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.
I posted a request to my little corner of the Whitby community this week. I got fast, helpful answers. I love these folks.
We want to install a Mast Mate on the mizzen. To do that, we need to order some slides for the track up the mizzen mast . But …
This is a small, fussy thing that hardly counts as a job. But it's what we do while waiting for warmer weather. Boat jobs break down in the "pink" and "blue". Cooking, cleaning, curtains and pillows tend to be pink jobs. Anchor chains, engines, carpentry, plumbing is traditionally blue. Except …
Our 2011 Spring Commissioning included using "Cold Galvanizing" on the anchor chain. All 100' of primary chain took 3 cans. We didn't coat the secondary or tertiary chains.
Our anchor windlass (Gimli, son of Gloín) is for The Heavy Lifting. It's cranked with a long steel bar. We had a …
Our 2011 Spring Commissioning had some dramatic results. We're excited to be back in the water after having had our drive train partially overhauled. While that's a big success, there's always more.
We thought we might be getting some paint. But on inspection our bottom paint was perfect. So we …
This is the forward "V" berth. Lovely teak. Storage bins all around. Under the cushions is one of our water tanks. This is where it gets scary. Cindy Ann busted out the pry bars and putty knives and—slowly, patiently—ripped the lid off the water tank, hacking away 30-year …
This is Carolyn B. modeling the famous Whitby chair. Red Ranger came with two, well-made, heavy-duty steel-frame chairs. The chairs dog down the floorboards in the Whitby saloon and flank the bar.
As nice as they are, we don't like them. They're heavy and relatively difficult to move. They have …
That eerie orange glow is daylight shining through a patch in our hull. We had two through-hull fittings removed. One was for the former aft air conditioner ("Cindy Ann Improved the Galley. I Made a Hole.")
The other was an unused through-hull drain for the aft head. In the olden …
Ouch. Our cutless bearing failed to be cutless. It cut into the drive shaft.
The bearing (on the outside) is designed to dribble cooling water into a shaft seal (or "stuffing gland" or "stuffing box") on the inside. The shaft seal includes a wrapping with flax under a little bit …
Barnacles! They seem to have found a home on our propellor. The previous owner had a putty knife with a lanyard that he used to scrape the prop clean. It looks like we need to do that instead of ignore it and hope.
Our paint help up beautifully. Not a …
The big red tube-like thing is the heat exchanger. Cars have radiators, boats have heat exchangers. A car radiator uses a fan to blow air past the radiator, cooling the engine water that circulates through it. A heat exchanger on a boat pumps sea-water past the engine water to cool …
Our Heat Pump/Air Conditioner was made originally by Cruisair, inc. That company was purchased by Dometic. Our heat pump's raw-water pump was made by a third party. Where are they now?
Question 1: who has impellers? I tried WrightMarine, a more-or-less random choice of a large installer in Florida …
What is that? The green light is the sun shining through a hole in the bottom of the boat.
This is the view through the top of our raw-water strainer. All the water coming into engine, air conditioner, and heads comes through this strainer. The green light is Jackson Creek …
These are pictures from earlier in January. It was cold.
The creek isn't frozen, yet.
Starting about the 15th, the crew of Fawkes were back in the marina. Living full-time on their boat. On the hard. In the cold.
The good news is that there hasn't been as much blowing …
Good ways to deal with old boat parts are eBay, Craigslist and Nauti Nells. **Consignment stores are kind of fun -- drop it off and hope. eBay is a little more fun if there's a bidding war. ** Craigslist, however, is the most fun. Why?
The fuel filter eBay sale …
Okay, it doesn't look like much, bit it's epic. It's a Parker|Racor 75/500 max fuel filter system. It replaces the old pair of Racor 200's and their leaky bronze tubing and their fiddly little stopcocks that had to be carefully opened and closed.
The old filter system had …
Yes. That's a wine cork in the deck of Red Ranger. Once upon a time (it appears) something like an antenna was mounted there. A hole had been drilled through the deck into the aft cabin. A piece of hardware of some kind had been screwed down outside. [You can …
Poop deck?
Yes, the birds seemed to have pooped all over Red Ranger's deck. Sigh. CA took a picture of a bloody fish-head on Liquid Therapy's swim-platform. It appears that otters use swim platforms as picnic tables.
Also, it snowed on Jackson Creek.
You can see traces of snow on …
Now that it's cold outside, we've identified our two favorite appliances for weathering winter weekends.
On the left is a wood stove. Yes, it's small, but filled with Wood Pellet Fuel, it rocks. We use a long, metal soup spoon to put in about 2 spoon fuels of pellets every …
Accessible snacks are really important. There's an easy way to do this. All that's required is to eat some Classico® spaghetti sauce that comes in those high quality Atlas Mason jars. The hard part is keeping the jars handy. Unless, of course, you have a nice shelf under which you …
Sell the house. Buy a boat. See the world. Is that just hubris? We have all the elements: an ambitious November sail which lead to an emergency tow back to the marina. Was it a vain hope that lead to a poor plan and a humiliating smackdown from Poseidon? How …