A Boat Out Of Water - by Tom

If we put this boat in the water tomorrow, it would sink. That's a pretty good incentive to finish all the work that has to be done before we depart in mid June. Remedios wouldn't sink because it is an unsound boat, it would sink because we are working on the plumbing and one of the fittings that goes through the hull is being worked on by our ace plumber, Pat. While Pat is having fun working on plumbing, Rob and I have to do dumb stuff like drill holes in the deck, pick out some of the balsa core sandwich, fill the void with epoxy, then redrill the hole, then reassemble the fitting with goo leaving the fitting we just spent hours working on looking and functioning exactly the same as it did before we started. Here is a picture of Remedios on a stand inside its winter home at Barker's Island Marina in Duluth. Remedios is the big pointy boat in the middle of the picture, not the 14 foot runabout in the foreground...


Here's a picture of our deck and some of the boats around us. Some are sailboats and some are very big motorboats. There are lots of boats crammed in here, and Saturdays are filled with work noises and fiberglass odors as folks work on their boats. One guy has a nice big boombox (does anyone still use that term?) so we can all listen to his favorite radio station.

Here is something you hope you never see while sailing. This is the base where the bottom of the mast goes. The mast is that big tall stick thing that holds up the sails. I really thought that the mast base would be bigger and perhaps stronger-looking. But Pat says gravity does most of the work keeping the mast in place.

Here is another scary thing you don't get to see while sailing. This is the joint where the lead keel meets the fiberglass bottom of the boat. If you had a little toy boat that was too tippy, you could take a lead tire weight and bolt it to the bottom of your toy boat. The boat would be less tippy and the weight has the added bonus feature of being heavy enough to pull your little toy boat to the bottom of the pond if it got any water inside. Pat says that's gravity at work again. Does that joint look scary to you? Pat says that the bottom paint adheres to the keel and the boat very well, but it doesn't stick too well to that white sealant. He explained this to me and Rob yesterday and the two of us are thinking of sleeping on deck wearing our life jackets instead of deep down in our cabins. I like sailing catamarans. Cats have two hulls to keep from being tippy although they sure do tip over sometimes. But even when they tip over they don't have 16,000 pounds of lead trying to pull you straight to the bottom. Pat says the keel is our friend. Rob and I just hope it stays attached.

Voyage Preparations - by Pat

With too few days left until departure it feels as if I should be doing something every day to prepare. On a day like today when there is little time to fit anything in, I will have to settle with reading and doing research on gear. Tonight's topic will be storm tactics and the gear research will be drogue and sea anchors to be used in the worst conditions to ride our heavy weather. I have been most impressed with Lyn and Larry Pardy who strongly advocate laying hove-to behind a sea anchor on roughly 300' of heavy rode. This gives the crew a much more comfortable and comforting ride at the same time it minimizes the time in storm force conditions. This flies in the face of some advice that teaches running before the wind on long warps or a drogue to slow down to keep under control. One of the problems with running with the storm is that it puts severe physical and intellectual demands on the crew at the same time it guarantees a significantly longer time in the body of the storm.


This controversy serves as an example of how getting the best of advice only leads to choices with advocates on all sides. I deal with the same things at work and in life every day. At some point it always seems you make the choice that feels best to you based on what you have learned. In storm management for example, there will be no one right answer but once taken, a decision requires commitment strong enough to be sure to take the technique to its full effect. It cannot be so strong that it is the only answer and a fallback must be available.


Pat

This past weekend in Bayfield was both frustrating and productive. Frustrating because my brother, Robert, could not join me for the weekend because of a blown transformer that he had to tend to at home. Productive because I used the time to get more work done. The framework for the new bimini is now done. It is very solid, designed so that all parts can take my full weight without significant distortion. Max, who is making the dodger, has already done the patterning.

The other big thing I got done was installing the padeyes we will hook on to while in the cockpit. These will keep us from being swept overboard by waves in the event of a major storm or knockdown and placement is key to making them convenient enough to work all the gear while sailing. The perfect placement I might have chosen was not possible because I could not gain access to put in the heavy backing plates necessary for such a critical piece of safety gear. I spent as much time staring at the cockpit imagining all the different scenarios as I did actually installing the parts. Then, after I had decided on the location, I walked the marina looking at other sailboats to see if they had any ideas for me to steal. Only three had any padeyes installed for this purpose but all were located in ways similar to the way I decided to do it. That helped calm me as I started drilling into the deck.

The contortions necessary to do any work on a boat convince me that I am right not to wait more years before taking the trip. Getting these parts installed involved folding and unfolding myself dozens of times, and because I was working on this alone, I had to scamper between the inside and the outside for a good part of the day, locking the vice grip pliers on nuts where they served as my second set of hands. Yes, I can still scamper.


Crew Emails

Tom to Pat and Rob:

http://www.morinu.com/index.html Hey, did you guys know you can get these packs of Tofu and they don’t have to be refrigerated before opening? We could easily use one package up in a 3-way meal.

If we get a bunch of these, then we don’t have to rely so much on canned chicken which is produced by keeping chickens crammed into a way-too-small space where their waste contaminates the ground water for miles around and then butchering them in a horrible fashion and then having a bunch of illegal workers cut them up for hideously low wages. Instead, we can eat food that is produced on massive corporate soybean farms, using an ungodly host of chemicals to keep out weeds and increase the yields which then contaminates the ground water for years into the future, and then trucking them off via smoke-spewing diesel engines to a large factory where they are processed by illegal workers for hideously low wages.

These have a shorter shelf life of around six to 12 months so would be a purchase just before we leave or in New York or wherever.

Speaking of which, I’ll add a page to the Doc for a point of departure shopping list.

Pat, you can add this to the blog as part of our list of many dilemmas we face. Or tell Rob and I how to add to the blog, which will be a huge leap of faith for you.

Rob to Tom and Pat:

My thoughts on Tofu. Feed the Tofu to the chicken. Eat the chicken.

Pat to Tom and Rob:

Actually, I have started a crop of soy beans in a hot box I constructed using reclaimed farmhouse windows. These heirloom seeds should mature at just about the right time for me to convert them to tofu which I will can here before we leave. I also happen to know that last summer Roseville passed an ordinance allowing backyard chicken coops, thanks to a plucky little 12 year old who got the media behind her. Between the chickens I raise on table scraps and the fish I have been farming in the little pond out back, I will have nearly all the meat we need. I will use a time tested and very seaworthy salting method for preservation using salt reclaimed and purified from the road slush just outside our door. I am also hoping to snare some of the geese and mallards who frequent our back yard trying to steal my fish. Those I will dry into a jerky, cause it seems the right thing to do to those thieving bast... Anyway, this will be an adventure.

Tofu? I'm in.