Waiting for Weather

We were ready yesterday morning to leave, but the weather gods seem to really want us to stay here in Stuart. Monday was a day of running around, to buy a flag and flag-hanging stuff, a handheld GPS, new dive equipment that should have been purchased a month ago(!), new sunglasses to replace a pair that have disappeared into the bowels of the boat, to wash the car that Karen and Pete were generous to let us have during this stop, to buy cat litter and food and toys, and all that last-minute stuff you need to stock a boat to go to the islands.

Last week was also productive. The alternator arrived as expected, and rxc spent a day and a half installing it. The Jeanneau wiring from the alternator to the main switch was woefully undersized, even for the alternator that came with the boat, so that had to be replaced, which made this project a bit longer than anticipated. This is surprising, because Jeanneau installed some serious cable from the batteries to the switch, but they skimped on the alternator wiring – go figure. You can’t run 120 amps thru 4ga wire, and I think even 80 amps is too much for 4ga. Luckily, there is a marine electric shop here in Stuart who had a really great deal for me on 1ga, black wire. About 10 ft for $10(!). Those of you who do boat electrical work know that this is a real deal. I had to wrap some of it in red electrical tape, but that was easy and a cheap solution. My handy-dandy whacker-crimper did its thing, and now I have a fully compliant wiring system. It was tight to install the alternator, and I think I may need to buy a shorter belt in the future, but this will be fine to get us over to the islands.

The boat stamp was completed by the nice people at Stuart Rubber Stamp, and they also made up a very nice plaque with the call sign to install next to the radio.

The trip to Palm Beach was informative. We have now been cleared by the doctors to continue on our way, and just have another checkup in about 10 months, in France. We celebrated by buying a bottle of 2002 Silver Oak cabernet which we will give to the Bassos when we arrive. This was in a Total Wine in PB, which had more high-end wine than I have seen in a long time. People in PB evidently have a higher standard for wine than the rest of us. At the other end of the wine scale, we found an incredibly good merlot in Walmart for $2.97(!), and went back for a case - Oak Leaf Vineyard from Ripon, Ca. Karen tried it at dinner on Monday nite, and said she was going to stop at Walmart on the way back to her house to pick some up. We also tried their cab, but it was a bit thin. We probably should have bought 2 cases…

We also stopped at an Italian food store – Carmine’s – and bought take-out stone crabs to picnic on. We have become stone-crab aficionados here. We served them together with a risotto Milanese to Pete and Karen on Monday, and had a great time.

We did some major food shopping at several different Wal-marts, at Publix, and at our favorite fruit/veg place (Rorabach on Indian Street), and re-arranged the storage in the boat. Now that the electrical work is complete, we moved excess wire to deep storage in some bilge locations that are under screwed-down floorboards. We also put some books there that we won’t need for a while. This freed up space for wine and food and storage of other “stuff”. Storage on a boat is a continual dance, as you figure out new/better places to store stuff, and move it all around. A lot of our issues here arise from the excess amount of stuff we brought down from the house, and from jlm’s mother’s apartment, but we were pressed, and erred on the side of having too much, rather than having to buy it again. However, if you don’t know where the stuff is stored, you can end up buying it again, in any case. We lost a bag of lentils for about 2 weeks, and were going nuts trying to find it. I think I have enough tools at this point to take apart anything on the boat, but I can’t do any fiberglass work because I don’t have any resin. Hopefully, I won’t need it.

We planned to leave yesterday, but the weather was truly miserable, raining and blowing all day and all night. There were tornado warning boxes all around us at midnight, and we even started up the boat radar to see if we could spot threatening weather. Luckily, we didn’t get any damaging winds and the lightning stayed away. If we had left as planned, and anchored where we intended, we would have seen 60 mph gusts, which would have been too exciting…
So today we decided to stay and catch up on paperwork. We have our taxes essentially complete, and one mother’s taxes, as well. We are now waiting for the last of the paper from the other mother. We also sent off all of the medical claim paperwork. The amount of work needed to keep up with life’s mundane chores is troubling – why have we let it get so complicated? We try to have everything paid automatically, with as little paper as possible, but the paper storage on the boat is becoming an issue. At home, it would all be scanned and shredded, but we don’t have a scanner here, and we have to keep the paper till we get to France, so it has to be stored. Sigh…

Speaking of going to France, the plan there is still unresolved. We now have two estimates for experienced captains to take the boat over, with rxc and one other volunteer crew member. However, we are still waiting for shipping cost estimates from the company in Ft. Lauderdale and Jeanneau, and we will don’t know how we are going to move the cats, because the container ship company out of Guadeloupe has not responded to our enquiry about taking jlm and 4 cats. One possibility involves leaving the boat here in Stuart in April for 7-10 days while both of us travel with 2 friends to France with the 4 cats. This can work because it looks like mid-late April is not a high-travel season to France from Miami. Then, after they are installed in France, rxc can come back alone and either take the boat down to Ft. Lauderdale to ship, or meet the captain and crew and head east. Alternatively, if Jeanneau is able to ship the boat out of Baltimore, we will have to bring it back north and then do the same trip to France out of the DC area. If only the shippers would give us a price, we could make a decision… We hoped to have this resolved before we left Stuart. We are thinking more and more that we will have to sail the boat to France.

Kitties are doing well. Dante had an “event” with the two large labs last week. jlm was off at the marina in the morning, while rxc was checking email. While this was taking place, Dante decided to take a stroll down the pier. He made it all the way to the catamaran next door, where he jumped up to check out the poodle that lives there. jlm started back down the pier, and he knew that he was going to be busted, so he jumped down and started back to our boat. However, he did not realize that it was also time for the dogs to take a walk, and he ended up face-to-face with Annie and Shane on the pier. He turned sideways and puffed himself up to look as big as possible, and they just stopped in their tracks.

THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

And they did not, until rxc came down and scooped him up. This action was met with a big hiss, probably aimed at rxc – not the dogs.

I have been writing this all day, during which the weather has changed from sunny and warm, to pouring down rain, back to sunny, but cool, and now, at 9:00 PM, it is cool and clear and blowing a gale from the NW. We plan to get underway tomorrow around 8, which will require an early rise, to fill water tanks, take on board the bikes, raise the dinghy, undo the cable TV and shore power, and then figure out where to stow the myriad lines and other stuff.

Time to go to bed…