I HATE SHOES

After spending a week and half over Thanksgiving at my brother's place in Stuart, it was time to weigh anchor and head over to the west coast. I had a great time over there, and even met up with Scott and Kitty again which is always a pleasure. Stuart was not my final destination though, and I'm now starting to realize I'm not sure if I have one. I was getting desperate for some other crew and wanted to leave by the end of the week when a guy Chris responded to my ad on a cruising forum. I had sailed with people from that forum before, it was how I got in touch with Alex and got on the whole Hawaii/Alaska/San Diego expedition. Two days later he flew into West Palm and we left the following morning. I decided to take the Okeechobee Waterway across the state as opposed to going around the tip of Florida and through the Keys. I've heard with the Gulf Stream so close to the reefs it can get a little intimidating trying to shoot between them. It only took us two days to ...

Fernandina Beach is an interesting place. It had a cute, quaint downtown area with more bars per square mile than Newport, which is definitely saying something. A few days after I got there my good sailing friend Joey joined me and we spent the next few nights reveling in the small town and waiting for the weather to change. A cold front had stalled out over the eastern Florida coast and was not making an easy decision as to when to leave. After a few days we kinda just said the hell with it and proceeded down the ICW at about 4 pm on a Thursday. I didn't think motoring down the ICW at night would be a huge deal, turns out I was wrong. Thankfully nothing dreadful happened, but when a day marker that's not on your Navionics app, nor your paper charts appears out of the pitch black darkness a mere 15 feet to starboard, its a freaky experience. I've done this in twilight before, in a much wider waterway with many well lit buoys, however the narrow, dark channel between Ferna...

I've wanted to title a post "Florida" for a long time, four years actually, and today I finally can. The reason I started this blog, nearly four years ago, was to document my travels south, specifically to Florida. I was living in Boston at the time, winter was coming on and I needed a way to get out. The desk job didn't have any transfers down there and there was just no way I was spending any more time in New England. This is how I came into purchasing Winchelsea . It was a pretty basic idea: buy a boat and sail it down to Florida. That started a four year odyssey involving three boats, two oceans, an engagement, a captains license, a galaxy of new and wonderful friends, and roughly 10,000 nautical miles under various keels. I can't emphasize the friends part enough, it is the thing that has really made this whole voyage worth while. Anyone who has met me in the past four years has known I've had this one and only goal, a one-track mind if you will, it w...

It was cold leaving Baltimore. Damn cold. Mid 40s during the day and mid 30s at night. The wind was right though and within an hour of leaving the dock the sails were up and we were going at a good clip in the northwesterly breeze. My crew consisted of Pearce, the son of a friend of mine with almost no prior sailing experience, and Zach, a fellow 12 meter sailor from Newport. The breeze really picked up during the day and lasted into the night. It felt really good to be sailing Soveraine  again, even if it was bitterly cold with the wind that night. We motored into Norfolk the next day and slid into a slip at the public, i.e. free, docks in Portsmouth. We were putting the boat away when a troop of three people about my age came down to the boat. "What kind of boat is she?" "Allied Seawind." "Oh nice! My wife and I were looking at those. We ended up buying a Hans Christian 38." I invited the three of them onboard and after a few beers we talked about ...

Exactly eight weeks to the day after injuring my foot, I am back in Baltimore ready to continue to make my way south. Soveraine looks as good (if not better thanks to the rain and not dragging up mud with the anchor) as when she left, thanks to Chris for putting her to bed so well. Not a moment too soon either, the temperature has dropped considerably and is supposed to be in the upper 30s tomorrow night. We'll head out tomorrow or Friday morning, depending on when Zach (a fellow 12 meter sailor) can get his butt to Baltimore. Pearce is the third crew, he has some 420 sailing experience and should round us out nicely. We'll sail down the Chesapeake into Norfolk and through the ICW/Albemarle Sound to Beaufort, with a possible stop to see another friend who lives on the outer banks. That should take a total of 5 days. From there we'll wait for weather and hop outside to Charleston, just about the same distance from Block Island to Cape May so that should take around 4...

What a nightmare, I thought to myself in that state of half awake/half asleep before even opening my eyes. My dream consisted of a trip to the ER and a diagnosis of a broken heel, which would have certainly put a damper on plans for heading south. But wait, why does my left foot feel tight and constrained? I cracked my left eye open and an unfamiliar ceiling lay above me. Tilting my head up and gazing down at a mass of cotton and Ace bandages confirmed reality. The plan was to head south to Norfolk on Wednesday morning. On Monday night Chris and I went out for dinner and, long story short, I jumped 7' from a wall along the boardwalk to the sidewalk below and when I tried to get up, couldn't support my own weight. Some hours later, the ER doctor told me I had broken my heel. I took a taxi back to the dock where Chris was supposed to meet me, but his phone was on silent so I asked the driver to take me to a cheap hotel. He ended up taking me to Willdwood, a bizarre grid of chea...

Chris and I left Newport and motored out of Narragansett Bay on Wednesday morning, still a little groggy from the bon voyage blowout the night before. The wind was expected to build out of the southwest that afternoon and I wanted to be at Block Island before that started. And after a blissfully uneventful five and a half hour motor sail, we were anchored. We spent the next two nights there waiting for the southwest breeze to tire itself out and a fresh northerly one to take its place. On Friday morning we weighed anchor and set out for Cape May. The breeze was a gentle 5-10 knots until compeltely dying at noon, the sails came down and the motor pushed us along until it filled in, this time from the northeast, at around sunset. During that afternoon, I witnessed something I hadn't seen before at sea. What started as one or two small flies buzzing around the boat had turned into what seemed like at least three dozen, of all varities, as well as a couple of flying ants and wasps. W...

After many days in the 90s sanding, painting and fixing stuff below the waterline, she was back on the hook last Thursday morning. As far as the inboard goes, I have finally realized that it is indeed the shifting cable, and only have to tweak it. So there it is, shes ready to head south with fresh bottom and topside paint, a working inboard and all of the rigging set to go. It took a little over a year, but I brought a 50 year old "classic plastic" back from the verge of being hacked up and crushed. I have a couple of regattas in early/mid August on Weatherly  and after that I'll be pulling the hook up and starting the trip south. The plan is to head through Long Island sound, down the East River and pulling into an anchorage in New York harbor. I'll wait for a weather window and head to Cape May, possibly all the way to Norfolk if the weather holds. Then it'll be a few days of motoring along the ICW inside of Hatteras and through Beaufort, North Caro...

Soveraine  was hauled out on Monday afternoon. Things I was looking to accomplish: a bracket for the outboard I purchased, paint on the bottom and topsides, repair a through-hull in the head and take some play out of the rudder. There was a delay in getting my boat hauled so I figured I would get the transmission ready to take out since I had been talking to a guy in Connecticut who said he could get me in touch with someone who could rebuild it. About half way into the removal I discovered that the shifter cable was loose. This was interesting, could it be the cause of the sudden "slipping" of the transmission? I threw everything back together, turned the engine over and discovered yes, it certainly was. I now have a fully functional inboard again, and just after I purchased a brand new outboard! After she was out of the water, I scraped all the hard growth from the bottom which was in the amount of 5 gallons in volume, and roughly 10 lbs. A LOT of growth. I sanded the b...

After buying a used filter housing that kinda, sorta fit my engine and spending thirty something dollars on fittings, I threw in the towel on that option for a host of reasons. The weather cleared Friday evening and I had a revelation that I didn't need the hard copper piping since this was all upstream of the injector pump. A trip to West Marine ended in a bulkhead mounted Racor at 2 micron filtration downstream of my existing 30 micron Racor, plumbed to the fuel and injector pumps with flexible hosing. It worked perfectly. Elizabeth came into town on Friday and after picking up some supplies for lunch we were planning to sail to Block Island. When the key was turned and the ignition button pressed however, nothing happened: dead battery. I had read about, and knew I had, a manual crank starting option that I had not attempted before. With Elizabeth at the compression lever and my hands cranking as fast as possible, it started on the second try! By the time we had this sorted an...

Out of the 12 days so far in June, its rained for about 10 of them. Two more tomorrow and Friday, and it looks like three out of the seven of next week. This has put a damper on both the Weatherly  charters I make my money from as well as working on and sailing my own boat in prep for the departure later this summer. Which brings me to my next subject. I've been fielding a lot of questions as to when and where I'll be going once I leave Newport. In all honesty: it's still up in the air, the whole thing, and will be up until I'm actually there. I'd love to sail to Block Island. Sure, I'd also really like to make it to Florida. Maybe the Bahamas or Mexico, or even Cuba? Point is, I'm in Newport right now and this voyage isn't entirely about the destination. Wherever I am, that's where I'll be. To be frank though, there are some outlying engine issues that may put a hindrance on travel. In an attempt to fix a fuel leak, I found the filter housing ...

Great times last Monday, thanks to all who could attend. More to come! Note the chainplates in the first two pics, working hard! Nefertiti  in front of Clingstone. The boat I had the pleasure of working on this spring. I know the contours bottom of that hull more intimately than anyone ever should. Boom of Soveraine  in the foreground. Left to right: Seabass, Gretchen, Micah and Liz. And myself. Thanks to Miss Watson for taking the picture from the poop deck.

I motored out to the anchorage last week and dropped it for the third season I've spent in Newport.  Soveraine  is finally ready to go, with her name painted on the transom in a font I'd like to call "10 minutes with a chip brush", and you would think a child in elementary school did it for some milk money. It should be temporary, since I plan on painting the topsides sometime soon, but its also a nose in the air salute to Newport in general. I've gotten some guff for it however I'm almost positive vinyl lettering won't improve my performance or safety. Memorial Day finally came, after 5 days of no sun and pissing rain storms. And with it, myself, Elizabeth (actually, there were two aboard), Seabass, Micah and Gretchen took Soveraine out for an inaugural sail of the season (a season I'm planning to perpetuate indefinitely). It was blowing out of the west for awhile before the sea breeze kicked in, and kick in it did. We had full sail up while it was ...

I honestly didn't think this winter was going to end. Even after the first sail on Lyra, even after 7 charters on Weatherly, living aboard through a blizzard, a hurricane, countless smaller snow storms, freezing fog, a desk job, and a troop of high school swimmers, it still seems surreal I'm on the other side of it. Friends are making their way back into town, and have been trickling in over the past couple of weeks. Every day I count more boats in the anchorage and mooring field. The pulse of Newport slowly begins to strengthen as she shakes off a long, cold hibernation. It was a strange path that led me back here and this past winter punctuated it well. Soveraine  is reborn as well, and when I get a new turnbuckle this afternoon she will be seaworthy for the first time since I've had her, and I'd guess a long bit before then too. The chainplates are finally complete and they mark the end of a long, long list of essential items I knew I had to tackle when I purchased...

First and foremost Sunday marked the first true sign, in my eyes at least, that the sailing season had begun and winter has officially kicked it: we went for a sail. Green's charter business On Watch Sailing  is open for customers and to shake things out after a long, cold and snowy winter he invited myself and Elizabeth to join him and his family on Lyra , their Reliance 44. We sailed down to Hammersmith Farm and up under the Newport bridge and got some great pics for his website. The shrink wrap came off Saturday. After nearly 5 months guarded from the elements of a New England winter that included a blizzard in the top five most severe of all time, a half dozen snow storms and lots of the delightful "wintery mix", she emerged unscathed. I wish I had the opportunity to paint the decks or something before her unveiling  but most of my projects this winter happened below. Most recently I completely redid the head, which started a few mo...

When I first bought Winchelsea  over three years ago, I'll admit it was on kind of an impulse. I knew my roommates were terrible and I hated my job, the sailboat was my ticket out of both. I had been reading about the lifestyle of cruising and voyaging since I had broken my knee the July previous (this was the summer of '09, I was still driving the desk at the engineering firm), which all started with Slocum's iconic  Sailing Alone Around the World . I read a lot of how-to books covering the technical aspects of sailing and the life aquatic aboard a boat, but they would only sometimes touch on the "why", outside of picturesque sunsets and pina coladas. Bernard Moitessier was my first inspiration outside the realm of conventional cruisers (which is obvious to anyone who knows me well). He starts voyaging to escape the chaos of Indochina during World War II, and in his later works he starts to develop his "why" as a spiritual quest dealing with some demo...

Currently in Maine visiting dear old Dad who has a wood working shop, including a C&C router!  I designed a logo a couple of weeks ago (see the top of the blog) and my dad helped with the toolpaths to carve it. We ran short of time to produce a finished product, but the mockup out of foam looks great!

I knew full well when I got Soveraine  that the transmission was stuck in forward. I thought it was probably a linkage issue that would be easily fixed. Once that possibility was ruled out, I toyed with the idea of leaving it stuck in forward, since I had throttle control. I would really only need reverse and neutral coming into a dock, and, and in all practicality not even for that. I got to the dock I'm at now slowly coasting in after cutting the engine a few yards before gliding alongside it. No sweat. But, since I have the time, I decided to get it looked at professionally. A friend of all Newport boaters and a lifetime diesel mechanic John Whitney came over to look at it and promptly said it had to come out for him to really diagnose it. He said it probably was just a worn part that needed to be replaced (he even narrowed it down to one or two specific pieces, given an exploded diagram of the reverse gear), not a huge deal, just not something he could do with it sitting in m...

I recently, as in last night, watched a documentary called Mansome. More or less it questions the present state, in our uber-modern society, of what makes a man, a man. It made me ask myself, as I near 3 decades of life on Earth, what kind of man-mold do I fit it into? When I graduated college and moved to Boston, I loved the idea of clean pressed solid colored shirts, with a color complimenting striped neck tie, shiny (but not too shiny) shoes stepping gracefully onto the T and starting up a conversation with the lady standing next to me; maybe something about how I recognized her for wearing a fragrance from Channel. Things changed though, once I got there and started living out that vision of what I thought I, or myself as a man, should be doing. Fast forward a few years and I'm a pretty scruffy guy with oil stains on his clothes, holes in his sweaters, and a slight musk of diesel and general "boat" scent. Does this make me less of a man? More so? I'm able to do ...

**WARNING: Due to the blizzard in Newport, I have written a technical blog post detailing how I went about designing new chainplates. It is dry as a bone and there is only one, uninteresing picture. You have been warned. I should also mention that to the right of this post is a link to Amazon and you should see some products scrolling by. These are not random ones chosen by Amazon, but ones I have personally hand-picked because I use them almost daily. I'll go into more detail about them in subsequent blog posts. You'll also see a sprinkling of books, movies and other media I come across that I've found interesting, useful and/or inspirational. Yes, I do get a small kickback from each sale, but in return you get a product that has not only met my standards, but has held up to my daily use in the marine environment. Chainplates are important. For the uninitiated, they hold your mast up and keep you sailing in all kinds of weather. Not something to skimp on. I discovered ...