Norfolk, VA
To see as much of the world as we can,
Using the smallest carbon footprint we can,
Spending the least amount of money we can,
Making as many friends we can.
The West River Sailing Club cruising group ordinarily has a half-dozen cruises throughout the season. We were away, living in Nevada for some of the sailing season. With a pandemic, a cozy get-together is not a great idea. So, a cruise was a surprise.
Some folks from the club decided …
The Whitby sleeps 6 (sometimes 7, depending on your saloon.) It seems like a lot of owners live in the aft cabin, and use the saloon and V-berth for guests.
The aft cabin is designed to have two widely-separated bunks.
A lot of couples sleep athwartship. One person is aft …
We use Trello (https://trello.com) to track a lot of the jobs on Red Ranger. We also use Toodledo (https://www.toodledo.com). Trello is really good for complex one-time tasks, prioritizing, assigning, etc. Tooled is really good for recurring tasks. Trello requires an internet connection, Toodledo is a …
Instead of taking a break to honor the Labor Movement, we worked.
Some of it was wildly successful. CA washed down the entire deck. It's amazing how much grime accumulates when you're not actively using the boat. CA uses ammonia once each year to gently wash the teak toe-rails. We've …
Yes, we have left the dock. Here's the cockpit, heeled over in 10-15 kt of wind. Beam Reaching down Herring Bay.
And here's the view out on the water.
Sun. Wind. Boats.
We got our reefing lines and lazy jacks squared …
The galley is finally starting to feel like we live there again. We spent four days aboard; I did my day job from the boat using Herrington Harbour's WiFi.
CA has cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned. And investigated stuff we hadn't looked at in years …
Our Nissan/Tohatsu 2-stroke outboard is (with some care) still going strong. Early on, we broke a thing called a lift bracket.
It's part of the frame on which the outboard motor hangs on the transom of your dinghy. Studying the drawing, it seems to …
Having dissimilar metals in a salt water environment has consequences. Life-or death consequences. The galvanic current flow means your metal bits are dissolving. There are some clever tables providing details on how "noble" each metal (and alloy) is. The "Galvanic Series" and the "Anodic Index" show you what's happening to …
What's required to get Red Ranger ready?
Cleaning. After over a year of sitting empty, Red Ranger is very dirty. So far, the galley is clean enough to cook in. The cockpit is now clean enough that we can start to look at the heads and berths.
Water. The port …
Sailboat mysteries are bad. Knowing how everything works is sort of the point. And knowing how everything works may also be life-or-death.
The electronics on Red Ranger can be split into two groups:
Portable. This includes phones, iPad, computers, watches. A hand-held VHF radio.
Fixed. This includes the two chart …
She's been on the hard for about a year.
We had emptied every battery container (except one.) We had opened every locker and drawer.
We'd even disconnected the vent fan for the Air Head composting toilet. The only thing left on was the bilge pump. On the hard, she takes …
We're not "home" yet. We still have to move in.
But we're in the neighborhood. And tomorrow we'll finish this.
The south-eastern corner of Ohio, a tiny sliver of West Virginia, southern Pennsylvania, and Maryland provided some scenery.
Much of today was a winding, hilly road …
This has greenery and a few valleys. But. Missouri, Indiana, and western Ohio are all respectably flat and very similar-looking.
Today was a short-ish day of driving, but we crossed a lot of state boundaries in one day. We're getting set up for the final day, which includes Ohio, West …
We kept the first day short. We also failed to realize where the border with Mountain time is.
The objective was is a short jaunt up I15 with time left for a hike in the Cedar Breaks National Monument. The time-zone change meant we had an hour less than we'd …
This was a long day. Upon review, it's better to stop in Grand Junction and maybe do a little hiking there.
Here's the view from I70 in northern Utah.
From there, it transitions to forested mountains. I70 winds through canyons in western slope.
Eastern Colorado and western Kansas are a lot of emptiness.
There's agriculture. And a little oil production.
There's a ton of wind. We had to take pictures of it.
It took some searching to find Martinelli's in Salina …
It was hard to take a picture that feels like it captures eastern Kansas and western Missouri. It's not the epic flat of central and western Kansas. It looks a lot like much of the east. Trees. Fields.
Historic Markers. (This is outside Lawrence, KS.)
Maybe …
Here's how we stand on day D-1. We don't have everything in there, yet, but it looks like we might succeed.
There's some rom abaft of the wheel wells for the bed, table, and the two folding chairs we're keeping.
The other IKEA furniture — table, office chair …
See Seeking Advice. Add this to the question.
"My current thinking is to play around in the Caribbean again for a while then perhaps over towards Central America. Pleasure boating experience is nil. Some deck experience when on the Navy ships."
Important self-reflection on boating experience being nil. That's central …
See Diesel Fuel Consumption for some initial thoughts. We have a mystery.
The diesel system is a well-understood transformation from pounds of fuel to horsepower and torque. Indeed. It's 0.4 pounds of fuel per hour per horsepower (about 18 fluid ounces.) 59 HP is 3.25 gal/hr.
(59 …