That’s right. I’ve shared a few “hows” from our stint at the yard, now it’s time for a few “how nots.” Watch as we re-bed the bow pulpit not once, but twice (because it was so much fun the first time) for your viewing pleasure.
And … aSIDE from the book release next week, then it’s just a few days until we embark on our Atlantic crossing journey. Atlantic Annie’s getting a little too excited about it. If you haven’t yet, join the journey on Patreon. Go ahead, take the plunge!
Ooooh, says Video Annie. Magic bolts! Watch as we get our frames blasted and painted and get “real creative” (Brandon term) making custom bolts to fit the stupid binding posts for the windows. Thanks, as always, to the boys at Perdido Sailor, Inc. for helping us DIY’ers on the re-fit. Enjoy the video!
Come aboard as I get a full on-the-water tour of this impressive 1985 Gulf Star 45 Hirsch model, only 1 of 30 built, a moderate-sized, comfortable coastal cruiser suitable for a family of four. Thank Brandon with Perdido Sailor, Inc. for the tour!
Finding these boat tours helpful? Awesome. Help me film more! And, let me know certain boats you would like to see. I’ve got a Beneteau, an Island Packet and, a real treat, my first motor vessel, this Mama Jama, which I’m going to call an almost-mega yacht.
Whoa.
All coming live to you soon! If you’ve enjoying the tours, please support the cause!
(And a “worm dance” to boot … do NOT miss that!) We were headed to the shipyard to work on a Sunday but Brandon said it was too pretty not to sail. Watch as we take a well-deserved break from the yard and hop aboard Brandon’s Gulf Star 45 to fly the chute!
Exciting news kids. Weather depending (always the case, right?) Phillip and I will be headed out today for our first weekend on the hook since … last year?! This boat is ready to go!
And, I’ll keep working hard over here to bring you along every step of the way through videos, photos and blogs. If you’ve been inspired by the journey, get on board!
I almost forgot how it feels. I was standing in our saloon yesterday afternoon, looking out through the cockpit, and I saw the backdrop move. The water, the buildings, a bird squatting on a piling─they all moved about an inch to the right and it caught me off-guard. Imagine if you looked out the window of your house and everything you saw shifted over a few inches. It would make you pause, right? I had to do a double take.
Then I realized the backdrop didn’t move. The boat did! In the water, she moves! Three months on the hard in the shipyard and I had forgot how that feels. While she seems so unwieldy, so monstrous up on the jacks, in the water our boat is fluid. She glides and bobs and sways, and I love that she does. The fact that my future home is an agile sea traveler excites me. Because she moves, she can take us to so many places. I knew that this entire time we’ve been at the yard, but it was like I needed the boat to remind me. And, she did. With just a swift glide in the water. It was like a playful nudge. Look what I can do. I stopped what I was doing and smiled. Standing there (on our floorboards!) in the saloon, looking out on the water behind her stern, I let it all soak in. Our boat is back in the water kids. Oh the places we’ll go!
And, she’s got new rigging.
Oh, oh AND floorboards! (What are those?) No more bilge!
We’re kind of (a little too) excited about it.
Sooooo much more to come!
Thanks to all my Patrons who help me share this journey and help more people realize this awesome dream─to live, travel and be on the water.
Here we go kids! From hot glue sticks to a plywood template to no-sh&* Coosa stringers buttered up and good as new! Thanks as always to the hard-working crew at Perdido Sailor who allowed us DIY’ers to work beside them so we could learn the process. Hope you all enjoy seeing our boat’s bones brought back to life!
WOW. Only $30 to go to Give the Gift of Cruising! You could be the donor that gets me there and then YOU could be the winner! Shut up! I’m serious. GET ON BOARD!
Start of the stringer repair! I know you guys have been excited to see this. The guys at Perdido Sailor finally busted out some proper (oscillating) tools on our rotten stringers so we could start repairing her up right. Oh, and then Russ brought some hoes aboard. Check it out!
Only $48? That’s great! Just a teeny bit more to go. Get inspired. Get on board!
You know that sound, that unmistakeable rattle nearby that tells you someone is about to drop the hook near you and become your new boat neighbor for however long. It’s kind of an impluse, but something inside makes you want to at least pop your head out of the companionway and see who’s come to join you at the anchorage. Is it another sailboat, one with classic lines and lots of jugs and gear strapped to the deck that tells you they must be a cruiser, perhaps a live aboard? Or is it a pimped-out eighty-foot yacht with a blonde hood ornament sunning on the lido deck? Or, maybe it’s a loud, blubbering fishing boat with big wakeboard speakers blaring some country lyric you know will require mention of beer, fish or her? Either way, you’re curious. A rattling chain nearby is one step away from ringing your doorbell (which we all know equates to a knock on the hull). A rattling chain piques your curiosity.
It was funny to see the same reaction happen, though, when we dropped hook at the shipyard. As you likely know from the videos, our gallant s/v Plaintiff’s Rest is currently hauled out, up on the hard at the Pensacola Shipyard having a schlew of work done to ready her to cruise south this coming season. To Cuba and beyond!
And, as you naturally do when you’re hauled out, you start checking the boat for all of those “hauled-out” type things you can only do when she’s out of the water, i.e., replace goobered thru-hulls, add thru-hulls if necessary, replace underwater hoses, check the prop, shaft, stuffing box, etc. Throw on some bottom paint. But, doing those things often gets you looking in lockers and cubbies you haven’t in a while and you start to find all sorts of don’t-have-to-be-hauled out things you want to do just because, well, because you’re in project mode and you obviously can’t go sailing. So, might as well spend your time improving the one thing that will get you back sailing─your beautiful boat! Right?
That’s where we were. Phillip and I were running through every system, locker and inch of our boat to see what all needed to be done (and then what did we merely want done) to improve our boat’s structural integrity, longevity and performance for our coming cruising years. One of those things ended up being replacement of the anchor chain. But it didn’t start out that way. Our initial goal in dumping the chain out of the locker was not to inspect or replace it but, rather, to give us access to the backing plate of the bobstay (which is usually buried in wet, salty chain (a situation we plan to remedy as part of this minor re-fit). But, we needed access to the backing plate of the bobstay to allow us to inspect it for potential replacement as part of our re-rig of the boat. So, out the chain went.
It rattled and rocked and created quite a ruckus in the yard. I did not think it would draw the same reaction from our boat neighbors as it did on the water but … sure enough. After a minute or so of rattling, our buddy Mike on the Tartan “next door” popped his head out to see who was dropping hook next to him at the yard. Like I said, I can’t explain why it makes you want to crane your head around and look but you just sense the urge. And, it wasn’t thirty minutes later, after our chain was all dumped and Phillip and I found ourselves focused in on our bobstay project that we, too, heard that familiar rattle. Buried down in the anchor chain locker, my wrench holding the nuts on the backs of the bolts Phillip was removing outside at the waterline on the bow, I could hear it through the thick hull of our boat,
and I hollered through it to Phillip: “Who’s that?”
Funny I should say that at the yard, I know. It’s not like boats are meandering and moving around like they do in an anchorage, but it was my natural response. I wanted to know who was dropping anchor next to us. “It’s Mike!” Phillip hollered through to me in the anchor locker. Turns out our inclination to drop our chain out inspired him to do the same to give her a look-see. Like I said, might as well if you can’t go sailing. When Phillip pulled the last bolt on our bobstay and I could finally come topside to see the goings-on at the “anchorage,” we all had a good laugh about it because it was kind of funny to see two boats, our Niagara 35 and Mike’s Tartan 37, both up on the hard, with both of our hooks dropped as if we would be mooring there for a while.
I shouted over to Mike: “Nice anchorage, huh? Not too rolly!”
He laughed and said, “Yeah, well protected. You guys ought to come over and join us for cocktails later. We can watch the sunset from our cockpit.”
And it was true. We could. Since we hauled the boat out in December, Phillip and I have taken in many-a-sunset from our cockpit, which faces south, southwest right now and offers us a nice view of the sunset over Bayou Chico just over our port stern. It’s been a funny feeling thinking all of us here at the yard aren’t really on anchor here, enjoying a peaceful pristine mooring─far from it actually with all of the dust, daily grinding and the not-so-romantic atmosphere at the shipyard─but we are still “boat neighbors” for the time being. We met Mike here at the yard when our poor little wounded boat was hauled out and set up on jacks near him at the yard. I didn’t meet him until a couple of weeks later but when I looked back at our haul-out footage in preparation for making the haul-out video for you all, I saw him standing in his cockpit, a drink in hand, his wife Sherry by his side, and they pointed at our boat as we were brought in. Just like he probably would if we were on the hook. Hey, Sherry, check out our new neighbor.
And, Phillip and I have been overwhelmingly surprised to find the same kind of camaraderie at the shipyard as we have always found on anchor. All of the boat owners nearby will share their projects with you, their tools, stories of their setbacks and their latest hardware headache. Mike quickly became a good friend and by taking up the guys at shipyard’s offer to poke a little fun at us while our mast was residing at the yard alone, he also became known as the “Resident Bee Expert.” It takes a little explaining when we introduce him for the first time to other boat owners who come and go at the yard, but we like the title for him, so the name stays.
We also were pleased when we heard Bob aboard s/v Partager would soon be joining us at the yard. We had met him before and been aboard his boat during our trip to the Keys in 2014, but Bob impressed us even further as a “shipyard neighbor” by bringing us every few days fresh copies of SouthWinds magazine, Cruising Outpost or whatever other sailing rag he had picked up at the marina office. He was actually the first one to see the write-up Steve Moore did of my Salt of a Sailor book in the last SouthWinds issue and he made a special trip to the yard to bring me a copy and congratulate me. Bob has also been very helpful in offering us tools to use, spare products as well as his advice and opinions on certain projects we have been undertaking. And, as you know, he was generous enough to allow me to film a tour of his boat while on the hard.
Our friend, Russ, is here, too, next to us at the yard, aboard his 1963 Pearson Rhodes 41. He’s been the Perdido Sailor employee who has teased us the most as lawyers soon-to-be live-aboards but also pushed us the most to conquer projects we thought might be a little out of our capabilities and he helped us build our rotten stringers back good as new.
Although Phillip and I are beyond eager to splash and begin meeting folks as we had before, back on anchor─our boat gently rocking on the water, that light lapping sound of little waves kissing her hull and our icy glasses clinking in front of a brilliant magenta sunset over the stern─we have been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and camaraderie at our current “anchorage.” It is mighty strange to think we will miss these hard times on the hard. But, I can already tell, there are certain aspects of it─the people, the projects, the friendships daily formed and fortified─that we will look back on fondly as we reminisce about our winter at the yard.
Only $48? That’s great! Just a teeny bit more to go. Get inspired. Get on board!
Okay, you all called it. It’s time to haul out. “Uncle!” we cried. But, we were proud of the demo we accomplished DIY style. Now it’s time to take that same attitude to the shipyard and do this job with the professionals so we learn how to do it right, but save time (and our fingers!) in the process. Season Two, that’s a wrap!
Whoa! We’re so close. Only $70 to go. Let’s make this happen kids!
Seems our hack job didn’t really pass muster and we have, in the words of Brandon with Perdido Sailor, “a lot more to do.” So, bad news and now a very BIG decision to make. What do you think we should do?