Posted by Bo | May 18th, 2013
You know how sometimes when you’re learning you have a breakthrough and suddenly something that was once black magic comes into crystal clear focus and is no longer this mysterious monster that you thought you’d never understand?
That happened to me this week.
My boat has a 90hp Ford Lehman diesel engine. Until this week, I knew very little about diesel engines. Several months ago, I’d heard rumors that the “architect” of my engine, Bob Smith, gave training workshops a few times a year, so I searched around and found that the next one was in Anacortes, Washington at a TrawlerFest, put on by Passagemaker Magazine.
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Posted by Bo | May 9th, 2013
Had a great time hanging out with the ‘rents last weekend. We were stuck in the marina for a couple days “slip sailing”—sitting on the boat without leaving the marina slip—because it was too windy.
Which is like the worst reason ever to not go actual-sailing, we can agree.
The problem wasn’t so much that there was too much wind to go sailing as it was the fact that I don’t exactly know how to maneuver the boat out of the marina under those conditions without hitting every other boat and possibly a restaurant.
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Posted by Bo | May 5th, 2013
Looking back at the logbook for our 3 day sailing trip last week, there’s an entry at 0651 on Day 2 that simply says “Bird!”. We were somewhere south of Apalachicola and hadn’t seen land for around 18 hours, so having a bird land on the boat in the middle of the gulf was a notable event.
0828: Named bird Sam.
Sam rode with us almost all day, checking out various spots around the boat. Around 3:30 that afternoon we had to do a little storm dodging, but Sam was still riding it out with us. He even spent some time cleaning the boat of a few insects, which I appreciated.
And then, as quietly as he appeared, by 5pm, Sam was gone.
Posted by Bo | May 3rd, 2013
Something I’ve yet to master is steering my boat in reverse. I could blame it on the modified full keel or the undersized rudder, but I’m pretty sure it’s just because I haven’t spent enough time practicing yet.
When I say I haven’t “mastered” it, I actually mean that I’ve yet to feel any steerage whatsoever when the boat is going backwards. At first I thought it was just me, but Randy had the opportunity to try to back into our slip in Clearwater after I butchered the first 2 attempts.
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Posted by Bo | May 1st, 2013
We’re home! After 47 hours & 27 minutes we made it home to several friends shooting fireworks from the marina docks.
The crossing was uneventful, which is a good thing. I’m extremely proud about how well the boat handled the seas. She ran great and we made better time than I expected.
If you followed our satellite tracker, you probably noticed that a few times we veered a little bit off course. At one point we did it because we realized we were on track to get to Pensacola at 1:30am, so we shut the engine off and sailed for a while. At another point we turned due north to avoid the brunt of a storm cloud.
I shot some pictures & video that I’ll try to get put together in the next few days. I’ll be around all weekend, so if you’re in the Orange Beach area, give me a shout.
