I HATE SHOES

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...