Beaufort Docks, Beaufort, South Carolina: May 5, 2021 (day 2)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B042'57.0%22N+76%C2%B039'54.4%22W/@34.7158474,-76.66731
Tour bus. Does it double as the Night Bus? (Harry Potter reference)
A few birds just hanging around the docks.
Marc- We are delayed here due to weather. We spent the day exploring this charming old seaside town. There is a serious Maritime Museum on Front Street as well as a wooden boat building facility. Many historic as well as nice old homes line the streets here. We also visited many of the shops and one breakfast restaurant.
We saw several of these signs on the residential street here. Everyone we met has been friendly.
The schooner Nina caught my eye.
Sue- This is supposed to be an Ode to Marc that
I had written for Valentine’s Day and/or his birthday (February 16), and should
have posted then, but I didn’t. I am
leaving it as written, in the present tense.
It’s also some of my thoughts about boating. I reserve the right to change some of these
thoughts when this trip is done (actually I have changed some at this point,
but that’s a story for another day).
This boat adventure is quite something. The good is seeing new places and things
every day. The good is not feeling
frantic nearly every minute of every day as I did at work. Coverys was wonderful in many ways, but it
was time to go. The job changed so
much/too much in the last few years.
Mostly there was more work than I could manage and I was always so far
behind. There were so many bad cases,
and it was just a terrible feeling day in and day out. No matter how long a day I put in I could
never get on top of it. I would finish
up a big awful messy case and there were many more to catch up on. It never stopped. I was lucky to have the last 6 months with no
new cases to clean up my work. If not
for Covid I would never have finished it.
Covid meant no trials and no in person meetings. That bought me the time I needed.
It is good that Marc can fix all of our
boat problems. Because that is what
boats are all about. Like houses, things
happen constantly. He would not be able
to fix a broken-in-half boat, but that has not happened yet. It is pretty amazing that we got all the way
to the Keys without going aground or having some other major disaster. From South Carolina on South, we saw 2-3
wrecked boats in the ICW a day. Down
here in the Keys we see such things regularly, too. Some of the wrecks are powerboats, but mostly
they’re sailboats. When we got to the
South we realized that people can live on their boats year round, they don’t
get hauled out in the Winter, and some people don’t take care of their boats. So they eventually sink. Though I think a lot of the wrecks we saw on
the ICW probably ran into something and sunk.
On our trip South we had numerous engine problems. After a while I was not surprised when they
happened. We never got into a situation
where the engine was misbehaving or dying as we neared an abrupt drop, like a
Niagara Falls kind of drop. (That has
happened before—the engine quit near a hydroelectric plant or some other place
with a big drop off. That was a little
scary. The girls were little then. But somehow he got us out of that mess.)
Marc spoke with a mechanic at a marina
during one of our stops. Had he needed
the mechanic to work on the engine we would have had to wait 3 weeks. Which brings the following to mind. You should not take a boat out anywhere very
far from your neck of the woods, from where your friends can come rescue you,
etc. unless you really know what you’re doing.
One of my friends at work, hearing that Marc and I were going to take
this trip, said she would be afraid to do this.
She is a smart girl. She should
be afraid to do this UNLESS she was going with someone who really knew what
he/she was doing. I am with Marc, who
really knows what he’s doing. I learned
this on our very first date. We were
sailing from Plymouth to Wellfleet, a 6 hour trip. I was steering and he was in the cabin
looking at the chart (before radar, electronic navigation in the cockpit,
before cellphones, etc.). He called up
from the cabin and told me I should be seeing buoy #2 coming up soon. I shined the flashlight (it was dark out
because I was an hour late for this adventure) and what appeared but buoy
#2! I thought “Wow, he really knows what
he’s doing.” And when we finally got in
to the anchorage, the harbormaster said “You came through this channel at
night?” It was a long channel. Marc can read a chart. He also has a sense of direction. I can’t, and I don’t, and I marvel at this
skill.
So my friend at work is right. You should be afraid if you don’t know what
you’re doing. It’s easy to drive a boat
around when the conditions are great and when the machinery works. But when the weather conditions and/or
electronics and engines act up, you can get into a big mess real quick. A person who knows what actions to take when
there is trouble is the person you want to be boating with. In Marc’s case, he has a lifetime of
knowledge of engines, electronics, wiring, plumbing,
fixing/making/problem-solving the many things that can go wrong on a boat. He uses all of that knowledge regularly on
this boat, believe me! He’s a real good
person to be with.
We are buddy boating with Michael and
Doreen. They were very helpful and never
annoyed when we would have engine problems. The guys help one another with boat
projects, and that is a very nice thing.
Brother Brian Gilmartin always made himself available to listen to the
engine problems and he did a great job helping diagnose and suggest treatments
over the phone from his farm in Vermont.
I call him Lucy III’s cardiologist.
I call Mindy Donnelly Lucy III’s internist, as she is very
knowledgeable about all aspects of the boat and boating. She also can diagnose and treat engine
problems, and take apart an engine and put it back together again!
There is no “real” bad re this trip. There are the usual unpleasant things about living
on a boat. I am not talking about an
ocean liner or a large boat. I am
talking about our boat, a 34 foot 1974 sailboat. It is narrow and we are squished inside with
all our stuff. And we have plenty of
stuff. Lots of it is stuff the boat
arguably needs: a massive number of
tools, life jackets, lines, life boat (I don’t think most people have a life
boat unless they travel across an ocean, but we have one), lots of TP (can’t
have too much of that in a pandemic), water, food, etc. We bump into things on the boat regularly. Marc is so familiar with the boat and loves
it, yet hits his head regularly on the hatch or the speakers he installed for
the satellite radio. I have bumps and
bruises limited to my arms and legs.
Over time you learn to avoid most of the hazards that cause the bumps
and bruises, but you can never avoid them all.
Odors cannot be avoided on a boat. Marc has become an expert toilet repair
man. He has installed a number of them
on this boat. They have gotten better
and better over the years. But we are
still stuck with a potty that has a button.
You press the button to flush and there is a loud electric motor
noise. What a relief it will be to live
in a house again and not hear that motor!
That noise bothers me more than about anything on this boat. The smells are not great, either. He is always throwing bathroom cleaner down the toilet
to tone down the odors. It’s the only
thing that works. After the first leg of
the trip in the Fall that lasted 2 months, I remember feeling that the bathroom
at home was so big. It has a grown up
sized sink and toilet, and it even has a bathtub and shower!! I now think of our bathroom at home as being
absolutely luxurious.
Another thing you need to know as a sailor
is wind direction. The wind determines a
lot, of course. Right now I am just
thinking about where you tie your boat up, or where you toss out the
anchor. Knowing what you are doing in
this regard is the difference between staying anchored and landing on a reef or
rocks and having your boat split in half and totaled. So if you don’t know what you are doing, stay
on your boat on your dock or mooring and never leave. Just use it as a floating cottage.
Knowing navigation is a must. Marc teaches navigation classes. He knows it inside and out.
Here in Marathon we are roasting, sweating,
dripping, dying from the high temps with high humidity. We had no idea it would be this hot. Our boat neighbor who lives here year round
says “It’s pretty dang hot here for February!”
Mind you this is only the beginning of the hot season. What happens from April through
November? Do people drop dead right and
left if they leave their air conditioned boats or homes? Speaking of that, we walk and sweat and drip
on the hot streets and paths, and then we see Publix or Walgreens. We step inside and bask in the AC. We LOVE Publix, and I am starting to love
Walgreens. There is no CVS in Marathon;
you have to go down to Big Pine Key to find one. Which reminds me that we don’t have a
car. We learned right away that when you
live on a boat (in one place for awhile) you want to have a car, or some method
of transportation other than your feet.
We are very lucky to have Michael and Doreen and their truck! It’s a
beautiful Ford F-150 with indescribably wonderful AC.
When we got this boat in 1996 it was a
barebones boat. That’s how a boat built
in 1974 was. No refrigeration, no hot
water heater, no cabinets, no AC, no electronics, no bells and whistles. Marc has added so much to it. I’m sure the prior owners would never
recognize it. The most obvious addition
is that he made it a Yawl. He made it a
2 masted boat when it was originally 1 mast.
The boat was made both ways, and he got the plans to make it a proper
Tartan 34C Yawl, so he didn’t really fool too much with it even though it was a
major change from the way the boat was built.
He changed the steering. He
designed an aluminum pedestal that houses the steering, lots of wires for lots of
electronics, and a radar screen. Fred Lewis
built the pedestal in his foundry. He
designed a new aluminum cockpit floor which Fred also built. He designed the davits on the stern that hold
the dingy, which Fred also built. He
engineered pulleys to raise the outboard off the dingy and onto a boat railing. He re-engineered the kitchen, put in a new
oven/stove, a microwave, hot water heater, a TV, fans and AC.
One of the biggest changes that has meant
the most, is the refrigeration. Guess
what, the refrigeration for many years was 5 pound blocks of ice. We had a hole in the deck with a hatch cover through
which we put the blocks of ice. Then we
put our food in. When you wanted food or
drink you kneeled down next to the hole, took off the hatch, stuck your head in
the hole and fished around for the food.
Now we have TWO REAL refrigerators.
The first came from Grammy to Marc on his BD a few years ago. It is an ENGEL electric fridge, and it can
also function as a freezer (one or the other mode at a time). It runs off the 12 volt boat power. It was a game changer. Then Marc read about Italian boat
refrigerators. They are all the rage on
the fancy new boats now. For $1200 he
bought and installed himself (he installs EVERYTHING himself) one of these things. It’s about 3 feet long and 2 feet tall. You can stand up a half gallon or gallon of milk,
etc. in it! There is a tray that spans
half the space on top for more storage.
We marvel at this thing even today.
I think we’ve had it about 3 years now.
It also runs off the 12 volt boat power.
So we have normal refrigeration now.
No more ice. No more bending down
to look in the hole in the deck with your butt up in the air to fish around in
the hole for food or drink. We have
enough 12 volt boat power because he has added 3 solar panels to the boat.
I don’t think AC was a “thing” on boats
until recent years. Certainly it wasn’t
up North, and certainly not on a 1974 boat.
Some of us didn’t even have AC in our homes or cars back then. But in recent years we have found it to be
hotter and hotter on the boat, even in VT.
So Marc installed a little 600 BTU AC from Home Depot in the boat. It is air cooled. It was great.
The first one died and he put in a second one. It worked great, until we got to Marathon. (Though we have never had AC when we are
anchored. The generator is not strong
enough to run it. So at anchor, we
roast, sweat, drip if it’s hot.) The
weather here was great in January. Now
we are roasting and sweating and dripping, and we are at a dock and plugged in. It is so hot here. At least 150 degrees with the same amount of
humidity. The little AC cannot keep
up. It tries and tries. It runs 24 hours a day. It gets us to about 73 overnight, then it
cannot keep up during the day. For
instance, it is 11:17am right now and the AC says it is 82 degrees in the
cabin. This afternoon it will say at
least 88 degrees. If we were to turn on
the oven or stove or both, the temp in the cabin would be over 90. But we don’t put the stove or oven on much
because neither of us know how to cook.
Given this extreme heat, Marc has looked
into how we can cool the boat down.
There is not a square inch of space on the boat for another air cooled
AC, so he has learned about water cooled marine AC. You can buy a little air cooled AC at Home
Depot for $250 but it’s a different story with a water cooled marine AC. Anything marine requires a visit to a marine
store, and anything marine costs an arm and a leg. At first I was hearing that such an AC would
cost $1200-$1400, or at least that’s my side of the story. Then when he got the quote from the marine AC
guy, it was $2700. And that’s with Marc
installing it. I thought, “Why do we
need a quote for an AC?” Apparently
there are numerous parts to be put together for this thing. So I balked, but then decided we had no
choice (except to die). So Marc has read
the installation manual, he has put in a valve for this (had to hire Diver Dave
to plug the hole in the bottom of the boat while he put this valve in because
some seacock is frozen open), and has installed the wiring and hoses. Now we just need the compressor. Hopefully it will arrive before we leave here
in 6 weeks. It is only coming from
Tampa, but is not supposed to arrive until next week. 2+ weeks to get something from a warehouse in
Tampa?
We also have hot water on the boat, thanks
to Marc. No more washing dishes or faces
with cold water! No more feeling like we
are washing up in a cold river. This is
also a game changer.
We have had a few water hoses blow on this
trip. The other night I was standing by
the kitchen sink and heard a big “POOF!”
Then I felt warm water on my feet.
A hot water hose had blown. So
Marc turned off the water and took out the old hose (which happened to be 40
year old tubing for the milking stations from the Gervais dairy farm in East Fairfield, VT) and replaced it with new tubing that has fiberglass
reinforcement. The old milk tube was new
when it was put in this boat (by Marc) about 20 years ago.
So to end my first blog entry I want to say
that Marc is very talented and a wonderful husband. He can make/do/fix/rig/figure out just about
anything. We would not be on this
adventure but for his many abilities, determination and hard work.
I’ll be back with some updated thoughts at
some point (not on Marc’s abilities but my thoughts about this trip!)
