For Anna and Andrew

Friday, February 5, 2010

For Anna and Andrew

This is a special blog post, just for my niece's two wonderful children, Anna and Andrew.

UD - Uncle Denny to those of you out of the family - snapped these pictures today. Nothing special, except a bit of celebrating that I am living this new life. The weather has been almost perfect for the last couple days, and as I was departing AF, I decided to stop and take a couple of pictures of her - here is one - and thought the you two - Annah and Andrew - might like to see where UD is today. There is no snow to play in here. Just hot, sunny days, like when we went to your pool last summer. And I hear that Anna is getting the mail now at your new house, which is a very important job to have, so I must buy a postcard and send one to you, and one to Andrew.

This picture turned out better than expected. When I arrived here, the water was very cloudy, and has continued to clear. This is the bottom, from 15 ft above. I took a bit of a swim today and for the first time, bothered to check my anchor. It is buried deep in the sand. Did you know that UD is back in the same place that he was when he bought your T-shirts last year, with the funny pictures of the fish. I have seen other people wearing the same ones and I think of you guys every time.

This is an old sailboat that sailed past me the other day, during the schooner races here. I took the picture for my friend Mike, who lives up near your great-grandmother in Millersville. He also has an old sailboat, too.

On my way to the store in my dinghy, I spied this old boat which is stuck in the mud. Can you believe that? Someone got their boat stuck in the mud, and just left it there and went home. So, can you find the bird in this picture? She is sitting on the prow of this old boat. She is a pelican. She is cleaning her feathers, with her big bill. I wonder how she can do that so easily because her bill is so big. Do you guys know how a pelican catches her fish? The bottom of her beak is a big pouch, that stretches out so she can carry more than one fish, if she wants. She can take them home and eat them later, just like UD picking up Chinese dinner and bringing it to your house to eat at your table with you. Do you think she would share her fish dinner with you? Do you WANT her to share her dinner with you? Yuck!

And this picture is a white crane, who was busy searching for fish to eat, in the shallow waters near shore. She was doing very well and catching a LOT of fish, so it was hard for UD to take a picture, when she was standing still. She wouldn't stop, and smile and say CHEESE for me. Her belly must have been getting full.

I heard today that Anna is 4 and 1/2 years old now, and taking reading lessons, and so I asked her what a hard word was that she had learned, and she told me, "BOOK". And I agree. That is a very hard word to learn, when you are taking reading lessons. I am glad that you learned it, though, and I want you to keep learning new words to read.

And Andrew and I talked on the phone, too, and he told me that he is TWO. Wow.

So, I know that playing in the snow is a lot of fun, but for me, playing in the water is a lot of fun too. I miss you guys, and love you very much. And I know that you are coming to see me sometime, even if it means you get to fly on an airplane. They are fun, too, and it is very exciting to fly. Ask your Pappy.

Love - UD

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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.