one of the best parts of fall. Ocala Pumkin Run, and Daytona Turkey Rod Run. I love car shows and these are great.
• Welding:
• Between building a drift trike from old bicycles to fixing trailers I have slap ran the welder out of wire.  I like welding a lot more than I thought that I would.
• Fishing:
• Thanks to Amber's Dad I have been going fishing about every other week and there is nothing I love more than being out on the water.
• Bearding:
• I'm cultivating a pretty epic beard. I don't know how far I will go with this but we will see.
• Bartending:
• I finally broke down and I'm back at redsauce bartending 3 days a week.  I really missed bartending and i'm glad to be back in that capacity.  Also there has been enough time since the sale of the restaurant, the money is good, and I miss a lot of the customers. It is what it is.
• Amber started bartending at her restaurant too and is loving it. She's a natural at bartending and has also become a certified server trainer. She's amazing!
• Shooting:
• At thanksgiving we did our annual clay pigeon shoot. We shot pistols and AR's as well as the shotguns. This only reminding me how much of a diminishing skill shooting is and lit a fire in me to get my edge back.
• New Computer/Gaming:
• We got a second computer so we didn't fight over them while gaming.  I've always been a big gamer and having a laptop with some serious hardware is a huge for me.

Well...there you have it. Our plate has been full, but full of good stuff. We don't plan on slowing down any time soon either!

For picture references to all these go to https://www.instagram.com/kaseyclyde_dot_com/

Crossing Streams: Supplemental Video

My laptop crashed and I finally got a new one!  This video would have been created weeks ago if I had had a decent pc to work on. 

This is supplemental to the post: Crossing Streams. To see the first post click here.  Enjoy!

Weather or not we'll make it back

Everything started out perfect enough.  Two beautiful days of sun (but not too much sun) and breeze. Amber, Austin, Aaliah, and myself sailed down to Anclote Key so we could anchor off and play on the beach.  The second day was forecasted to get rain all day and we never saw a drop.  This made it inevitable that we would get hammered on the third day when the forecast said there wouldn't be rain. Check the video out below.

Crossing streams

Put a notch in my belt because I finally got to cross the gulf stream!  I realize this is not a big deal for a lot of sailors but I had been looking forward to doing this for a while. The very unfortunate part of the trip is that Amber could not join me because she had just started a new job and it was opening week. What terrible timing.

So Rick and I flew down ahead of the rest of the crew to Fort Lauderdale early on a Wednesday with the intentions of readying the boat and leaving early Thursday morning.  The best laid plans of mice and men...

I'll preface with the boat. Its a brand new, just delivered 2 months ago, Lagoon 560 sailing catamaran.  A beautiful and intimidating boat that is over twice as long as my H26 and almost 4 times as wide.

The preparations and provisioning Wednesday starts well enough.  There were guys crawling all over the boat installing a new Direct TV HD satellite dish, and custom fit cushion covers.  Rick and I were buzzing all over town trying to check all the items off of his mental list of preparations.

It was later that day when several things happened.  Unplugging from shore power to go get fuel we discovered that the generator was running but it wasn't powering anything. No bueno. We went to get fuel anyway and managed to mangle the ladder on the side of the boat with a piling. Also no bueno. Getting fuel and returning was uneventful except for learning the docking procedures of a new, and larger than i'm use to, boat.  So at the end of the day with no generator, only half of the groceries we needed, and a new ladder to buy we decided to take the Thursday to get properly prepared and leave Friday morning.

Thursday rolls around and we spring into action again.  We bought a new ladder, finished grocery shopping,  and a technician comes out to look at the generator issue.  As it turns out, when the satellite dish was wired up it tapped into a circuit that would draw too much current for the generator to support and it would trip the breaker.  The technician pulled the satellite wiring apart and wired it up correctly.  Great! three things accomplished.  

Then Murphy meddles in our affairs again.  Stepping down on one of the aft steps the wooden plank that is screwed in the metal framework gave way. All the screws came right out.  Not that big a deal to fix but surprising on a new boat to say the least.  Next a metal hook that is the safety support for the tender platform fell into the water.  It was barely threaded and fell out during adjustment.  We were able to source another one from an identical boat for sale in town managed by the same company that manages this one.  This turned out to be unnecessary because Deryck and Rick retrieved the hook later while scraping barnacles that had completely covered the underwater lights and where taking over the prop.

This was less detrimental to leaving in the morning compared to water maker and the chart system issues that also plagued that day.  The water maker would start up try to run its flush cycle and then have an error halfway through.  We could have left without the water maker but it was a matter of if you want to get something fixed Fort Lauderdale is the place to do it verses the Abacos.  Plus we discovered the chart plotter did not have updated maps for the Bahamas. We would be going blind through areas like the west end and around whale key without those detailed charts.

After beating my head against the wall trying to install newly purchased, but wrong chip size, Navionics maps we gave up for the day. We decided to wait until Friday, get all of the final issues sorted out with the boat and leave Saturday morning.  Wow what an ordeal.

Luckily everything ironed out on Friday.  All of the problems were addressed, the weather was spectacular, the seas were relatively calm compared to if we had left on Thursday, and we were completely provisioned.  We did have on technician out Saturday morning at 7 a.m. to replace the processor for the chart system in an attempt to fix an issue with the plotter screens resetting but this did not fix the problem. Oh well. 9 out of 10 isn't bad.

Finally we motored out into the Atlantic and left Fort Lauderdale behind.  Luckily for all of us aboard our flight out of Marsh Harbour (our destination) was early Tuesday morning.  We still had three full days to get the boat to her home in Marsh Harbour.

The wind, annoyingly, was a headwind for basically the entire trip.  We had to motor across the gulf stream to the west end where we stayed docked at Old Bahama Bay marina for the night.  We had arrived at around 4:30 and were able to clear in and fuel up.  We had only used 75 gallons of diesel to get across but it was better to be safe and top up.

Later that evening after a relaxing swim and a delicious dinner the sound of drums and percussion instruments floated across the marina to the top deck where we were relaxing with drinks.  My curiosity got the best of me and I had to go see what was going on.  I grabbed another beer and followed my ears.  Meandering through the dimly lit grounds of Old Bahama Bay the sound grew louder and more intoxicating.  Soon I came up on a junkanoo in full swing at a little bar by the beach.  It was impossible to not be sucked in to the rhythm and beat of the horns, drums, tambourines, and other instruments that i'm not sure I could name if I had to.  I hung out for a while enjoying the music until I decided to go back to the boat and grab another beer and the GoPro.  As fate would have it the party was over when I returned.  I sat in a chair on the beach and listened to one of my favorite songs, the sound of waves lapping on the shore, and finished my beer,

The next morning came bright and early as we motored out of Old Bahama Bay.  The wind was coming directly from the east and we decided we could head north-east close hauled.  We pounced on the opportunity and shook the sails out. This was a magical time in the trip. No motor noise. Amazing scenery. Calm waters. It was only 10 miles or so before we decided that we would never make it to Marsh Harbour in time for our flight.  We reluctantly lowered the sails, pointed east and motored on.

We had trolled lures all the way from Florida to the West End without a single nibble.  It was in the shallows north of Grand Bahama that we started getting bites. Unfortunately they were all barracuda.  Even though they weren't good eating fish it's always a thrill to have a "fish on!"

Pretty soon we decided to pull in the lines or we would never get anywhere.

It was buzzing along later that day that we ran into a phenomenon that we didn't identify until later.  While I was on watch we came bearing down on an extremely shallow looking area in the middle of nowhere.  We thought this was strange and as we got closer the fear of running aground grew more and more.  Finally I made a decision. I clicked the auto navigation off on the chart plotter and took over the wheel skirting around the eerily shallow looking water. An hour or so later when Rick was driving we came across another shallow area but seeing no depth variations on the chart plotter he decided to creep into it. It wasn't shallow at all, just cloudy.  It was later in the trip that I happened to come across an excerpt in The Waterway Guide to the Bahamas. It was "Fish Muds."


We learned something new.

That evening brought us to a a beautiful secluded anchorage on the west side of Pensacola Cay.  When I say secluded I mean secluded from development but not from other boats.  We shared the picturesque cove with 4 other boats.  One of which was a McGreggor 26.  Now i'm not a fan of McGregors because they were described to me as the herpes of sailboats, nobody wants one and once you have one you can't get rid of it.  But I did think it was cool to see one because they are basically the sibling to our Hunter H26.  Its the same size, water ballast, and swing keel.  It was very encouraging seeing this small "category C" boat, just like ours, make it all the way out here.  It gets my mind zooming with possibilities.

The next morning everyone in the cove motored out into the Sea of Abaco and made their way further along their respective journeys. Pensacola Cay was our turning point and we headed south.  The wind was outrageously now coming directly from the south so we continued to motor on.  We reached Green Turtle Cay and decided we were slightly ahead of schedule and a little parched so we should go refresh ourselves at on of the bars on the island.  We anchored, dropped the dinghy, and ended up at the Green Turtle Club for some Kaliks and lunch. Perfect!

The rest of the trip that day went pretty smoothly.  We easily skirted around Whale Cay with the guidance of the chart plotter and continued towards the house at Marsh Harbour.  We made it to the dock well before sunset that day and had plenty of time to relax and drink more Kaliks.  The only trouble came when docking the girthy girl in her U shaped dock.  The dock was built for the old Lagoon 450 and this 560 is considerably wider.  There was actually only 1.5 feet on either side between boat and pilings. Very impressive driving on Rick's part.

The morning came all too quickly and it was time to fly back to the states and resume normal life.  I definitely was not ready to return and would have happily spent more time cruising around on the boat.  The only silver lining to returning home was getting to see Amber. We hadn't spent that long apart in years and it was very hard for both of us. The next trip she has to come too because its not the same when you can't share the adventure with the one you love.

Gary on watch

Rick hanging the courtesy and quarantine flags

Sunrise at Old Bahama Bay

Leaving Old Bahama Bay in the morning

Sails up!

The view through my Costas

Motoring into the cove at Pensacola Cay

Merica!

Like a glove!

Damn I love Kalik!

There are only three kinds of sailors...

As the saying goes there are only three kings of sailors. Those that will run aground, those that have run aground, and those that lie about it.  I was going to lie about it but I already uploaded these pictures and its too much work to click and delete them now.

Let me set the scene for you. We were having a great time on Anclote Key.  We made good time with our Simrad tiller pilot (review coming soon) and were anchored at south east corner of the island just north of the state park dock.  The weather was perfect and we were exploring the beach line, swimming, walking the dog, fishing, drinking. You know, everyday stuff.

It was somewhere in the midst of this blissful afternoon that Amber noticed the boat was rocking strangely where it was anchored.  I reeled in my line in and came over to investigate.  It appeared that she was rocking back and forth on her centerboard.  We sprung into action in a futile attempt to get her back into deeper water.  No amount of pushing, jamming the motor in reverse, throwing out a second anchor and trying to winch us off the beach could prevail.  We were beached like a fat white and blue whale.

The only saving grace was that the centerboard, which sticks down below the hull even when tucked in its trunk, had wallowed out a grove in the sand and the entire weight of the boat was not resting on the centerboard.  There was nothing we could do anyway so we waited and I went back to fishing.

Now that the tide had receded I started to notice all over the beach were are plethora of scallops.  Amber was already planning on cooking chicken that evening so we gathered and shucked about 40 scallops and she cooked those up too. Delicious!

It was during my shucking session that a pretty serious storm that had been raging on the mainland over Tarpon Springs had made its decision to visit us.  We threw everything loose into the cabin and closed ourselves in.  I continued shucking scallops as the storm pounded outside. It was fortuitous that we were beached because we avoided being tossed around in a washing machine.  Everything happens for a reason.

It was after the sun had set and the storm had passed when we started to notice that the boat was rocking in a more familiar way.  We were starting to float off the beach.  We did get free but the boat almost grounded higher on the beach as we negotiated the trio of anchor lines, motor depth, and an abbreviated rudder. There was some very very tense moments followed by whooping and celebration as we barely scurried into the safety of the deep water. 

We had been tossing around the idea of a dinghy or kayaks for a while and now we think it is a necessity.  One more item for the list!

Project Hunter H26: Centerboard Saga Episode 2

Nary is there a sailor (or boat owner in general) that does have small catastrophes happen while out on the water.

We discovered while I was scrubbing the bottom of happy that the centerboard was dragging on the ground as we swung back and forth on the anchor.  The pulleys on the line were tight to the block but the board was not tucked into its trunk.  We weren't sure how long it had been that way but we were lucky there was no damage to the boat, centerboard, or pivoting brackets.  

This most likely was caused from the knots tightening on the new line we installed (http://www.kaseyclyde.com/2014/11/project-hunter-h26-centerboard-saga.html) or perhaps even a small amount of stretching,  It was something we hadn't even thought to check and this is a video of how we fixed it.

STCW95 Training Course

Part school, part vacation.  That sums up the week we spent in Fort Lauderdale taking the STCW95 training course.  The STCW95 is a basic course for safety at sea and is required for anyone working on (or wanting to work on) a commercial vessel. This could be any kind of vessel like mega yachts, oil rigs, research vessels, etc, 

The course was split up into 3 basic parts.  Day 1 and 2 covered safety at sea with day 1 being in the classroom and day 2 being practical evaluation in the water. Day 2 was cool because we were in a lake with life jackets and immersion suits, flipping and boarding life rafts, and practicing life saving techniques as a team.

Day 3 and 4 were covered firefighting at the Resolve Maritime Academy with day 3 in the classroom and day 4 actually fighting fires. There is a video showing parts of day 4 below. It really was amazing donning full bunker gear and air tanks crawling around through smoke filled buildings.

Day 5 was introductory first aid. This was something that I had always wanted to learn anyway.  One of our instructors, Rex, was very entertaining and very competent with his knowledge and techniques. It made for a fun and very informative lesson.  I had always wanted to be taught these skills and we all got to preform CPR on dummies.

Besides school there really wasn't as much time for play like we had hoped there would be. Especially on the practical days we were pretty whipped after.  We did eat well though.  We kept trying interesting restaurants around the area.  Some notable ones were 

• Trata Greek Taverna: Which was our favorite restaurant of the trip and Louie the bartender was spot on.
• Burger Fi: with amazing, non greasy, delicious burgers
• Redcow: Pretty good BBQ and interesting decor.
• Quarterdeck: Beach shack with good food
• Da Big Kahuna: A passable burger
• Lulu's Baitshack: Awesome mahi reuben
• Pei Wei: decent pan-asian diner

There were ups and downs throughout the week but overall the experience was fun and memorable. We met a lot of really cool people from all over the world and in all sectors of the marine industry. We wish everyone we met during class the best of luck in their future endeavors!

The Las Olas Food and Wine Festival

Our accommodations were....pretty rough   :)

Review: Yamaha EF2000is generator / inverter

A not so short video testing our yamaha EF2000is inverter / generator.   Pretty good info for someone looking to use a generator on their boat or trying to run a portable AC unit on their boat.

Me, my love, and a mustache

Buddy helped us bring the boat down from New York last year and now we were finally getting to go sailing on her all together.  It took too long for this trip to happen but it was worth the wait for this awesome outing.  We went out and did and overnight on the gulf that was filled with fishing, beer, music, more fishing, and more beer! Perfect!

Highs and lows, overnight on the gulf

The bottom paint was finished, "Happy" was back in the water, and the weather was warming up. (but not the water) It's time to go sailing!

One thing we have discovered is sailing is always an adventure.  It is pleasure boating for sure but with a considerable scoop of work and danger tossed in also.

We motored some and sailed some about 15 miles south of Hudson to a small island called Anclote Key.  It was getting late so we decided to go ashore, walk the dog, and watch a beautiful sunset that would have been perfect if not for the 50 other people that had been dropped off on the beach by ferry for the exact same reason,  It took us several times to get the delicate balance of anchoring scope, wind direction, and water depth right so we could get out and walk ashore in the cold water.  We ran aground once and had to gun the motor to get unstuck.  It was still a beautiful sunset.

After dark we loaded back on the boat, pulled anchor, and motored into the shallows.  It was very calm and when we tossed the anchor and line just sat there,  We went about our business of cooking and eating. It was later on in the night we started feeling an odd tugging every now and then. Not the normal jerk of the anchor line.  At first we thought we were anchored in too shallow of water.  We discovered that the anchor line was actually stuck underneath the boat somewhere.

So then I had two choices.  Dive down in the cold water and dark to try to free the line or cleat the line short, hope we stay hooked through the night with the short scope and fix it in the daylight.  So my fear of diving under the boat in the dark and cold won and we cleated the line and waited until morning.

During the night we were treated to Hercules using the bathroom on my legs, I don't know if he was scared or what but he had just went on the island hours before.  He has never acted scared on the boat. He is always calm and relaxed. Regardless I woke up in a panic thinking that it was raining and starting closing hatches in a half-asleep stupor.  Oddly enough it was sprinkling (even though the weather apps said that it wouldn't rain) but barely enough to merit closing hatches, It was then that I realized that my legs were tucked up in the v birth where they could not get rained on anyway.  Needless to say when I discovered the cause of the wetness on my legs I was not a happy guy.  Bad wiener!

In the morning we pulled the anchor up into the boat and with the rest of the line wrapped under the boat still we motored into deeper water. Following my hunch we released the centerboard line which did not free the centerboard. The line was wedged in between the trunk and the board. Finally after bouncing around in the waves for a minute the weight of the board overcame the wedge and the line was free.

Then after barely scraping over a few extremely shallow parts on the way away from the island everything was hunky dory.   It was enough adventure for one trip so we slowly tooled our way back north and back to the marina.  We would still choose the adventure over work any day.

Bad wiener!

You're my boy Blue!

I love this boat.  Amber, the kids, and myself still go out on it quite often.  Sure we have the Hunter 26 but that is kept on the gulf about an hour and a half away.  This, which you have seen in many posts before but I never did and actual 'about' post, is our 60's - 70's O'day Daysailor 17.  It is so easy and quick to hook it to the back of the truck, toss in a cooler, and put in at any of the MANY lakes around us.  And we live near Lake County so this is not a understatement. 

The Buck Board from my grandpa was my first introduction to sailing but the O'day (named "Blue" from the Will Ferrell Movie 'Old School' where he says "You're my boy Blue!" in classic Will Ferrell fashion) introduced me to the greater possibilities of sailing.  We could stay out all day, bring food, anchor and swim.  It was a new world coming from the previous background of fishing boats which you don't clamor in and out of jon and bass boats very much.

We were very lucky to have gotten the boat in perfect working order with basically new sails.  The only change I made was to swap the trailer the boat came on with a bigger one that I put all fresh bunks, bunk hardware, carpeting, rollers, winch, and electrical. In the future we will split the hull and redo the fiberglass that is getting weak where you stand and redo the rub rail all the way around.

Every time we take out Blue we say how much we love the boat and we've decided that regardless of what other boats we have we can never get rid of Blue because "You're my boy Blue!"

Docked at Eaton's Beach on Lake Weir

This picture is from years ago. Notice the port side line (red) is pulled too tight.  This is a mistake I made when I first started sailing "Blue."  The Port line should be loose and the starboard line tight to create optimal sail shape.  I can admit when I'm wrong!

She lost a tooth!