Preparing to cruise is a lot like work!

After getting our land based stuff stored and automobiles moved to Pensacola, we left the Demopolis Yacht Basin (in Demopolis Alabama) September 7th and headed down the Tenn-Tom waterway. Three days later we were anchored in Ingram Bayou (between Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama) when our new Excide starting battery developed a short and melted a terminal and destroyed some battery cables.

We managed to crank the engine with the house batteries and motored on in to our friend's dock, Tom and Bobbie Vandiver, on Bayou Chico in Pensacola, Fl. We spent our time visiting with friends, celebrating a friend's 70th birthday, and repairing wiring and replacing the dead starting battery. Lesson learned: Never buy an Excide battery! In our opinion, their warranties are as worthless as their batteries. After a great three weeks, we stored the car and moved our truck to St. Pete Beach, put the sails back on the boat and headed out to the Gulf of Mexico.

We had planned to stop by Destin (again to visit friends) and Apalachicola (to eat some oysters), however, the weather was so good, we decided to do a couple of overnights and head straight to St. Pete Beach. Along the way, we caught two King Mackerel and one large Spanish Mackerel, so have been enjoying a freezer full of fish.

We arrived at St. Pete Beach and our friend's house, Ted Irwin and Peggie Rowe, about noon on the third day. We anchored off from their dock in about 7ft of water. There was no room at Ted's dock because he had his 41ft, 54ft and 68ft sailboats tied up there.

We had lots of projects planned for Mobetah while in the Tampa Bay Area including: having the life raft recertified, new battery for epirb, pulling the mast and replacing the mast boot and wedge, repainting the mast, boom and pole, installing a new TV antenna, installing new roller furling, installing new insulators on the back stay, checking all the standing rigging, having the sails checked and restitched, and installing a Tides Track and a new Mack Pack. Ted, a St. Pete Beach native, seemed to know everyone in the boat business and was a great help in not only lining up people to do some of the work, but also helping with a lot of the grunt work in the yard.

Most of the work is now completed (still waiting for the Mack Pack to be delivered and the life raft to be repacked and certified). It has certainly taken longer than we had planned, and as often is the case with a boat, we ended up doing more projects than we had anticipated, but we are beginning to see the end. Now it's on to provisioning, dealing with the truck and obtaining insurance for the N.W. Caribbean. In a week or two we hope to head on down the coast to Marco Island, where we will top off the fuel and water tanks before heading to the Dry Tortugas (a National Park 75 miles west of Key West), so we can rest up and wait for weather before heading out for Isla Mujeres Mexico.

If It Ain;t One Thing, It's Another!

When we last posted, we were back on the boat and putting things away. After we finished putting things away, we went up the Tenn-Tom and anchored for a couple of nights to see what still worked and what didn't! All in all, it went pretty well ..... The generator was slow to start (loose and/or corroded cables and connections) , the anchor windlass was sluggish (again, I think that's also loose and/or corroded cables and connections), a couple of cabin fans need to be replaced (bearings going bad), the cooling fan on the inverter is beginning to make a lot of noise (like the cabin fans it's bearing are going bad) and the steering pedestal was making all kinds of noises when you turned the wheel. Apparently, bearings don't do too well when left unused for three or four years.

We then packed the truck to go to Texas for two or three weeks, but first we ordered a new ham/ssb radio and tuner from Dockside Radio, as well as a fan for the inverter, so they would be waiting for us when we returned. We also had Dale (a friend in the marina) install a front access to our refrigerator.

After three great weeks in Texas, visiting with friends and checking on our condo, we headed back to the boat. We made it back in one long tiring day! Dale did a great job on the refrigerator access, and the radio and inverter cooling fan were waiting for us at the marina office. We purchased a steering pedestal rebuild kit from West Marine in Corpus Christi.

Back to work on the boat, and it didn't take long to find more problems ....... The aft holding tank had developed a crack, so Bill began removing it, only to find all the hoses completely filled with calcium deposits. In removing the hoses, he managed to cut his thumb pretty badly with a box knife , resulting in a visit to the local ER and 10 stitches ....... he was lucky to some degree, because he did not cut it on a joint and did not cut any ligaments or nerves. Anyway, that's healing nicely and the stitches come out today.

Dale, the same friend who installed our refrigerator access, had a holding tank that would fit in our boat, so we bought it. However, the inlets were in the wrong place, so we still had to get an inlet relocation kit ........ we now have all the parts to install the new holding tank.

We needed one more road trip to take our stuff for storage in Atlanta, GA, at Pat's step-son's, but before we left, we find one more problem ......... our Force10 water heater is leaking. We will try to find one at West Marine in Atlanta while we are there.

We left Demopolis AL with a pickup truck loaded with stuff for storage, then went to Eufaula, AL (where we have been living with Bill's mother for the last three and one half years) to pick up more stuff. We rented a U-Haul trailer, loaded it up and headed for Atlanta (after a trip to the Dentist for regular checkups and cleanings).

We are now in Atlanta and things have been going pretty well. Curtis and Bill have built a storage closet in Curtis's basement and have all our stuff stored. Today we will visit with a cousin of Bill's on the other side of Atlanta and go by West Marine to shop before heading back to the boat tomorrow.

We plan to make a detour through Phoenix City, AL on the way back to Demopolis to visit with a friend who adopted Bill's mother's kitten after Bill's mother passed away. Should be fun to see if Sarah, the cat, remembers us.

Once back to the boat, we plan to get all the work done that is possible before heading out to Pensacola about September 8th, because the Corps of Engineers is closing the Coffeeville lock for three weeks starting at sunrise on September 11th.

Back Aboard The Boat

After packing and loading the car, the truck and the neighbors' basement with all the things (food, clothing, electonic gadgets, house wares, books, boat parts, etc.) that one gathers in three and one half years of dirt dwelling, we then headed out for the boat.

When we arrived, the thermometer in the car said the outside temperature was 106-F, and we found one air conditioner not working and the other not working very well. With the help of a very nice and knowledgeable air conditioner tech from a local electrical contractor's shop both air conditioners will now freeze you! In order to get to the two air conditioners, we had to empty the vee-birth and everything we had on the aft cabin bed and put it on deck ...... meanwhile, Bill was unloading the food, clothing, electronic gadgets, house wares, books, boat parts, etc. from the car and truck. Of course, all that stuff ended up on the deck while the air conditioner man did his thing. Mobetah looked a lot like the Bevery Hill Billies old truck for a day or two. It all is now being put away, and things are beginning to look normal again. Of course, we are sorting again ..... you know, this pile stays on the boat, this pile goes to Good Will, and this pile goes back to the neighbor's basement and later moved to storage (Curtis, thanks for that space in your basement ..... We Love Ya!).

We are cleaning as we put stuff away. Bill had not been able to get over to the boat for the last two or three months, and the deck was filthy and beginning to turn green (not to mention about a million May Flies who decided die on our boat)! Inside, the boat was very dusty (where does all that dust come from?)

After we get things organized, in a week or two, we'll go up the river and anchor for a day or two (something we have not been able to do for almost three years) just to unwind and to see what still works and what doesn't). Then we'll drive to North Padre Island, Texas to check on the condo and visit with friends for a few weeks.

Updating the Interior

After installing the new fuel tank and water tank the interior was in deplorable conditon. We decided it would be best to update the interior while we were not living onboard. So, for almost a year now Bill has been cleaning, sanding and varnishing the interior.

In addition, each time he went to the boat (about one week a month), he brought back a pickup truck load of stuff (tools, spare parts, linens, dishes, pots & pans,books, rugs, lamps, etc.) home to be sorted into one of four piles: 1. throw away, 2. store, 3. donate to good will or 4. take back to the boat. Everything taken back to the boat was cleaned and/or refinished as required.

Brass clocks, barameters and lamps were cleaned and sprayed with an acrilic coating, rugs were cleaned or replaced.

Most woodwork was refinished with satin varnish (the original finish by Endeavour) however some of the trim, the companionway stairs and the Navagation table top were finished in either gloss Epifanes varnish or glossy polyeurthane.

A New Entertainment Center for Christmas

Well, Santa brought the boat a new entertainment center for Christmas. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to install it so Bill went over to the boat and did that last week.

He replaced the old cassette player radio with a new JVC (200 watt) cd player/receiver. The new radio is sirius radio ready, plays MP3s and has an aux input on the front of the unit for I-pods etc., we got a pass-through adapter so we now have an external input (which connects to our new JVC Sirius radio tuner which connects to the back of the JVC reciever - both are out of site in a cabinet under the entertainment center) so we can now play music, on our computer, through the stereo without all those wires and cables showing.

We replaced our old 13"analog tv with a 19" LCD-HD which Santa purchased at 5:00am on Black Friday. We ended up mounting it with a swivil arm mount from WalMart (worked out really well and at a very reasonable price)

We also replaced the old VCR with a Magnavox DVD recorder/player.

In order to install the various pieces of electronic gear Bill had to move the clock and barometer (to make room for the tv), relocate the air conditioner thermostat (to make room for the tv mount) and fabricate and install a new panel for the JVC radio and a new panel for the tv mount to be mounted to (it also covers the hole left by the relocated air conditioner thermostat).

Everything is now complete on our new entertainment center including permanently mounting the sirius radio antenna. We decide to mount the sirius radio antenna on the davits, so we had to order and intall an antenna cable extension.