Ice Ice Baby

Living aboard La Vida Dulce has certainly been a learning experience.  The first part wasn't too bad because the weather was still nice and we had weekends of sailing to look forward to.  In my inexperienced mind I thought that the winter wasn't going to be all that different and even planned on some weekend sailing during those heat waves in January.  Uh-huh, dream on dude.  Life on board in the wintertime is a whole different game.  First and foremost, it's just too cold to go sailing.  There have been days when I thought to myself "we should be out there" but the reality is that my crew has no interest in getting frostbite and I haven't tried sailing solo yet.  To be completely honest, I'd probably get out there and be miserable.

Of course going sailing is pretty much a pipe-dream anyway because since mid December we've been iced in for all but two days.  OK, so I'm exaggerating, but not by much.  According to the National Weather Service for December and January we had 10 days with the high below 32 degrees (F) and 60 days with the low below 32.  I'm talking frozen creek here.  So sailing has been pretty much out of the question unless you have a boat with 1/2" steel plate in the bow.  Being iced in has been interesting in it's own way.  I started out being overly concerned about ice building up around the hull and would run the engine at 1500 rpm's in reverse for an hour or so twice a day.  This served to stir up the warmer water below the surface and break away the ice for a pretty good distance around the boat.  The dock lines held us in place at our slip and the water just flowed forward across the hull.  It worked great but it was noisy and used up precious fuel which now has to be carried in by hand.  I eventually stopped doing this and settled on using the boat hook to break up the ice about a foot or so out from the hull all the way around.  Even when the ice on the creek was 4" thick it stayed thin around the boat due to my boat hook and the natural motion of the boat.  We do have to keep an eye on it though.

OK, so ice is pretty much the main theme here (I would also like to mention that we've been making ice cubes in our freezer, one tray at a time, and it's been working out very nicely.  Just gotta have those Bloody Mary's!)  Since we've been iced in so much it's created a problem that we didn't foresee.  With our new handy-dandy gold plated ($$$ cha-ching) 60 gallon holding tank we can last about 2 weeks between pumping out.  I'm a pretty simple guy, don't mind making the trek up to the showers on most occasions.  Cheri on the other hand is a total "Princess" and demands the comforts of home.  I don't blame her at all here, in fact I think she deserves it.  Way back in the beginning I promised her this wouldn't be "camping" so we've made every effort to make life on board as comfortable as possible.  And why not?  It's our home, not a pup tent!

Herrington Harbour North makes a big deal about being "green".  They have tidal marshes and nature walks and recycling stations and lotsa rules about working on your boat in a "green" manner.  The owners are very active in "Save the Bay" kinda stuff.  The owners, by the way, are a father/son team, not some faceless corporation, and they operate things on a personal level.  They also preach customer service.

So here's the rub.  Since we've been iced in for most of the time this winter we hired a company, Safe Harbor Sanitation, to come to the boat and pump out our holding tank.  These guys were supposed to have some kind of agreement with HHN for this service.  Some companies provide this service using a boat and come right up to your slip and do the dirty deed.  These guys have a system mounted on a cart and they can come out onto the dock which is what's needed when the creek is frozen over.  So we called these guys and arranged to have them come out every two weeks and take care of things.  They came out at the end of December, once, and then we never saw them again.  Two and a half weeks went by and we called them a number of times, left messages, and never heard from them.  After three weeks we were feeling rather desperate and asked HHN to launch a boat to break the ice so we could get over to the pump-out station.  We explained our situation and they grudgingly helped us out.  While they were breaking the ice for us I walked out the dock to the pump-out station and found they had "winterized" the system and there was no way for us to get pumped out.  Uhm, we seem to be having a breakdown in communication here.  I talked to the folks at the office and they made phone calls and finally we got a hose hooked up and pumped out our tank.  The folks at the front office said they'd be happy to help us out next time as long as we gave them enough notice to get things set up.  OK, sounds good.  Great customer service.

Two weeks go by, it's time to pump out again.  Still no word from Safe Harbor so on Tuesday I call the office and ask to have arrangements made to pump out on Friday.  "No problem" they say.  Friday comes and the station is all set up but we're iced in.  The entire creek is iced in all the way out to the breakwater.  I walk over to the office and on the way there I run into the yard manager who is the dude in charge of all operations, including setting up the pump-out station and having the ice problem taken care of.  I asked him about getting the boat out to clear a path for us and he said no-way, it's too expensive.  He suggested we hire this company, Safe Harbor, to do it and I told him my sob-story.  No tears from this dude.  He said we should do like everyone else at the marina and use the facilities over by the pool.  Huh?  There's ten other boats at HHN who are live-aboards during the winter and supposedly we're the only ones asking for pump-out service.  The marina thinks all these people are using the "facilities".  Right.  I know the owners of two other boats and both of them are pumping their tanks into the harbor.  This is illegal by the way.  It's also pretty disgusting when you figure that one of them is also using a water maker.  Gag me with a spoon.  That's like putting your well right down the hill from your septic tank.  So I ask the guy what happened to customer service and what about the extra $100/ month we pay to be live-aboards..  He says that covers the extra toilet paper we use.  Wow, what a deal!  I walked up to the office and asked for some pump out tokens and they made sure I understood that we were the only ones using this system.  Grrr.  They really need to think about what they're doing here.  We're trying to "do the right thing", the legal thing, and they're trying to make us feel bad about it.  So now we're starting to realize that live-aboards are just a pain in the ass to this marina.  Why let us stay here in the first place?

I returned to the boat and told Cheri we were gonna start looking for another marina.  I explained what happened and she picked up the phone and called the owners of the marina and relayed our story.  Half an hour later the ice was broken up and the "son" half of the father/son team was sitting on our boat discussing our problem and promising a solution.  Wow!  That's fast action!  This guy explained about their interest in the environment and how their goal was to be the "greenest" marina on the East coast and at the same time to be known everywhere for their customer service.  OK, that's great but the staff has a bit of re-training to go through.  He said he was going to reinforce the company goals at the next staff meeting.  I picture everybody getting chewed out after being told about some unnamed boat owner who's been having problems getting pumped out.  Hmmm, I wonder who that could be?  I'm pretty sure the staff will soon have a new nick-name for the owners of La Vida Dulce.  But maybe not.  Maybe this'll all turn out for the best.  Maybe HHN will truly become Super-Green and be the Shining Star of all marinas on the East Coast.  Maybe they'll even provide dock-side pump-out service in the winter.  And just maybe I'll wake up tomorrow morning and be twenty years younger.

So, yikes!  I've really gone on and on about this.  I started out to say how different life on-board is in the winter.  Ya don't go sailing after all.  You eat, sleep and work during the week and then on weekends you eat, sleep and work on the boat.  Plus you get to haul 25 gallons of fuel down from the parking lot every weekend.  And break ice away from the hull.  I'm sure there's more.  Maybe the biggest challenge is being cooped up inside because of the weather.  It's kinda like spending every weekend being locked up with your wife inside a walk-in closet.  It's only gonna be as good as you make it.  People keep saying that we're "Living The Dream".  I just hope that when I wake up we can go sailing.

Note:  This is an update from almost three years later.  As it turns out Herrington Harbour Marina is now considered one of the top marinas on the East coast.  It's the top "green" marina on the Chesapeake Bay.  Within a year the owner invested in a pump-out boat and completely rebuilt the pump-out system on the dock.  They provide year-round service at a fair rate, $20 per month.  So they did become "Super Green" and they did become a "Shining Star".  I'm sure it sounded like I was being sarcastic a few paragraphs back there but it was simply me being prophetic.  Unfortunately I did not wake up 20 years younger.