Last post for a couple of weeks

Just wanted to show a few pictures before I head off for New Hampshire on Friday.

After the pump out (clearing the holding tank takes 2 hours) yesterday we went on a sail --- our first since we got here in November.  Hurray.  The wind was 6k; the boat did 2k - a slow lazy sail out in Biscayne Bay!

Miami in the background and some of the cool buildings with amazing architecture if you look at the details.

and a little movie

I'd love to try this but my balance isn't that good anymore.
     
                    *                         *                               *

I realize my job is default boat hand, a job I didn't interview for, but here I am.  Originally I thought I'd spend a couple of hours on house/boat work each day and then do something enjoyable like a movie, museum, bike ride, walk, visit a garden, explore a park.  It's not panning out that way, wah, wah.   I have a fantasy life in my head - the idea of what I'd like to do each day with Drew and then the reality life of what actually happens (all of the above but often by myself.)  Drew's daily life includes the gym.  He has work phone calls "Gotomeeting," or the Island Packet Listserve that he enjoys contributing to and trading fix it information, researching and ordering parts, and of course boat projects.  This is what happens when one person of a couple is retired, and it takes a few years to iron out a pleasing acceptable routine.  Harder for me since I am the one retired from a very busy fulfilling career.  Now to find other fulfillment on a sailboat when it isn't sailing. 

Yesterday I worked on polishing all the stainless steel on the boat.  It gets more marks on it because of the seawater.  Today I spent all afternoon resewing the leather wheel cover at the helm. Over time the threads disintegrate because of sea air.  I did a bit last year, but now I'm finishing the job. 
See the needle stuck in the wheel cover?  It takes a few days to finish the whole thing.

I have had the stunning realization that this is it -- I am now a boat hand every day.  This is my life in Florida on this boat.  There is a long list of cleaning, replacing and fixing jobs - endless actually.  Another one is, I am embarrassed to say for the first time, taking off all the slipcover upholstery on all the cushions and having them professionally laundered.  Drew is better at wrestling them back on than I am.  He gets the seams just right.  The bow light isn't completed.  Next is cleaning the entire boat top and then waxing it all.  That doesn't include the hull or cleaning the bottom which we hire to have done.  Yikes.  I am not usually a complainer, but sometimes... I really do.

I do love the sailing, the warm and the views.

Lastly, there's always that incredible sunset over the water.  The spot in the sky is a blimp that went over us as we sailed at dusk.
   

Bow Light and wiring and coconuts

      This post may have more information than you want, but here we are on a project:

Replacing broken old lights with brighter, smaller, new LED:

oldnew

 

housing for new light.

   We are on day 4 of connecting or figuring out how to connect the new bi-color green and red bow light. 

 small grey wire peeking out that we attached new white wire to.

This is the bow with so much I won't define it all.  You can see the size of the stainless steel tubing of the bow pulpit that the wire needs to slide through to go down to the anchor locker.

Anchor locker with wire coming from above and temporarily attached to wires that go to the electrical panel at the Nav station.                  right here

                                                                                  anchor chain stored here.


 spliced wires that were taped up and are not fitting through stainless steel tubes.

 The old light was removed while keeping the wire in place that follows 2 right angle turns through the bow pulpit stainless steel tubing down to the anchor locker where it connects to the electricity.  The red wire is positive and yellow is ground (battery minus) on wires from the switch panel. They go up to the anchor locker.   In the anchor locker the wires switch to black and white colors.  Black should have connected to the yellow wire and the white to the red wire, but it was backwards so when Drew tested it, it didn't light up.  Some lights are protected against reverse polarity but LED  must have the polarity correct.
  For LED lights in 12 volt DC systems on a boat red is positive and black is ground or battery minus.  House wiring color codes are different.  On this boat we have 5 separate grounding systems:
1.  Battery minus that's anything connected to 12 volts. 
2.  For AC 110 volts there is AC neutral white (in a house the white wire.)
3. AC safety ground, the green wire (in a house it's a bare wire)  No current flows through it. 
4. The bonding ground connects all the large metal objects on the boat, like the fuel tank, mast, pulpits, arch and all wires connect to the engine that connects to the water to provide safety during electrical storms.
5. The RF ground for the single side band radio are dynaplates underwater against the hull on either side of the keel and connected to the single side band antenna tuner.

All the grounds are connected together at one point on the engine block in the boat to avoid ground loops.  The engine block is connected to battery minus.
There's a grounding bus bar behind the switch panel.  Almost all of the ground wires are yellow or brown and newer ones use black.  At that same bus bar there is also a single connection to the AC neutral wires.  (All dictated by Drew.)
 
     This old light drew 2 amps and the new LED light draws 1/6 amp.  The old lamp was broken on the side of a canal as we motored in; side to the wall, but the bow light hit the wall first.  oops.   Saving amps is important to do when we are not plugged into a dock because the only thing that keeps lights, heat, radio, frig, phones and computers charged/ going are the six 12 volt batteries.  These batteries when on a mooring are kept "topped off" or charged by our wind generator, 2 solar panels and the engine running a few hours every day.

   All these days we are trying to squeeze the new bow light wire that is attached to the old wiring and pull it through, down to the anchor locker.  This is not happening.  It keeps getting stuck.  Drew is in the anchor locker pulling the wire under the pulpit and I am at the pulpit feeding in the new wire that is taped to the old.  The two right angles it must go through are prohibiting it from moving - not sure how we'll solve this one.  My ideas are going unheeded - to lubricate the wire a lot to slide it through the tubes.  Or to use a very small, strong wire and pull it through with that as the leader rather than use the existing old grey wiring to pull through the new white wire.  The grey wire can barely slide through.
It's complicated.

This is keeping us from going out at all.  We have moved out of the slip to get our pump outs, but today the pump outs at the marina are being repaired.  So no pump out.
We couldn't go to the symphony Wallcast in Miami Beach last night because it rained.  I did take Mazu for a run yesterday and visited the little fair at the US Dept of Agriculture grounds on beautiful Old Cutler Road.

I continue to harbor a persistent deep rattling chest cough and anvil-on-the-chest tiredness.  I can only last about 2 days on the boat before my antsy spirit lifts me out of the boring bed to do anything at all. 

Of course there is always the evening sunset.

COCONUTS

  The marina cuts down all the coconuts so they don't fall on people and cars and gives them away out of a pick-up truck.  Drew sawed open a coconut.  The coconut water is in his hand, saw and sliced away green coconut.  The inside is sort of like a custard that he eats with a spoon.  Loves it!



me writing the blog

 Just read Iris Murdock's The Unicorn.  amazing writer.

A Day in the cabin and misc pix

Happy Birthday to my niece, Lisa.

Here’s the truth on a nearby billboard:

LOL, only in Miami.

Today I am Sick-a-bed with cough. It feels like an anvil is on my chest.  I cut Mazu’s hair and lay down, changed the bed linens and lay down, made dinner and lay down.  Studied how to use the GO PRO 3 silver on Youtube tutorials.  Laughed at Facebook.  I have the best people on my Facebook, read Freakonomics -- an exciting day inside the cabin.

Drew changed the oil and Racore filter after 150 engine hours.  I made a mistake and said 250 hours last blog post.  Scratch that off the list.  Having beautiful weather lately with highs of 72 and lows of 52.  Nice.

The International Miami Boat Show begins Thursday.  The International Coconut Grove Art Show begins Saturday.  Since we ‘live’ here we get free tickets for every day of the Art Show. : )

Discussed pros and cons of sleeping in the aft cabin.  I like it because it’s darker, cozier, bigger, calmer, more private and quieter than the fore cabin berth.  Drew likes the fore cabin because it’s closer to the head, lighter, smaller, and he can get into bed on two sides.  We’ve always slept in the fore cabin so this winter it’s my turn to choose.

A few pix I’ve missed putting into the blog.

At Coco walk in the Grove.

On Virginia Key Beach, over the Rickenbacker (toll) Bridge , where it's pretty muddy rather than sandy.  We didn't go in after all.

A teeny, tiny crab the size of half a pinkie fingernail.  Unusual crab at Crandon Park's Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Bay Nature Center walk.  Super camouflaged, a treat to see them scurry about from hole to hole.

Another day in the Florida life...

Yesterday was great.  Regular exercise has been a problem on the boat.  I have the paddleboard now which helps.  I take walks, but it’s really not enough.  So yesterday at dusk Drew rowed the new dinghy with Mazu aboard while I paddled next to him.  I fell in again just at the end and climbed back aboard.  Can’t take a selfie of us while paddling.  It was fun.  Earlier pic when I did have Mazu aboard.

Here's a duck we can't identify.  Waddled along alone.

Projects have been delayed, on the list is: change the oil (every 250 engine hours), replace the macerator pump, replace the broken bow light, refill the propane tank for the stove, replace the window shades with plastic translucent ones for privacy since we’re on a dock, mount the new TV, learn my Go Pro Camera to put on the paddle board.  It’s February and Drew seems to hibernate even in the sunny, warm, Florida weather, sleeping late many mornings.

Picture this:  The Fairchild Botanical Garden Glass House dining room overlooking the butterfly garden with some as big as birds, sun-gilded flecks of blue, white, yellow against the greenery; a Dale Chihuley gold and white blown glass chandelier glimmering, shimmering overhead, fresh orchids on every table, no crowd; holding hands while listening to the Frost Music School clarinet, bassoon, and flute trio play Bozza, a 1900 French composer and an upbeat Beethoven string piece they played with their wind instruments.    

A truly wonderful afternoon.  We walked all through the botanical garden, the rainforest orchid walk, past a cannonball tree and a great 14” pink trumpet flower hanging off bushes, around the cycad (oldest plants still living on earth) circle and overall watching an emerging flowering spring.  We ended at the store where I looked at a selection of exquisite botanical print notecards of Gaugin, Monet and Chinese prints. Next to me a woman turned and said, “Isn’t this place just magical?”  It certainly is. 

This was the precursor to watching the Super Bowl Sunday at Monty’s Bar with a friend whose dinghy flipped that morning with him in it on his way in because of high winds. 

 He was helped by fellows in the mooring field to right it, and bail it out.  He took the shuttle to us and we were to take him back to his catamaran in our dinghy after the game.  Instead he slept on our boat for the night with the heat turned on. We were reminded how happy we are to be in a slip in spite of the cost.  A pretty constant wind of 15 to 20 K is blowing here.   There is the occasional calm day.  The protected (by mangrove islands) waters in the dock area allow me to paddle around.  In the mooring field we’d be marooned on our boat every day.  The marina shuttle boat to and from land doesn’t run if the wind is too high.

Last but not least (as books are the best part) is the book for seafarers I must recommend, Incredible Tales of the Sea. It includes excerpts from famous authors’ books like Robert Louis Stephenson’s Treasure Island  at the critical moment when Long John Silver finds the treasure spot with young Jim only to see an empty hole then to battle the mutinous crew who had trudged to the treasure spot first.  Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe  describes a scary sail around his island on his island made boat that almost takes him out to sea with no supplies.  Victor Hugo in “An Imprisoned Thunderstorm” describes a terrible lose cannon on a ship.  As it rolls wildly around the cannon hold it kills several men.  But one brave soul climbs the ladder below and in slow motion words Defoe explains how it is captured…white-knuckle reading.  Jules Verne in “An Unknown Species of Whale” describes Captain Farragut on board the Abraham Lincoln frigate out to capture a narwhal that ends up to be something else - a science fiction piece.  Dickens’s “The Wreck of the Golden Mary” describes in tearful prose two lifeboats' long survival adventure after the ship goes down.  Another includes the sentence, “A joke is always like an outstretched hand.” in a story by John Traust.

Oh, the power of story can bring you right there.

I quote, “But these thoughts and kindred dubious ones flitting across his mind were suddenly replaced by an intuitional surmise which though as yet obscure in form, served practically to affect his reception of the ill tidings.” by Herman Melville in “A Fatal Mistake” from Billy Budd.  -- Yeah, you have to read it again.  The old fashioned long terribly descriptive sentences of an “intuitional surmise”.  Have a student read a sentence like that and tell you what it means.

Have a good day.  Be kind.  Fair winds.

Back to Miami after a few visits

After whirlwind visits with grandchildren on both coasts we drove to Florida over 4 days rather than straight through for 26 hours.  I always say whirlwind because it feels that way – always wishing we lived closer to one another, always missing that warm Grammy feeling like comfort food and cinnamon toast. 

[Drew is sleeping until noon each day and up until 12:30 every night as he fights off the ever lingering cold.] We are rested and ready to relax some more.

I must show a few pix from the grandkids snow fun in New Hampshire to the Disney LA Philharmonic Hall in downtown LA, Broad Museum and of course, Isabelle.

Tate and Violet

Celia  and Dillon 

Mazu loving the cold and snow

We also attended the Currier Museum of Art NoonYears celebration for  kids.  Hundreds of balloons fall from the ceiling as kids stomp on bubble rap to simulate firecrackers.

LA sites

Disney Center carpet designed to look like sails as is the outside.

 Delft tile fountain because Mrs. Disney loved delft

 Whole center from the outside designed by Frank Gehry

Drew at the entrance

 Sarah, Yeang, Mazu (who flew to LA) and Isabelle

 Eli Broad collection of contemporary art - one of the best in the world, line to get in goes around the block for about a 1.5 hour wait.

angle to the ground

Eye of the Broad Museum next to Disney auditorium across from LA Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) that we loved.

Isabelle and cousin Rachel at the park with stunning homemade necklace.

 The DAILY TO DO LIST:

BOAT PROJECTS:  adding a TV.  If we are going to live on the boat for more months I’ve decided I need TV to follow the news and political circus.  Our friend installed a great system over his Nav Station with a 24” LED TV with DVD insert, a good Mohu Leaf antenna and a strong swivel motion bracket thru bolted on the wall.   Yippee, no expensive cable connection required.  We got the TV with the antenna is sitting on top of shelves.  The TV sitting on the table awaiting wall bracket from Amazon.

Easiest project is the helm seat that turned white during the wettest January on record in Miami with several inches of rain.

Then the sun dried it out, and all the white disappeared!  Easy fix.  Thanks sun.

Then the plastic on top of the pier pole kept slipping off and was unstable to grab so I screwed in a couple of securing screws to fix that problem. [ Also hammered in nails that had come up out of the dock.]

Next, the gas tank on the new dinghy needed strap holders - the little black piece on the floor - screwed into the floor so the gas tank doesn't slide around when we are zipping about.

View from dinghy while I work.

Saturday we drove over to Miami Beach for an extraordinary free Wallcast Concert of the New World Symphony with friends.  We brought dinner, sitting on blankets.  They played Franck : The Accursed Huntsman  Mozart : Piano Concerto No. 22 , R. Strauss : Thus Spoke Zarathustra

 The lyrical Mozart Piano Concerto #22 with Jeffrey Kahane on piano was spellbinding.  See here.

I tried out the sail on my paddleboard, but felt I needed a bit more wind for it to be worthwhile.  Today I could paddle faster.  Mazu had a little ride and likes it since she jumps right onto the board, trembles for a minute and settles in watching the passing scenery.  I fell in for the first time in the wonderfully warm water then easily climbed back on board.  Good to know I can do that.

When we arrived in Coconut Grove the place was covered in lasers and trailers in the parks surrounding Dinner Key for the ISAF Olympic trials and Sailing World Cup Miami.  Here’s just some of the support boats from all over the world.

winners of the races.

Reading the book on race, Between the World and Me by Tahnesi Coates, a letter to his son.  Best book in a while was A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Fredrik Backman.   Brooklyn by Colm Toibin was disappointing with what I think is a copout ending; maybe to allow a sequel.  Great series on Netflix is “Occupied,”  highly recommend this thriller set in Norway about solving the world’s energy crisis but then the Russians occupying Norway to ensure they don’t use the energy answer and gain power.  Interesting premise and highly plausible.  The series was produced by Norway and France.

And then we are frequently on our devices: (picture courtesy of Dr. Chng)

Drew sneaking a peek at my Facebook.