We are in Lake Worth

We are in Lake Worth and will head out in the morning for the Bahamas. Keep an eye out on the "spot" in the morning for about twenty-four hours to see our crossing. If we start to head too far north you might want to do us a favor and call the Coast Guard after a day or so :). My worst fear is always the Cargo ships, because at night they are so much harder to tell how close they are. There are always a few of them showing up on our AIS and Radar at any time.

We are heading to Great Harbour Cay in the Berries and have decided to do some exploring there since we only stayed there last year while the engine was being repaired. GHC Marina is a great place to check in and if you look around there is a lot to do but you really need to explore and ask where to go to see the really cool stuff.

After that we may head back to Florida to do some cruising in the southern part of the state.
We really don't know and don't care this year so it will be exciting just to see where we end up.

Happy New Years to all and will write when we get to GHC.

Merry Christmas to all

This is the Ireland Clan-Jon grow up with them.

We wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope your day is as wonderful as ours.

Christmas Eve @ Kevin and Chris's place in Jensen Beach

Bud and Jill in Vero Beach on S/V Earendil

We are still in Stuart making our plans for the crossing. The weather looks promising for this week so we will probably meet up with Jill and Bud (our friends that we met in New York at the marina a few years ago) in Lake Worth and head across to the Bahamas. We will try to get there by New Years Eve since we have already made plans with Jeff and Lana to bring in the New Year's cheer at the house.






We have been having so much fun here in Stuart with all our friends that it almost seems as I should just live here all winter. The weather has been in the 80s almost every day so that is a plus too.

Booze run

Mick & Sue from England, they sail in Turkey during the summer

Mike working on the new canvas

One of the biggest reasons we stayed here for so long was Jon had to order all the parts for the engine also we had to wait for the canvas to be fitted and then there was  the autopilot that had to be replaced.

Another issue that had to be addressed was a few spots that showed up on my scalp and nose a few months back that would not heal. We figured this was a perfect place to see a skin specialist and deal with it. I was a little nervous about going but knew this could not wait since I have had issues before and
things can turn to cancer really fast. I talked to a few people here that told me about a huge medical place right here a few blocks away that were great to deal with and had specialist for all types of skin problems, so I called and they got me in that day. Anyhow all is well, they froze the areas and said have a good time in the Bahamas see you on the way back for a check-up. The part that floors me every time we go to a doctor for our check-ups or dentist appointments is that when we were running our business in New York our insurance was 13500. a year which was three years ago, lord only knows what it would be now. On our way out we cancelled it and put a large amount away for self insuring ourselves while out here, whenever we go to the doctors we let them know we don't have insurance and are willing to pay cash and our bills so far have been less than any of our co-pays were back in New York. Just for the record this total bill was $43.50 cash.      

another day at the store

Now we're waiting

Well it seems like I've lived this before. Westerbeke has the hoses, and they were ordered on Friday. However, because they are closed for the next 2 weeks nobody got any orders out on Friday because they might have been parting. So no hoses till next year. Thinking and discussing this with other people I inserted a small piece of PVC into the hose that we were worried about. Nice tight fit, installed it on the engine and put all new VERY flexible hoses up to it. I think this was the real problem, that the hose coupled to it was not able to bend and passed the required bend onto the softer hose kinking it. Again the engine is running fine holding it's temp very nicely and pumping tons of water. So we'll run it for quite a while and keep checking the impeller. Looks like a nor'easter is making for lots of wind so we will probably be here for Christmas, which is fine. We have several places that we've been invited to and it's not snowing here.
Dick and Ann on Grey Hound pulled in on Monday and we think they are here for a while too. Not too many people are leaving and lots of boats have been just left here for the holidays, But at least it''s not snowing. Oh I said that already.

A Lazy Saturday

The new canvas and top are in looking great. We've met may people that we've spent time with last year and the year before.  The Auto Pilot is in and needs to have it's sea trial done but it works and will be fine.

The engine gave me a little scare the other day when I heard the exhaust sound a little different, I looked over at the outlet and not enough water was coming out. I knew what this meant, another raw water pump had been chewed up. Upon inspection I found all but one of the six impellers had been RIPPED off and caught up in the heat exchanger, this impeller lasted 10 hours and that's not acceptable. This is what was the start of the problem last winter. Of course when Arline saw this she started dialing the Realtor to buy a trailer or condo here. After a few calls people were telling me I had a water flow problem (DAH)know that the pump was ripping itself apart because it wasn't getting enough water and I should look at all the hoses. I took all the hoses apart and was able to blow through all of them on the suction side, so that can't be the problem right, WRONG. Determined to find something I started pulling them all out. There is a very tight set of hoses that run water through the bottom of the tranny for cooling it. They are up tight against the bunks for the engine and there I found a soft hose with a kink in it. I got that hose out and found it was supposed to have a wire in it to keep it from collapsing, but that had rusted and moved allowing it to kink. So new ones are on the way and should be here Monday. It's such a tight bend and corner that only a premolded hose would work. A trip to a Napa and looking at some 100's of hoses I couldn't find anything with a bend, wire and the right size. So Monday it is.

Back to my Lazy Saturday.

Bud and Jill from Earndale are in Vero Beach having problems with thier new Yanmar, 28 hours and the thing is leaking oil. Bad installation and heads are going to roll according to Jill. I thought we were having a tuff time with things. I won't even tell you what a new 4 cly Yanmar and a custom instalation cost. They've got to get to George Town by the 8th of January so if they get it fixed by the begining of next week we might cross with them, and follow each other to someplace that the wind and current take us. No Big hurries. We might still head to Miami, or not.

Looks like Amy and Jeremy have some time at the end of January and will meet us in Great Harbour Cay for close to a week.

Just enjoying the weather

We have been doing a lot of walking and meeting up with old friends here in Stuart. The Mooring balls were full when we got here putting us way out on the end with very little internet making it very hard to write in the blog. Now we are much closer to the marina so I have a  connection.





One of our last nights at Indiantown Rick, Kasidah's former owner came in on his way to Ft Meyers with a friend on a Dana 24 sailboat and spent the night. We all had a great time, there was much to talk about and there was drinks for all.
The croc did peek up at one point near thier boat to see the dogs.  

The trip to Stuart went flawless except the many sudden down pours. It was warm and the boat was running fine so that made the day wonderful.

We have been waiting in Stuart for our new Autopilot and we are also waiting for the canvas shop to drop off our new Bimini and Dodger. This is important for Jon because when he is asked to sleep in the cockpit he should at least stay dry.......

Last year we met a couple from Lincoln, Maine where all of Jon's family is from so we had to go introduce ourselves to them, wouldn't you know it, they know all of Jon's relatives. This year they just happen to be in the marina as we were getting Kasidah ready, so we have been hanging out with them. Don and Betty are a lot of fun and they are closer to 80  than 70, so for all of you that have told us your to old to go out cruising......we say sure you are.


We have been watching the weather and it does not look good for some time to cross so to Bahama, we have made our minds up to head to Miami for a few weeks and wait for weather there to make the crossing. We have seen that there are many places to anchor near South Beach and at Dinner Key.

So Miami here we come. 

1st week in Stuart

We moved Kasidah on Monday and she worked great. The engine was 100% with out any overheating.
We took the last mooring ball at Sunset Bay Marina, and won't give it up. We've been offered money to move, cause there are no reservations and people want in. The weather is holding people here, not able to move onto their next location. The wind has been up pretty good, keeping everybody from moving but keeping my batteries pretty well charged. The autopilot is dead and a replacement from a consignment shop was shipped back because it didn't work. A new, different make, should be here end of next week, and it should be an easy install using the same brackets and other item$.The canvas people are working on the dodger and bimini for the cockpit, Looking forward to having no leaks in the cockpit. Falling into our winter routine on the boat and loving it.

To rock at night on a mooring ball, with everything working right,..priceless.

Warning-Holiday festivities can be dangerous to your health.

Warning-Holiday festivities can be dangerous to your health.
How true this has been sitting here at the dock enjoying the week long party Indiantown puts on for the entire Marina.

 Monday we partied with a Steel band and enjoyed Island food and drinks.


Tuesday we had wonderful Italian cuisine  from a restaurant in town which was awesome and then karaoke was the entertainment of the night. I even went up and picked a song I thought would be easy for me "Wipe Out" however I did not know there was a rap remake of the song....................funny funny.




Wednesday we joined in on the dinghy race- poker run then off to Stomp some grapes,taste some wonderful wines, listen to Dr Dave's Southern rock band and then way to much drinking and dancing to end the night.


Click  here to see video.
Stomping grapes

Thursday was a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings and a pie contest.
By the end of the night we were totally exhausted and really needed to go to bed early.

 We wanted to give our thanks to Scott and Rochelle the owners of the marina and all his staff for all the hard work they did to make all of us feel at home during these holidays when most people are with their families. They really made us feel like part of theirs.

Running Westerbeke by jon

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone, I’ll let Arline tell you all about the parties and good times, but here’s the latest on the motor.




Well the injectors were ready on Monday and after a few errands we got back to the boat by 3:00. I finished installing them and a few other last minute items on the engine and wanted to try and get it to run just for a moment. We were scheduled to go into the water on Tuesday and then there was another schedule conflict. It was the beginning of parties here at Indiantown. Tonight the Steel Drum Band was starting at 5:00 and we missed that last year. So for half an hour I primed the system with the fuel boss, and tried to get it to run. I could only get it to run if I put fuel into it from above and then only till the fuel was gone. And the Steel Drum Band was warming up, so I’d have to wait till tomorrow.



1st thing at it had the same results and just couldn’t get it running. Now I’m getting nervous and it was our turn to be put into the water. We pulled Kasidah around the corner to her dock space and I jumped back at it. I thought I should check from the start so as not to miss anything. So I removed the fuel line from the engine at the injector pump and placed a coffee can under it to catch the fuel. I turned the pump on there was my problem,….WATER, no fuel just frigging water. Checking the fuel separator confirmed it was full of water. I pulled about a gallon of water out before good fuel started to flow, I cleaned the separator and fuel filter blew the lines out, then I only needed to get the water out of the injector pump. Now I’m sure the motor was running when we put her away in the spring so I was worried about the pump having water in it all summer. That would have been real bad! So on a recommendation from the guy who rebuilt the injectors, I sprayed WD-40 in the pump where fuel should have been and all the water came blowing out. (Did you know the WD in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement). A little more priming and bleeding and in 2 minutes it was running. It runs cool and never idled as nice.

Westerbeke Again by jon

Well most of you know that we over heated the engine last year on our way over to the Berry Islands. We were Lucky enough to have landed on an Island that had Great people, charter flights from the states to get parts and generally a great place to hold up. We had rebuilt the engine and moved on last year but near the end of the season we were having another problem with the engine. Air was getting into the cooling system, causing an  air bubble that would make the engine over heat again. At the end of last season I had not felt I found anything and woke many times though the summer at Fair Point Marina in a cold sweat thinking and worried about it.  Then at the end of the summer I had a head gasket blow on the travel lift in the yard. Now I had just replaced that head gasket last year and thought it was stange,....UNTIL I realized I had not re-torqued that gasket!! Could the same stand true for my Westerbeke? Looking at the manual it says re-torque after 50 hours,.....I didn't do that. The engine ran fine last year for about 75 hours after the rebuild and then the second problem started to show up. It was starting to make sense.

Once at the boat after cleaning it up enough to sleep on it, and cleaning the outside, we put away all stores we brought with us and fired up the batteries, Yeah 12.6 volts, fired up the refer unit, Yeah cold beer. Then I headed straight for the engine, I re-torqued the head and started to adjust the valves, but noticed a lack of compression on # 2 and #3 cylinders. Well the head had to come out of the boat again. As I was taking parts off I noticed the exhaust manifold had unburnt fuel in it, a sure sign of incomplete combustion. As the head came off I was hoping to find a huge hole in the gasket but didn't see it. Eric, the service manager at Indiantown Marina, had a look at the head gasket and right away pointed to TWO spots where there was blow by from the cylinder to the water jacket, #2 and  #3. YEAH YEAH YEAH. There were also other signs in the water jacket of anti-freeze being burnt from compression blow-by. Now was the head warped or the block?

The head went to a speciality shop "Blockheads" The report came back great, he too saw 2 spot with blow by, and machined only .008 of and inch off to make it straight. All thinking is that if the head wasn't warped the block would be fine, as the block has a lot more mass to it and a lot more water around it for cooling. The good news to date is that the head job only cost $160.00. I also took the advice from the great guys at Blockheads and sent the fuel injectors to be checked. Another Great  small speciality shop looked at them and confirmed "Wow these babies got hot". He showed me how they should work and what mine didn't do. How much to rebuilt them please? $27.00 each plus a 10 dollar part, they'll be ready on Monday. So the bad news is the gaskets and parts were $650.00 with the head gasket alone being $225.00 Ouch.

Well the head is back on and all painted up now we are just waiting on the injectors to come back Monday and we go in the water on Tuesday. We then can really test the engine under a load and get our confidence back in it. Hey if she gets 50 hours on her you want to bet I'd re-torque the head!!

We had visiters here already, Tom Gardener and Terri from Fair Point Marina (Ponytail Tom for all you, theres too many Toms here, people) came on Sunday last week and spent the afternoon here walking around and looking at all the boats here. They also took us out to dinner, then drove home. They are on the west coast of Florida during the winter so it was a 3 hour drive each way for them. It was great to see them and show them around here and Kasidah. They hadn't seen her since we left NY in '09 and all the work we've done to her since we left.

Looks like we'll stay here at indain Town for Thanksgiving, there is 4 days of events, just as a tease there is a real Steel Drum Band playing Monday night and it just gets better from there. I don't think I'll take part in the dinghy ran, roamer has it the alligators win every time.

Thanks for looking.

Ready for the drive to Florida....

We have been visiting family first in Dover and then in Connecticut for the past two weeks and are now back in Dover.
Wednesday morning we will head out for the long drive down to Florida to start the cleaning and work on Kasidah before our crossing.
We have had a great time visiting but its time to hit the road.
We went to Connecticut last week knowing that we may not have electricity because of the storm, but what we found was way beyond just the lose of power. The place  looked like a war zone, there were trees down, power lines down at just about every house and street corner and still lots of snow on the ground when we arrived on Monday, by the time we left this week it started to look a lot better but they will be cleaning up for many months.



While we were there we got to see Kim (Jon's niece) play soccer at her school. 











We decided we would stop back in Dover for a night or two because Kasidah won't be in the work yard till Thursday afternoon and we won't be able to stay on her till then, and the last night we were in Connecticut I pulled my back and was in some major pain for the drive here so it was one more reason to stop.    

Our next adventures begin....

 







We finished up our work at the marina this year and realized just how much work we had completed there. New main docks, fingers and fuel dock was just a few projects we completed.

Once all boats were winterized and shrink wrapped we cleaned out the RV, put the Bike away and packed the Jeep with as much as we could possibly fit in it.

This is some of our great customers at the Marina.

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 Our first stop was to Schyler and Laurie's house in Skaneateles to pick up back issues of our favorite mag "Lats and Atts." then off to Tully to spend the night with our longest and dearest friend Diane

Last ride of the year....

Jeremy and Amy's back yard...

On our way out the next morning we stopped in to see a friend from the Marina "Mel". She has a very cool restaurant in Syracuse and we decided we would stop for a quick bite to eat.

We are now in Dover De. for a week to catch up with our oldest daughter and husband before heading up to Connecticut to visit the youngest daughter Jill.
Amy may have to leave in a day or two for a mission so we wanted to make sure we got to see her before she leaves.

We have made arrangements to have Kasidah pulled from the storage yard and put in the work yard for us on the 9th of November. Jon will be trying to locate a problem we have had with her getting air in the system and causing her to over heat.

Pirate weekend at the Marina

We had a fabulous weekend with lots of people joining in on the festivities.  

FPM group shot

Nice one

We are just having fun enjoying life on the water every day.....LIFE IS GOOD!

We are very busy this summer and just felt we would wait to post  till we got back on Kasidah and started to travel, but some people have been asking us to post.









We have had a great time visiting with freinds and family and Jon has even managed to ride his bike a few times. The kids and all the dogs came to visit for a week and it was a blast. It was pretty funny that there were as many people as there were dogs but we always had pets and the kids love dogs so it would not be the same without them around. One thing we really were proud of this summer was Amy becoming a Captain.......(we are so proud of you)

                                                       Ray,Tim and Jon out for a ride

The projects at the marina have been going smooth this year even though its a lot of work. We disassembled and stripped a whole dock, installed fingers and all new water and electric lines added new pedestals and filled it with customers in about two months. Jon and I were exhausted every night but the reward of looking at it every day is wonderful. Now Jon has started to take apart another large dock which will become part of a fuel dock. He wants it in place before we head out in a few months. Jon has been very busy with service work for the past three weeks also.                                            Jon and I finishing the dock

               

 This is Jill with Ru on her new Kayak.
                                  

Just adding to the cruising fund

We are back at the marina working a little to add to the kitty for our next adventure.

Back in the States

We had a lot of fun once again in Great Harbour and would like to thank everyone there for making us feel right at home during both our stops there. Joe and the staff at the marina are some of the best folks we have met since our trip began, the locals and landowners are some of the friendliest people and always went out of thier way to help us with things.
On the last day there we rented a golf cart for a few hours and explored the island, at low tide we went to Shark Creek which you can walk to the small island at that point. This was well worth a visit.
We left Great Harbour Tuesday morning at 915 and made the trip across to Lake Worth by 930 the following day, very smooth sailing and just enough wind to keep the sails full. We made a quick stop at the Riviera Marina to let the dogs go potty and stretch then off to Stuart to pick up a Mooring ball and get some well need sleep. We arrived in Stuart at 1600 hours went to shore then back to the boat to celebrated our full trip with a bottle of champagne that the kids had sent us and we had not felt the time was right to drink it till now.
We have been busy here cleaning Kasidah and doing some shopping for parts. We even had a chance yesterday to hit the beach and collect some shells. The temperature is perfect right now and hopefully it will stay this way or a while because our youngest daughter Jill is comeing down next week for a few days.

Lots of Fish Stories

We are back in Great Harbour Cay waiting for a window to do the crossing. It looks like Monday or Tuesday will be the start off time to cross. If we leave Monday we will have some great sailing and all wind will be behind the beam, but we will have some large seas and in the gulf stream a little more swells but if we leave Tuesday it will be light the whole trip with only 10 knots of wind and under 3 foot seas the whole way over. We decided not to make up our minds till Monday morning after coffee.
Great Harbour Marina is having a fishing tournament this weekend so the place is jammed with beautiful fishing boats from all over Florida and Georgia. They have been bringing in some huge fish and really having a lot of fun at it. The Marina had a big party for them and they invited us to it. I must say we have had a great time here and will be back in the fall. Joe and all the staff are wonderful and always there to help with things. When we arrived last week we were insteantly invited to some dinners and breakfast partys which always makes for a good time and we meet so many more people that way(thanks Jeff).