s/v Annah Foster - My Last Adventure by Dennis Doak: December 2011

Sunday, December 18, 2011

My 3rd Merry Christmas away from the States

I have received many emails lately, checking up on my situations, since I have not written here for some time - some a bit peeved with me. So here goes a brief update, sans photos.
I have 5 laptops on the boat. 1 old IBM used only for emails and weather while at sea. 2 Acer Aspires. A Dell which I left the States with, and an HP I bought in St Martin to replace the Dell when water entered and I unknowingly, turned it on. The drive went "Zing!" and that was it. So I paid someone to put in a new hard drive, and reload Windows, and put it into a water proof bag, to be a spare. The 1st Acer went zing in the ocean coming here, and friend Rosemary, brought me a 2nd from the States last autumn when she visited. My friend's little boy dropped it on the tile floor, and the sound card stopped working, and it blue screened a week later. Zing #3.
My new HP seems to have gotten wet on its left side, and slowly the ports there are failing, including the slot for an SD card, so I cannot load photos from my new camera. The cooling fan is on that side as well and does not function, so a friend gave me a plastic base with 3 cooling fans, running off the power at the last working USB port. And, the shift key on the left has failed, so all of these capital letters in this post, are done with the right shift key. The backup, spare Dell - well it works but has similar troubles but the shift key is stuck ON, so I cannot type Dot.com - It coms out >com. So I cannot even access email with it. I am slowly loading music to it, and hope it will serve as my music player, through the nice am/fm cd radio I bought in Miami.

It looks like Santa might have to buy me a new laptop for Christmas. I have pictures of my new home at the Roatan Yacht Club to post, as well as some others but cannot get them from the camera to a computer just now.
There is a computer store here, but the rumors among the gringos is that all they can do, and recommend is replacing hardrives. Quick and easy, and profitable. I need better help than that, so when I return to the mainland, I will look for a repair shop that actually repairs things. Possibly, one or more can be salvaged.
Life is just fine here after what seems like a much longer than last year, rainy season, with 6 and 8 inches frequently falling in a day. We have had to bail out our dinks a lot here. But, it seemed that the temperatures were not quite as cold as last year. Normal in my boat is 80-84 and it got down to 70 or 72 a few days, a couple of times. I had to put on some clothes and turn off the fan.
An electrical problem related to the propane that powers my stove has made cooking a bit of a challenge, but I have a little one burner butane stove and have used it. But a seal leaks, making for some excitement and singed hairs on my hand, when the leaking gas ignites and explodes. But now that it is sunny and hot, I will get the propane valve re-wired and will be able to use my oven again. I have made chile con carne and a great pot roast in the crock pot, which lasts me for days of nice filling meals. I don't mind leftovers, as some folks I know do.
My island car is suffering some hiccups lately. I had to have a bearing on the drive shaft replaced as well as the rear brakes rebuilt. When the mechanic was driving to pick me up, a gringa backed into the driver's door, breaking off the mirror and really denting in the door. Estimate: $180. Work scheduled for Tuesday. A friend was quite ill and asked me to take him down west to a clinic the other day, and on the return trip, a screech emerged from under the hood. The cooling fan bracket had broken. Welding the part $40. Labor for remove and replace - $25. Last night I went to a birthday party for the daughter of the lady who cleans my boat, and whose grandfather is a friend. The car wouldn't start, stranding me there. A free ride home in a stone mason's big Kia flat bed almost made me vomit (or was it the 6 rum and coke's and 2 beers?) I returned today, and using ether, got it restarted, but the source of the problem is still unknown.
I have been invited to 2 local homes for Christmas dinner. And 2 different friends have asked me to go to the mainland for the new year - one Tegucigalpa, and the other San Pedro Sula, where a friend's boy friend was murdered the other day for his car. I need to get over the the mainland for some car parts as well as computer repair, but I am not certain that I will travel over the holidays.
So. A rather bland update, but complete, other than that I have a read a lot of books lately, and currently, I am enjoying the complete short stories of Jack London. Most include details of the fridgid Klondike winter, and it is a bit fun to mentally compare with the weather here. Did you know he was a socialist and ran for mayor of Oakland, Calif. for the Socialist Party?
OK - everyone. Merry Christmas, if I don't get to write anymore before then. God Bless All.

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.