Putting humpty dumpty back together

So, so much happened over the last few months it was like drinking from a firehose.

In a nutshell, we pulled the boat, got her Irma tattoo fixed, painted her fixed the inside, inspected the swinging keel pennant.

Now I just need to get back down and clean her up. Fun.

bulkhead replaced after fix--little different wood grain, but we are putting up some pictures
to distract from that.

no more scratches--(however our dock finger still isn't fixed)

Our little beauty.

Solving the curious case of the creeping crud

First of all, I do NOT recommend Category 4 hurricanes as a diagnostic tool.  But that being said, we would never probably have discovered this problem without 100mph winds and torrential rains.

Our first suspicion had been hatches, we have two in the general area, but after those were replace and we had a few more tests by thunderstorm, we knew it was still there.

So that means tearing apart the boat.  Shit.

Off goes the cabinetry, the veneer, all of our crap (back berth, our living quarters) and there it was, a little bitty crack in the sealant at the deck/hull joint.  Top sides there was a little bitty gap at our built in chock.

But at least we found it.

Diagram provided by Jorg--boat builder/fixer extraordinaire.

Gap on deck.

The Great Elysium Hatch Replacement

...and we shall not talk about how many BOAT units that cost.

Even funnier, we probably would have postponed except for the curious case of the creeping crud in the back cabin.

So, in true fashion for the husband, if you are going to do one, you do them all.  And we found out we have a weird size (thanks, UK), my spouse and his buddy obviously don't follow the measure twice before you order a gazillion.  And our friend, who is the absolute bomb at what he does, had decided to remove ALL old hatches before finding out that the ones we ordered were the wrong size.

Comedy of errors.

Defender came to our rescue, accepting the wrong ones back even though it's not their policy for certain items and we got the new ones.

The happy ending to the story?

I used to see from crazed hatches like this:

But now I see out of hatches like this:

We just have the deck mounted hatches to do now.

Oh, and no, the creeping crud issue did not get fixed from hatch replacement.

The Curious Case of the Creeping Crud

A month or so after Irma, we were down to our routine checking in on boat and putting Humpty Dumpty back together and I noticed a very ominous stain in the wood veneer of our back cabin.

Oh, crap.

We's got a big leak.  I placed painter's tape to mark the boundaries so we could see if it was done or it expanded.

The veneer never felt wet, but over the next few months we notice it would expand/morph/move.  A couple of big thunderstorms had moved through during that time, so we new more water was getting in but how.

The obvious suspect was the portholes, so that's what we went after first.

When we first noticed, the stain was around the corner and also down to where the tape was.

I've encounter wood stains/rot/mildew, but this is just weird.

Catching up with posts time

Been having a few months of 'how can I clone myself so I can be 5 places at once' experience.

Then I realized the world couldn't handle 5 of me and I gots to stop over thinking everything.

So, here come some updates, not necessarily in chronological order, but in the order I can find the relevant information.  ;-P

So a few weeks ago, our piling finally got replaced, yay us!  Lessee, only six months after the hurricane.

They squeezed in a mighty big barge to do it.

Now we'll have to get the boat over their to add a hook to drape dock lines.  (Accessories not included.)

The Hunsinger Guide to Grounding your Boat

If ya gonna do it....own it.

We have always been well aware of the vagaries of our channel, narrow, shallow and unforgiving.
There's the main channel, and then it branches off to our channel and the commerical marina. That's when it gets weird.

And our channel is not marked well at all, in fact I did find an older chart that proves that it is missing a very important ATON.

However, one of the reasons we chose our Southerly is because we did like the variable keel and grounding plate aspect. Because we are doing some serious skinny water sailing here. Oh, and hurricane, yeah, that thing, rearranging the bottom and such.

So, what went wrong. I was at the helm, and I am mad at myself for some seriously rookie mistakes.
To sum it up: I WAS AT THE HELM. I HAD THE INFORMATION, I NEEDED TO BE IN CHARGE.

But, nope, this time I thought I'd be a team player.  So, Tim, who usually is NOT on the deck was a bit freaked out because since we approached from a different way and since he was on the deck, it all looked very unfamiliar to him.

He keeps calling out, slow down, keel up you are going the wrong way.  I did tell him that it would be fine, just keep a hand for the boat.  But he insisted, and since I am not always the best team player, I thought--well maybe he sees something I don't.

So, I slowed TOO far down (I own that one) and keel was too far up and big old blue baby is now at the whims of the breeze, wave action and current which are all currently on the beam.

And she went sideways, in a hurry, and we went from 10 feet of water to 3 feet of water..just...like...that.

Tim is stubborn at the best of times, and he thought he could get us off.  It took him a bit to realize that I had called it--time to involve TowBoat US.

At one point, we could have had it, but Tim didn't have faith when I said keep backing up.  For some reason he had got really disoriented at this point of what was where (and why I harp to study your charts constantly).

So, game plan in place.  We bicker alot, but when it comes time to put emergency plan in motion we got each other's back (not that this was an emergency, but the tide was rising and we would have been pushed deeper into shallows, it wasn't going to rise enough for us to get off ourselves until 11pm that night).

So, Tim calls TowBoat US and I drop our anchor, we tried to swing it out, but awkward and heavy.  I did suggest that one of us (Tim) walk the anchor out until about 5 feet of water and we could possibly pull ourselves off, but Tim wasn't getting into the water and I wasn't sure I could get our heavy ass anchor/chain set in.  Both of us really wished we had a dinghy, we could have pulled ourselves off.

So, we waited about 30 minutes for our rescue, which doesn't look bad because we don't heel over when grounded, we just sit flat bottomed.  (Cue in Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls--our grounding theme song now)

After our tow showed up it was get the bridle on and we slid back into deep water like we were on greased skids.  He pulled us for a little bit I think to help rinse off any sand in our prop and rudder and followed us back in for the paper work. 

Long story short--from here on out more communication before we reach the channel.  Whomever is at the helm will need to let the other crew member know what their plans for approach are.  EVERYBODY needs to understand what is going on so there is no 'you are going the wrong way' assumptions. Make sure you are not TOO throttled down.

Last but not least....make sure your tow insurance is paid up.  :-)

Meandering about the Keys

Last few trips down to the Keys we did a bit of wandering about.  Anchoring at our usual hidey hole and sailing up to Marathon to see some friends and hang out up there.

Pictures can't really show the damage that is still visible from Irma.  Large patches of mangroves are completely dead and you see brown along the shoreline.  Up to Marathon I still noticed random bits of things floating around in the water close to shore, more things to dodge besides the lobster balls.

All along the Keys are the final staging areas for the relinquished or unclaimed boats to be destroyed and hauled off. They get lined up with a semi size commercial dumpster beside them, by this time all electronics, engine and environmental hazard stuff has been removed.  Then its crunch, crunch, crunch until they get down to the keel.  Even the mast will get broken up.  However, up in Marathon there are stacks of masts recovered and I guess if you need a mast you can arrange to see if there is one that will fit your boat.

Things are slowly returning to normal in some areas, but where the eye passed will still be a while.  A lot of the lower income housing (boats and trailers) that service based employees lived are gone and there is a shortage of affordable housing for them and therefore a shortage of employees for the tourism industry.

Its been interesting to see the socio-economic effects of what a major storm can do to an island chain.