fetchinketch

Little did we know, as we were entering Port Canaveral there was a news photographer taking pictures of the famous boat entering the harbor.

As reported by the newspaper Florida Today, the sailboat Harmonie enters Port Canaveral after an Uneventful Sail up from Fort Lauderdale.

That’s us, right there front and center in the forground.

Well, maybe the photographer was really there taking pictures of the barge in the background–that’s the barge that Space-X uses as a target for their not-quite-ready-for-primetime “reusable” rockets.

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2016/03/08/spacex-drone-ship-appears-port-canaveral-after-falcon9-rocket-launch/81489586/

Today we are off on our first real sail on the new boat.  Dock space is so expensive here int he Fort Lauderdale neighborhood that hitting the road makes sense.  Our destination will be the Ocean Club Marina in Cape Canaveral, about 200 miles north.

We have been holding here for a few days waiting for the weather to settle, and today looks perfect for a fast sail north.  Everything on the boat has worked flawlessly at the dock so far, but as the famous Captain Ron so elegantly put it, if something is going wrong, it’s going wrong out there!  (If you don’t know that reference, go look up the eponymous movie, and have a good laugh…)

We have full fuel tank, and full water tank, and are excited to get going!  The weather routing software is predicting a very fast trip with the Gulf Stream pushing us along as well as a stiff following breeze.  we are timing our departure so we arrive at the new marina after sunrise tomorrow.

It has been a while since we posted here because we have been busy.  With what?  well…

It was an interesting time perusing things at the Fort Lauderdale boat show.  Huge, huge show, lots of interesting  new products, and the usual collection of boats.   WAIT A MINUTE! What’s Bill doing in Fort Lauderdale??? That’s a REALLY, REALLY long way from Honolulu!  Surely he didn’t go just for a boat show???  What’s going on?…

Well, sit back and enjoy a story…

Big change always starts with something simple.  As with so many big changes, the start was something very small.  When we approached the dock in Honolulu for the first time, our new dock neighbor jumped up to help us get tied up.  It’s not an easy place to tie up to, especially if you haven’t practiced it much, so Jacob’s help was very welcome.

Jacob had come to Hawaii a couple of months before to buy a boat.  He had been looking for a Kelly Peterson 46 for years.  A beautiful classic sailboat from the mid 1970’s.  If one of these boats has been well cared for, they can be expensive. He had looked a quite a few of them, and either they were in rough shape, or they were outside his budget range.  Finally, everything came together with this boat in Hawaii.  He bought it, and started on his way back to his home port of Seattle.

Like many plans, the Fates were to interfere with Jacob’s.  About a week out during a spell of rough weather, his mainsail tore badly enough that a repair wasn’t practical.  He turned around and came back to Hawaii.  Arriving back here in early November, basically means he is stuck for the winter.  Weather in the North Pacific has shifted to the winter pattern, and storms and rough seas preclude a return to the Northwest coast of the Mainland.  So his new plan is to stay with the boat, catch some construction work, and move the boat back to Seattle in the spring.  That might seem a bit of a diversion, but it was actually Jacob’s boat that was the trigger for the snowball of events that followed that end up with Bill in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

A tour of Jacob’s boat opened Karen’s eye’s to what was possible on a boat, and how much things change with just a little bit extra length.  The galley was bigger, the aft cabin had a full sized bed you could get into from either side.  There was a small workshop.  Six more feet of length and the boat’s feel changed completely.

“Just for laughs” we contacted a local boat broker and looked at what he had for sale.  While we saw possibilities, nothing really lit our fire about being right for us.  I have been treating this as kind of an exercise, not really expecting anything to come from it.  When Karen asks me what boat I could have if I had the choice of any.  I named a few, and we went off looking on YachtWorld.com.

Among sailors, YachtWorld.com is known as “boat porn”.  You can see virtually all the boats for sale in the world, complete with all the pretty pictures.  Running through all the choices that any traditionally minded voyaging sailor would drool over—we had great fun.  Hylas, Valiant, Swan, Hinkley, Gozzard, Tartan, Morris, Amel, Pacific Seacraft, Tayana, Island Packet.

One soon stood out as being a relative bargain, a spectacular boat, and one with almost a cult following.  The Amel Super Maramu.  A few weeks of looking and…  we found our dream boat.  In (can you guess?)  Fort Lauderdale!  It’s a long story, but here we are.  Yesterday was the survey (not a single discrepancy found!) and we’ll be closing the deal at the end of next week.
We’ll be posting lots more about our new dream home next week after we take formal possession.

The same day we had our offer accepted on the Amel, I got an acceptable offer on the Fetchin’ Ketch!  That deal is moving a bit slower, but I think she is going to go to a great new home.

Anybody who has sold a home where they have lived for a LONG time will understand that it is a time of greatly mixed emotions.  I have lived on Fetchin’ Ketch for 17 years–longer than I have lived anywhere.  In many ways the great boat she is today is because of the upgrades repairs and modifications I have made over the last decade and a half.  I’ll miss her.

Nothing to do with travels or sailing, just some fun observations about the coming apocalypse.

Our modern world is covered with advertising.  It is hard to go more than a few minutes without somebody trying to sell you SOMETHING.  In some ways, marketing defines our culture.  (Even if you don’t agree, go along for the ride here, it’s fun…)

For most of the last century one of the companies that was at the pinnacle of  marketing in the western world was Procter&Gamble. With more well know brand names and advertising slogans than any other organization, their in-house marketing teams touch our lives every day as much as any other group of people alive or dead.  If the ideas from P&G have to some extent defined our culture, I now have conclusive proof that our culture has come to a final, and complete, dead end.  Why?  The marketing people at P&G have totally run out of ideas.  Proof?  I present to you Exhibit #1:  Bearglove Body Wash Front Label

First is the name.  What exactly is a “BearGlove”? Is it a glove you wear when you have some kind of interaction with a bear?  Is it something a bear wears on his paw?  And what’s with the two bears on the label?  One is roaring ferociously, the other looks lost and asleep. Does Bearglove have anything to do with soap?

So we are not not off to a good start where with the name.  But what’s in a name?  The REAL test of a marketing department’s skill and creativity is the SLOGAN!  Any product is worth nothing until it has a great SLOGAN!  That is how people remember the product.  In many ways the SLOGAN on the outside of the bottle is much more important than the product inside it.

Here is where my case for the imminent  total collapse of our cilvilization is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Exhibit #2, Bearglove Body Wash, Back Label.

Here is the SLOGAN for this product, photographed right of the back of the bottle, because there is no way I could have made this up:

I could write a long critique of this amazing bit of prose (or is it free verse?), but nothing I could possibly write would be any better than a little mental exercise I’d like you, the reader, to perform.  Be forewarned, if you have a very good imagination, this might be physically painful.  Here goes:

Imagine:  Yourself as a participant in the corporate meeting where this was the BEST slogan anyone could come up with…

I apologize if that little exercise left anyone with traumatic nightmares.

In the nautical world a “long tow” is a tug boat pulling a barge on a long cable.  When they are towing in the ocean the cable can sometimes be REALLY long.  It is a way of shipping anything that can be loaded on a barge in quantities that are smaller than would justify the use of a full sized containership.  Long tows are used around the world, but here in Hawaii they are a large fraction of the shipping you encounter on the ocean. They are used for almost all inter-island transport, and a large fraction of the goods shipped from the mainland arrives on barges like this.

They can be real trouble if you are not paying attention.  Here’s why:

You are out sailing on the ocean, and you see a tugboat in the distance…

You look around to see if there is anything attached.

I don’t see anything…  do you?  Let’s look a bit further…

Nope.  Still nothing.  Maybe look just a bit further…

Oh!  Look at that!  Yes it is a barge.  And yes, it is attached to that tugboat in front with a very long cable.  When I checked on my radar, this tug and tow combination was over a half mile long.  If you tried to go between them, you would have a VERY bad day.  At night the situation is even worse, although the barges are lit, the lights are typically quite small and non-obvious.

Why are they so far behind?  One reason is the barge does not have any kind of brakes.  If the tugboat’s engine was to stop and the barge was towed close behind, the tug would be run over by something an order of magnitude or two bigger and heavier.  Not a pretty picture.

One of the popular sports here, especially with the native Hawaiians, is racing outrigger canoes. Very skinny boats with an outrigger for balance they are usually crewed by one to six people, although much bigger ones are around.

Here in Ala Wai, Thursday evening is the “girl’s night” for practice and Friday is for the guys. They practice on the ocean, and up in the canal.  On days when the races are being held, the shoreline is lined with  spectators running along with the boats, cheering loudly for their favorite team.

Another popular pastime here is the SUP, or Standup Paddle Board. Basically a beefy surfboard you stand on and propel with a long paddle.  In rougher open water, they are the provenance of the young athletic crowd.  In quieter backwater lagoons everybody plays along, some a bit less athletic than others.

And finally for today is the story of our new neighbor.  A few days ago a new boat was making its way into the harbor, and coming in to tie up.  Our immediate neighbor, being alert and ready, jumped up onto the dock to catch lines and help them in.  He was in for a bit of a surprise.

The boat was being single handed by an athletic woman maybe in her mid forties. Nothing too surprising yet, except she was, as our British friends might say, totally starkers.  Yep.  Not even a pair of sandals on her feet.   Without a stitch on she tied up her boat and settled it into its spot on the dock. You meet all kinds on the docks.  Sorry.  No pictures.

A slightly belated Happy New Year to everybody.

We have been continuing to explore around Honolulu, and will likely be going further afield on Oahu in the next week or two.  In the meantime we have been sailing a bit, and fishing a bit.

We had an excursion to the north side of the beautiful island of Moloka’i.  The weather forecast was for light winds, but not exactly true.  Crossing the channel it ranged up to 30 knots, all straight on the nose.  The boat blasted through without too much trouble. Like every time we have been out in the channel between Oah’u and Moloka’i we saw a group of pilot whales cruising along, and this time a few humpbacks spouting and occasionally breaching in the distance.

The cruising guide said the anchorage we were aiming at was safe in any wind strength except from the south.  They also did mention that it could be rolly in a north swell.  As we crossed the channel the weather service issued a large wave advisory for the night, for a north swell.  Oh well…

As we approached Moloka’i we hooked a small big eye tuna.  An unusual catch for surface trolling apparently, they are supposed to be more of a deep water fish.  They are valued second only to bluefin tuna for sashimi.  It made AWESOME tuna poke…

It was dark when we arrived, at the anchorage so I picked what looked like the best spot.  It was about another hour or so before the north swell came up.  As the guide book suggested we rolled.  We rolled a LOT.  Neither of us slept much just trying to stay in bed. In the morning light I realized I picked the WORST possible spot.  Right off the only rock cliff in the middle of one of Hawai’i’s  longest beaches.  The waves bounced of the rock and reflected right back out to us. Live and learn…

We sailed back in beautiful conditions the next day. No more fish, unfortunately.

We took the boat out fishing today.  We actually tried yesterday, but it was blowing so hard (30 knots) that we came back early.  It was much nicer today, 15 to 20 knots.  We actually caught our first Hawaii fish, the cutest little tuna I have ever seen.  A Yellowfin, about 2 pounds.  So small he didn’t even take any drag off the reel.  I’d show a picture, but we dumped him back to grow up before we got the camera out.

In Hawaiian a tuna can be an “Ahi” if it is large, or if small, it is called a “shibi”.  This one we caught today was very much a shibi.

At first this seemed strange, having a different name for a small fish and a big fish of the same type. After a moments thought, we do it all the time in English.  Dog/Puppy  Cat/kitten Cow/calf.

Fishermen do it all the time everywhere for fish.  “Mine” is always bigger than “Yours”!

Karen picked out some awesome fillets of opah at the market the other day.  A traditional Hawaiian macadamia nut crust, served on stir-fried cabbage and we have dinner better than the fancy restaurants. If you have never tried opah (sometimes called “moon fish”) it is a special treat.  As good as the best swordfish.

Merry Christmas to everybody!

Tomorrow we’ll be attending the marina potluck dinner down the dock.  That should be fun!