Mutiny on Daruma

Nope, Traci never took over the ship, she's the admiral, it was this guy.......

John and Sara Hamrick, a couple we met at the marina, went on vacation to the US Virigin islands and we gladly offered to watch their cat named Crew. Crew is not a suitable name, nothing Crew about him, he's the captain, owns the whole ship, don't forget it.

During the storm, Isaac, he was a little nervous due to the noise of chop on the water slapping the sides of the boat but after the storm he settled right into letting us know who the boss is. This morning I'm at the table reading up on another new toilet we just aquired and enjoying my last coffee of the day when Crew leaped up on the table, walked over my coffee and stuck his right hind foot right into the cup. It was still a little bit warm, hot even so he jumped clear of the cup and ran across the table and went to Traci's fruit basket, pictured above, that he claimed days ago as his own, and proceeded to clean the coffee off his foot. John and Sara are picking him up today and tonite they'll be wondering why he's so full of it and won't sleep. I hope he has a caffeine withdrawal headache tomorrow, that'll learn him. We had to clean up the spatter and little coffee foot prints while he just lay there and look at us so innocent like.

He is a little cutie. You can pick him up and flip him over and rub his belly or when he reaches out to get your attention he never has his claws out or when he chews on you it's always gentle. There is a resident little lizard who lives in the mast and jumps down and crosses the windows every night at sundown going out to roam and feast on bugs. Once and while he hesitates on a window and Crew saw him just above the chart table on the outside. He jumped up on the table and cocked his head side to side and gingerly reached up and softly touched the window where the outline of the lizard was. Cute moment but otherwise the hurricane was inside.

When we travelled from Grenada on our maiden voyage I kept a blog on some site with lots of pictures and a timeline of events from start to finish. Every new entry prompted the site to send emails to everyone on your list to tell them to check the blog. It was all good until the moderator shut it down and discontinued the site. I wrote and asked him if I could get all the stuff I uploaded but was unable to so it is pretty much lost forever. On this journey, I asked Paul and Shannon Baynham if they wanted to join us and learn (or suffer) right along with us as we brought the boat back to Florida. Paul and I used to talk of this sort of thing years earlier when Traci and I ran a little marina on the St Lawrence River and Paul and Shannon kept their house boat with us. We'd sit around a fire in the evening, might have had a beer or two, and discussed retirement and sailing the southern waters as I always thought this is what I'd like to do. One year we sat around the fire talking the same old dream and Paul said "I think we'd like to join you." I thought something along the lines of "long ways away" or "we'll see" or "I'll be lucky to live long enough" or some such thing. Low and behold, Paul and Shannon helped us make our (or my) dreams come true and after our journey they purchased a motor catamaran and we finally met them on anchor in the Bahamas last January. During our journey they kept a blog of the trip and after their cat purchase started another blog which is linked on this blog. I was trying to find their blog recently in a search engine by searching Coyaba, the name of their boat and came across a book called Coyaba by Shannon Baynham. I thought "She's turned their blog into book form." They are currently in St Augustine working on Coyaba and I emailed to tell them we wouldn't be able to make it up to see them and Shannon asked for our mailing address. I thought "She's going to send us a copy of the book Coyaba I'll bet." Below is what we got.

Look out Clive Cussler!

We are blessed with the best of friends.

Dave & Traci

Tropical Storm Isaac

Hi Everyone: I haven't been updating as of late cause I think it may be a little boring to some people to read a sailing blog about a sailing vessel being upgraded or repaired but on the other hand when I do tell of things I've done I get some reasonable questions from a few readers like David's question about hooking the water system into the marina water which I ashamedly have never answered, so sorry David. Also I think it's a pretty fair record of what has been done to the boat should we ever have to sell it. I've done so many things to the boat and not documented them in any way and my age I'll never remember until it breaks again but once I start something I seem to forget about taking pictures of before and after, shame really.
To answer your question David. I cut what I recall to be about a 2 7/8 hole in the stern and caulked with Dow 5200 and mounted with stainless screws a pressure limiting water connection. Before this I mounted a carbon filter available in the RV section of Walmart on the spigot. Inside the boat I changed a few of the original water lines which were metric to new 1/2" line and tee'd this into the cold water line that runs to the shower mounted on the transom. I turned the water on and watched my water tanks to make sure that my 2 12 volt water pumps had check valves in them and didn't feed any water back to the tanks. They don't and now I'm thinking I will put a by-pass around the pumps with a valve in it so I can open this and fill my tanks while still hooked to supplied water through the carbon filter and maybe never have to open the deck fill fittings again. The whole operation was pretty easy and painless and so worth doing. The 35 psi that the marina water is regulated to is nice in that it doesn't create any leaks or faucet drips in the on board plumbing unlike the 65 psi that the onboard pumps provide.
With Isaac being hyped up so much on the news as being possibly a cat 2 hurricane and smashing it's way up the center of the state I thought I should have engines ready to run, water tanks full, freezer full, all the canvas off etc etc but as it was I was in California until Saturday evening with Isaac supposedly hitting us on Sunday evening or Monday by noon. Then I started thinking what if they cancelled flights into southern Florida and Traci was on the boat alone then I started to panic. I thought "the news likes to hype things up to keep you watching so calm down and check NOAA and Wind Guru and see what they say." As suspected, we were due to catch the edges and remain on tropical storm watch but I have to say that working on Friday in California took some concentration to keep my mind from wondering and thinking the worst and Saturday nothing flew fast enough to get me back there. Saturday evening I removed the solar panels on the Bimini top and the top and Traci pretty much had everything else lashed down or removed and the offers of help and calls of concern where above and beyond and I thank you Grady Chance and Paul Baynham, someday when you need me I'll make sure I'm there. I was more nervous than I'd ever let on but all for not. Wind got up to around 40 mph and probably gusted to 60 or so and it rained cats and dogs but when we thought about it, we've been caught sailing in similar weather and faired well so we missed the bulk of it and are thankfull.

Above are pics of the heat exchanger on one of the engines as I removed the end cover. I noticed 2 black fingers off of a raw water pump impeller and I cursed a wee bit as I just changed the raw water pump last year. The next one shows the exchanger plugged about 50% and the last one shows the cap and the left side or intake side plugged with the 2 rubber fingers and mussels. I cleaned the exchanger in a few minutes with 50% muiriatic acid and water and it looks like new again, shoulda took a picture. Got it back together and then hooked the engine cooling to the heat exchanger in the hot water tank so that when we run this engine it will circulate hot antifreeze through a radiator in the hot water tank and heat some water for showering and dishes without electicity. Filled it all back up with antifreeze and started to mount another new alternator and smart regulator. Not done yet as I have to take the alternator apart and by-pass the regulator.
On a great note, the marina bought a brand new house boat for live aboard folks to do laundry in. It has 2 brand new washers and dryers, a shower and bath room. They also gave us an efficiency to use during the storm as the short back and forth motion was making Traci a little motion sick. I offered to pay but they said no as I help him around here now and then and it was appreciated. Turns out we didn't need it but we did do some laundry in it and watched some tv.
Sorry for the boring update, promise lots of underwater pictures when we hit the Bahamas in January.
Dave