Preparing for Departure

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Preparing for Departure

I am preparing for departure tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning. While I was cleaning up a bit, it occurred to me to try this Google Earth Map image. It shows my path, so far, based on my positions I wrote in my SSB emails while enroute. At my furthest point south, I was 888 miles due east of the Georgia/Florida border, and my trip so far, has been about 800 nm or over 900 miles. I drifted for the 36 hours about 60 miles, and hand steered the boat with the emergency tiller, about 130 nm. Bermuda is 873 miles due east of Charleston, SC, so I lost all of the coast of Georgia coming here.

I moved AF to the fuel dock today and filled up with fuel and some water, with the help of a French couple I had spoken to several times, but met formally Friday. Wonderful couple - he is a retired Air France pilot, who started his career on the old Caravelle jet and ended flying 747's. She is now an artist, and quite good. When they offered to help me weigh anchor and get into the fuel dock, I didn't know that he would have had 5 or 6 glasses of wine first, so he was a bit - shall we say - demonstrative? emphatic? French??? with his suggestions and recommendations, but it made it a lot more fun for me, and I laughed at most all of it. We dropped her off at the fuel dock from the dink, so she could take a line thrown when we got there, and then he and I rode out to AF, and got the anchor in - I had almost all of 300 feet of rode out. I made some turns to check the steering, and in we went (but not before he had a nice pee over the side - these French!), and it went perfectly, including the departure, with her aboard. Well, there were no loud crashes or even quiet scraping sounds, if you call that perfect! But was expensive fuel!

I brought AF over to the better anchorage, and now we are nestled amongst all the other boats, in a much more sheltered and shallow area. (Good thing, too, as I just heard 40 knot gusts forecast on Marine Weather, for either tonight or tomorrow night - not sure.) We shared a few glasses of wine, more, (it was a box wine I had bought at Denise's liquor store my last trip that way.) and I opened some Black Diamond Cheese I had frozen and sliced it up, and we had a good time visiting in my cockpit. They have invited me for an early lunch tomorrow, and there is a very good chance I shall try to depart and sail along with them, as we both are going to St Maarten - of course they are going in at the French side. They will out sail me, I am sure, but it will be fun to have a companion boat, even for a bit. Will see how long it lasts. They have a smaller Amel than Paul's, but she will out sail me I am sure in every way, AND I will be more conservative in my sail size.

So, much to do in preparation, including picking up my outboard, fixed or not. Will make one more entry before departure, and then will be offline for a while.

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About Annah Foster

Annah Foster is a 1980'ish Morgan 462. She is a USCG Documented vessel and the year on the document is 1979, which I believe is the year the keel was laid. She is known as a ketch, which means she has 2 masts, and the aft mast is forward of the rudder. She also is a center compartment boat, which means the helm is located between the 2 masts, which are, by the way, the main and the mizzen. She is equipped with roller furling on the jib/genoa sail which is the big triangular sail on the front. Her empty weight, or rather displacement, is 33,000 lbs, which is fat for her length. Mr. Morgan believed in thick fiberglas for strength and I am told that at places it is often found to be 2 inches of solid fiberglas. Her keel has encapsulated lead weighing 8,000 lbs.

She boasts 2 staterooms, - v-berth forward with separate head and twin beds aft with separate head, including the famous bathtub. The configuration of the aft stateroom could easily be changed with a change in the mattresses to an almost queen berth, port to starboard, but currently she has twins, running fore and aft, with 2 large mattress cushions separating them. There is also a ladder and sliding hatch aft for egress in an emergency, to the aft deck, which I call the back porch. I bought some director's chairs for it and have sat there many evenings enjoying a drink and sunset. The aft deck is also the location of the propane gas grill, storage for the 2 outboard motors, Yamaha 4hp 4cycle, and a Yamaha 15hp 2 cycle, which power a new Apex Lite 10'6 inflatable dinghy, which can hang from the installed davits.

The main sail has 2 reefing points on jiffy reefing and the mizzen has 1. No lines lead to the cockpit but the jib, main and mizzen sheets.

She has a Switlick 6 man life raft mounted aft the mizzen mast. And, an emergency tiller aboard.

She is equipped with a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine, powering a Hurth transmission and turning a 4 bladed Max Prop, which feathers when sailing, and reverses pitch in Reverse so that she has the same thrust as in Forward. One unique design flaw is that the propeller shaft exits the boat at 3 degrees off center, making the port prop walk in reverse, even worse. The engine is equipped with about a 90 amp alternator with a very good voltage regulator.

She also has a Westerbeke 5.7 kw diesel generator, which produces 110 v AC power, and charges the batteries thru a 40 amp charger. I also have a Honda 1000 watt gasoline powered generator for emergency 110v, and an automotive battery charger aboard.

She came with an old Windbugger wind generator, not quite perfectly mounted. Stowed in the V-berth, there is a replacement AirX marine wind generator and 8 foot mast waiting to be installed, along with the controller, and 2 solar panels, which are half the possible wattage the controller can handle.

She has 3 4-D AGM batteries for the house bank and a type 18 start battery - all are 12volt.

The 4 gallon water heater will heat with both engine cooling water and 110v AC power and is equipped with a mixing valve to prevent scalding.

Tankage - Water - 110 gallon port and 85 gallon center tanks
Fuel - 175 gallons
Range when new at 2250 RPM is almost 800 nm.

Currently, her refridgerator and freezer are 110 volt AC, with several holding plates each which must be manually started and stopped. She has waiting to be installed, 2 Cool Blue 12 volt systems, with automatic controls, but truthfully, I don't know where the new holding plates will fit.

Electronics -
She is equipped with 2 VHF marine band radios, one at the helm and the other at the nav station, with repeater at the helm, and a hand held low power VHF 'walkie talkie'. Also, at the nav station, she has a Single Side Band HF radio - SSB with a Pactor 2 modem making her capable of downloading NOAA weather fax and Sail Mail emails and Grb files. onto a dedicated IBM laptop. She has as primary a Raymarine E-80 Chartplotter at the helm and a smaller Garmin Chartplotter for back up at the helm, a handheld Garmin Chartplotter, and an older Furuno GPS at the nav station. She has an older Raytheon black and white 24 nm radar at the helm, with a repeater at the nav station. She has a RapidFix 406 EPIRB, emergency locator beacon, that is hand activated. She has a new Clarion AM FM CD player, with input for computer or MP3 player on 3 sets of individual speakers - cockpit, salon, and aft cabin.

For those who do not know me, I named her for my parents - Annah Margaret and George Foster Doak. It is through their beneficence that I am able to live this dream and I felt that I should dedicate my boat to honor their memories.