Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Jan 19th ICW Mile 1020: Lake Worth Inlet

West Palm Beach Anchorage

We had another leave-at-zero-dark-thirty start today from Fort Pierce to what is known as the Lake Worth inlet. After more than a thousand miles along the ICW we are at our southernmost point on the east coast. At least that is our plan.

We motored about 10 hours today along the calm and sunny Florida coast. Everything went smoothly, the engine ran perfectly with no leaks from our maintenance and repair jobs of the last month. As is usual, we saw many dolphin through the day and we had a nice bonus: The water has become the clear. We can actually see the seabed below as you can in most of the Caribbean.

The city here is West Palm Beach and it has a far larger and busier port than I expected for what appeared to be a small inlet on the charts. There is a big industrial port here as well as uber-expensive real estate.

Our next leg of the trip is to hop over to the Bahamas, only about 55 miles across the gulf stream east of here. However, we will have to wait for a weather window. The low pressure system crossing the U.S. this week is expected to bring very high wind to the area this weekend. We reserved a spot at a marina here to ride it out. After that storm we hope that weather will be calm enough to cross the gulf stream about a week from now.

That’s it for today!

Jan 18th Goodbye Vero Beach, Onward South

Anchorage at Fort Pierce

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Vero Beach, our home for the last five weeks. We went out for a final dinner with Marie, Jack and Dan (another Boulderite) for our final farewell. Much of the time there was like “Boulder East,” visiting with a bunch of Colorado friends who happen to be in Florida for at least part of the winter. I was quite surprised how sad I felt to leave “Velcro” Beach, I had gotten used to a lot of the quirks of the town and we made quite a few new friends at the marina. Surely we will see many of them again.

But we are on a vessel that demands adventure!

After topping off our fuel and water, we motored three hours down the ICW back to the Ft. Pierce inlet. Almost immediately we noticed a couple of problems. We had a leak that was getting worse, and our VHF radio seemed to be freaking out on us. On top of that we heard the weather forecast calling for high winds starting this weekend. Very high winds. Our plan was to anchor at the inlet and stage for a further hop down the Florida coast and wait for a window to cross to the Bahamas.

We were able to determine the source of the leak, it was an anti-siphoning valve for the water lift muffler. We had to do some research. I discovered this was a common problem due to salt accumulation in the valve, an inexpensive plastic part easily replaced – if you can find one. We consulted with Mike, the boat expert we hired at Vero, and he warned us that it wasn’t a big problem yet but would become one very soon and would be catastrophic for the engine. This means: NEED TO FIX ASAP.

Also, the VHF seemed to be not working well again when we called the Vero Beach marina. That too is critical, though we do have a backup plan, our handheld walkie-talkie, but it’s a poor substitute especially for communicating over miles of ocean. So today we got busy searching for parts and testing equipment.

We found many of the radio parts we needed at a giant marine store here in town. We also were able to acquire the proper valve replacement, including a second trip into town to get teflon tape to seal the connection. On top of all that, we finally got our solar panels delivered right to the dinghy dock.

Result: After a really long day the engine looks fixed, the radio appears to work, and the solar panels are stored and just about ready to be installed. We plan to head down to West Palm Beach next and ride out the upcoming weather. If everything remains stable, we’ll take the next weather window to the Bahamas!

Jan 16th Diesel Mechanics and Other Fun Stuff

Good Karma’s Diesel Engine

We finally got to work last week to do maintenance on our diesel engine. Every 150 to 300 hours of running time you need to change the engine oil, which is called lube oil to distinguish it from fuel oil, which is what diesel fuel is called. Also, need to change the oil filter and the fuel filters.

Step one: Acquire the necessary tools if you don’t have them. One unique item was a pump to pump out the oil from the engine. Can’t just go underneath and open the oil drain plug as you would in a car because the engine is basically below sea level. Also need absorbent mats, rubber gloves and a bunch of trash bags.

Step two: Get the new filters and oil. Had to make several special trips to find everything for our particular system.

Step three: Go to work. It took both of us about 4 or 5 hours to complete, mainly because this was the first time we tried it but also because it’s a bit of work. Here are the steps:

A) Change the Racor filters and clean the bulbs. The photo at the bottom shows these filters. They are pre-filters for the engine and the bulbs tend to fill with gunk that may be in the diesel, they also trap water. In the photo below, you can see the red glow of the bulbs located at the bottom of the beige cylinders. Supposedly you can drain these bulbs via a valve located at the bottom, but we only had about an inch of clearance and nothing to catch the drained fuel in. So we pumped the fuel out to clean them. Replaced the 2 micron filters.

B) Change the engine fuel filter. This is the secondary filter on the engine and normally does not need to be replaced often or at all if you have the pre-filters as we do. But since I have no idea when it was last changed, I decided to do it anyway. In the top pic the filter is the white can located on the mid-left border of the photo. Unscrew this and catch the fuel that spills, which was easier for this filter as we had a lot more room. Replace the filter and bleed the air from the fuel lines. This involves loosening a bolt and pressing the lifting pump until you re-fill the filter and no air comes out as you pump, then tightening the bolt. Do this again for the injection pump and the individual cylinder lines. Can’t have any air bubbles in the fuel line or the engine will stall.

C) Get the engine started and run it for 5 minutes to warm up the lube oil. Turn the engine off, pull out the dipstick and pump the oil out with your new oil pump device. When done, pump out the oil from what is called the marine gear. This is what the engine turns to drive the propeller.

D) Replace the oil filter, the black can way low down in the center of the photo. This was quite difficult due to the tight space, the USUAL case on a sailboat. Spilled a bunch of oil into the bilge, not sure how to really prevent that. Replace oil filter and add new engine and marine gear oil. Run the engine for about 10 minutes to ensure there is no air in the system and there are no leaks.

Also last week we had Mike from Hartge Yacht (in Maryland of all places) re-install the VHF, add GPS to the radio and run the cable to the cockpit for the remote speaker-microphone. He gave us a lot of info about how our electrical system works, how much charging we should do, and pointed out our battery monitor wasn’t really working. It was basically a loose wire. Got that fixed and are now charging/discharging the batteries correctly.

Next: Goodbye Vero!

Racor Fuel Filters

Dec 29th Life in Vero, Part II

Crab in a Footprint

All the tourists come out here just after the Christmas holidays. There seems to be many more people around town than in the days prior to the holiday. The weather has been unusually warm here, in the 80s most afternoons and humid. We are not complaining.

The bus system here is free, just hop on and off at your stop. Unfortunately, it’s not only the car-free cruisers who ride the bus, but also the crazies. One guy sat in front of us who was obviously having mental issues and acting a bit belligerent and unpredictable. I overheard on of the locals say, “oh man, I don’t like this guy.” Two people moved to the back of the bus and we sat there until another customer unstable customer got on, sat behind us and started yelling at the first guy over us. We then moved to another seat, thanks. After a few more stops, the first guy gets kicked off the bus for yelling and swearing, but only after he made threatening moves for about the entire time he was on.

Another time Shelly got to have a “good” conversation with an older woman who was totally drunk and nearly incoherent. Thus goes the Vero Beach crazy bus. Other than that, it does get you around town. Not all rides have been that eventful.

We’ve taken many walks on the beach. Saw the large crab (in a footprint above) in the beak of a seagull who was running around trying to get it to let go. The gull was finally able to shake him off. Not sure what was going on there, whether the gull was trying to eat him or just bugging the crab and got clamped.

Shelly is walking on the beach on a nice, windless day in the pic below. This is in contrast to about a month ago at Cape Fear, where Shelly had to wear here down coat on our walk along the beach.

We’ve ordered a bunch of boat items including a life raft and a water maker. The life raft we hope to never use, the water maker we expect to use all the time. We’re here until at least mid-January or whenever they get the water maker installed, which may be later. We aren’t in any big rush but would be good to move along again soon.

Nice Day on the Beach

Dec 14th Vero Beach!

Rafted to Another Boat at Vero Beach

Two hours north on the ICW this afternoon brought us to our destination, Vero Beach. There are many boats here tied to mooring balls so you have to raft up to someone. What that means is one boat is tied to the mooring and we come alongside and tie to the first boat. You have to be careful not to ding your neighbor as you come in, we did well on that part. You tie up tight on the other boat with fenders between the boats to keep from knocking and scraping against each other.

We arrived at 5 p.m., just as everything was shutting down. The reason for the late arrival was to wait for low tide, to once again get under the low bridges. This morning we walked around Ft. Pierce and went to what I’m calling the Manatee Museum (not sure of the actual name). Haven’t see any manatees as of yet though. However, we still saw many dolphin and other big fish jumping around.

Tonight we were greeted by a the local Christmas carolers, on kayaks decorated with lights. Our song was “Frosty the Snowman.” They were all locals going out to various boats in the marina and singing, kind of cool and quite different, given that it’s about 80 degrees!

Settling down for a month here.

Dec 11th Kennedy Space Center

First Stage of a Saturn 5 Rocket

While waiting for a weather window for our last leg, we visited the Kennedy Space Center and it was quite amazing. They have an actual Saturn 5 rocket, the rocket used to go to the moon, opened up in sections. Also, the space shuttle Atlantis is on display. The bus tour drives around several of the launch pads, including the one that launched the moon missions and many (or all?) of the shuttle missions.

The launch we saw the other night from the ocean was from a separate launch pad, there are many launch sites on the cape. At the Visitor Center, ghe astronauts are front and center and promoted as quite heroic, which I guess they are in a sense. I never thought of them as heroes, I was mainly envious of them as a kid.

I really enjoyed the technical aspects of the NASA programs, being the nerd that I am. BTW, we used Uber to get there and back, amazingly efficient! It was a very worthwhile tour, especially given the industrial urban area where we are docked, nothing much to see on a walking tour.

Planning on heading south tomorrow on another overnight trip. There are no stopping places between here and our next destination and we estimate a 13 hour trip. We can leave and arrive in daylight if we travel overnight yet again. I’m not a fan of the overnight voyages but it’s better and far less hazardous than the ICW!

Launch Vehicle Assembly Building – Largest building in the Country

Dec 9th ICW Mile 895: Cape Canaveral, Florida

Another Atlantic Sunset

Wednesday morning we said goodbye to St. Augustine and after a 30-hour offshore passage arrived and docked at Cape Canaveral. St. Augustine was a quaint little town with a surprising number of tourists, but we were happy to get moving south spurred on by the passage of a cold front that reminded us we were not far enough south yet.

We made another long overnight passage mainly because there are no intermediate stops that are reasonable to do in a short winter day. We needed to pace our arrival at Cape Canaveral to about noon, we thought, and because we started early the day before, at 9:30 a.m., we needed to slow down over the night. No problem, it was very calm and warm. And eventful in very cool ways.

The first event happened at 6:53 p.m.: A rocket carrying a communication satellite launched from Cape Canaveral. We knew it was scheduled that night and were waiting for it. They launched at the earliest time in their 5o-minute window. We were 50 miles northeast on the half-moon lit ocean and could hear the low rumbling before a great flame lit up the horizon. It lifted slowly, passing behind the low clouds, I caught a video of it rising here. The video doesn’t look so dramatic, but when you’re out on the ocean surrounded by darkness, a rocket launch is impressive. We could see the first stage separate and fall away from the yellow flame as a dim red ember. It arced east for about 5 minutes before we lost sight of it.

Later that night, Shelly was visited and escorted by a pack of dolphins for about 45 minutes. The first one breached and exhaled, startling Shelly as she listened to her music. She said they were quite large too. Then a fish jumped up onto the deck. Shelly picked could hear flapping around and spotlighted it to see what was going on. She threw it back into the water (probably into the mouth of one of those dolphins). I of course missed all of this while taking one of my naps below deck. Shelly didn’t wake me. As a rule, you want to allow the other to sleep as long as possible during their breaks on these passages. We’ve been trying 3 hrs on/off, but really neither of us has been able to sleep more than a couple hours at a time anyway.

Today and through the weekend the weather is supposed to be windy and fairly cold – for Florida, but it’s still over 60F so not that cold. Our wind instrument shows it gusting to 17 knots and feels it’s howling as we sit in the dock. Same windspeed when we’re sailing doesn’t seem so high.

We are here until at least Sunday night or whenever we get another weather window to do the long passage down to Vero Beach, our Christmas destination.

And Another Sunrise