Jekyll Island to Cumberland Island, In Photos

Yesterday was a picture perfect day.  It was in the mid-sixties, the wind was less than ten knots out of the west, and it was sunny.  We couldn't have a better day for our trip from our beloved Golden Isles to Cumberland Island.  While it was sad to leave Brunswick Landing Marina and our friends there, Pam knew there would be horses at the end of the day, and that made it better.

We took a load of photos to share.  Here you are.

Shrimp boats as we leave Brunswick Landing Marina.

A freighter on its way into port.

Our Scot friends Geoff and Linda taking pics of us from the old bridge.

Daymarker 19 on Jekyll Creek.  We plowed a furrow in the bottom only two hours after high tide, and we draw five feet.  We would later hit bottom in the Cumberland River, where the buoy colors change sides.  We bumped.  A hard bump.

Keep the green buoy to port.

Towing the Whaler.

Homemade sailboat.  Looks kind of skinny.

Laughing Gulls were swarming behind Drift Away.  Maybe we looked like a fishing boat.

A Friggin' Pelican.

Olivia looking for birds.

Nope.  No idea.  A car-type boat wash?

Just as we arrived at Cumberland Island, horses!

If you don't have your own boat, you can buy a ticket on the Cumberland Princess.

Drift Away at anchor.  Only the second time in three years that we've been on the hook.  Now that the Whaler runs, we need to do more of this.

The river walk on Cumberland

Pileated Woodpecker.

A wild horse.  Doesn't look so wild to me.

As a matter of fact, they seemed downright friendly.  They  took as much of an interest in the dogs as the dogs did to them.

The Dungeness ruins.  We'll visit here again tomorrow, and more pics and info then.

Female turkey.

Crabs can be right or left handed.  These guys must have thought they were looking in a mirror.

Doe.  A deer.  A female deer.

OK, everyone.   Awwwww........

The road back to Seacamp went on into infinity.

Our anchor neighbor.

Last night's sunset.  It's not the Golden Isles, but it's pretty nice.

Finite.

I Cut The Hose

It was another rainy day here in Brunswick, Georgia yesterday.  Combine that with lack of a car, and the absence of our 42" LCD television, and I had no excuse not to do boat projects.  It was time to finish the deck washdown.

I had already installed the deck fitting and ran the hose from it down to the locker I was going to install the pump in.  I had also run the hose from the locker to the head's seawater intake where I'd tee it in.

For some reason, I just wasn't with it yesterday.  Simple problems seemed complex.  It must be because I skipped breakfast, the most important meal of the day.  Or maybe it was because I also forgot to take all my meds.  I dunno.   But I had to ponder everything.  But everything eventually got done.

I know some of you are looking at the pic above and thinking "Hey Dave, why don't you throw a coat of paint in there.  It looks like crap."  You would be correct, of course, and my answer is "When I'm done doing eveyrthing else."   That means never.  Drift Away is a boat.  There are always things to do.

So with the hoses connected to the pump and everything wired in, it was time.  The last thing to do.  Either cut the cabinetry away from the seacock so I could properly close it, which would be the seamanlike thing to do, or to be a hack and just cut the hose.  I chose to be a hack.  I measured carefully.  You only get one shot at this.

I fetched my bag of tapered wooden plugs from their special place in the engine room (so I know exactly where they are should I need them), looked at the hose, guestimated a good cutting place, and slashed the hose with Pam's sharpest kitchen knife.  Water came gushing in, and even though I expected it and planned for it, this always gives a boater a twinge of oh-shit.  I jammed a wooden plug in the hose and stopped the flow.  I trimmed the cut hose, crammed them in the tee, put on hose clamps (yeah, I know, two clamps below the waterline.  Later.) and was done.  Now to turn everything on.

It took a minute for the pump to prime, but there it was.  A gusher.

I was so happy that I went directly to the victory beer without even putting away my tools.  Well, everything down there was soaking wet from cutting the hose, so tomorrow will be a better day to pick up.

The bottom of my anchor locker is plywood, which drains directly into the bilge.  I've mentioned before that stinky life forms evolve in the primordial soup of bilges.   Since all the chain is laying on the deck and the locker is empty, I should fiberglass over the plywood to seal it off from the bilge, and drill drain holes out the side of the boat.  I'm pretty sure it's above the waterline.  Only one way to find out.  If I have any left over glass mat, and if I can find it, maybe that's what I'll do on Sunday.

Just Cut The Hose

Yesterday, Pam and I delivered our car to the Florida marina where we'll be storing Drift Away.  Thankfully, our friends Dick and Deb from Journey To... were here and offered to follow us down in their car and fetch us back, an offer we gratefully accepted.  But before that chore, I worked again on the deck washdown pump.

I decided that installing a dedicated seacock for the washdown wouldn't work, since savvy mariners tell me that it's not advisable to drill big holes in the bottom of one's boat below the waterline while in the water.  I decided it would be better to tee into the water intake for the forward heads, which must be around there somewhere.  I found it once a few years ago, so I'm sure I could find it again.  Following the water line from the forward toilet, under the sink, to a junk work room storage locker, and then to another storage locker, I found it.

For my landlubber friends, a seacock is a valve that pokes through the hull of your boat to allow sea water intake.  It's used to flush heads and engine cooling, for the most part.  The seacock is a tapered plug with a hole through it, with a handle on one end that allows you to throw it ninety degrees to open or close it, and a lock nut on the other side to make sure you cannot do this quickly.

The whereabouts of these  valves should be well known to the boat owner, and exercised by being opened and closed on a regular basis to make sure they're functional incase a hose bursts and you need to turn it off.

Whatever.

Drift Away was remodeled, and part of the remodel was a modification to the forward stateroom and the addition of a head.  Another part of the remodel blocked off access to that seacock (see above photo).   The locknut was completely inaccessible.  How did the previous owners exercise the seacock?  The answer is that they didn't.  How un-mariner like and careless of them.

Oh sure, I tried to move the handle without loosening the lock nut, after soaking it in PB Blaster and hoping for a miracle, but it wouldn't budge.  I put a bit wrench on it, but I could see the whole seacock bend and not the handle.   I decided that breaking off the seacock would be just as bad as drilling a big hole in the bottom of the boat, so I let it be to ponder this problem a bit.  I'm a big fan of pondering problems.

Today, I may take my jigsaw and cut that cabinet away to loosen the nut, whale on it with a plastic headed mallet, hit it with a heat gun, and see if I can loosen it.  That would be the wise thing to do.  Or, I may just put a F*ck It sticker on the seacock, cut the hose and let water spray into the boat while I try to slide on hose clamps and insert the tee.  I'll let you know what I did tomorrow.

We're waiting for both a weather window and a replacement motor for the Whaler of Death.   I called the outboard guys to buy their 50 HP Johnson, and we agreed to a price, but it seems that the outboard guys need to get their hands on a trailer to haul the Whaler of Death out of the water and to their shop to do the swap.    I'll let you know how that works out too.

But in any event, we wouldn't be going anywhere anyway today and most likely tomorrow.  St. Andrews Sound is only a short hop to cross, but with strong winds out of the east, it's got a nasty steep chop that's probably over our three foot maximum wave limit.

Why a three foot wave limit, you ask?  There's a search function at the top of the blog.   Search for "getting the snot kicked out of us".

Installing the Deck Washdown

Yesterday was a rainy day, and with little else to do, I decided to start a boat project I've been putting off for two years.  Installing a deck washdown pump.

For my landlubber friends, anchors and chain rest in mud and slime.  When you raise the anchor, everything is covered in gunk which winds up in the chain locker.   Many chain lockers, such as that on Drift Away, drain into the bilge.   This slime and gunk sit in the bilge and evolve into new life forms, all of which stinks worse than a chicken farm.  It's a good thing if you can hose everything off.

Here's the box, which took me three days to find.  I knew it was on the boat, I just couldn't remember where.  Look at how the cardboard started to evolve into a new stinky life form.

I placed everything on my junk work bench.  

I'm going to mount the pump in the windlass's battery compartment.  This will be a piece of cake.

There's the chain locker right there.  Easy peasy.  Hmmmm....  where is the deck fitting?  Jabsco didn't supply one.  Amazing.  So I hied myself off to West Marine where, amazingly, they had one on the shelf.  

You can see it in the pic below, the round shiny thing.  I also bought a brass pipe to extend through Drift Away's very thick deck, a 1/2" to 3/4" adapter, a pipe to hose adapter, and a 3/4" tee to tap into the water intake for the forward head.

This is what it will look like going through the deck.

The rain stopped briefly, so I took the opportunity to take my hole saw and cut through the deck and install the deck fitting.

The hose would pass through the chain locker, so I put the hose through a conduit and wire tied it off to one side.

This slowed this project down considerably.  Once you've drilled though something, you need to remove the wooden piece plugging up the saw.  The manufacturer of the hole saw thoughtfully put two pretty useless holes on each side into which you can stick a small screwdriver to pry the piece out, stabbing yourself in the finger at the same time.

My friend Dick came over at 4 for happy hour, so I happily stopped working for the day.   Today we bring our 42" TV to the storage unit, and then drop our Kia (Audrey) off at the marina in Florida.  We hope to leave on Saturday, although the weather is looking doubtful.

Today: East winds 30 knots with frequent gusts to gale force. Seas 8 to 11 feet. Inland waters very rough. Widespread showers. Isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon.

Tonight: East winds 25 to 30 knots with frequent gusts to gale force. Seas 8 to 11 feet. Inland waters very rough. Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms.

Saturday: East winds 20 to 25 knots. Seas 6 to 9 feet. Inland waters rough. Scattered showers. Isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon.

Saturday Night: East winds 15 to 20 knots. Seas 5 to 7 feet. Inland waters choppy. Scattered showers. Isolated thunderstorms in the evening.

Sunday: Southeast winds 15 to 20 knots becoming south 10 to 15 knots in the afternoon. Seas 5 to 7 feet. Inland waters a moderate chop. Numerous showers and isolated thunderstorms in the morning...then scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon.

Sunday Night: Southwest winds 10 knots. Seas 3 to 5 feet. Inland waters a light chop. Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms in the evening...then isolated showers after midnight.

Monday: Southwest winds 10 knots. Seas 3 to 5 feet subsiding to 2 to 3 feet in the afternoon. Inland waters a light chop. Isolated showers.

The rain isn't too big of a deal in a trawler, but the east winds means we can't cross St. Andrews Sound, which is open to the east and shallow, meaning that there would be a very nasty chop and most likely exceed our three foot wave limit considerably.  Monday is looking much better.   We'll see.

The Boston Whaler of Death

We've decided that we're leaving Brunswick Landing Marina on Saturday, weather permitting.  The part for the A/C hasn't come in yet, but we need to leave.  We need to get our car to Florida, which we'll do on Friday.

Today's project was to get the ramp our friends Dick and Deb gave us rigged up to our boat.  We need a way to get the dogs off Drift Away and into the Boston Whaler of Death.  I decided I'd put an eyebolt at each corner of the ramp, tie one side off to the big boat and suspend the other with our electric winch.

As I worked, I didn't realize at first that Pam had the camera.

Deep in thought.

With Chevy wondering what I was doing.

We rigged it up.   Chevy is game for anything, and was our first guinea pig.

As you can see, he was very happy and proud of himself.

It took some coaxing to get Olivia to come down the ramp, and A LOT to get Ruby to descend.  To celebrate, we took our newly repaired Whaler for a spin with the dogs.  We got to the end of the marina and paddled back.

Yes, I made the call and bought the 50 HP Johnson.  It will replace the Evinrude today.

Do you know how hard it is to get photos of you or your boat?  Our friend and dockmake Joe took a few for us.

Chillin' on the flybridge.

Pam putting Semco on our teak.

Thanks Joe!

Revenge of the Whaler

Yesterday was a mixed bag.  A little bit of everything.

As I sat at the dinette table with my first cup of coffee, I noticed  a beautiful Great Blue Heron by the marsh.  I grabbed my camera, but it was foggy, something unusual here.  I took the shot anyway, but the result is... well... foggy.

Then I heard the rumble of big gasoline engines.  Spirit was leaving, embarking on it's trip north to Buffalo, New York.

You might recall this pic from yesterday of the Whaler's outboard.  Upper right center in the pic below, you can see a half circle.  That's supposed to be a complete circle.  It held part of the linkage, the part that advances the timing.  I went to the local Evinrude dealer to learn the part is no longer available.  I decided to McGiver the broken linkage.  

Down in my junk work room, I took a flat washer with a 1/2" hole, stuck it in my small vise, and took my Dremel to it.  After grinding and testing, grinding and testing, and grinding and testing some more, I got a good fit for the plastic grommet insert.

I spread some epoxy on it and vice-gripped it to the linkage.  There's not much pressure on it.  Maybe it will hold.  Maybe not.

I had called a place in Darien the day before looking for a used outboard.  They didn't have any at the present time, but the person who answered thought his brother-in-law might.  His BIL was retired, and his hobby was rebuilding old outboards.  I gave the guy on the phone my number, and just as I finished clamping on the washer, I had a call from Robert.  He'd come over and have a look-see.

I wasn't the only one working on boat projects.  Pam had cleaned some of the teak on Drift Away using straight ammonia, which is an excellent teak cleaner, by the way.   She was now brushing on Semco, a sealant that we used with great success at Sound Sailing Center.  Great stuff.

Robert and his friend Gary arrived.  They came down the dock and looked at the Whaler.  Robert said that he had a 50 HP Johnson that he had totally rebuilt that would bolt right on.  I'd really like to get something smaller and lighter, I told him.  He said he had a 25 HP Mercury, but the mounts and linkages would have to be totally redone.  Then he asked what the problem was with the Evinrude.  I told him about the broken linkage, and how the part was no longer available.  Robert said he had a few laying around, and for $75 he'd go get it and put it on for me.

Deal.

He and Gary were back a few hours later.  Robert had the new linkage on in short order, and then did a compression test.  Both cylinders were fine.  He then fired up the Evinrude, made a few adjustments, and it was purring like a kitten.  We took it for a spin and it ran fine.  But back at the dock, before they left, I got his telephone number.  One burp out of that Evinrude and that 50 HP Johnson is going on.

We had a five o'clock dinner date with Mike and Cyndi.  Pam worked with Cyndi at Belk.  After a great dinner at Fox's, they came back to the boat to see what living aboard is like and to meet the dogs.  They like dogs, but can't have any in their apartment.  The dogs didn't disappoint, especially Chevy.

And then, as our day was winding to a close, was another beautiful Golden Isles sunset.

Today we're waiting on the A/C repairman.  Once that's done, we can rent a car, drop our car off at Green Cove Springs Marina, come back to Brunswick, and head out to Cumberland.  Finally.  

We also plan to run the Whaler of Death a bit before we leave too.