Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Jan 30th Gulf Stream, Bahamas and Quarantine Flags

Sunset at Great Sale Cay, Bahamas

From Shelly:

We left Lake Worth, Florida at the crack of dawn last Wednesday and crossed a rolling gulf stream. Mark turned a little green but no lunches were tossed. We opted to motor sail which means the winds were less than 15 knots so you combine motor and sails to get enough speed so that you don’t go too far north in the Gulf Stream and miss the Bahamas altogether. By late afternoon we arrived on “the banks.”

The depth of the ocean literally goes from hundreds of feet to 25 feet in a matter of 30 minutes. You can see the sand flying underneath you. That’s very disconcerting because you could hit a stray rock. But we have tons of radios and a life raft. And seriously, how much trouble can you really get into in 30 feet of water. Not much hopefully, because the next step was to anchor at night at Mangrove Cay after continuing our crossing in the dark for another hour or so until we got there. We didn’t hit anyone else and the anchor dug first try. Actually, Bahamas is weirdly well charted and the ocean floor uniformly flat more or less and unless you try, it’s kind of hard to hit rocks.

The next day we still didn’t have much wind so we motor sailed to Great Sale Cay about 25 miles away. Mark was excited to try out his new snorkel gear although the water was super cold. It will warm up as we move south and we get through winter a bit more. We did not go ashore.

On Friday, we did a big push to Powell Cay and were able to sail much of that route. Yippie! Finally, sailing along in good wind with great weather and scenery and no schedule. We set anchor and Mark did his nightly routine of sending out a spot beacon and email “to the mothers” so people know we’re not dead. Mark, our communications specialist has programmed the SSB radio to send small emails out. But more importantly, he can pull down weather “grib” files so we know what’s in store. What turned out to be in store was a bit of a front with 20 to 30 knot winds by Sunday or Monday.

Armed with that knowledge we didn’t go ashore on Powell Cay on Saturday. Instead we high tailed it farther south, back out into the Atlantic for a mile or so, skirted around Whale Cay, back into the sea of Abaco and anchored at Treasure Cay. Otherwise we would have probably been stuck north of the Whale for days. Around the Whale, the conditions can be rough and the currents strong if wind is blowing water into the inlets since as with much of the Bahamas the water is being pushed up onto a much shallower area. There’s even a dedicated Whale weather report every day, it’s so notorious around here.

On Sunday we got our predicted 25 knot winds – a few hours early. Our plan was to go to the government dock at Marsh Harbor and check in through customs. The rules are that you fly your yellow quarantine flag until you check into a country and that you can anchor but not go on shore until you officially go through customs.

Most people go to a marina to check in but none of those marinas are ones I want to go to anyway so marching to our own tune – as usual – here we are on day 5 still flying the quarantine flag. It’s fairly difficult to dock in high wind plus it started to rain.  Marsh Harbor is exposed to the wind blowing from this particular front so we bagged on that idea and went around behind March Harbor to a protected anchorage where we now sit. On the bright side – we were able to get a better feel for how Good Karma sails in 20 knots with only a reefed main up. It worked great. We were the only people with a sail up out there today, in the pelting rain. Whatever, we had a good time.

The weather is supposed to worsen tonight and then be same for tomorrow so we’re just chillin’ instead of going ashore. Nor will we tomorrow because doing a sloppy dash in the dingy in high wind and rain is not my idea of a good time. You should be starting to see a theme here… our feet have not been off the boat in days. The scenery is however, lovely.

Since we haven’t gone ashore yet, we don’t have SIM cards for our phones so no internet. 5 days without internet. Reminds me of camping on our mountaineering adventures except we’re dry and we have a toilet and fresh bread. We’re reading our books and Mark is getting intimately familiar with his SSB radio. I am not missing news about politics. We’ve been listening to “Missed in History” podcasts. We listened to one about the founder of Montessori recently and now I’ve decided I should be referred to as “The Directress.”

Once the weather clears up a bit and we get our checkin and communications life in order, we’ll go over to Hope Town at Elbow Cay, grab a mooring ball, walk around the little town and check out the various bars. Then it’s hopefully some snorkeling south of here and then staging for Eleuthera.

[Editor’s Note: The weather was great today and we were able to get internet connected. Thus the status post today]

Jan 21st West Palm Beach Divide

Shelly Fixing a Leak in the Ceiling

We spent this afternoon fixing a leak we’ve known about for months. Unfortunately we had to remove a huge panel from the ceiling of the galley to get to the bottom of the deck where Shelly suspected was the origin of the leak. Ah, boat work. Gotta love it. If you live on a boat you better love it because that is a big part of life here in paradise.

We are at the Riviera Beach City Marina. I went for a run today and noticed some things. The marina is fairly nice though not the top-end expensive kind. They’ve recently renovated the area around the marina to add a large park and new buildings that I assume will house shops and restaurants when open. However, just outside the marina, the neighborhood is a bit rough, not the worst I’ve ever seen but definitely low income. Everyone I passed was friendly and said hi as they do most places.

I read later on, and the people living on the boat next to us in the marina confirmed, this is a higher crime area. Shootings, apparently gang related and late at night, take place only blocks away. A shooting happened a couple nights ago. I have to reiterate that the neighborhood doesn’t seem THAT bad to me, it reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in. I have seen far worse. But it is what it is.

On my run I crossed the Blue Heron bridge over to the Palm Beach Shores neighbors. This is 10 minutes across the water from the Riviera Beach side. The difference was like night and day, to use a cliche. Palm Beach Shores was a wealthy neighborhood with nice houses, parks, community events, lots of people walking around. Oh, and did I mention that on the Riviera side I saw mainly African Americans and on the Palm Beach Shore side I saw exclusively white folks. Separated only by a half-mile wide body of water.

It wasn’t that the wealthy side was a better location geographically, there are beaches on both sides. The poorer side had a lot of industrialization, like the Port of Palm Beach, and that is the main difference. Places people retire to vs. places people work.

Oh, and did I mention we’re only a couple miles north of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s exclusive resort?

Anyway, just another view of America where the good times don’t necessarily apply to all.

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