Workin' Onna Dockada Bay.....

Otis Redding - Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

Originally written on February 25, 2015:

Another cold weekend.  I know, I know, it's Winter.  This is brutal cold weather though.  You walk halfway down the dock and your face hurts from being so cold.  The Bay is still frozen over and the ice at our dock is about 6" thick.  I usually try to keep an open channel around the boat by breaking the ice with the boat hook and pushing the large chunks back under the surface.  These last few weeks it got away from me though and now the ice is too thick to do anything about.

On Friday I picked up another 30 gallons of diesel to feed the heater.  In coast mode it uses about 0.1 gallons per hour but with this bitter cold we have now it's running full blast all the time and still not able to keep up.  I have to supplement the diesel heater with an electric heater to get the temperature up to 70 degrees F.  I had both of them going full blast out in the salon to keep things cozy.  When I went to take a shower I found that I had no cold water and the hot water was just a trickle at first.  I suspected a frozen hose but it could have been something worse like a blown out hose.  I checked the bilge and found about 4" of water, more than normal but I hadn't checked it in a while.  I did notice ice down there too.  If a hose had blown off there would have been a lot more water so that was a good sign that it was most likely a frozen hose.  I opened up the water panel for the shower and pulled off the cold water hose to verify no flow.  I noticed that the hoses snaked down into the cavity between the shower wall and the starboard hull.  Hmm, might get kinda chilly in there.  I decided the best thing I could do would be to position the electric heater so it blows against this spot.  It took all day to get water flowing again and the heater now stays in the forward head all the time.

It was so cold on Friday it was all I could do just to fill the Jerry cans.  I left them in the car until warmer weather, which finally hit on Sunday with temperatures in the low 40's.  T-shirt weather!  I added 30 gallons to the tank to give us a few more weeks of heat.  All I need at this point is for the water to get over 38 degrees and then we can switch back to the reverse cycle heat.  After I did the fuel transfer thing I took Bella for a walk.  I don't think she'd been off the boat for over a month.  She was so excited she just ran back and forth on the dock.  Pretty funny.

In the afternoon I got to work on the cabinet project.  Saturday I had hauled my 2' x 4' sections of 1/2" plywood down to the boat and laid out all the parts for the cabinets.  On Sunday I pulled a cart down the dock and used it for a workbench.  With my trusty cool-man saber saw I had everything cut out within a few hours.  The end panel on the long low cabinet has a "skin" that I ordered from the factory.  It's 1/8" thick and glues to the plywood panel behind it.  This is the only outside plywood surface of this cabinet that shows and this "skin" really dresses it up nicely.  For both these cabinets there are very few parallel or perpendicular surfaces.  The aft bulkhead in this cabin angles out from the hull at about 20 degrees.  The hull itself angles in towards the stern and also has a nice slope to it.  This makes getting a snug fit kinda challenging and requires rechecking all your measurements.  I used heavy cardboard for templates on the most difficult parts and that really paid off.  Assembly is going nicely and I hope to have these in useable condition after one more weekend of effort.

We had originally planned to take off in April for the Bahamas and continue on from there into the Pacific.  As our departure time got closer we realized this plan wasn't going to work for us.  A major factor was in preparing our finances and investments for retirement.  Over the last three years we've tried to refinance our boat several times and despite having adequate income, good jobs and high credit scores we were turned down because we live on a boat.  Some banks claimed it was because live-aboards are vagabonds and are a higher risk of running out on their loans.  Uhm, gee, that doesn't really apply to us.  Others said it was because the Federal Government's "Department of Homeland Security" puts pressure on banks not to deal with anyone who doesn't have a home stuck in the dirt.  Something to do with false identity and terrorists and the like.  Oh yeah, that sounds more like us.  Makes much more sense.  The effect of this ridiculous prejudice is that it causes honest people to lie about where they live and with that they take the chance of losing their boat when the bank calls in the loan because they submitted false information.  What terrorist in their right mind would want to live on a boat anyway?  It's so much work they wouldn't have time to  make bombs or plan terrorist kinda stuff.  I think "Homeland Insecurity" would be a more appropriate name.

All that just to say that we decided to buy a house.  We chose Florida because we have family down there and also because Florida has no state income tax.  They also have really good prices on homes right now.  We chose a nice little house in a good neighborhood located on the Atlantic side with a short drive to the water.  For the first few years this will serve as our hurricane hole where we'll return from the islands and put the boat on the hard for the Summer and Fall.  We'll have a place to store stuff from our voyages and Uncle Sam will be happy too.

Our plan for right now goes like this:  I'll quit my job in eight days.  That's not going to be a surprise for them because I gave almost three years notice.  We'll move the stuff we have in storage along with one of the cars down to Florida, come back and sell the other car through CarMax.  With that taken care of we'll cast off and take the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW) down the coast to Florida.  If we leave by the end of March we'll have about three months to make the 1200 mile trip.  That works out to about 13 miles per day!  That's a very slow pace and should give us plenty of time to explore and see some sights along the way.  Maybe even stay for awhile if we really like a spot.  We'll start out from Hampton, Virginia and take the canal through the Great Dismal Swamp.  Cheri found several good books, Cruiseguide for the Intracoastal Waterway and Anchorguide for the Intracoastal Waterway that give us detailed information about pretty much everything along the way, including what to see, where to go, where to anchor, sources for fun, food and fuel, etc.  When we get the boat down to Florida we'll store her on the hard at a marina near our house.  The marina has cradles that tie down to the tarmac and this is something the insurance company seems to like so that's a plus there too.  Even though this is a major change from cruising the islands it only delays us for the next hurricane season.  We're both excited about just getting away and doing some exploring.

With the boat on the hard in Florida I'll be able to finish up the water maker and several other projects before we head to the Bahamas next Fall.  What's more, I'll be able to work out of a shop at home instead of on the dock.  Now won't that be a nice change?