Getting ready to head south

We're in the process of getting the boat, and ourselves, ready to head back to Marathon for the winter. Part of the process of getting the boat ready was to install a new rudder.
Last year, when we met with Phil Bolger I discovered that I had made an error in building the rudder. I left of the "bottom plate," a sort of shoe or wing that helps the rudder focus the flow of water and improve efficiency. Instead of rebuilding the old rudder, I decided to have a whole new one fabricated out of steel. Now we have a welded steel rudder that weighs about twice what the old one.
Today, while the divers were here to clean the bottom, we had them help us put the new rudder in. One of the neat things about Bolger's design is that the rudder sits completely outside the watertight envelope of the boat so there was no need to haul out to change the rudder. We simply pulled out the set screws in the old bearings, dropped the old rudder to the bottom. Then we floated the new rudder into place with the help of a life jacket. It was a bit of work to hold it in place while the bearings were set, but we did it. Somehow, during the process, the rudder blade got reversed, so we had to spin it around. When we finally got it straight, it turned out that it rubs against the boat's bottom. So...tomorrow, we get to pull the bearings out and shave them down by 1/8 inch to make for proper clearance. I think the welder didn't get the rudder blade perfectly straight because the clearance is correct at the post, but the rudder rubs at the tip.
So...we are now delayed one more day in our departure for the Keys, but better safe than sorry.
This will likely be be our last post before Marathon. As it looks now we will be leaving here on Tuesday. Once we leave, we will be sending updates by "SPOT." When you read the SPOT update, be sure to click the link for the Google Maps showing our exact location.
Before we head out, we want to give a great big THANKS to Julie and Tim for letting us park the boat (and ourselves) at their place. True friends are hard to find. Julie and Tim and Angel - you will always have a place to stay if you make it down to the Keys. Thank you for everything!

South Carolina

Recently, Bev and Julie took a road trip to South Carolina to visit Julie's family there. While in Central, SC, they went to Collins Old Town. It's a sort of "museum village" run by Julie's mother's brother-in-law, Roy Collins. It features a Depression Era country store, a barber shop and a school house.
If you're ever in Central, stop in to see Roy and Pat at 228 Lawton Road.
Bev and Julie stayed with Julie's folks, Lilian and Ray, Julie's brother Arnie, her brother Tim and his family. Bev also got to meet Julie's handsome son, Kyle and "Ranger" formerly known as "Shadow."

More on SPOT

I hope everyone got the test message from SPOT earlier today.
Here's a little more info on the system.
SPOT is a handheld device that allows 3 simple messages to be sent via satellite to the SPOT home office. Depending on which message was sent an "OK" will be sent to my list (you guys) or a "HELP" message will be sent to those I designate or "911" which will activate the Coast Guard and tell them my position.
For more details on how SPOT works, see

Find Me SPOT

A test message

If you are a subscriber, you should have received a test message from the SPOT system.
The first line of the message is a personal note from us, and it will probably be the same every time. The message will also include the Lat & Long of our position, the time (in GMT, so you will have to calculate the local time) and a link to Google Maps. Click the link to see exactly where we are.
The test message was sent from the deck of the boat as she's tied up at Tim and Julie's house so it shows us a few feet out in the canal behind their house.
KEWL!

OK ESN:0-7359581

This is Mike and Bev just letting you know that we're OK.
ESN:0-7359581
Latitude:28.2355
Longitude:-82.7422
Nearest Location:not known
Distance:not known
Time:09/15/2008 22:42:08 (GMT)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=28.2355,-82.7422&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

A new feature.

Within the next day or so we will be installing a new feature on the blog. It's called SPOT. Whenever we are traveling, you will receive an email from us (if you are a subscriber) that will tell you we are OK and include a link to Google maps. Click the link and you will see exactly where we are!
The SPOT system is also an emergency notification/locator system so if we should ever get in trouble, SPOT will notify the Coast Guard of our exact location.
Watch for the test message today or tomorrow.

It's official!

The bird's name is Capt. Morgan.
The final vote was Capt Morgan-6 votes, Hemingway-3, Capt Sparrow-2, Charlie-3. So...
the tiny little bird will be stuck with the official moniker "Captain Charlie Hemingway Morgan." For short, he will be "Morgan," "Captain," or maybe "Skipper." He's coming along quite nicely. He did a very clear wolf whistle today, and is on his way to learning to say "Hello" & "Good morning." He's a lot of fun to watch and listen to. I think we will enjoy having him as part of our crew.
Thank you, Julie and Tim.

2 seconds of fame!

Today, we are watching the "Rally for the Republic," (C-SPAN2) the kickoff meeting for the "Campaign for Liberty. It is an organization started by former Presidential candidate Ron Paul.
At one point during the broadcast they showed a clip of Ron speaking in St. Petersburg and there...right in the front row of the audience...guess who: Bev and I! I guess we have used up 2 seconds of our 15 minutes.
To learn more about the "Campaign for Liberty" see the link on the main page of the blog.

Gustav & Chandra

Chandra has gone home. We put her on a plane for Sacramento yesterday and we miss her already. She is really a neat kid.
On Saturday, we took Julie and Tim out for a sail. They are officers in the Sail and Power Squadron in Clearwater and the Squadron had planned a rendezvous for 1:00 PM. The designated coordinates were about 19 miles from here so it took all morning to get there. As always, we checked the weather forecast and it looked fine. It was a great morning on the water, but by afternoon we were starting to see some T-storms on the radar. By the time we anchored at the designated spot we could see a storm approaching from the east. We sat out the brief storm at anchor, but then we could see that it was followed by a whole line of storms. We decided to head back immediately.
Along the way home, one more storm passed over us. There was wind, rain and few close-by lightning strikes, but the boat handled the conditions well. Chandra and Julie stayed warm and dry in the cabin while Bev and Tim and I stayed on deck. The storm passed by quickly and the rest of the trip home went without incident. We made it back safe and sound, right on schedule. In hindsight (always 20-20) it wasn't a good day to have been out, but I learned a little something about the boat and my ability to handle her in less than ideal conditions. I was nervous, but never worried. Now we all have a good sailing tale to tell.
When we got back to the house and checked the weather on TV it turned out that the storms we experienced were part of the leading edge of Gustav. It seems that Gustav picked up speed during the day and spread out a bit to produce the line of storms that hit us. So much for the "calm before the storm" stuff.

Name the bird 2

Well..we still can't settle on a name for the bird. The poll was a tie between Hemingway and Morgan, and we've had two new suggestions. So here's another poll. Everyone please vote so we can finally name this bird.
Thanks.

Chandra takes a cruise

We just got back from a 3 day mini cruise. We wanted to give Chandra a taste of life on the water.
We sailed out of New Port Richey on Wednesday and anchored off Anclote Key. It was a great day of easy sailing in light breezes. We had to tack several times to make way south, but we had all day to go only a few miles, so we didn't care.
When we got to Anclote and set the anchor, there was a swell coming in off the Gulf. Not enough to be a big problem, except for Chandra who got a mild case of the old "mal de mare." A little dramamine and some sleep and she was fine by the next morning.
On Thursday morning we sailed off anchor and made our way down to Three Rooker Bar. We had been advised to avoid this spot, but the advice was dead wrong. It was beautiful. We anchored in about 8 feet of water in the crescent behind the Bar, had a little lunch and then took the dinghy to the beach. We spent most of the afternoon shelling, swimming and kite flying. It was a great afternoon.
Getting back to the boat, we had a great dinner of pork chops, couscous and "apple stuff." A game of Scrabble (which the bird watched intently) polished off a really great day.
This morning, Bev made pancakes for all, including the bird. We motored back to Tim and Julies because they have to work tonight and that meant we had a timetable for getting back. On they way home, Chandra took the tiller for a while and even managed to steer us accurately through a planned course change by following the rhumb line plotted on the GPS.
"A splendid time was had by all."

A sister ship badly damaged

The Anemone, a Bolger AS-39, was badly damaged in a storm in Canada. A 3 day nor'easter caught the crew by surprise with its intensity and duration. Anchored 100 yards off a lee shore, they were caught in 7 foot waves and their anchor line chafed through. The boat was pounded on the rocks for several hours until a crane could be brought to the site to lift her off.
This particular AS-39 (one of only 2 that I know of) was built with a steel ballast plate bolted to her bottom. The 1" thick steel was severely dented and twisted, causing who-knows-what damage to the plywood structures behind it. In addition the bilgeboard trunks were heavily damaged.
The crew, Jean and Gabby, are OK, but are now scrambling to find a home ashore while they repair Anemone, which had been their home prior to the storm.
I wish we could be more help, but our circumstances and location don't lend themselves to offering any more than a heartfelt "Best wishes!"

There's another one!

Yep, there is yet another AS-29. It's "Zephyr," built in Minnesota by Marc Lindgren and now owned by Sandee and Matt DeLapp of Wyoming. They are planning of starting the loop soon, so maybe, just maybe, we will run into them somewhere along the way. Here are a couple of pictures of Zephyr.

Morgan?

My daughter, Jennifer, suggested "Morgan," as in Captain Morgan. Cute. I will add it to the poll.
There is now a poll on the blog site to register your vote on the name.

Hemmingway?

So far the suggestion for naming the new bird are:
"Mist" - Mist was the name of one of the Valkyrie (Walkure).
"Signy" - Also, one of the Walkure.
"Phoenix" - as in rinsing from the ashes.
And finally "Hemmingway" as in a former Key West resident.
I'm leaning in the direction of Hemmingway, but I'm still open to suggestions. So come one folks, send in your suggestions.

Getting to know you...

We're starting to get to know the new bird. (He/She is still nameless, so come on folks, start sending some suggestions.)
We also spent some time today cleaning the barnacles off the dinghy. We will also have to do a lot of scraping on the boat to get rid of what has grown since the last cleaning in Marathon. Here are a few pictures.

A new bird

Well, we're back in the "Florida sun," such as it is today. We flew back to Tampa yesterday, picked up Chandra at the airport and took the Supershuttle to Tim & Julie's house. As we were getting settled in I noticed the birdcage had a lot of new toys in it. As I looked closer, I saw this little bird. Julie had gone to the pet store the day after Barney died and bought this little Quaker Parrot. I guess this settles the decision about getting a new bird.
We don't know the gender (a DNA test is the only way to tell) so we are searching to gender-free name. So...once again I am asking our readers to suggest a name for our new pet.

More baby pics

Bev would never forgive me if I didn't include more pics of her granddaughter, Kahlenn, so here they are.

Talk about bad timing

Here we are in Blackstone MA and watching the reports on TS Fay. The current forecast is for Fay to hit Tampa as a Cat 1 hurricane about noon on Tuesday - exactly when we are scheduled to fly in to Tampa. Yikes! And of course the airlines wants an arm and a leg to change the reservations, and they haven't yet heard about the hurricane. So here we sit, waiting for the airline to realize that there won't be any flights into Tampa on Tuesday. Yuck.
While we wait, here are a few pics of our trip north. I've included a couple of pics of the Grand Opening of the Middletown Vet Center, of which my sister is the new team leader. (You old rockers might recognize the tall guy at the podium as John Hall from the band Orleans. He's now a Congressman.)

Barney, RIP

We have some very sad news to report. Bev and I are in MA visiting her family. (Last week we were in NY visiting my family.)
We left our bird, Barney, in the care of our friends Tim and Julie. It was Tim who rescued Barney after he was hit by an SUV last year. They continued our habit of allowing Barney some time out of his cage each day. A couple of days ago, they let him out and he seemed content to sit on top of his cage, as he usually does. Julie turned away for a moment and Barney decided to fly off his cage onto the floor. Their dog, Angel, pounced on Barney, perhaps thinking he was her squeaky toy. Unfortunately, Barney was far too delicate for Angel's rough play and his neck was broken.
Barney has been a much loved part of our crew and he will be missed.
Of course, Bev and I are second-guessing ourselves about having his wings clipped and about not taking him with us on our trip north, but it's too late for that now.
The boat will not seem like home when we get back and there's no Barney.
We don't plan on getting another bird before we get back to Marathon. We want to give ourselves time to get over losing Barney.
As a last tribute to our little pet, here's a last picture of Barney.