It’s already been 10 days since I last posted. I’m still hanging out in Stuart. Time has gone very quickly! The good news is that the weather seems to have changed to spring already! The last few days have been in the upper 70’s and even hit 80 degrees a couple of times, and the foreseeable forecast (i.e., for at least the next two weeks) shows the same. I can’t express how much better my mood is when I’m not cold! It’s been awesome breaking out my sun shirts and shorts and stowing my electric blanket!
Live Music
There are a surprisingly large number of places which host live music around downtown Stuart, some nightly! One in particular, Terra Fermata, is a very cool outdoor venue with a different theme every night. Last Monday some cruisers whom I had met at Shepard Park, Elisa and Bill Obermeyer, invited me to that night’s jam session. According to them, the owner (also a musician) invites different musicians from different bands to play together for the first time on stage every Monday night. They just start jamming, working off each other and the music. I was very cool and fun to watch.
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Now that the weather has warmed up significantly and consistently, I’ve been keeping the portlights and hatches open at night. That has made me I realize how much an urban place Stuart is, at least transportation-wise. I have already mentioned the at least hourly trains that run from about 4 am through midnight, always blaring their horns as they pass through town and over the bridge 1/2 mile away. There are also two automobile bridges on either side of that railway bridge over which young males in obnoxiously-loud vehicles (or middle-aged lawyers in obnoxiously-loud Harleys) cross at all hours. In addition to those, there is also Witham Field, a general aviation airport just about a mile away, the final approach and departure course for which is right over this anchorage. So, while there are no big jets, there are a lot of business jets and prop jobs flying over the anchorage starting well before daylight and continuing until late evening. So, while is it pretty here and quite convenient, I wouldn’t call it tranquil!
Bottom Cleaning
The warmer weather has also made the bottom cleaning of my boat less unpleasant. While the water temperature is still pretty cool, it’s much nicer coming out of it to a warm, sunny deck instead of a chilly, windy deck! Same with cockpit showers. Sooo much nicer. I love Florida! 🙂
Despite the warmer weather, the hull cleaning has gotten a bit tedious, mainly because it is completely dark under the boat. I actually broke out a previously-unused underwater flashlight thinking it would illuminate the hull, but the water here in the river is so dirty that it didn’t do a thing! So below about 6″ of depth, I have to clean completely by touch. It gets a bit creepy when I’m way under the “bilges”–under the wide, overhanging topsides–because it feels like I’m in a cave, and I start to get a bit claustrophobic with a little bit of panic creeping in at times. It’s my dark-and-cold phobia kicking in, I guess. In such cases I have to talk myself into remaining calm, realize that I’m getting all the air that I need, that there’s no need to rush or panic, that I’ll soon be warm again, and to just keep scrubbing!
I have definitely come to realize that Serendipity has a hull with a lot of wetted surface! That’s what I get having a boat with a full keel, I guess. To give it an adequate scrubbing, I’m having to break the cleaning into four separate dives–at least until I get to a place where I can actually see something and the water is warmer, making the process quicker and easier. (Each dive is usually separated by a day because of how cold I am and the need to recharge the hookah battery.)
For the first two dives I put an extra weight in my diving belt because I’m deeper, cleaning start with the keel–i.e., the lowest part of the hull. Starting at the bow with a suction cup handle in one hand and a coarse scrubbing pad in the other, I work my way down and aft, cleaning everything within arm’s length of the bottom of the keel. I also have a metal scraper tucked into my shorty wetsuit pant leg that I pull out when I encounter barnacles.
As mentioned, once I get below about a foot of depth, everything is completely black, so I have to try to remember what my hull looks like, where the propeller, rudder, through-hulls, and zincs are all located. Since I’m anchored in only about 7-8′ of water, I also find my fins sink into about a foot of ooze that the bottom of the river consists of. That is, unless the current is running, in which case I’m held out more horizontally, kept from being swept downstream only by the suction cup handle.
Speaking of which, the hardest part of the whole cleaning process so far is moving the suction cup handle from place to place! It is surprisingly strong, and usually doesn’t want to release. Sometimes it cooperates by sliding laterally along the hull when I’m ready to move another arm’s length aft, but if not, I have to try to pry it off with a single gloved hand since the other hand is holding either the scrubbing pad or the scraper. While I’m trying to do this, I have to take the load off the handle, and that means kicking my fins–especially if there is a current running (which there is most of the day). Each of these handle repositionings can take 15-30 seconds which gets quite frustrating and tiring. I tried a different kind of section cup handle–one with release levers–but it won’t hold on Serendipity’s very curvy hull. (She’s a lady, what can I say?) Of course, what also takes up an inordinate amount of time is simply not being able to see what I’m doing; I’m sure that I miss some spots while I probably over-clean others.
Also, I’ve learned that here in the St. Lucie River cleaning the hull every two weeks seems like a good interval. I was forced to wait almost three weeks this last time, and small barnacles had started to take hold. I think if I maintain a schedule of every two weeks I won’t even need the scraper.
Cold Shower
And speaking of cockpit showers, my oldest son, Nicholay, gifted me a battery-operated water pump for Xmas, with the idea of my using it as a portable bilge pump in my dinghy (to remove rainwater, etc.). However, I found an even better use for it: cockpit showers! I attach a normal hand sprinkler to the end of the pump’s hose, fill up a bucket half with cold water and half with water heated from the stove, submerge the pump in it, turn it on, and voila! I have a very easy-to-use shower with a copious stream of warm water. I love it!
However, my first attempt at using it didn’t go so well! I put everything together, hosed my body down with the lovely warm water, turned off the pump, then lathered up from head to toe. What I didn’t realize was that while I was doing this, the connection between the sprinkler head and the pump hose had popped out. So, while I had been lathering up, all the warm water had been draining out of the bucket due to the syphon effect, and when I went to reach for the sprinkler head (searching by touch because my face was full of soap and my eyes closed), I found the hose with nothing on the end of it and a bucket with no more water in it! Worse yet, I had already used all the hot water that I had, so now had only a Jerry can full of cold water handy. Did I mention it was 50 degrees outside, and so was the water?! So, that was a very cold rinse. But with the addition of a hose clamp, the pump has worked wonderfully ever since!
First Shower Inside the Boat
So, Serendipity’s head (bathroom) is designed to also be a shower (like some RVs). There is a shower head plumbed into the freshwater system, and the floor is a grate with a sump underneath to catch the shower runoff and pump it overboard (so it doesn’t end up in the bilge where it would eventually start to smell). However, everything I had read about the cruising lifestyle said that most cruisers avoided taking a shower inside their boat whenever possible because: 1) It made a big wet mess; and 2) It brought a lot of moisture into the boat, a source for mold. But, I had always wanted to try it in case I would need it someday when it was too cold outside or I was in a tight anchorage with no privacy to shower on deck.
So, the other night I was in desperate need of a shower after having worked out and dived on the boat in the dirty river, but the evening was cold and windy (and dark), so I thought I’d give the shower in the head a shot. I wouldn’t use the built-in shower head, though, because that water would be cold, but instead would use the same bucket and portable pump that I used out in the cockpit; I’d just set it on the toilet.
So, I cleared out everything from the head that I didn’t want to get wet, closed the cute little cover that protected the toilet paper roll, got the bucket full of warm water, closed the head door and took my shower.
While the shower itself was fine (and certainly warmer than being out on deck) I doubt I will ever do it again. What a pain to clean/dry everything! It took me over an hour! I even had to remove the composting toilet to dry up the water which had run underneath it. The mirrors, the walls, the door, the cupboards–everything was wet to one extent or another even though I had tried to control the spray (which wasn’t very strong, anyway). Yeah, I finally understood what they were talking about! A last resort from now on.
Appreciation for My Long Bowsprit (That’s what she said!)
I’ve had mixed feelings about the Shannon 38’s six-foot-long bowsprit. It was designed this way to allow it to be a cutter rig, i.e., have a staysail as well as a jib/Genoa. That is good. But, it sticking out so far makes it difficult to maneuver in a marina. It also means that it doesn’t take much to damage it severely. In fact, a fellow Shannon 38 owner shared on our Facebook group that they lost control over the bow when docking with a strong crosswind, hitting the bowsprit on a piling and causing over $12k worth of damage!
But, I have discovered a good thing about having such a long bowsprit, and that is the weighing anchor process–more specifically, cleaning the anchor. When talking with cruisers, the topic of anchoring often comes up. These discussions often include muddy bottoms and the inconvenience they create because of the resulting stinky, muddy chains and caked-up anchors, i.e., trying to prevent both from dirtying and stinking up the boat. Especially demanding seems to be getting the caked-on mud off the anchor’s flukes before it’s brought up onto the bow roller.
Once I got to the land of muddy bottoms last year (basically, north of Florida), I quickly developed a technique to easily take care of that problem.1 If my anchor comes up caked with mud, and it doesn’t come off after dunking it a couple of times using the windlass, I lower it back into the water about a foot, then go back to the cockpit, put the boat in gear, bring the RPMs up to 1000, and slowly motor out of the anchorage. The 2-3 knots of speed forcefully drags the anchor along, quickly removing any mud from it. A minute or two later, when I have a clear seaway and the autopilot engaged, I walk forward and bring the now-completely-clean anchor aboard. This would not be possible without such a long bowsprit because the anchor drags back 2-3 feet during the process. On a boat without such a long bowsprit, the anchor would bang violently against the bow, causing significant fiberglass damage. Until these discussions with other cruisers, I hadn’t realized what a real convenience this is for me, especially during transits of the ICW when one is weighing anchor daily, and often in muddy conditions.
The Dinghy: Running Aground and a Citation
Okay, so a few weeks ago, as I related, I went aground for the first time in Serendipity. Well, a week or so ago I went aground for the first time in my dinghy! Well, sort of aground. Dragged a rocky bottom very badly, and at speed.
A couple of Sundays ago, on a (back then) rare warm, sunny day, I decided to take a dinghy ride all the way around the point, under the three bridges, to the north side of Stuart where there is a free town dock right on the city’s Riverwalk. I planned to park there, see the Farmer’s Market and the free concert, etc., then dinghy back home. I checked out the nautical chart carefully before leaving (since I don’t have anything to reference while driving the dinghy), and the lowest water listed between the bridges and the town dock was 2-3 feet. The dinghy draws less than a foot, so it seemed like I would be able to go direct.
However, in the event, shortly after I emerged from under the bridges, turned toward the town dock a half mile away, and came up on step, I noticed something under the surface not very far in front of me. I only had time to partially throttle back before the engine was dragging over rocks! I got to the engine, turned it off, and swung it up out of the water as quickly as possible, but by that point, we were past the shallows. The hull had never touched bottom, but the engine sure had! I was sure I had screwed the prop and would have to paddle the mile back to the boat (or get a tow), but to my surprise, there was no damage to the engine or the prop that I could see. As designed, he skeg had shielded the prop. I cautiously started the engine again and motored toward the city dock, very slowly at first, then coming up on step again once in the channel to check the engine at speed. Thankfully, there were no issues!
A few days later I got a citation in the dinghy from the Martin County Sheriff’s boat. Well, almost two citations, actually. I was returning to my boat from Shepard Park when to my shock, from seemingly out of nowhere, a boat hull appeared right next to my head as I was cruising across the St. Lucie River on step. I mean like two feet away. Scared the crap out of me. (It was on my starboard (blind) side as I sat facing the outboard.) I had checked to my right before crossing the channel and there was not another boat in sight, so still don’t know how they appeared a minute later right next to my boat. Anyway, I immediately came off step, and by this point only about 30 feet from Serendipity. After we stopped and they tied me off to their boat, the two officers claimed I had been on plane in a no wake zone and pointed to an area where I was sure did NOT have any no wake signs. They then revealed that everywhere in the county within 600 feet of a shoreline in a no wake zone, sign or no sign. Great. I guess I’m supposed to research each county’s specific nautical rules as I move through them up and down the coast! Whatever! Regardless of how I felt about it, I was respectful to the two officers.
About three days prior, I had decided to finally start carrying a copy of the registration on the dinghy with me. I haven’t really used my dinghy very much until the last couple of months, and even though I knew it was a requirement, I didn’t have a way to carry the registration in the small dinghy and so thought I would likely just lose it. But, now that I was using the dinghy every day and was carrying a dry bag with me all the time, it made sense to print out a copy of the scan I had previously made of it, keep it in the dry bag, and make myself legal.
So, imagine my sense of satisfaction when one of the officers asked to see my drivers license and registration. I smugly pulled from my dry bag my recently-printed registration in a ziplock bag, removed it from same and handed it to the officer. He looked at it and then said, “No, I need the registration for the dinghy.” Huh? I looked puzzled and he said, “This is for a sailboat, not a dinghy.” OMG. I had printed out the wrong registration! Are you kidding me!?!? I told him exactly what had happened, pointed to Serendipity literally 30 feet away and said the correct registration was right there. But he didn’t seem at all interested but instead wrote me up a citation for not having a registration aboard. I couldn’t argue with him. My fault.
But, it still seemed ridiculous. I mean, a registration is just a tax, right? It’s simply a user tax. These days, with a few button presses on their iPads law enforcement can tell whether anyone’s registration is current or not. Having the physical piece of paper is moot; it’s an old pre-Internet requirement. But of course law enforcement officers’ job isn’t to be practical or use common sense—it’s to enforce the law, no matter how outdated.
But, something told me to just keep quiet and be courteous, which I did. While the one officer wrote me up, the other one and I chatted about their boats, their jurisdiction, my being in the Coast Guard (didn’t help), and so on. Then the other guy finally hands me back my license and says that he’s just giving me a warning about the speeding, but is citing me for not having a registration. However, (he continued) if I present my current registration at the country court house in downtown Stuart, or show up in court and present it to him there, the citation would be waived. (Okay, let me get this straight: I couldn’t present it to him 30 feet away, but if I went to the trouble to show up in court and show him there, it would be waived. Whatever!)
So, I took the citation, biked to court the next day, and had the citation waived. Not sure what purpose it all served. Had they posted signs about the 600 feet restriction by the park (where all the dinghies come and go), none of it would have happened. As it was, it took 30 minutes for them to write the citation, and the county clerk’s office took another hour to do the paperwork to waive the citation. Makes absolutely no sense to me. It soooo reminded me of being back in the Army, which was like that 24/7/365.2
Finally, a Good Bus System
I lost a strap to one of my fins when I was climbing back aboard the boat the other day, so needed to visit a dive shop to get a replacement. I found one about three miles north of town but was too tired to bike six miles round trip, so decided to check out the public transportation system. Turns out there was a route going directly there, and the busses are free for military retirees! I had to wait on the bus each way less than five minutes. Finally a reliable and useful bus system!
Starlink Up and Running
I successfully installed my Starlink Mini and wired it into the boat’s DC system. It works fine. Not great, but fine. The Starlink app says that the dish is talking to the satellites at over 150 Mbps, but I’m typically seeing only 30-50 Mbps on my devices. Every once in a while I’ll see over 150 Mbps, but that’s rare. Again, that’s good enough for anything I need, but slower than I anticipated. It seems to draw right about 2 amps (20-25 watts) after warming up for 30 seconds or so.
- The muddy-chain problem is solved on Serendipity through the use of my deckwash hose which aims a saltwater spray at the chain as it comes aboard. ↩︎
- One of the biggest examples I saw of the Army’s stupidity was when they introduced direct deposit for payroll back in the mid-80’s. Up to then, they paid soldiers in cash. But, with new technology, the Army figured it would save money and have been security by making monthly direct deposits into each soldier’s bank account. The problem was that most of the junior enlisted folks didn’t have, and had never had a checking account. And they didn’t want one. They liked getting paid in cash and they liked spending cash. After all, every place on base took cash, and the German establishments sure wouldn’t take an American check. But, the Army mandated every soldier get a checking account so they could start receiving their monthly pay via direct deposit. But (and perhaps you can see where this is going) checks started bouncing all over the place! Soldiers who were never taught how to use a checking account thought that as long as there were still checks in the checkbook, they were good to go. Soon the commissary, the exchange, the bank, and every other retail place on base (and on other bases, too) were in turmoil because so many checks were bouncing. (This is when it often took 10 days or more for checks to clear.) So, to solve this problem, the Arm–in its infinite wisdom–instead of educating the troops on how to manage a checking account, decided to penalize them with increasingly severe punishments for each overdraft. Until (and this is the good part), if a soldier had bounced a total of I think five checks, he would lose his direct deposit “privilege” and would be paid in cash instead! This was the Army in a nutshell. I actually made a little comic strip about how asinine this whole thing was and showed it to my fellow officers, but for some reason, I was the only one who thought it amusing. Nobody else seemed able to see the irony. ↩︎