Toilet Humor isn’t just for kids!

Toilet Humor isn’t just for kids!

 

Wednesday August 5th 2020

 

Live aboard cruisers talk a lot about their toilets, which if you’ve been reading this blog you already know.  (They also talk a lot about their batteries and power consumption. However, this doesn’t quite match up in terms of grossness and amusement value, but also tends to be mind numbingly boring to non-boaters). This afternoon we were chatting with Gloria’s brother Rod and his wife Sue when the topic turned to holding tank issues on a boat belonging to a friend of Rod's. We listened in rapt attention as Rod described overflowing vent pipes, blocked pump-out hoses and fishing out bits of “stuff” with a hook through a small hole. This is what legends are made of! I ventured in all seriousness that if you were going to install a tank-monitor it had to be an ultra-sonic model with no moving parts to gum up. Rod suggested a tank made of translucent material was better as you could determine just how full it was by looking at it. Sue added that it was important that the material was “translucent” not “transparent” as the latter would provide altogether too much detail. Then Gloria chipped in with one of her classic comments … “Well if the holding tank was transparent then it could take the place of a fish tank and provide relaxation and entertainment”. At this point, we all collapsed in hysterics. I guarantee that even if you don’t find this amusing then it will be an image that you find hard to remove from your brain!

 

Today we managed to do laundry, fill gasoline and propane tanks and pick up the new lens for Mike’s specs back in Sudbury. Rod has taken our car back to his house and we are now ready to set off!

 

Mike

Gloria at work in the Nav Station

The Isaias Experience

The Isaias Experience

 

Tuesday August 4th 2020

 

It’s now 7.30pm and it’s been blowing hard for the past four hours. Everything seems to be going OK and we are pretty confident that things will work out fine. The winds have mostly been in he 20-30 knot range (force 6-7) but we’ve seen many gusts to the mid-high 30s (force 8) and the strongest gust went to 42 knots. The local weather forecast predicts that the wind will ease off over the next 3 hours, which will be a relief. It’s pretty spooky when it’s blowing this hard and the boat is squirreling around on the mooring.

 

The morning started with the classic “calm before the storm” with grey skies and absolute calm. It was still hot and also horribly humid. Having completed the dinghy patch repair yesterday evening, I rowed the “Dumb Dog” to shore and picked up our life raft from the car (which we still have in East Greenwich). We then made preparations to the boat, adding additional lines to the mooring, tying up the sails so they can’t come loose and taking down the bimini. The forecast still indicated a strong chance of seeing tropical storm force winds and suggested “Isaias” could arrive in the mid afternoon. Around 3.30pm the wind started to pick up and an hour later some heavy rain arrived. However, that didn’t last long and when I could see clear blue sky emerging I thought the worst was behind us. Not so much! If anything the wind just got stronger. Our dinghy was flipped over three times – the first two times I was able to get it back upright by hauling on the lines tying it to the back of the boat, the third time I didn’t need to bother as I saw the wind pick it up like a kite and flip it back the right way. Thank goodness we took the outboard off and put it securely on the rail of Cotinga!

 

Anyway, if things settle down we should have a good night and then tomorrow we will finish up our boat preparations with the aim of setting off cruising on Thursday.

 

Mike

East Greenwich Cove in the morning before "isaias" arrives

East Greenwich Cove in the morning before "isaias" arrives - note the town dock on the right where we go to shore

A small dinghy downwind of us as the wind picks up and creates spray to add to the rain

... and in B&W ... not sure whether I like this better in color or B&W

Ambition gives way to fun

Ambition gives way to fun

 

Monday August 3^rd 2020

 

The day had an ambitious start but somewhere in the afternoon progress was overtaken by fun.

 

We left the boat at about 9:30 taking with us the food shopping list, the fuel jerry cans and the trash (to be discarded).  Our first project was to pick up the life raft from the company that had re-inspected it.  The other goals were just add-ons!  We shuttled all the stuff from the dinghy to the car and set of to Tiverton, RI.  It was just after 9:30 am and already 85 F.  The abundant sunshine promised a very warm day.  Once we got to the life raft company, there was a little snafu with the inspection certificate that resulted in quite a delay.  I had been left in the car in the sun but soon had to bail out and find some shade.  It seemed like I stood in the shade of the building for an hour but probably it wasn’t that long.  Finally, Mike emerged to say we were all set to drive round to the loading dock and pick up the life raft.  Thankfully, an employee brought it out on a cart. We were soon on our way back to East Greenwich. 

 

Our second stop was the grocery store.  Holy mackerel!  Dave’s is an up-scale market but not that large.  The aisles are narrow and the place was jammed with people.  It’s not a grocery store that we know well so that added to the difficulty of moving smoothly through the shop collecting the items on our list.  I started to have a real freak-out when I found myself in the midst of four people who were WAY TOO CLOSE!  Mid-day is clearly not the time to go to Dave’s.  We dragged all the shopping over to the boat and unpacked and stowed everything. 

 

We had invited my brother, Paul, and his lovely wife, Francine over for a drink on our boat.  They called to suggest that we come to their shady back yard instead.  That was a good call as the temperature was in the high 90s (according to our car).  So we packed some sandwiches and sashayed over to their house.  This is where the ambition fizzled out.  We had a lovely time chatting with them outside and forgot all about filling our fuel jerries! 

 

Upon returning to the boat we took the engine off the dinghy and hoisted the inflatable onto the deck for round two of the patching.  Mike was unhappy with one of the patches he had re-glued in Sudbury.  He set to work on the repair while I started on the spice mix for chicken tacos (dinner).  After some amount of time Mike came down, grabbed a C-clamp and the plastic chopping board and scurried topsides.  I had a vivid mental image of what the “dumb dog” might look like with a cutting board permanently attached to the port-side tube!  Hopefully it won’t come to that.

 

Tomorrow we need to get working on our tropical storm preparations.  That was another job on today’s list that got postponed.  How does it go? All work and no play.... We would hate to be dull.

Gloria

Clamping a new patch repair on the "Dumb Dog"

A relatively lazy day on the mooring

A relatively lazy day on the mooring

Sun 2^nd August 2020

We’ve been back on the boat 24 hours and are now fully immersed in the cruisers lifestyle. How do we know this? … because Mike spent the morning replacing the pumping unit on the forward head! You may think boating is all about cocktails at sunset, but we seem to spend inordinate amounts of time doing boat maintenance. In fairness, it’s often at the start of living aboard that you realize what needs attention and when most work needs to be done.  This job actually went really well and we now have a fully functional toilet in our forward bathroom. (We have two bathrooms on this boat, forward and aft)

We did go to shore this afternoon, bought some iced coffee and took a wander back down to East Greenwich Yacht Club, where we have members for the past ten years or so. We put our membership on hold at the end of last season in anticipation of being away for a long time.

This evening we are trying to figure out what conditions we are likely to experience as former hurricane “Isaiah” moves up the East Coast. At the minute the models suggest we have an ~ 40% chance of experiencing tropical storm force winds (>39 mph sustained) on Tuesday night (see picture below). It’s a little unsettling and we will continue to monitor the situation carefully. However, as you can see from the picture of the chart below, it’s hard to imagine being in a more protected location. We’ll let you know how we are preparing in our updates tomorrow and Tuesday.

Mike

41.6547, -71.4485

The Sunday evening predictions for "Isaiah". the numbers represent the % probability of experiencing tropical storm force winds. Our approximate position is marked by *

Chart of East Greenwich Cove - * marks our approximate position, which is well protected from adverse weather and about as good a location as you could find anywhere

Is that really what you want to do on your Wedding Anniversary?

Is that really what you want to do on your Wedding Anniversary?

Sat 1^st August 2020

Today we handed over the keys to our house to the Masurel family. Vianney, Dorothee, Maxime, Lise, Eulalie and Eloi, we hope you will all have a great time at 24 Martin Drive in the year ahead! We would love to hear from you!

I actually drove down to East Greenwich yesterday afternoon, launched the dinghy and moved a bunch more stuff onto the boat. I’m delighted to say that outboard motor is working fine! After spending the night on board, I drove back up to Sudbury to finish things up at the house and by mid afternoon we were back aboard with all our gear stowed away. After a 5-minute break (I’m not good at just hanging out and relaxing) I mentioned to Gloria that I was considering starting work on replacing the pumping unit on our forward “head” (toilet). “Is that really what you want to do on our anniversary?” Gloria replied. A fair point … and I thought I was the romantic! Actually I can say with some certainty that this is a job I never really want to do. Anyway, I know you are all thinking that I had forgotten our anniversary – well that’s not true, we’ve just been so busy we haven’t had time to think about celebrating. It was 33 years ago that Gloria and I got married in the Brown University chapel in Providence and it’s been a fantastic 33 years!

So we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the side deck of the boat in the shade of the dodger and picking up as much breeze as possible. We then cooked a fine dinner – rib eye steak, pan fried in butter with Aleppo pepper, sumac, black olives and cream, served with wild rice and cauliflower. We ate in the cockpit as the sun went down and an almost full moon rose above the horizon. A lovely evening!

Mike

41.6547, -71.4485

Our 33rd wedding anniversary dinner in the cockpit

Dinghy and Outboard Repairs …. and Packing, Packing, Packing!

Dinghy and Outboard Repairs …. and Packing, Packing, Packing!

Wed 29^th – Friday 31^st July 2020

On Sunday evening we brought our inflatable dinghy and Honda outboard motor home from East Greenwich. We had problems with the outboard at the end of last season and had put it in for repair / service over the winter, but the shop weren’t able to reproduce the problem and weren’t confident they had fixed. They were correct, they hadn’t fixed it and it was running very poorly as we tried to shuttle to and from the dock last week. On Monday morning we phoned around but every service center that we called had a 3- week waiting list. We had a new spare carburetor (that Gloria had brought down to Tortola in 2017 when we were also having some issues but resolved without using the spare), so we took the bold step to switch out the carburetor ourselves. This went surprisingly well and on completion the engine started up first time … except now there was no cooling water coming out of the “pisser”. This had to be a separate issue and on dismantling the lower part of the engine we found that the water pump impeller was totally shot. In retrospect we are sure that this happened on the final use last year when we saw smoke from that area and the engine overheated. We think it was pure chance that we got some cooling water flow last week and we were really lucky that the problem revealed itself whilst we were working on the motor this week. We ordered the new parts and on Thursday reassembled everything. Again the engine started up fine, only this time the propeller was constantly in gear send water spraying everywhere and actually quite dangerous. It turned out that whilst troubleshooting the problems we had taken out the propeller shaft and inadvertently dropped a critical stainless steel shifting rod into the gear casing. We know this because we fished around in the gear case oil and found it! Anyway, third time is a charm and we got it all back together and it now seems to be running beautifully. We also took the opportunity to find the leak in the inflatable floor of our dinghy and were able to patch that. So now we should be in great shape for running around in the dinghy.

Other than that we have been busy finishing up the packing and storage of stuff that we are leaving in the house. I think we might have said this after moving out in 2012 but never again!

On a final note, hurricane Isaias has just formed off the coast Hispaniola and is heading north. We will move aboard tomorrow (Saturday) and on Tuesday we may get tropical storm conditions in New England!

Mike and Gloria

41.6547, -71.4485

Cotinga in slings the evening before launch (iPhone)

Cedar closet storage in our house (iPhone)

Utility room storage in our house - a narrow path remains to the main circuit breaker panel (iPhone)

Back on the boat … Are we crazy?

Back on the boat … Are we crazy?                             Tues 28 July 2020

It’s been two years since we got back to New England after our 2017-8 trip to the Caribbean and now we are about to set out on another year afloat. In January it seemed like a great idea … now we aren’t so sure!

When we returned form our previous trip we were delighted to have the chance to go back to work at Framingham State University and for the past two years we have been teaching chemistry and enjoying life on land. Our sailing was limited to Rhode Island waters, with small cruises to Block Island and around Narragansett Bay, all of which was lovely.  Over time we started to contemplate what our next adventures would be and specifically the notion that we might take the boat to Europe.  As these ideas evolved we realized that we needed more time and flexibility. In particular, we couldn’t imagine launching Cotinga in the spring, teaching to the end of May and then being ready to leave New England to cross the Atlantic just a few weeks later and so we decided that the time had come for us to retire. Our last semester at FSU did not go entirely as we expected because of covid-19. We never went back after spring break and taught the second half of the semester on line. It has to be said that teaching remotely is quite challenging and without the face-to-face interactions with the students and other staff members is nowhere near as much fun. 

Our broad plan, as we envisaged it at the start of this year, was to spend the early summer travelling on land and then launch Cotinga at the end of July to spend the latter part of the summer cruising New England. In the fall we would head down the east coast of the USA and once hurricane season was over, cross over to the Bahamas and then off-shore to the Caribbean islands where we would spend the winter. In the following spring we would sail up to Bermuda and then across the Atlantic via the Azores to Europe.  From there onwards, we might perhaps spend a couple of summers in northern Europe and then a couple of seasons in the Mediterranean, leaving the boat whilst we return to Massachusetts as our home base. Eventually we would sail back across the Atlantic and keep Cotinga in the Caribbean as a winter destination for the future.  Of course no sailing plans should ever be taken too literally and in January we had no idea that the world would be turned upside down by a global pandemic. In May, despite great uncertainty as to what we would be possible, we took the decision to proceed with our plan. We made arrangements to rent out our house for a year starting August 1^st and in 3 days time we will hand over the keys and move aboard Cotinga.

We still plan to head up to Maine for a few weeks and down the east coast USA in the autumn, but beyond that everything is up in the air.  However, we are fit and healthy and the impact of Coronavirus on our lives has been relatively minimal, so we count ourselves lucky and whilst we probably are crazy, we will try to make the most of this great opportunity.

Cotinga was launched on Wednesday 15^th July and is currently on a mooring in East Greenwich Bay.  In the next blog, we will fill you in on some of the many projects that we have done to upgrade the boat over the past two years.

Mike and Gloria

41.6547, -71.4485

Cotinga in Newport Harbor, RI, July 2019

Marina, Great Salt Pond, Block Island, July 2019

Town Dock, Great Salt Pond, Block Island, July 2019

 Lights over East Greenwich, RI, July 2019