Dalton W. Williams
On March 19, 2002 - Frontier Airlines and a three hour flight to my "fourth life" living aboard Quietly and a new life of sailing adventure.
Having completed my volunteer work at the Olympics and Paralympics on March 16th, there I was driving home to Vail for one last day at the office to clean out my desk and then on to Denver where I spent the evening before my departure to Florida visiting with my friend Deb. I am certain that Deb knows this, but she had a lot to do with my following my dream with her encouragement. She actually took action before I having left the working world back in November, but here I am living the dream while she was talked into getting back into the pressure cooker of technology in a startup company the day I left for Florida! Deb. You've got to follow that dream of teaching English in Mexico ... Project Management in New York City is not it!
So ... here I am on the three hour flight to my "fourth life" living aboard Quietly and a new life of sailing adventure.
I arrived in Fort Lauderdale and picked up a rental car and drove five
miles to Summerfield Boat Works where Quietly was having a bow thruster
installed and the repair items found during the pre-purchase survey corrected. There was still about a week of work that needed to be done so I went to work
learning all that I could from the experts working on Quietly. During the
time I was at Summerfield, there was a Mason 63, the big brother of Quietly,
also at the dock. So of course I could not resist probably the once in a
life time opportunity to make a picture of the two boats next to one another.
Quietly is in front and you can see how much larger the 63 is out past the bow
of Quietly.
At the end of the week, I took Quietly out for a short motor down New River
out to the ocean and back as a quick shake down cruise.
This was my first
time to single hand Quietly as my previous sails during my Christmas trip were
both with a crew of friends. All went well except the new bow thruster
quit after three burst of power until I came back to the dock where there was
now a boat on either side of my place at the dock. Without the bow
thruster to help in maneuvering, I made three attempts at docking in the
now very narrow space when two gentlemen immerged from their boat with an offer
to help and the advice that there was a place with more room further up the
river where I was able to dock with little problem and their assistance with the
dock lines. Their names are Tim and Dennis of S/V Marion, and their boat
is an Amel 53. We got together almost every evening for dinner as pictured
here as Tim and Dennis making salad for dinner aboard Quietly.
That weekend I sailed Quietly down to Miami. It was my first time singe handing her out on the ocean. And I was plenty tense after having to turn the boat around in the narrow river when the bridge tender did not open the Davie Ave Bridge during which the bow thruster decided to quit once again. But that was the purpose of this sail, to shake things up and out and find what systems needed attention. The trip to Miami took a little over six house which along with a slight ocean swell made me seasick three times. I just remembered that it is much better to just get it over with than to fight it, so get over with it I did.
Arriving outside the Biscayne Bay Channel just at dusk, I decided that it was
not prudent to follow the shallow channel that late and instead turned out to
sea three miles to a shallow area
marked on the charts to drop anchor for the
night. With the swell not about three feet and a wind blowing towards the
reef three miles away, I decided to sit up on an anchor watch over night.
About midnight, the old cotton rope snubber gave up with a loud snap and the
sound of chain running out until the windless caught it. There was not
much I could do about that except to periodically check that the chain lock was
still in place to keep the strain off the motor. At sun up, I motored
through the Biscayne Bay Channel with out problem and out into Biscayne Bay
where I hove to to have breakfast and then sailed into No Name Harbor to anchor
in protected waters and at 8:30 crawled into bed and slept until 2:30 in the
afternoon. That afternoon I sailed around Biscayne Bay for several hours
and then back into No Name Harbor to anchor for the night. That evening
with the sun setting behind the city of Miami and the lights of the city and Key
Biscayne, the view was nothing short of spectacular from the cockpit as I had
dinner.
The next morning I raised anchor at 9:30 after breakfast and spent spent the
day sailing on Biscayne Bay in 11 to 17 knots of wind. I raised the sail
with two reefs in the Main and with full Ginny, Quietly was making 6.6 knots in
11 Knots of apparent wind. During the day I practiced Tacks and Gibes over
and over getting used to sail handling. One thing I found is that it is
very difficult to "dump the main" from the helm position. You have to
essentially climb around the wheel and forward to take the main sheet off the
self tailor and release the main. This I have made a note to figure out a
way to install a cam cleat that I can release from the helm position.
During this time I kept running through the procedure for docking in a slip as I wanted to spend two days in Dinner Key at Miami. The radio call into Dinner Key confirmed they had a slip for me but advised me that they were short handed since it was Easter Sunday and they could not provide linesmen for the dock lines. I decided to at least sail the Dinner Key Channel and check out how the wind and current was in the protected marina. As I approached the slip, several people gathered to help with the lines as they had herd my earlier radio call. After Quietly was secure in the slip, I was invited to join everyone for a Potluck Easter Dinner at the end of the pier!
It was a great day of sailing and getting accustomed to single handing Quietly in the open Biscayne Bay and then a tense but successful docking in a slip for the first time with the help of new friends. The Easter Potluck was fun with everyone sitting around talking until 9:00 pm.
The next day I walked three and a half miles to WestMarine to purchase a new 500 Amp fuse for the Bow Thruster. The walk over was pleasant walking through Coconut Grove under a partly cloudy sky with a sea breeze. The walk back was something else! While I was in WestMarine, I heard thunder and by the time I was ready to head back to Quietly, it was a torrential rain storm outside. I waited an hour and finally decided that I would not melt as the rain had let up considerably and I did have my umbrella. That light rain lasted ten minutes and then the bottom fell out. It was "raining fish" and the gentle sea breeze was now a 25 MPH wind that lasted until after dinner. To say I looked and felt like a drowned rat would be an understatement! On the way back, I stopped dripping wet at Flanigans to have dinner. The hid me in a corner, but the fried shrimp and baked potato sure tasted great in my dripping clothes.
Well, as you might have guessed, after changing the fuse, the problem still existed... So the next morning I set sail back to Summerfield Boat Works in Fort Lauderdale to continue my work on Quietly and have the the bow thruster dealer come figure out why it only worked when it wanted to. {laughing}
Before leaving Biscayne Bay, I wanted to learn more about how Quietly backs up - It does seem to have a mind of it's own when backing. All of the books I have read about full keel boats with the prop in a aperture say that boats so configured do "seem to have a mind of their own" but with patient practice and learning one's boat, you will learn how to back successfully. Well, perhaps some day! So this day I spent two hours backing the boat in calm waters in the center of Biscayne Bay. I agree, it will take time to learn what she likes to do. The sail back to Summerfield was uneventful and Tim and Dennis were once again their ready to help me tie up next to them.
One
of the highlights of being in Fort Lauderdale was "Fleet Week Weekend" when the
Navy Blue Angles performed over the beach along with many other aircraft fly
by's.
American Airlines even had two of their passenger plains (of course
with no one but the pilots on board) flying formation down the beach. The show
was actually done on both Saturday and Sunday with Saturday the day I went to
the beach to watch. I was working on the boat Sunday watching the Blue
Angles from on Quietly when I snapped a picture of the Blue Angles over head.
You can see some of Quietly's rigging in the picture.
The problem with the bow thruster turned out to be a bad switch and has
worked very reliably since. Over the next month I continued to work on
Quietly finding minor things that needed to be corrected and some not so minor
things like a pin-hole leak on the sink drain where it was accidentally nicked
when Summerfield replaced the sink drains. But when we went to close the
seacock to fix the hose, it did not want to close. I had Quietly hauled
the second time and while out of the water, I pulled, cleaned, lapped, and
greased all of the seacocks and we replaced two thru hull fittings that on close
inspection looked ok at first glance, but questionable on close inspection.
As it turns out after testing they were fine, but I installed new ones anyway
since the old ones were out. I am now an expert at cleaning, lapping, and
greasing seacocks!
I decided to go ahead and install an Iridium Satellite Phone on the boat for
safety off shore as well as sending and receiving e-mail. There is a story to
this that saved me $1,000.00 on the cost of the unit. I had decided to
install a "Wells Arch" on the back of Quietly to carry the dinghy and as long as
I was having the arch made,
I wanted to have the necessary antennal mount made
as well. None of three dealers were confident of the antenna mounting
requirements and in fact each of three dealers (none of whom would actually go
look to see) gave me different mounting measurements or said they did not know. As it happens, the US distributor for Sailor has an office in Fort Lauderdale
and a phone call there resulted in an offer to come look for my self. When
I arrived at the distributors office, we pulled out a unit and found that all of
the previous advice was wrong! The distributor then offered to sell me the
unit at the wholesale cost and would throw in the antenna cable as I had had
such a run around with the dealers. Thus I purchased for $2,000.00 what
the least expensive dealer had quoted me at $3,250.00! The US distributor
for Sailor "Europhone" Iridium equipment is HollandAmerica out of Fort
Lauderdale and Houston. They are first class people and the Salor "Europhone"
Iridium unit is a flawless piece of equipment made for the marine industry.
Highly Recommended! The picture is of me running the antenna cable through the
aft locker.
The work on Quietly took two months to do and ran $15,000 over what I had naively estimated, but to give you an idea, here is a partial list of what all was accomplished:
- Inspected all Rigging was inspected by Summerfield Boat Works and was cleared for coastal and open ocean cruising.
- Installed new Running Backstay's.
- Replaced Genoa and Main sheets.
- All Winches were pulled, cleaned, lubricated, and all mountings rebeaded.
- New SidePower Bow Thruster installed to make single handed docking easier.
- The Mast was pulled and a new mast-step plate fabricated and installed.
- A new stainless steel Pillow Bearing support was fabricated and new Pillow Bearing installed.
- New Tri-Color Masthead Light was installed and wired.
- New Spreader Lights were installed and wired into the for deck light for night deck work.
- The Radar Cable was pulled out of the mast, inspected and repaired. (A new cable was unavailable.)
- New Backup Anchor Rhode of 5/8 Megabraid with a length of 350 feet for multiple uses; anchor rhode, trailing warp, heavy weather drogue attachment.
- New Anchor Snubber Bridal with rubber shock absorbers. (As recommended by John Neil from Mahina Taire.)
- New sink drains installed.
- Pulled apart and inspected electrical wiring bundles. Repaired wiring to cockpit instruments.
- Installed covers for for electrical breaker panel and battery switches.
- Installed two 12V outlets in cockpit for 1,000.000 candle power search light and computers.
- Replaced Air Conditioning Sea Water Cooling Pump and replaced the electrical wiring.
- Flushed Air Conditioning Sea Water Cooling system with muriatic acid to remove mineral deposits and improve efficiency.
- Tested Bilge Pumps by flooding bilge with water hose. One pump failed causing breaker to pop and failing both pumps.
- Replaced Bilge Pump that caused overload.
- Had a new Alternator Support Bracket fabricated to replace the one on the engine as it was slightly bent. Properly aligned alternator.
- Old (no longer used) Norman 30 Amp Battery Charger removed. Kept as a spare for trading.
- Installed new GFI's on the 120 VAC plugs in both the Galley and Head for safety.
- Had life raft inspected. In very poor condition. Purchased new 4 Man Life Raft.
- Aft Chain Plate was improperly aligned with the back stay. Realigned to match back stay.
- Installed netting in the anchor locker to keep secondary anchor rode separate from primary anchor chain.
- Exhaust muffler for Genset was loose. Secured it in place.
- Installed new Zinc's on prop and Rudder.
- Inspected and greased Max-Prop.
- Installed "Spur's" on prop to cut line and seaweed that may get tangled on prop.
- Replaced Thru-Hull and ball valve on refrigeration cooling water intake.
- Replaced Thru-Hull and Ball Valve on Bilge Pump outlet.
- Pulled, inspected, lapped, cleaned, greased and reinstalled all remaining seacocks.
- Gooseneck was removed and repaired by Summerfield and reinstalled.
- Corrosion around reefing locks was cleaned and lubricated.
- Icom 710 SSB Radio does not seam to transmit well. Cleaned corrosion from ground cable. Better but still not working well.
- Moved Icom 710 from off NavStation desk to cabinet above.
- Tuned Radar IAW manual and greatly improved operation. Works good as new now.
- Purchased all new Signal Flairs and kept old ones for backup use.
- Purchased all new dock lines: 4 - 35 foot bow and stern lines and 4 - 50 foot spring lines.
- Installed new "Wells Arch" on stern of boat to hold antenna's, dinghy, and future wind generator and solar panels.
- Installed new florescent cockpit light.
- Replaced old outside speaker wires.
- Aladdin Cleats installed for "hi lifelines" for harness attachment when working on deck.
- New "clip-in points" installed in cockpit for harness attachment.
- New Garmin GPS Antenna installed. GPS now lock on to 12 signals reliably rather than 5 - 6.
- New gasket material for refrigerator and freezer doors.
- Posted Written Waste Management Plan as required by USCG and international law.
- Two new Propane tanks to replace old tanks.
- Replaced all hosed in Propane locker.
- Tested Propane system.
- Mercury Mariner Outboard serviced by dealer. New plugs and a spare parts kit purchased.
- All Life Lines replaced with new stainless steal cables.
- Both Fuel Tanks completely drained and professionally cleaned.
- Changed Racor fuel filters on both main engine and genset.
- Changed engine oil and oil filters on both main engine and genset.
- Topped off cooling water on both engines with distilled water.
- Replaced cracked staysail turnbuckle in anchor locker.
May 30, 2002 - Quietly is finally ready and it is time to set sail for the North East!
Continued in the section "The Trip North".