The End

Pearl got hit by Hurricane Irma a year ago today. After much inspection and wrangling with boat yards and Insurance, she was designated a total constructive loss. The cost to repair the damage to Pearl was approximately $110K. On receiving the estimate, I had three options:

  1. Have the insurance company fix and restore Pearl.
  2. Take an insurance payout, buy Pearl back for $15K,  and try to use the insurance money to fix her myself.
  3. Take the insurance payout and walk away.

I took option 3 — heart breaking as it was. The challenge with rebuilding Pearl was that while the hull and rigging that were damaged by Hurricane Irma were easily repaired, the salt water incursion she suffered damaged the electrical system, air-conditioning, and who knows what else. Subsequent maintenance would likely become a nightmare and the amount of time and money that she would require would not be recoverable. Further, this would have to be done while living some place on the East Coast.

The logically correct answer was to let her go — even though emotion suggested otherwise. Pearl had been a home unlike any other: she’d been a place of refuge, a platform for adventure, and a source for much learning. She was a self-contained entity that would take you places — both spatially and temporary — if you’d only dare.

Re-boarding Pearl to pack her was rough. The boatyard in which she was stored had painted a horrific picture of a destroyed interior covered with mold, and slime: that was true of another Beneteau 373 that was at the yard. Pearl was really messy but fine. She smelled a bit musty, but once aired out, smelled like home — a mix of salt water, diesel, wood, spices — life on the water.

Going through the stuff on board and sorting out what to keep and what to toss felt like cleaning up after someone had died. In this instance, that person was a different version of myself, a different life. I gave away a lot of the stuff that related to sailing and cruising to one of the workers at the boatyard. He was just building his dream on a tight budget, and that seemed appropriate. All the stuff would have a new life.

I could go on at length about the decommissioning experience. Most notably once it was complete, when I sat down to take stock before leaving, Pearl … was just a hull. She had lost the smell that made her “home.” I am not sure whether that’s a creation of my own imagination, or something else. What I can tell you is that Pearl was a funny boat and I am privileged to have had her in my life.

Some pics of Pearl — I post some more in the future. So many fun and amazing memories.

 

 

Pearl Still Standing?

Ok. This rounds’s over. Irma has left the ‘hood — trashing the Keys but possibly not as badly as she could have. Most of our friends in the Keys should be ok. We haven’t managed to reach a few of them who stayed, but the surge, etc., didn’t seems to be as bad as it was made to sound (in Key West). We have no idea as to how people’s boats that were left in the water faired. Keep your fingers crossed.  Remember, some of these boats were also their only home.

Pearl may have come through Irma intact. The boat yard where she was stored seems to have come though ok. She is likely still on the stands that she was on before the Hurricane. The attached picture offers a clue.

Boatyard at which Pearl Rode out Hurricane Irma

The boat yard where Pearl was at is in the far left of the attached picture. The last pictures of Pearl we received from before Hurricane Irma show her racked somewhere along the hedge on the right side of the row. Most of the boats seems to be upright and intact so we hope Pearl’s one of them.

While we may have been lucky, there are many other people who have lost everything, homes, pets, boats, … the things that make up their lives.

Irma Passing Pearl

For a little while, it seemed like Hurricane Irma’s track would pass directly over Pearl. Right now, it looks like Irma’s split the difference between where we used to live in Key West where Pearl’s currently located in Marathon.

“Fortunately,” Irma is going through the area as a Category 4 Hurricane rather than the Category 5 that it was when it lambasted the Eastern Caribbean. While this is really bad, it could be worse.

The question is how much damage the storm will cause. Will the bridges and causeways that connect the middle and lower keys be intact? How are people going to get food, supplies, and medical attention — since the medical facilities in the Lower and middle keys were closed and evacuated? Is the aqueduct that supplies water to the keys still intact? All of that remains to be seen.

While we have no idea as to how Pearl’s weathering the storm, that’s infinitesimal in relation to what people who are permanent residents there will face.

 

Waiting for Irma

It’s been a while since we were on Pearl. She’s been on the hard in Marathon for coming up on two of years now, and we were contemplating going back to her this winter.

Hurricane Irma makes me question whether Pearl will ever sail again. It looks like Marathon (her current location) is directly in Irma’s path.

Pearl’s out of the water. She’s was mostly stripped down by us for bad weather when we left her. She was checked and further prepped by the boat yard she’s in yesterday: the lines, soar panels, and bimini are now off. With a bit of luck, she’ll ride out Hurricane Irma with aplomb — the same way she’s handled everything else.

While we’ll be okay, we’ve made friends over the years who sold everything and became live aboard sailors. These boats are not just for fun. They are homes. They are dreams. Wish them well.

If you’ve sailed on Pearl or thought about sailing on her, here are recent pictures of Pearl awaiting our return.

 

Bye-Bye Bahamas, Back to Reality

The Abacos have been wonderful for us. We sailed, we motored,  patched, fixed, snorkeled, made close friends, and ate great food. We learned how much fun it was to take our boat out and use her to do what she was meant to do. We had an awesome learning experience. It was hard to say goodbye, but Lisa had a health issue that necessitated us being back in the US. We were sad to leave.

Our route back was less complicated that or route to the Abacos. We went from Little Harbor in the Abacos to Bimini in one hop. We left Little Harbor in the morning, and were in Bimini about 24 hrs later. Just like that. This was Lisa’s first overnight trip. While she was a little apprehensive, it turned out to be a breeze. Getting around “Hole in the Wall” was no sweat. After that we headed for the Bullocks Harbor and kept going.  We kept Pearl in deep water at the edge of the Bahama Bank until sunrise. This kept us out of the shipping lane in the Northwest Channel and worked well for timing ur arrival in Bimini.

After that spending a night in Bimini, we made a late morning departure for Key Largo. The ride over was gentle, a one foot wind chop at best. When started out, the wind was pretty much on our nose. Mid-afternoon, it backed to the south and we got Pearl’s sails up, and kept them up until we were about 10 miles off Miami.

En route we were checked out by a couple of aircraft — a black unmarked helicopter and a coast guard aerial patrol. Nobody bothered us.

Instead of heading into Miami, we opted to continue down the coast towards Key Largo. We’d heard that checking-in in Miami was a nightmare, so we decided to keep going and check-in in the keys. We broad reached down the Miami water front just at around sunset. It was beautiful. Usually the entire area is littered with lobster traps, but since the season hadn’t kicked off yet, we felt pretty safe in motoring or sailing.

Since Lisa and I had registered with the Local Boater Program (a part of the Homeland Security Small Vessel Reporting System, all we needed to do to check in was call the number on our cards and report in. The officer who checked us in could not have been more polite. His advice was “file a float plan” the next time as that would make the process even easier.

Pearl is back in the US, on the hard in Marathon. We have recovered her from our trip and packed her up to be stored on land for a while. Harley is depressed. This isn’t much fun for him.

Our next adventure is to head back to Portland, OR to work on my house there for about three months as well as a couple of other projects we have in the pipeline. We weren’t ready to leave the Abacos, but life intervened.

I am not sure what I will miss most, the people we’ve met, the clarity of the water, the easy pace of life, or what. I didn’t expect to like the Abacos as much as I did. Perhaps we’ll be back. Sometime.

 

 

Hopetown, Abaco, Bahamas

I’ve put off writing anything about Hopetown on Elbow Cay in the Abacos. We ended up using it as a base (mostly for the internet connectivity) and spent the most time here of any place in the Abacos. Lisa and I loved being there. The question was “what to write about?!?”

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Entrance to Hopetown Harbor and the water front.

The Hopetown Harbor is cute. That’s the only way to describe it. It’s dominated by the Elbow Cay Light House — a candy striped building from the 1800s that still uses 19th Century technology in the form of a Kerosene powered light that’s driven by counter weights (think grand father clock).

Elbow Cay Lighthouse at Sunset with Pearl on the far left.
Elbow Cay Lighthouse at Sunset with Pearl on the far left.

The entrance is a bit intimidating. On our first approach, we weren’t sure that we were headed to the correct place. Our only clue were the channel markers — in what was very shallow water. Pearl had to go in on a high tide.

The Harbor itself  is relatively small (and so crowded) so one’s obliged to pick up a mooring ball. The balls are about $20/day, but get significantly less expensive if you stay a week or longer. The land to which the balls are attached is know as “The Queen’s Bottom,” and are tended by locals who pay a fee for them and rent them out. Yup. The harbor is not a place to swim since there are no convenient pump-out facilities.

“Downtown” Hopetown is small. It has two streets, Front Street and Back Street, and a bunch of lanes that hang off of them. The houses are clap board cottages in much the same style as Old Town Key West.

There are nice Atlantic-side beaches here that are only a hundred yard or so walk from the dinghy dock. The beaches are not crowded and have conveniently accessible reefs to snorkel if you’re so inclined.

DSCF7399There are a couple of bars and restaurants that are fun. The most convenient of these is Captain Jack’s which has the best potato chips I have had, as well as a pretty darn good blackened fish reuben. There’s also Sip-Sip, a wine bar that’s a lot lower Key, as well as the Edge that competes with Capt. Jacks on alternate nights as the local disco.

Hopetown also is a good opportunity to provision. Stuff here is more expensive than in Marsh Harbor, however, a scant five miles away. After a while we got in the habit of heading over to March Harbor to provision. Initially, we stayed so long in Hopetown that some birds decided to build a nest in the radar reflector.

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Lisa checking out an empty nest.

The people in Hopetown are relaxed, charming, and helpful. We had a great time. We made several friends, participated in wonderful dinners, and had fun learning how and where to fish in the area. Hopetown, however, has sharks. We didn’t fish for them as we did in the Keys.

Here are some pictures from Hopetown and northern Elbow Cay where it’s located.

 

 

Cruising: 10 Things We’ve Learned after 3 Months Away

Lisa and I cast off from Key West on  April 15th. That was approximately three months ago. Time flies when you are having fun. We’ve learned a lot during this time that we figured we’d share. Here a bunch of random observations in no particular order.

1. Pick a day to leave and then do so.

We heard this endlessly from longtime cruisers friends at our marina. “Just leave. It’s true. I wanted Pearl to be just so and my “affairs” to be organized before we left. If we had done so, we’d still be in Key West.  The day we left, all sorts of stuff that should have caused us to postpone our departure happened. Besides that, the fridge and freezer that we thought were “must haves” were glitching. I wont go into the details, but addressing issues by staying in place would have cost us an additional few months. We are dealing with the issues that came up while traveling. No big deal. Actually, we learn more about where we are that way.

2. Install a WiFi range Extender

When we left, I thought we could manage with just the WiFi on our laptops. That’s not true. A range extender is critical if you’d like internet connectivity. I’d been toying with the idea of installing one, but never got around to ordering the components before we left but didn’t get around to it. Fortunately, we had visitors who brought what we needed. Pretty much everything is easier to get in the US than anywhere else. Get it before you leave.

3. Generators are very useful

We purchased a Honda 2000i before leaving the US. I thought it was just so we could charge our batteries periodically and use it for our air conditioner. We use it to charge our batteries most of the time when we are at anchor rather than running the engine. It seems to charge the battery more fuel efficiently through the shore power charger and doesn’t warm the boat. It also helps to run the AC when it rains and the boat has to be closed up.

4. Plan to fix things en route: take tools and spares

There are several thing on Pearl that have glitched. The HAM radio that was working no longer does so. The freezer that was not working now does. The Fridge doesn’t work. We have an intermittent  leak that dumps water into the bilge. This is all stuff we have to address. Fortunately, we have most of the tools to do so.

5. A good tender is a great investment

We used to have a small roll-up dinghy with a 5 hp motor. We now have a 10.5 foot rigid inflatable with a 20 hp motor. We love it. It has allowed us to explore areas we otherwise are unlikely to have explored. It also helps when there are guest.

6. Dry bags with shoulder straps rule

Pretty much  everything eventually gets transported in the dinghy. That means it gets wet. Dry Bags are nice as they keep things, well,  dry. Shoulder straps on the same dry bags are nice as they make lugging groceries and laundry back to the boat much more comfortable.

7. People make friends over (spicy) food

People seem to like spicy food — particularly curry. We’ve made several friends and either served or been invited to several dinners that have been around curry and spicy. Pack more spices than you think you need. You will use them and they are hard to find en route.

8. We haven’t been in a Marina since Bimini (and love it)

I am not sure how much more I can say here. While we did spend time on a mooring ball in Hopetown, and make a bunch of friends there, this was mostly so that we could get decent WiFi service without a range extender. Since then we’ve been mostly at anchor and have loved it.

9. Don’t trust your chart plotter depths

We touched bottom coming into Bimini, and we’ve run aground other places that we were supposed to have enough water under the keel. Things change, sand bars shift, shoals may not be quite where they are supposed to be. Use your eyes and the charts as guidance. Blind reliance on the chart plotter has got us into trouble.

10. We are much more conscious of resources (water, fuel, food)

When you are in the US or at a dock, water, food, and fuel are easily available. You don’t think about it. It goes on your bill, or you just run a debit/credit card. Cruising outside the US we’ve become acutely aware of how much of what we are using and where we can get it next. This is also true of waste.

These are some of our observations. We’d love to hear yours!

Guana Cay, Abaco, Bahamas

Guana Cay is just the next cay up from Man O’ War. It is due North when leaving Marsh Harbor. We’ve visited Guana a couple of times. It’s complexion is completely different to any of the other Keys we’ve been to.

Guana is a very pretty cay. It is the home of Nipper’s famous (or infamous) pig roast on Sundays. Lisa and I stopped by there briefly one Sunday. it’s one of those “must do” things in the Abacos. I have to say I was underwhelmed by the experience. Nippers had a bit of a Spring-Breaky feel to it. There were lots of youngish people standing around drinking and taking selfies. There were lots of other people trying to be youngish doing the same thing.  If you want that sort of entertainment, Key West is way more fun.

The beach that Nippers overlooks, however, is spectacular. Even on a Sunday it wasn’t packed. The water’s spectacular and the sand is pretty much perfect. We aren’t sure exactly what there is to do on Guana besides dive/snorkel and go to Nippers or Grabbers, but the cay definitely has a nice feel to it. Perhaps we’ll spend more time on Guana and get to know it better.

In the mean time, this is what we have.

 

Weather Windows and Crossing the Gulf Stream

Getting to the Bahamas requires crossing the Gulf Stream. For most people, the task is either intimidating or completely routine. The difference comes from understanding conditions one’s likely to encounter in the stream. The stream can be a raging hell cat or a docile kitty. Since we crossed the gulf stream and seem to be getting around the Bahamas ok, we figured we should share some of what we have learned.

DSCF6575 - Version 2Conventional wisdom on crossing the stream is to get across as quickly as possible and avoid crossing when the winds have a Northerly component to them.  The idea here is that since the Gulf Stream (or more correctly Florida Current) flows towards the North, any wind from the North opposing the current creates a nasty, potentially boat eating, chop.

Before we crossed the Gulf Stream, Lisa and I did a bunch of research on how to find that magical weather window to get a smooth ride over. Unfortunately, we didn’t find much detail on the exactly how to pick a day. Fortunately, we have a great resource in Vanessa, a friend of ours in Key West. Vanessa pointed out a several things that we needed to factor in before making a decision — the most important being current.

Rule #1: Know the current and avoid opposing winds

Vanessa’s guidance was to avoid situations where the wind and current are opposed. This applies to the Gulf Stream as well as other areas like the North West Channel and Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas, and pretty much anywhere else like the West Coast of the US where you can find strongly opposed wind and current.

With crossing the Gulf Stream, this is a little trickier than just picking a south wind. The gulf stream has eddies that spin off periodically. If you catch one of these eddies, it’s entirely possible to have most of your ride be smooth and then get beaten up in the end when you hit an eddy with an opposing south wind.

Rule #2: Look for a wave interval in seconds that’s greater than 1.6x the wave height in feet.

What makes life uncomfortable isn’t wave height per se, but how steep they are. For example, three foot waves aren’t a problem. Three foot waves on a two second interval will make Pearl buck like a bronco. I was given this rule of thumb by a fisherman on the Oregon coast when I was contemplating crossing the Columbia Bar.

In general we look for a wave period that more than 2x the wave height and have been quite comfortable so far. The math is easier with 2x.

Rule #3: Use your OWN judgement

Regardless of what the weather gurus, services, and anyone else says, use you own judgement and interpret the data yourself. It’s your boat. It’s your life.

Everyone has a different comfort level. Chris, a good friend of ours, enjoys surfing his boat down large waves, a bottle of rum and cutlass in one hand, the wheel in his other, and a cigar stuck between his teeth. No offense to Chris, but he’s been sailing most of his life and has a very different skill and comfort level to Lisa and myself. That’s something he can do safely.

Chatting over drinks with various people, we’ve heard lots of tales of regret where someone decided to join a group of other boats and had a miserable time or a dangerous ride. Lisa and I prefer to use our own judgement even if it means we travel by ourselves. We take our time and pull back whenever we are not comfortable.

As a result, Lisa and I tend to pull data from a number of different sources before we make a GO / NO GO decision. What we like to see is a consensus between all the data sources. There appear to be at least two different weather models that services use that can offer quite different forecasts — hence our interest in consensus.

1. Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM)

Hycom offiers insights into what gulf stream currents are doing — particularly eddies. If you would like to find out more about HyCOM, you can browse their website. What’s more interesting, however, are the forecast models for the speed and currents layers for the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico that are found here.

There are two links to check out. One is an animated forecast for the speed and currents layer for the next 30 days. The animation gives you a good sense for what’s going on but it zips by pretty quickly. You can step through the individual images here. Make sure you read the information at the top of the page to figure out what to look at.

While this isn’t the most user friendly site, it does give you access to raw information that other sites synthesize.

2. BuoyWeather

We like Buoyweather for several reasons. The most important being that you can create virtual “buoys” along a route that you are planning save them as favorites, and either get automated daily emails or send an email to query their servers for that predefined location. You can also get passage forecasts that are optimized for low bandwidth connections. The site contains a lot of information, you just have to play with it for a bit to get it dialed in to suit your need. While you can get decent information off the free version of the site some of the most useful features require a subscription.

Note: for some reason, access to buoyweather in the Bahamas is quite slow.

3. AviationWeather

This is an aviation rather than sailing related website. It does, however, offer great insight into the “big picture,” where the highs, lows and fronts are and how they are moving. The key here is understanding what fronts are going over you. I like looking at the surface prognostication charts for this.

Typically in Florida and the Bahamas, as a front approaches the wind shifts to the north. As is passes, the wind clocks around to the east, south, and west before returning to the prevailing pattern for the season. Looking at the speed at which the fronts travel will give you a sense for the intensity of the weather you may encounter.

4. NOAA Weather

No weather evaluation would be complete without a look at what NOAA has to offer. It’s pretty easy to get lost on their site. I like to check the Marine Forecasts and the Hurricane Forecasts at the very least.

Another feature this site offers is the ability to get text-based information via email (ftp-email gateway). This is super helpful on low bandwith connections like packet radio links. There is a lot of information you can get using this method. It is intended for geeks and is NOT user friendly.

5. PredictWind

We use predict wind as well as Bouyweather. While I like the wind forecast wind and swell forecast graphics, I find the service a bit annoying. I feel like they try to upsell you on higher levels of service by versioning their product in annoying ways.

 

We’ve found out that if we stick to the rules listed above and check our weather information sources, we can have a nice time sailing. Eventually, we will get caught by something unexpected — like a squall with 65kt winds while we were at anchor. That for us, however, is a part of the magic of cruising.

We hope you’ve found this post interesting and/or useful. We’d love to hear from you if you have alternate services, rules, and/or tips and tricks that you use to avoid weather.

 

Critters: Man o’ War Jellyfish

I think most people have heard of Portuguese Man ‘o War jellyfish — and are terrified of the stings they can deliver. I believe very few people, on the other hand, have encountered one.

Portuguese Man o’ War Jelly Fish are pretty common in the Florida Keys during certain times of the year. Lisa and I spotted one while we were sitting on in Pearl’s cockpit while parked in the Boca Chica channel off Key West one day. Lisa is an avid critter catcher, so we decided to take a closer look from the safety of the dinghy.

Initially, the  Portuguese Man o’ War looks like a partially inflated plastic bag , container of some sort, or possibly garbage. On closer inspection, it looks like bluish sausage with an inflatable sail and a bunch of black strings attached to the bottom. It’s the black stings that are the stinging bits.

What  we found really interesting was that the Man o’ War we followed sensed us and changed it’s behavior. Initially it seemed to want to get closer. After we had looked at for a bit, it seemed to want to get away. Besides being “sentient” the Man O’ War also seemed to have several little black fish living among it’s tentacles. Curious. Check out the pictures and video below.

All in all, this is a fascinating creature. According to Wikipedia it’s not just a single multi-celled organism, but a symbiotic colony of Zooids. You can read the entire wikipedia article for more details.

 

Man O’ War Cay, Abaco, Bahmas

Man O’ War Cay is one of the three “must visit” destinations in the Abacos. It’s a curious community of very closely related people, about 70% of whom are named Albury. I’ve been told that until relatively recently, these people tended to keep to themselves and marry within the community. The result is that most people on the island look very similar —  a bit odd.

Also, unlike the other islands, Man O’ War Cay seems to have had a culture of segregation. In other words Black Bahamians were not permitted to stay on the island after dark. This isn’t true of most of the other islands in the Bahamas. There doesn’t appear to be racial tension, per se, though there seems to be a general dislike and distrust of Hatians.

Man O’ War is pretty, neat, clean, and tidy. It has cute little clapboard cottages with nicely tended yards. it also has a long tradition of boat building and sail making. I have to say that the traditional Bahamian boats made here have beautiful lines.

Man O’ War has a very protected but shallow harbor. It’s probably the best hurricane hole in the Abacos. The harbor is very sheltered. As it has two opening, surge from a hurricane can run through easily rather than just building up.

All told, it was a neat place. While it a nice, it doesn’t seem like it’s a community into which one integrates — like Hopetown. I’m glad we’ve seen the place, and we may use it as a hurricane hole, but my guess is we’ll just as soon head further south.