Old man gripes about the marina

Out for a sail, Skipper at the helm, pirate sheeting the main

Settled in to summer life on the boat. Marina location is great, nepotism in staff is a little hard to take sometimes. Boston snootiness wears on my sensibilities. If we make it through this season, I would like to search around some more for another place to tie off. Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina advertises a restaurant (closed more than a year ago), WiFi (sporadic connectivity and terrible bandwidth - I had better speed with dial up), and spotless bathrooms (they're certainly not spotless, they are hazardous to human health. Just hold it until you get to work.)

I would really like to find some community and people who like sailing or are creative and fun. I'm losing any fondness I had for the Boston area.

It's been too long since posting. Delivery home

There has been a lot of activity since the last post. We've been pretty busy!

I sailed out of Newport, VA on a Monday. I made it beyond the Bay Bridge Tunnell and out of the south end of the Chessapeak that night. Winds were strong and there was some chop, but things went pretty well until the storm sail blew out in the channell through the Bridge Tunnell. I continued through under the jib alone, then continued out a few miles to where I felt safe from grounding.

I found that Lady Grace would hold her course to the wind if I set her on a reach under the jib alone and that the course was pretty good for my trip plan, so I left her to her own devices and furled the blown out main.

I spent until thursday too far offshore for the cell phone, so out of touch with My Lady. :^(
Winds were rarely usable. I was effectively in doldrums, with occasional bursts of thirty knots that never amounted to more than a couple of housr in a day. One of the breezes found me adventurous and impatient and I mannaged to sink the starboard rail for a while, a first for me. That was pretty exciting, but a lot of work.

By the end of Thursday, I was certain that I would not make it to Boston in any reasonable time. My vacation time was nearly exhausted and I had only gone about one hundred miles of a more than three hundred mile trip. I decided to head in to a port and hire a truck to transport our home the rest of the way.

By late friday afternoon I had tied up in Ocean City, MD at a marina. I was referred to a sailboat guy, Bob Brenner. Bob is all heart and full of energy. He seams to live for helping out people.
Bob convinced me to hire a crew to sail Lady Grace home for us. The cost would reun about a thousand dollars and it would take a week or so. Relieved and tired, I headded back to Boston.

Bob and his people got the inboard started and asked me to pay to have the boat hauled out so they could clear the propeller. While it was out they painted the hull. It was beautiful!

After a month and three thousand dollars, the crew we hired gave up their efforts and told me to pick up our boat in Mystic, Ct. They had been fraught with unfavorable weather and an inability to keep the inboard Atomic 4 running. I headded down to meet them on a Friday afternoon.

Grace was able to find us a sailing captain willing to come over to the marina the prior crew had tied up in and chat with me about how to move on from there.

Keith Chmura showed up and looked over my predicament. He drove me around to get fuel for the outboard and food for the trip. He agreed to sail with me the next morning to get me through the channel at Fisher's Island that could be pretty onerous, then as far as we could comfortably get that day. He left me with instructions to get the outboard running and have a go at the inboard.

I got the outboard running easily, then turned to the Atomic 4.

When the crew left me, they took their protable fuel tanks and their batteries, but did not return our batteries, nor reconnect the main fuel tank. I found our spare gell cells which I had bought second hand before leaving VA and started trying to sort out fuel hoses and electric wires. I thought I would never sort it out, but mannaged to get most of the loose stuff hooked up to something and went up to the cockpit. I put the key into the switch and pulled the choke cable out of the pannell. Ugh. one more thing I would have to figure out.

I gave up and decided that the crew had been right and the inboard was hopeless. In frustration, I turned the key and pushed the throttle. The motor started right away and idled happily. Reverse would not engage, just grinding as if the control cable were misadjusted, but forward pushed against the mooring lines just fine. I was relieved and dumfounded.

*note: I broke out the service manual some time after this post and found that the transmission is right. Atomic fours make grinding or whining noise in reverse and are reduced two to one beyond foreward, so I would not feel her pull in reverse at the same engine speed she pulls in foreward, also, there is no detent in reverse. Funkey little rig.

The next morning Keith boarded and we motored out through the channel and sailed to Westport, MA with the motor pushing us along the whole way. Keith hopped off in Westport and I motored through the night through the Cape Cod Canal and on into Plymough, MA where I napped for a little over an hour, then pushed on up the coast and into Boston Sunday afternoon. The trip from Mystic took about thirty hours under power and partly with sails too. The weather was cold and often rainy. By the time I got to Boston there was fog reducing visibility to about half a mile.

Cold, tired and wet, I walked to the subway station and headed beck to see my Grace again.

the fateful trip to bring her home

My lady and I planned for me to go fetch our new home while she maintained our presence on the shore and provided support for the adventure. This was a terrible plan! Never leave your love behind while working on your life together! It's sad to move in to your future without the companion you planned it for. Lesson learned.

Eric met me in Virginia for our first effort at setting out in the new vessel. He stayed the night before my arival with his friend Dana. The two became my greatest resources for my time in port before the trip. Dana shuttled us about in her car and put us up for the first night I spent in town. Eric worked tirelessly cleaning the cabin of the boat and patching the dinghy.
Eric and I spent the whole day Saturday cleaning, fiddling with the inboard and rigging the boat. We decided the motor was too big a job to justify the time it would take, so we bought an eight horsepower outboard and mounted it on the stern.

sails mounted and ready to raise at fuel dock

Sunday we set out for a shakedown cruise. We stopped at the fuel dock and filled our outboard's tank before setting off.
We motored out of the marina and down the river. The little motor pushed us at a respectable three knots. Once we had enough room we hoisted the main and cut the motor. Lady Grace sailed!!! Eric and I took turns at the helm. We hoisted the jib and tacked a few times. She was easy to steer and pretty well behaved. I thought I would be able to single hand her alright when the time came.

the pirate at the helm

After our shakedown ride, we put back in to our slip. Eric had to be back to work, so he decided to train out the next morning. I hooked up with Rod, our marina guy who drove me to Walmart for some last minute supplies.

The next morning, Monday, I got an early start re-rigging a few things and topping up the little fuel tank, then set out alone for my voyage home.

first time aboard!

We took a long weekend to visit our new home.

The vessel looks to be sound, though a bit less beautiful than the photos implied. there was some crazing of the gel coat, much of it patched with polyester resin. This is not a serious problem, but a bit of a disappointment for a first viewing.

Our plan was to spend some time with the motor to determine its condition (we knew it was not in working condition, but were led to believe that it had run prior to installation of a new distributor) and to try to get it running. We also hoped to deploy the mainsail and maybe a jib to ensure functional condition of the rigging.

We never got the chance to deal with the issues we intended to address because the DPO (Dear -or Demented, take your pick- Previous Owner) left all of her junk behind - clothes, bedding, towels, toiletries, food, dishes, pots and pans, and more. Not to mention a goodly amount of grime and dog hair. We spent most of the time we had allotted for our work carting her junk off to the dumpster.

We were overall pretty happy with our new home despite the hassle imposed by the DPO, so we celebrated our new good fortune.

We think this will work out nicely. We know there's plenty of work ahead. All the more to look forward to!

We secured a spot in our new neighborhood

This is the view as we enter our neighborhood.

This is the top of our street. Our place is second on the left.

We went for a sail one day last summer

The pirate invited the lady out for a pleasant day aboard Gondwa Naland, a 16 foot cuddy cabin sloop and occasional pirate vessel.

That day, the seed was planted that rapidly grew into a dream of high adventure and romance - and it is already near at hand.
The pair began a search for a live aboard pirate vessel to claim as their own. Several promising candidates were considered. The favorite was a beautiful Endeavor 32.

The weather prevented the couple from promptly pursuing this wonderful vessel. They were prepared to brazenly go forward with this beauty despite the horrible winter that sucked the vitality out of all of New England, but alas, twas not to be. As time wore on there were other boats considered and discounted, until the joyous pair were blessed to meet the beautiful Irwin 32 CC, Moonshadow. 

The Irwin quickly won over the lady and the pirate and they were firmly convinced of the rightness of their choice.Where the Endeavor was a wonderful sailing vessel prepared for serious offshore adventures, the Irwin brought living quarters capable of providing a long term home.



With joy in their hearts, the happy couple aquired the Irwin and began planning in ernest.
They have yet to see her in person. The next step is to travel from Boston to her home port in Portsmouth, VA to make her acquaintance and step aboard. That will  happen the weekend of March 4.