Such a beautiful day

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Such a beautiful day

Awoke to calm, glassy bay. Really enjoyed sitting on the back porch with my coffee and morning smoke. So beautiful and peaceful. But the water was being churned by a rush of boats to enter the lagoon, when the bridge is raised - only 3 times a day. So, each morning, particularly calm mornings, there is a parade of boats jogging and jockeying at the entrance, in wait for the bridge to rise and the green light to come on - it is only a one way bridge, so just because it is open, does not mean it is your turn. With the swell crashing against the rocks, it is scary to me to think about going in, or even trying to stand down there, keeping AF under control, and pointed towards the entrance, and then fight the tidal flow coming out merging with the waves going in, and threading the needle, as it were, getting my 13 ft wide boat through the tiny - tiny bridge opening - I think it is 13 ft .25 inches wide - at least in my mind.
At the junk store the other day, I bought some cheap wooden 5x7 picture frames for some family pics I have, so drilled them, and screwed them to the 'art' that was left on AF when I bought her. I have never cared for the pineapple motif, but could not do better and it is very tasteful, just not to my liking, so after removing one pineapple picture to make room for the plate holder and spice rack, the second, over the table in the salon is now covered with some pictures of mine. This way, I did not have to make any new holes in the teak walls.

I then opened the binnacle again, and put the digital camera inside and shot different pictures to try to get the model number of my Hynautic steering pump. Got good numbers, but cannot find any reference to them being correct. Huh! So, I don't understand. But it looks like the pump was manufactured in 1979, so is probably original, unlike the piston/ram which seems to be circa 1986. So, I have all the info for Wes, and Jean-Marc, at least all that I can gather.

Took a nice swim off the dink later, and it was refreshing for me - seemed a bit cooler today but saved me from a shower - HA! I heard on the Cruiser net, or the end of it, perhaps, a fellow saying that he and wife wanted to find a beach they could go to in their dinks. Gonna look into that, because it sounded great to me.

I dinked into town for a croissant with ham and cheese, cafe au lait, and then some kind of French fruit juice in a can, and did the internet stuff. Stopped at the grocery on the way home, returning at dusk for a glass of wine in the cockpit, with baguette and cheese. A very nice day.

Had a nice email from a fellow from Inner Harbor East Marina who is in Thailand right now - follows the blog when he can. Now, HE lives a great life! Here one week, and off to another exotic place the next.

Decided that I will take more pictures of just 'stuff' for you to see. Like dinghy docks, which are the parking lots for us cruisers. And the bridge, and the waves crashing at its entrance. Yesterday, coming back in the dink from the Dutch side, I took a wrong turn and got close to a bit of a hilltop where, in the fading light I could just make out a group of goats, just standing there, looking down. Not sure why they went up as there is certainly nothing more to eat at the rocky top than down below. Can you find the goats in this pic?

Unfortunately, bouncing in the dink is not a good tripod for a camera and the pics show no goats (well, I know where they are, or were). But I did mention that the French side had pretty sparse fireworks for New Year's Eve, relative to the Dutch side, and across the way in Anguilla. Well, last night about 8 they shot the rest of them off, scaring the heck out of me. Flash! BOOM! Thought I was under attack! But got a decent pic or two, even from a rolling deck.

Should add this little story: You know how lucky the US is, that our products are not only labelled in English, but also Espanol (touch #2 por Espanol). Well, the French do not feel so disposed. So, shopping is a bit of a challenge for me. (What could be the French for sour cream, and not soured cream? Do they even EAT sour creme?) So, tonight I saw what I believed was kinda like deviled ham, in small, peel back top cans, which should be a good thing to have aboard the boat. So, when I got home, after enjoying the sunset, I found I have a propane problem, and decided on a cold supper. So, I pulled out a can of Pate de Jambon, made by Belle France. I THINK jambon is ham, and pate is pate, right? Well, I sliced some baguette, and forked some of this onto a few slices. It tasted pretty good but gotta admit, it LOOKED and really SMELLED like the cat food we used to open for Cat and Sushi, back in Pittsburgh. I really, REALLY hope I just ate human food. And please don't tell me - if you know - that Belle France is their largest cat food manufacturer.

So, tomorrow, will try to find all of the parts for the wind generator and solar panels and start to read the instructions.

Meow.

Life is good.

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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.