The trip to Seattle was bittersweet. We were there to hold a memorial service for Meryl’s mother, Joan, who had passed away at the age of 89 following a long illness. We knew this day would come, but you are never prepared for it. Meryl and her sister Durlyn spent a tearful day going over family mementos and preparing a display for the memorial service and making other arrangements. Jim and Chris Berry were kind enough to share their house with us, and they were the right people to be with during those difficult days.
The service was held at Mountain View Cemetery, where all of Walter’s family is buried. So sad to see the graves of your loved ones all in a row. During the service, the minister seemed to key on various evocations from Bennett, our almost one-year old grandson who was seated in the front row, and the interchange between the two went a long way to raising the spirits of everyone in attendance. Along with our immediate family, it was wonderful to see our cousins whom we hadn’t talked with in quite awhile, and the many friends who came to support Meryl.
Following the service we tried to decompress. We did get some quality time with the grandsons, Brody and Bennett, including a fun swim at a local YMCA. Always amazed at how much the grand kids change in between visits.
The rest of the week was the typical circuit of getting boat supplies at Fisheries and West Marine, a surreptitious trip to Dicks, and food items at Costco and QFC. Since we were flying back on a smaller Cessna 410 from Puerto Rico to Tortola, we couldn’t bring our normal two 70-lb. boxes full of supplies, but we did manage to fill one box to ½ lb. under the 50 lb. limit.
We took a night flight to Newark and caught the next flight to San Juan, but then decided instead of standing-by all day, to just get a hotel in San Juan since the flights looked better the following day. Hotel rooms are such a treat for us: unlimited hot showers, live TV, ice machines, and a comfy bed. The next morning we caught the 10:30 am flight to Tortola and could feel the tension easing from our bodies as the the tropical islands came into view through the clouds. Were back on the boat by noon and got most our stuff packed away before dinner time.
The next few days were spent reprovisioning and doing laundry. After the huge American grocery stores, the small local groceries require some readjustment. Since the weather was very squally, including one day where it rained a record 10 inches, we decided to just stay on the mooring ball and get our lives sorted out. Zipping around the world on airplanes may sound exciting, but in truth, it just wears you out.
On May 10 we had a wonderful short sail over to neighboring Peter Island, where we anchored in Little Harbor, a hidden gem not yet discovered by the hoards (and I do mean hoards) of charter catamarans. Since it’s a small bay, we emulated the other boats and ran a shore line around a rock ashore to keep the boat from swinging with the wind and tide (lets you get more boats in a smaller space). Haven’t anchored like that since our last trip to British Columbia.
Talked a short bit with a young South African couple on a 50 ft. Voyage catamaran who both looked like they could be professional models. Meryl and I had been having a long debate about whether they were dot.com millionaires, South African gold mine heirs, or cocaine smugglers. Turns out they were professional skippers, along with most of the other big cats around us, waiting for their next charter to start. Great work if you can get it!
While the original idea of going to tranquil Little Harbor was for some well deserved R&R, I decided it would be a good time to install the new Vesper XB8000 AIS unit we had purchased back in the States. AIS is a system similar to that used on airplanes that identifies other ships/boats in the vicinity and displays these ships on our computer navigation system. If you click on the little boat symbol it shows the ship name, speed, direction, and a calculation (called CPA … closest point of approach) of when they will be closest to you, or God forbid, if you are on a collision course. It’s a very accurate system and in some ways is much easier to use than radar. With the ship name, you can easily call them on the VHF radio to make sure they see you. We’ve had passive AIS on the boat for over six years; the Vesper now gives us the ability to transmit our position so other ships/boats can see us on their AIS system. It’s a huge advantage in the crowded shipping lanes of many ports.
Like many other projects on the boat, I had laid in bed every night for a week thinking about all the potential issues involved with the installation. In theory it should be easy: 1) mount the black box, hook up power, install a splitter so we can tap into the existing VHF antennae on the masthead, run power to the splitter, and run a small diameter wire from an external GPS to the black box. So simple in theory. The devil is in the details, as they say.
Like every boat project, about one-half of the boat had to be torn apart to get at tools, electrical connections, multimeter, and various chunks of wire, shrink wrap and wire ties. I have come to accept this disarray as a necessary evil. Meryl has not.
The first step was taking apart the face plates of teak upon which all our radios, meters, displays, etc. are mounted to access the area behind where the black box will be installed. Do this runs the risk of dinging any one of the hundreds of wires running from these devices, or electrocuting your bare stomach as you lean across the live electrical connections on the back of the panel (don’t ask me how I know this).
Mounting the black box was fairly simple. Finding a piece of one-inch thick wood to mount it to meant tearing apart the only area of the boat not currently torn apart. The wood scraps are stored at the very bottom of the deepest vertical storage space under the guest berth, naturally. Then finding the jig saw that I’ve used twice in the last two years, well you can image what that entailed. After all that I managed to cut the piece about one inch too short (only discovered after jig saw put away).
Running power to the black box and antenna splitter was relatively simple, with the exception of trying to solder very thin 22-gauge wire without melting everything.
I saved the best part for last, running the 30 ft. of antenna cable from the GPS unit to the black box. The cable has a factory-installed metal connector on the end. For a connector, it is relatively small. This is good, you would think. The problem was the wiring runs (or races as they are sometimes called) on our boat are absolutely, totally full. Not a micron-sized hair would fit through. The last electrician I had on the boat to install the 8-gauge wire from the new solar panels to the controllers, continually muttered “I’ve got to get out of this business” as we tried to force those relatively large wires through the same races. I remember him saying something about “that’s the last wire that goes into this boat.” Well, not quite.
All this is what I thought about every night for a week before the project. By now I have learned the boat well enough to know roughly where the wire would have to run. And I also knew it wouldn’t fit through several of the locations on the route. Like a downhill skier the night before the big race, I continually “ran the course” in my head, trying to think of a path through the innards of our boat that might work.
The GPS unit was mounting on the outside tubing that makes up our dodger. It was a little unorthodox location, but the only one that had a chance in hell of the wiring route to work. We followed the route of the solar panel power cables (the original pair mounted on the bimini). Like a WWI land battle, every inch of ground was furiously fought for. A cheer would go up as we found a way through the first two feet, a difficult dogleg left, only to be stymied at the next turn. I even used my new “video on a cable” tool to took at the route, but it was depressing what I saw. After an hour of putting my body into contortionist positions that only Houdini could accomplish, did I find an alternate route around the obstacle. Another cheer!
We were now in the engine room, supposed easy going like a Conestoga wagon across the Great Plains. The obvious wiring runs/races were jammed full of other wires. With Meryl pushing and me pulling, we somehow had to get the wire through a 1 ¼ inch hole in the stringer by the engine. As you might image, this hole was solid with wires. To tease me, there was a thin messenger string to help me guide the new wire through. Remember the little factory installed connector on the end to the cable, well it was about a smidgen too wide for the hole. There was no other place to drill a new hole, so for an hour I tried every trick I’d learned from the various electricians. The winner turned out to be placing a very long, thin screwdriver behind the little connector and gently using this to force the wire through the hole, while Meryl gently pulled on the messenger line. After that hole, my body soaked in sweat, a feeble cheer was uttered with the success.
But like those confident Conestoga wagons ambling across the Great Plains, my wire knew nothing about the great Rocky Mountains it had to cross shortly. I quit for the day, a mere five feet from the promise land, and fell asleep convinced that after all pushing and prodding I done that I’d probably damaged the propriety cable and it wouldn’t work anyway.
I don’t seem to have the ability to keep these technical descriptions short, but I will try. With a fresh, but somewhat battle weary attitude the next morning, I resumed the battle at the next hole through a stringer. Again, absolutely jammed with wires. An hour later a minor victory, but too tired for the cheer. Two hours later, and four feet of wire feed through, I came out of the mountains and could see the fertile valleys of Oregon in my Conestoga wagon. Only one foot to go. I won’t bore you, but even the last foot fought us for 20 minutes before the wire popped through. Not even a feeble cheer for this one, too exhausted.
I hooked the cable up and got a green status light on the black box. A victory? Not sure yet. I cleaned myself up as best as possible and rowed over to Ken and Barbie on the Voyage 50 to ask if they could see an AIS signal from Flying Cloud on their navigation system. “Ken” fired up the system and said, “Well I see Courageous, and there’s Antares, and Sally Anne, but no Flying Cloud. With my head hung low, I slowly rowed back to our boat wondering what I would do now. Then, across the water came Ken’s voice: “Hey, Flying Cloud just popped up on our system.” I was too tired to cheer, but I did have the courtesy to say “Thanks.”
I can’t say Meryl was thankful that it was working, she just wanted her boat so you could walk around without injuring yourself. It took us two days just to get things somewhat put back together. I sat and played with my new AIS like a ten-year-old with new chemistry set at Christmas. I still had some adventures getting the AIS interface to work properly with the navigation computer, but that’s for another time and another 10,000 words.
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| Meryl, her brother Kim, and sister Durlyn at the memorial service. |
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| Our son Brad, grandson Bennett, wife Ashley, and our daughter Christa. |
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| Meryl with Brody and Bennett. |
The rest of the week was the typical circuit of getting boat supplies at Fisheries and West Marine, a surreptitious trip to Dicks, and food items at Costco and QFC. Since we were flying back on a smaller Cessna 410 from Puerto Rico to Tortola, we couldn’t bring our normal two 70-lb. boxes full of supplies, but we did manage to fill one box to ½ lb. under the 50 lb. limit.
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| Checking out our boat anchored in Fat Hog Bay. |
The next few days were spent reprovisioning and doing laundry. After the huge American grocery stores, the small local groceries require some readjustment. Since the weather was very squally, including one day where it rained a record 10 inches, we decided to just stay on the mooring ball and get our lives sorted out. Zipping around the world on airplanes may sound exciting, but in truth, it just wears you out.
 |
| Stern tie to the shore kept our boat from swinging into nearby boats. |
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| It had been raining cats and dogs, so we put up our rain catcher. Didn't rain again for 10 days. |
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| Fifty-foot charter cats with professional crews waiting for their next charter. |
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| I had just finished cleaning the hull with my SCUBA tank when this monster came cruising by. Turned out to be a harmless 5 ft. long tarpon, but it still gets your attention. |
Like many other projects on the boat, I had laid in bed every night for a week thinking about all the potential issues involved with the installation. In theory it should be easy: 1) mount the black box, hook up power, install a splitter so we can tap into the existing VHF antennae on the masthead, run power to the splitter, and run a small diameter wire from an external GPS to the black box. So simple in theory. The devil is in the details, as they say.
Like every boat project, about one-half of the boat had to be torn apart to get at tools, electrical connections, multimeter, and various chunks of wire, shrink wrap and wire ties. I have come to accept this disarray as a necessary evil. Meryl has not.
The first step was taking apart the face plates of teak upon which all our radios, meters, displays, etc. are mounted to access the area behind where the black box will be installed. Do this runs the risk of dinging any one of the hundreds of wires running from these devices, or electrocuting your bare stomach as you lean across the live electrical connections on the back of the panel (don’t ask me how I know this).
Mounting the black box was fairly simple. Finding a piece of one-inch thick wood to mount it to meant tearing apart the only area of the boat not currently torn apart. The wood scraps are stored at the very bottom of the deepest vertical storage space under the guest berth, naturally. Then finding the jig saw that I’ve used twice in the last two years, well you can image what that entailed. After all that I managed to cut the piece about one inch too short (only discovered after jig saw put away).
Running power to the black box and antenna splitter was relatively simple, with the exception of trying to solder very thin 22-gauge wire without melting everything.
I saved the best part for last, running the 30 ft. of antenna cable from the GPS unit to the black box. The cable has a factory-installed metal connector on the end. For a connector, it is relatively small. This is good, you would think. The problem was the wiring runs (or races as they are sometimes called) on our boat are absolutely, totally full. Not a micron-sized hair would fit through. The last electrician I had on the boat to install the 8-gauge wire from the new solar panels to the controllers, continually muttered “I’ve got to get out of this business” as we tried to force those relatively large wires through the same races. I remember him saying something about “that’s the last wire that goes into this boat.” Well, not quite.
All this is what I thought about every night for a week before the project. By now I have learned the boat well enough to know roughly where the wire would have to run. And I also knew it wouldn’t fit through several of the locations on the route. Like a downhill skier the night before the big race, I continually “ran the course” in my head, trying to think of a path through the innards of our boat that might work.
The GPS unit was mounting on the outside tubing that makes up our dodger. It was a little unorthodox location, but the only one that had a chance in hell of the wiring route to work. We followed the route of the solar panel power cables (the original pair mounted on the bimini). Like a WWI land battle, every inch of ground was furiously fought for. A cheer would go up as we found a way through the first two feet, a difficult dogleg left, only to be stymied at the next turn. I even used my new “video on a cable” tool to took at the route, but it was depressing what I saw. After an hour of putting my body into contortionist positions that only Houdini could accomplish, did I find an alternate route around the obstacle. Another cheer!
We were now in the engine room, supposed easy going like a Conestoga wagon across the Great Plains. The obvious wiring runs/races were jammed full of other wires. With Meryl pushing and me pulling, we somehow had to get the wire through a 1 ¼ inch hole in the stringer by the engine. As you might image, this hole was solid with wires. To tease me, there was a thin messenger string to help me guide the new wire through. Remember the little factory installed connector on the end to the cable, well it was about a smidgen too wide for the hole. There was no other place to drill a new hole, so for an hour I tried every trick I’d learned from the various electricians. The winner turned out to be placing a very long, thin screwdriver behind the little connector and gently using this to force the wire through the hole, while Meryl gently pulled on the messenger line. After that hole, my body soaked in sweat, a feeble cheer was uttered with the success.
But like those confident Conestoga wagons ambling across the Great Plains, my wire knew nothing about the great Rocky Mountains it had to cross shortly. I quit for the day, a mere five feet from the promise land, and fell asleep convinced that after all pushing and prodding I done that I’d probably damaged the propriety cable and it wouldn’t work anyway.
I don’t seem to have the ability to keep these technical descriptions short, but I will try. With a fresh, but somewhat battle weary attitude the next morning, I resumed the battle at the next hole through a stringer. Again, absolutely jammed with wires. An hour later a minor victory, but too tired for the cheer. Two hours later, and four feet of wire feed through, I came out of the mountains and could see the fertile valleys of Oregon in my Conestoga wagon. Only one foot to go. I won’t bore you, but even the last foot fought us for 20 minutes before the wire popped through. Not even a feeble cheer for this one, too exhausted.
I hooked the cable up and got a green status light on the black box. A victory? Not sure yet. I cleaned myself up as best as possible and rowed over to Ken and Barbie on the Voyage 50 to ask if they could see an AIS signal from Flying Cloud on their navigation system. “Ken” fired up the system and said, “Well I see Courageous, and there’s Antares, and Sally Anne, but no Flying Cloud. With my head hung low, I slowly rowed back to our boat wondering what I would do now. Then, across the water came Ken’s voice: “Hey, Flying Cloud just popped up on our system.” I was too tired to cheer, but I did have the courtesy to say “Thanks.”
I can’t say Meryl was thankful that it was working, she just wanted her boat so you could walk around without injuring yourself. It took us two days just to get things somewhat put back together. I sat and played with my new AIS like a ten-year-old with new chemistry set at Christmas. I still had some adventures getting the AIS interface to work properly with the navigation computer, but that’s for another time and another 10,000 words.
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