A Word Or Two About Zincs

Whatasnoooooooozeeeee...zincs. You know, those lead-like devices that attach to the bottom of your boat and prevent metal components from dissolving due to galvanic action.

Recently we had a spate of winter-related warm weather and sped (a loose use of the word) over to the beach along which we sometimes anchor. And since the water in the Florida Panhandle tends to be pretty clear during December I was able to determine, be laying on the swim platform and looking down into the drink, that the two big beefy zincs on Betty Jane's transom were somewhat chewed up but still lively. This was good news, of course, and yet I didn't sleep as well that night as I might have.

Despite the wafty sound of wavelets sleepily lapping the hull, I kept wondering about the zinc on the propshaft. Was it in as good a condition as the two big transom-mounters? I really didn't know because I'm not able to see the darn thing from the swim platform. And despite the balmy, sunny weather we'd had during the afternoon (my wife BJ took the photo here as we idled in toward the beach), there'd been no way I was gonna jump into the water with my fins and snorkel...not then or even in this lifetime...not in December.

So a few days later I dialed up the folks that periodically scrub Betty's nether regions (while wearing the appropriate scuba diving-type clothing) and asked them to check on the propshaft zinc soon. Just in case.

Lucky course of action. My propshaft zinc was gone for all intents and purposes and had to be immediately replaced, else some prop or other damage might occur.

The moral of the tale's easy to get a handle on...just because the easy-to-see zincs on your boat are hangin' in there doesn't mean the hard-to-see ones are also. Check one...check all!

Otto Returns (With A fishy Reference)

So yeah, last weekend was cold here in Northern Florida. Real cold. But I took Betty Jane out for a little spin on the high seas anyway and, in the process, learned just a little something more about my Simrad AP28 autopilot.

As noted earlier amongst these dodgey bloggy entries, I've been getting good results from the Simrad's AUTO mode--I mean Otto (my groovy nickname for AUTO mode) will keep Betty on course with the precision of an arrow in flight if properly employed--but the NAV function has been acting like it was "broke down," as we say in the Sunny South. The NAV function, by the way, is supposed to sync the pilot with a positioning device--mine is a Garmin 3206 GPS plotter--so that the vessel--Betty in this case--steers herself through a pre-programmed route.

At any rate, who knows what motivates a guy like me? Maybe it was the slowly improving weather that afternoon. The sun had come out, turning the shallows around Shell Island all yellow and aquamarine, and the air was fresh and salty. The ambiance was positively inspirational, I guess. "So why don't you give this NAV mode one more try...see if you can get it to work," said I to myself.

What happened next was interesting. I'd been making two egregious and fundamental mistakes, apparently. First, I'd been doing a lot of slanderous grumbling about the NAV function in question, an entertainment choice that had consumed valuable time, annoyed my wife, and shifted my attention away from where it shoulda been. And second, I'd not bothered to read the manual that had been so nicely packaged with the unit, a goofy oversight I tend to repeat with all new electronics purchases if I have the opportunity.

But hey! I wouldn't want you to get the idea that I eventually DID read the manual that day or have even read the manual at the time of this writing. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I'm getting at here is that by moaning and groaning a lot, and then by failing to read the manual, I was able to prolong my ignorance by weeks, perhaps even months.

But hey again! What's a few weeks or months of slanderously grumbling ignorance, especially when stacked up against what I actually learned by playing around rather unconsciously (or was it intuitively) with the unit for an hour or so. What did I learn?

Hitting the NAV key does not engage the NAV function until you secondarily hit another key on the NAV screen itself. And when you hit that key...bingo! The cursor on the little ol' GPS screen starts following routes with wonderful (dare I say fantastic?) accuracy.

I came home Saturday evening so enthused by my whopping discovery that I was absolutely and stubbornly resistant to the notion of leaving Betty for home the next day. This behavioral quirk was exacerbated by the fact that the weather had warmed even further, thus allowing my wife BJ and I to keep Betty's door and windows open so the night-time breezes could blow through (see photo above). Nothing beats watching an old movie on AMC in a cheery teak-clad environment that's warm, well-lit and out-of-doorsy, sort of.

BJ suggested we do the video below to capture the sad essence of an impending departure after yet another serious, sans-manual electronics triumph. I added a fishy warning based on personal experience.

The Drawer From Hell?

Yeah right. It looks a tad messy perhaps, but everything in here is absolutely necessary to the solid and continuing operation of the Betty Jane. I mean, really--it is! And the only reason I'm revealing the contents of the top drawer of the cabinet in Betty's saloon (on the starboard side) in such a no-holds-barred (dare I say naked?) fashion is to prove to my wife, via immediate interactive comment from the thousands of readers of this blog, that said contents do not amount to logistical insanity but simply represent a level of preparedness the sea demands from all, savvy seafarers.

So help me out here somebody. Please! Comment! Favorably! After all, every boat over 30 feet in length needs a drawer like this baby...chock-a-bloc with essentials and ready to go at the drop of a deck shoe.

Got an emergency leak? We gotcha covered! With a couple of tubes of silicone and a package of two-part epoxy. Run into a pile of free oysters that need shuckin'? Again, gotcha covered! With a solid oyster knife from the fish-knife-makin' folks at Dexter, or is it Russell.

Anyway, just zoom in on the photo for a moment. I've got chisels (a set of three) for work on the ol' teak deck, a flashlight for after-dark exigencies, a set of small screw drivers (Phillips and standard) for miniscule projects, a few mainstream screw drivers (Phillips and standard) for more serious macro projects, a whole bag of zincs (to stay current on stray current), a Leatherman multi-tool for whatever, a bag of lag screws (for what I'm not sure), a little duct tape...the list goes on and on and...on.

So please, please, please comment. And if you don't mind, while commenting, please tell me exactly what I want to hear, which is: all boats have drawers from hell (see above) and each and every one is as necessary to human existence as oxygen, GPS, and Nathan's hot dogs. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to bow to my wife's wishes and "straighten up" the lovely, interesting, constantly changing agglomeration of artifacts I've got growing rather robustly. Yikes!

Rainy Days

There's something to be said for rainy weather, even of the cool (almost cold to us middle-aged types with thinned-out blood) sort that comes to North Florida in the late autumn and winter. Just before leaving the Betty Jane for home, I snapped this picture so I could kinda remember exactly how relaxing the rainy day I'd spent aboard had been, the day I'd spent doing virtually nothing but reading (a couple chapters in one of Alan Villiers books: Cruise of the Conrad), snoozing, and eating (among other things, a BLT with plenty of mayo from the deli up near the dockmaster's office).

Of course, Betty's got reverse-cycle air-conditioning and, most likely due to her comparatively small interior, it heats things up nicely and in a hurry. And she's got a TV, too, a nice little flatscreen that we hardly ever use, at least on rainy days, because it's so toastily nice to hear the rain falling on the foredeck and flying bridge when you're warm and comfortable inside, with little need to go out into the wet.

Almost invariably, when spending rainy days onboard the Betty Jane, I'm reminded of other days, long ago, when I didn't have the luxury of being warm when the weather turned dicey. I guess one of the coldest days I can remember around boats was onboard a Great Lakes ship that was docked alongside a coal-fired electrical plant in Marquette Michigan in December. We were offloading at the time and my job entailed wandering up and down the deck of the ship figuring which holds to pull cargo from and which ballast tanks to fill. The steel deck seemed bent on extracting every last degree of warmth from my body as I conducted my affairs. And the warmth seemed to be departing straight through my feet, in spite of the fact that I was wearing pack-type boots with felt liners.

Yes, sir. It's absolutely lovely having such memories of ships and far off places, especially when you're snugged up inside your own little ship on a rainy Florida day with a rousing Villiers yarn, a bag of Oreos, and nothing much to do really...but yawn.

You're A Smart One, Otto

My new Simrad AP28 autopilot is up and running and Betty Jane seems pretty proud of her new, steering-related capabilities. Just a few days ago, I dialed up Simrad's new No-Drift Mode on the unit (which I affectionately call Otto, by the way) and it worked like gangbusters, holding Betty right on course, despite the considerable effects of wind and current at the time.

Now, if you want to read all about Otto and the entirety of the saga of his installation--and I do mean saga (adapting a Post Modern autopilot to an old-fashioned boat requires quite a lot of work these days and I should know since I did most all of it myself)--you can crack open an upcoming issue of Power & Motoryacht, although I'm not sure which issue yet. But if you're only into grabbing a sneak peak at this particular time, read on:

No-Drift Mode? Imagine that you are creeping along a fairly tight little channel that's fraught with a sideways current. Of course, in order to stay in the channel you'll have to "hold up" (as we used to say in the ship piloting biz), meaning you'll have to steer into the current slightly to make good on your course and maintain a safe position in the channel.

The way you deal with this sort of thing with an old-fashioned autopilot is you play around with the number of degrees you use. You try two degrees for a while and see if that keeps you in the channel, then maybe you try three, or four, or whatever, and finally settle on a heading that seems to do the trick--say steering 93 degrees to make good a course of 95 degrees. However, if the strength of the current changes for any reason, as it often does, you have to go through the trial-and-error process again.

But hey! The AP28 does away with all this complication. You simply dial up whatever course you need to follow to get from where you are to where you need to go and the autopilot does the holding up for you...automatically.

And guess what! When the amount of sideways current effect or set changes (even if it gets pretty darn strong), the AP28 adjusts and keeps you on your heading nevertheless. All by its lonesome.

Is my buddy Otto cool or what?

Man vs. Bird

Man, I hate to admit this. But I've got a bird problem directly related to the Betty Jane. Most folks are familiar with the Great Blue Heron (photo to come), a rather large winged specimen that ordinarily hangs tight with swampy, woodsy locations. Myself? I've always been a fan of the Great Blue. His presence typically signifies the wiles of nature, a favorite destination pour mois.

However, over the past couple of weeks, a Great blue my my wife and I have taken to calling G.B. has developed a great affection for Betty and, from everything I can tell, taken over semi-possession of her, at least in his own mind.

Just this past weekend BJ and I were preparing to embark on a Sunday mini-cruise, me outside the boat on the port walkway and BJ inside the boat stowing stuff, when G. B. materialized on the fingerpier adjacent to our starboard side.

"Bill," BJ intoned ominously, while eyeing the giant avian aviator who was eyeing her back through a side window, "There's a big bird on the dock...and I mean BIG!"

"What," I asked, reasonably.

"A big bird and he looks...I mean I think he means business."

"What," I asked again, still reasonably, while strolling around the bow to come down the starboard side. What I saw put the fear of the Bird Gods in me. Our Great Blue was easily four-foot tall, maybe even five-foot tall with his neck fully extended. He had a menacing, rapier-like beak that was about one-foot long, and he had an exceptionally displeased (or was it just quizzical) expression upon his face. "Hey, buddy, this here's my territory...what the heck you doin' on MY territory," the look seemed to say.

Shoving off was a tad difficult. And ultimately I had to pluck up the nerve to get out onto the fingerpier with G.B., who gave way grudgingly, but not by much. Talk about profiles in courage. To deal with the shorepower cord I had to bend over and place my derriere right on the firing line, at a range of less than two feet, with my wife fretting from the cockpit, "Oh Bill he's coming toward you...he's coming toward you."

All went smoothly, though. And as we pulled away from the slip, G.B stood there watching us, doing a slow burn or at least what seemed like a slow burn.

Coming back to the dock after the mini-cruise I had one overriding thought: Jeeze, I hope the ol' boy's moved on. And indeed, while backing into the slip I noticed the absence of G.B. with deep gratitude. We tied up without incident and I commenced washing down with a bucket, hose, deck brush and a couple of mitts I use to do the rails. All was wondrous. I love to whistle and sing while I work so I began cheerily singing and whistling.

But then came the dreaded return. Toward the end of the washdown process it occurred to me that I might as well fill the water tank before taking the hose off the boat. The task's a worshippy one, from the standpoint of posture. While removing the fill cap from its fitting in the cockpit sole with a spanner I am constrained to kneel on the deck with my back to Betty's forward portions.

"Hmmmm...hmmmmm....hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm, I chortled while cranking away on the spanner.

Maybe G.B. is a music lover--I don't know. Anyway, he secretly hopped aboard from some undisclosed location and, intrigued by the siren song no doubt, made his way slowly and stealthily down the starboard side deck. I was oblivious to this, of course, and so was BJ, who was reading the New York Times in the saloon and grousing about Congress.

"Squawwwwwwwkkkkkkk," proclaimed G.B. with considerable aggression (to get a handle on the audio here, check out: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Great_Blue_Heron_dtl.html#sound), while peering dolefully around the corner. His warning shot took me by such immense surprise that I launched from the kneeling position into full aeronautical mode in under a millisecond. Whaaaaaa!!!!!!! As luck would have it, the taffrail that spans Betty's transom kept me from actually leaving the cockpit via the power of fright. Unperturbed, G.B. hopped off onto the fingerpier and stalked off to glare from a modest remove.

"We're gonna have to make friends with him," observed BJ. She'd just opened the door from the saloon into the cockpit upon hearing the commotion. G.B. switched his gaze to her and blinked, going for sympathy, I'd say.

"Yeah," I panted, waiting for my heart to quit racing, "Maybe bait fish'll have a soothing effect on him. If not, I'm gonna have to start doin' tranquilizers to survive the marine scene around here."

Pause Before Docking

I'm an antsy sort of guy. I like to get wherever I'm going with all due diligence unless I'm headed for the dentist's office or some dicey place like that. So when I'm approaching a marina--and usually I'm pretty excited about going to most marinas--I'd rather not cut down on Betty Jane's amiable little cruising velocity for any reason, and certainly I'd rather not actually pause for a moment. Heck no!

But I've formed a habit over the years that militates against this overly-intense approach to marinized travel--as I approach virtually any place while operating Betty, I slow to a stop for a minute or two well before arrival.

Why? To simply sit there at the helm and gauge the effects of the wind (how robustly is it blowing and from what direction?) and of the current (how robustly is it moving Betty and in what direction?). And then to approximate how the combined effects of these two forces will affect Betty as I'm backing her into her slip.

How do I do this last part really? By picking some impromptu ranges ashore, one abeam (whether to port or starboard makes little difference) and the other ahead, and briefly observing by means of these ranges the manner in which the wind and current is actually going to move the boat one way or the other once I get to my slip. A range, of course, consists of two objects that can be lined up fore and aft, rifle-sight-fashion, as an indicator of a vessel's relative motion. Typically, ranges are used to indicate proper positioning within a stretch of channel and they occur either ahead or astern of said channel.

At any rate, the habit's served me well over the years. Since first incorporating it into my navigational routine, I've rarely been surprised by meteorological conditions when I enter a marina, whether it's the one Betty calls home or some other little spot I've never been to before.

Gotta Do Some Painting?

For a few years now, I've been under the impression that by free-handing my brush, I could more efficiently deal with repainting Betty Jane's window frames.

I mean, who wants to waste a lot of time applying preparatory varnishing tape to the outsides of the frames?

And, perhaps even more significantly, who wants to waste even more time applying even more varnishing tape to the insides of the frames? Why not cut to the chase and merely combine the use of a steady eye and a steady hand to get the job done? And just skip the sticky, blowin'-in-the-wind, pain-in-the-neck tape?

Well, I've just discovered a big reason to go with tape and skip the steady-hand-and-eye baloney! A professional boat maintenance guy explained it to me just the other day. Wanna hear it? Here it goes:

With tape on both the inside and the outside of the frames, you can bear down on the surface of the frame itself with more vengeance than you'd otherwise use while free-handing. After all, free-handing calls for delicacy and a light touch. But with tape protecting surrounding surfaces, you can squish the paint like there's no tomorrow, thus providing a thick finish with better, longer-lasting adherence.

The upshot? Check out this close-up photo of the latest application of Petit's Easypoxy http://www.pettitpaint.com/ to Betty's wood frames. Note the plastic-like thickness of the finish. Previous free-hand applications never looked half as nice as this. And I'm guessing that previous applications haven't lasted nearly as long either.

Oh I know! Maybe you don't have labor-intensive teak window frames on your vessel. Teak window frames are a thing of the past, for the most part. But you probably have a few surfaces onboard your very own, more up-to-date watercraft that need painting or will need painting sometime in the near future. So remember. Whether you're doing the work or you're hiring somebody else to do it:

To really save some time and ensure a finer, longer-lasting paint job, skip the artistic, free-hand approach and go with tape. Lots of it. And thereafter put some muscle into that paint brush. Works like a champ on the ol' Betty Jane.

Lookin' Backwards

One trait that distinguishes folks who are REAL familiar with operating boats is that, when underway, they occasionally (but habitually) turn around and take a gander at where they've come from, whether it be day or night. There are a couple of reasons for doing this.

First, lookin' backwards keeps you updated on traffic approaching from the stern--always a good idea. After all, how you deal with traffic from behind is quite likely going to affect how you deal with traffic coming from ahead. On the Betty Jane, for example, I glance aft every couple of minutes while toodling along. And I always shoot a glance over my shoulder before making a turn. Cutting some poor devil off with a boat can be just as dicey as cutting 'em off with a car!

Second, lookin' backwards helps you stay in whatever channel you happen to be passing through at the time. Currents and breezes often set or push vessels crosswise in channels. Under such circumstances, you may be happily aiming your bow for the appropriate spot between two upcoming channel markers but, without looking at the channel markers aft to gauge the effects of sideways set, you may also be skirting the channel's edge or even sliding subtly into dangerously shallow water. Don't take chances--glance over your shoulder and line up a previous marker (or markers) with an upcoming marker on the same side. Draw an imaginary line between the two by eye. Are you actually IN the channel? Just takes an instant or two.

And third, lookin' backwards is an easy way to check on the accuracy of your seemingly picture-perfect radar picture. Seafaring novices, I've noticed, tend to exaggerate their reliance on radar. While radar units are undeniably excellent (and exceptionally sensitive) these days, they are still subject to various forms of interference, some of it emanating from the very vessels they're installed on. It's not totally beyond the realm of possibility, even in these modern times, to see all-clear astern on your screen when there's actually a boat back there following close, even a large one, hidden amidst the clutter. Yikes! A fast over-the-shoulder glance lets you know for sure.

Varnish Job Details...As Promised

I've been waiting a while to report on the status of the Betty Jane's new varnish job, an extravaganza done courtesy of Brian Hicks and his one-man enterprise: On Board Wood Finishing. I wanted to let a little experimental time go by, you might say. Just to see how a rather old-fashioned-type approach might hold up long-term.

Anyway, as I've mentioned mucho entries ago, I'd been using synthetic varnish on the Betster for a couple of years while thinking I was going the easier, softer route. Trouble was, I was having to apply a fresh coat of synthetic varnish every couple of months to keep up with UV damage.

So I wised up this spring, I guess. And the whole thing's workin' out, big-time. Since Brian laid on the last coat almost three months ago I have seen no appreciable change in sheen or shine. No lifting. No nothin'.

Talk about stuff that hangs tough! The old-school (or semi-old-school) varnish he applied so meticulously is outlasting synthetics outrageously. And, if Brian is right, it's likely to hang tough for quite a while longer. He says he expects I'll get at least six to eight more months out of the finished product before I have to apply a few more coats.

Brian's secret is no secret at all. Once he'd removed all the old synthetics from Betty's teak rails and trim pieces, he applied an "anchor coat" of four layers of Awlgrip's Awl Spar classic varnish (with phenolic resins), typically applying two to three layers a day since Awl Spar can be recoated after three or four hours of drying time (and within 36 hours of application) without sanding or scuffing. Then he applied four more layers of Petit's Z-Spar Flagship varnish (with phenolic and alkyd resins as well as linseed and tung oils), laying on one coat per day while scuffing between coats with 220-grit sandpaper.

Certainly, technique and preparation are critical to a good, long-lasting varnish job. But that said, the above products, classic and conventional as they may be, seem to be wearing like iron in this summer's blistering North Florida sun. More power to 'em!

A Small Point Perhaps

Maybe because I've got a radical streak runnin' straight up my spine (or maybe because I've spent much of my life working on the decks of ships, tugs, and oilfield vessels), I can't stand so-called froo-froo flemish coils laying around on deck.

You know what a flemish coil is, right? Some poor benighted soul takes the free end of a line and spins it outwards on deck until he has a nice tight spiral laying there for all the world to notice. Looks yachty and knowledgeable. Hooooop-teeeeee-dooooooo!

But have I ever seen such a travesty on a commercial ship? Nope! On a tug? Nope! On an oil-field boat? Well, maybe just once...in the wake of a deckhand I worked with years ago. His name was Scooter and he lived for entire two-week hitches on a refrigerated mixture of peanut butter and mayo, but that's another story.

Anyway, I prefer something a little more practical than flemish coils onboard the Betty Jane. My deal's not as yachty (which is fine with me) and lets me dispense with the bitter ends of mooring lines on deck in a much more expeditious fashion. Here's the low-down on it:

Simply coil the line into three or four bights in-hand in the usual fashion, bearing in mind that all line has a natural twist to it that dictates a clockwise coiling motion. While creating the coil in-hand, remember to also roll your right hand outboard (if you're right-handed) as you lay the bights in your left hand. This also helps accommodate twist and nixes chances of kinks.

The next step is to simply drop the coil unceremoniously on the deck near where you want to stow it. While you are doing this, I'd suggest pleasurably imagining some poor bugger stooping to spin lines on deck or, worse yet, getting down on his tired old knees to do it.

And the final step? Toe-kick the coil flat against an adjoining vertical surface like a bulwark or bulkhead. Done!

By the way, if your own boat doesn't have a vertical surface (like Betty's bulwarks, for example) to keep the free end of the line from falling or getting kicked into the drink, more's the pity. You'll have to flemish-coil the dang thing I suppose, a tactic that traps dirt underneath if used in a long-term way.

How To Tie A Bowline

Jeeeeeeezzzzzeeeeee!!!!!!!! I sound so darn mean in this little video my wife BJ recorded of me. I act a little mean, too. Don't know what to tell you about this. It was a GORGEOUS day. We'd just come back from a nice cruise on the Betty Jane. I'd slurped plenty of water so I was nicely hydrated. And there was a slight breeze blowing across Betty's flying bridge.

Could it be that I'm just turning into a grumpy old guy? Hmmmm, maybe. But I'm pretty passionate about my knots, if you want to know the truth. And I tend to be a tad impatient with boat-prone folks who can't deal with the basics in fairly efficient ways, although I've been told that, from a student's point of view, I'm a fairly patient teacher if the student has plenty of patience as well.

Be that as it may. Mean soundin' and actin' or not, I'm pretty easy to understand on the video I think and if you watch the dang thing a bunch of times while trying to replicate what I'm doing with a piece of your own line, you'll get the hang of it right quick, as we say in the Sunny South.



I learned to tie a bowline this way so many years ago I can't remember who my teacher was. Guess it was either some bosun on a Great Lakes ore carrier or the skipper of a Mississippi River pushboat. In either case, I'm betting the guy was a little rough-and-tumble himself.

Good Luck!

Cast Of Thousands...Literally

The marina the Betty Jane calls home hosts a big fishing tournament every July and BIG ain't the half of it. This year there was concern about whether America's faltering economy would cut the number of entries, whether going to a catch-and-release format would diminish the enthusiasm of local anglers, and whether folks from far away would spend the gas money to turn out in droves, droves, and more droves as of yore.

So much for all the concern. This year's four-day 25th Annual Bay Point Invitational Billfish Tournament seemed to cruise along just about as lavishly as any of the others my wife and I've attended in recent memory. Saturday night's when the big weigh-in takes place (complete with giant TV screen and a couple of rock bands) and my wife and I typically hang in there until 11 o'clock or thereabouts, sampling the food, T-shirt, marine art, and other concession stands, talking with friends, and just generally blending into the event. Then we head for Betty, draw the curtains, crank up the two air-conditioning units onboard, and settle in for a serious snooze after checking in on the final results of the tournament via our TV.

This year's festivities were as long-lasting as ever, I'm happy to report. In fact, upon arising from the berth in Betty's forward cabin to hit the facilities a few hours after retiring, I noticed that the dock immediately behind the transom was still groaning under hordes of strolling, dock-lit ladies dressed to the nines, gents dressed to the nines, and casually-attired children staying up way past when they would normally have been tucked into their berths. "Wow," I marvelled to my semi-sleeping wife, "It's two o'clock in the morning and I just saw a woman in a designer dress go by pushing a baby carriage. I think the kid was trollin' for grouper with an Ugly Stick and a Penn Senator!"

Sunday was a quiet day, comparatively. So off we went for a little spin in the Betty Jane. The weather was spectacular. And the water in the shallows was some aquamarine, some yellow, some blue. I let the autopilot drive for the most part. On the way back we eased on past a 110-foot Broward dallying in Grand Lagoon, not far from Bay Point. When I called the skipper on my trusty VHF, he said he was waiting to pick somebody up from our marina. The channel into the docks was just a tad too shallow for the big Broward to get into the transient dock.

As we continued on our merry way, my wife and I began speculating on who the somebody might be. Hmmmmm. The owner of one of the big battlewagons that had participated in the tournament, perhaps? A guy with a tower-accoutered 70-some-footer? Or a tower-accoutered 80-some-footer? Whose other boat is a 110-foot Broward?

As we toodled past the fuel dock, a big ol' Jupiter center-console sped by with 350 Yamahas screamin'. Two guys were onboard, a youngster drivin', an olderster not. The Jupe was headed for the Broward, it looked like.

Sheeeeeeeesh!

Heavens To Betty...The Fuel Thing

A weekend or so ago, I fell to talkin' with a couple of our neighbors at the marina, Russell and Lee, in the way that boaters do, and have been doing for hundreds of years perhaps...cockpit to cockpit. Russell and Lee own a Nordic Tug (as you can see here) with a cool, rather tug-like name: Alice Lee. She's a beaut, and comparatively new although she's got a whole pile of lovely miles on her.

Anyway, Russell says, "Yeah, it looks to me like there aren't that many people going out these days, I guess because of the fuel situation. People are just stayin' on their boats in the marina on the weekends."

Now what Russell was referring to here is the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel and the plummeting level of actual boat usage that seems to result from it in our marina as well as other marinas across the land. I agreed with him, of course.

"Yeah," Russell continued (that's him waving from his darkened wheelhouse while pulling out of his slip to go off on a moderst little afternoon jaunt), "It's not slowin' Lee and I down that much, though. We're burnin' about three gallons an hour, or thereabouts I think. Not too bad. Not too bad at all."

"Yup," added Lee (that's her waving from the cockpit...with the stylish straw hat and the happy-to-be-going-boating smile on her face), "We've decided to use our boat as much as possible this summer. Life's too short not to. That's how we see it. We're off to Shell Island as a matter of fact."

Certainly, the conversation with Russell and Lee warmed the cockles of my little ol' heart. After all, one of the reasons I purchased my very own turtle-slow but wonderfully economical Grand Banks 32 was the whole issue of fuel. Even four years ago, it seemed to me that some hard times were a'comin', as they say. And it also seemed that a sightseeing-type fuel burn of 1.5 gph (that's Betty's consumption at 1,750 rpm, a rate that produces a cruise speed of approximately 8 knots) might eventually come in real handy.

Now, I know. Nobody in his right mind today wants to hear from some super-fortunate son-of-a-gun (feel free to substitute other, more satisfying words for this last one if you're so inclined) who for one reason or another happens to currently own a comparatively cheap-to-operate motorboat, especially when the tab for go-go juice is blasting bullet holes through the roof of the wheelhouse.

"So that's just wonderful, Billy Boy," I can hear somebody say, "So you got an economical little trawler, eh? Well, whooooop-tee-dooooooo for you. I'm just tickled pink about how lucky you are. Say...why don't you take a long walk off the nearest short pier!"

But listen. Could it be that economical, single-engine vessels like the Alice Lee and the Betty Jane are the next new thing? Could it be that the need for speed's fading from the scene, at least until some whopping mechano-electro-nano-geekster genius comes up with a propulsion system that transcends the pricey drawbacks of internal combustion?

As for me and Betty? Believe it or not, I am starting (and I mean: starting) to think along the lines of retrofitting my old-fashioned trawler with a heavenly new-fashioned powerplant of some sort (You can read about this extravaganza in one of my upcoming At Sea columns in Power & Motoryacht). Maybe a hydrogen fuel cell. Maybe a Starship Enterprise warp drive.

Who knows! I just hope my ol' dead-simple, low-tech Super Lehman doesn't find out what I'm up to!

A Little Criminal Behavior Perhaps?

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Ah well. My apologies for trailin' off on the bloggin' commitment. Criminal! Just criminal! I hate startin' stuff and then slowing down to a crawl. Anyway, for those who are still interested in the varnishing project on the ol' Betty Jane (but whose interest was waning due to my in flagranto derelicto blogomondo behavior), here's a short but sweet update.

(I got an excuse for not blogging for a month, by the way. I have been traveling all over the place for PMY. You-name-it-I been-there kinda thing. Australia was the farthest away I got. Will toss in a few photos of yours truly with a koala bear here at a later date. Close encounter of the cutest kind. Stay tuned.)

Anyhooooooooo. As you can see from the photo above, the stripping-off-the old-varnish-and-annointing-anew project on the Bettster has been completed. And what a gorgeous result. More details later. You know, the specifics, like kinds of varnish used (there were two), number of coats (there were a whole bunch), old-varnish removal techniques (they were exquisitely laborious), the time required to perform the work (figured in hours and dollar signs), the rip-snortin' cost, etc.

But heck! Let me enthuse first!!!!!!! Just look at this stuff...the whole boat looks like this!!!!! I know...I know. I wrote a story in PMY extolling the virtues of various forms of synthetic varnish and I am sorry. I apologize. I aplogize!!!!!!!! Never did Betty look this good when adorned with synthetics of any description. With a real, genuine, pain-in-the-neck-back-and-posterior varnish job she looks like a grand piano!!!!!! Think I am overdoing the exclamation marks. Gonna dial it back from here on out!

According to Mr. Brian Hicks, the genius who spent a whole pile of weeks on this job, the finish will last nine months, maybe even a year. He suggested I keep a sharp eye on things so he can come back and recoat when necessary and "keep 'er lookin' the way she oughta look," as he says. You can bet yer bottom dollar I will follow instructions to a V-for-varnish on this one. Afterall, (I hate to say this but) Betty was starting to look just a tad ho-hum. I mean, she was tending in that direction of late, more's the pity. Now she looks like she oughta reside in The Metropolitan Museum of Maritime Arts. Hip, hip, hooray!

Well...Hmmmmm

By hook or crook, I recently came into the possession of a Powermonkey-Explorer, a sort of remote battery that can be attached to cellphones, laptops, iPods and other digital devices to provide or prolong the supply of electrical power.

Along with the Powermonkey came a thing called the Solar-Slave, a small, fold-out solar collector that can be made to charge the Powermonkey if AC power is not immediately available for charging.

Anyway, I love stuff that falls free as rain into my graspy clutches, so I was all fired up to give this groovy little product a rave review until...well, let's just say I'm havin' a little network difficulty on the iPod front right now. Gotta call Merry Ol' England (where the outfit is that markets the China-made Powermonkey).

Catch PMY Tries (in the "FYI" section of an upcoming issue of Power & Motoryacht) to get the full story.

Hmmmmmm. I wonder how smart it was to hook the Powermonkey up to my battered, hard-travelin' iPod while the Powermonkey was hooked to the Solar-Slave?

The Joys of Not Boating On A Boat In A Marina

Okay. So there are some truly great days you can spend on the water. Days when you ease into an oft-visited anchorage (like the one above), run right up close to the beach where the water's sorta aquamarine like in Bimini, drop the hook, and just listen to the silence for a few ensuing hours, if that's yer cup of Starbucks.

And heck! I've been fortunate enough to enjoy a few such days over the past few months myself. Winter in North Florida, after all, is a rather wonderful time for boating. Places you normally go in the summer are often pretty empty much past November. The bugs have all gone someplace else, too. Or kicked the bucket, or done whatever bugs do when cold temperatures make 'em feel discouraged. And the air is generally bracing or, for a change of pace occasionally and briefly, downright warm.

However, as all us North Floridians know, there are those wintry times too, when whether due to rain, high winds or both, the waterways beyond our marinas start looking less than inviting and we decide to "set tight," as we say in the Sunny South.

Which is exactly what my wife and I did about two weekends ago. Certainly there wasn't any rain at the time. In fact, the sun beamed down with utter enthusiasm. But wind? Wooooooooeeeeeee! It was so dang wickedly breezy that on both Saturday and Sunday Marina Manager Steve took the flags down on the fuel dock so they wouldn't blow slap away!

Set tight?

What I mean is that we simply decided to stay onboard Betty Jane in our marina and never leave the slip--let's call it, hmmmmmmmmmm: Not Boating On A Boat In A Marina or NBOABIAM. Yeah, it's a little hard to pronounce but it's got a lot of advantages and opportunities. Here are a few cool ones:

The first boils down to sitting around in the cockpit soaking up the sun. You don't really have to have anything substantive to talk about to get the sitting-around-sun-soaking synergy to work for you. In fact, it's better to not have anything substantive to talk about at all.

For example, my wife BJ (the one with the sunglasses and bluejeans all the way to the right) and her sister Judy (the one downing a glass of ice water) were gabbing about pedicures mostly at the time this photo was taken. Judy had just returned from having her toes twinkled nearby and BJ was enthusing over the workpersonship and greatly interested in comparing her feet to her sister's. "That sure is a set of toes there," I noted at one point, trying to be supportive of the familial bonding process.

Getting your hair done is another fine thing you can do while NBOABIAM. Judy's daughter Ashley (far left) showed up not long after the above photo was taken sporting a new form of manicured headgear, which looked very nice indeed blowing in the wind.

Of course, beautifications of this sort are not available in all marinas in our fair land. In fact, in some marinas I've spent time in over the years such things would have been positively wondered at. Heck, in some marinas I've spent time in over the years the amenity quotient wouldn't have stretched much farther than a couple of dogs, a bait cooler, a phone booth, and a Coke machine.

In any case, I believe Ashley enjoyed having her hair-do done at the nearby spa a lot more than a couple of wind-blown hours spent tooling around Panama City on the flybridge of the ol' Betty Jane listening to Uncle Bill's ancient, mucho-told sea stories. Thank goodness she (Ashley, not Betty Jane) is much too polite to even intimate such an ego-puncturing proposition!

One last thing you can do while NBOABIAM is eat. And there's a great little eatery at our little marina in Panama City. It's called The Butler's Pantry and it's run by Ruth Braunz.

Mostly, Ruth cooks just about everything on the premises of TBP (am I overdoing the acronyms in this little post, do you think?) in a kitchen area that's easy to see from the rest of the place in case anybody's interested. Her daughter Mallorie (that's Mallorie on the right and Ruth on the left in the photo here, by the way) helps out dutifully on weekends.

Breakfasts come fast and taste good. The chicken panini Ruth dishes up is to-die-for and the Reuben? Made with a giant, old-fashioned press of the type used to make Cuban sandwiches, it's top-tier. Buy one and the chips and drink come free!

Anyway, my most recent experience of NBOABIAM is that after you've dined at a place like TBP and maybe watched a little TV onboard (Yup, I am definitely overdoing the acronyms...big-time), sack time turns out to be wonderfully relaxed. Let's face it. There's no better place to sleep than on a boat when the weather's cool and windy, the ports are open, the water's lapping, and a bunch of halyards chime somewhere off in the distance.

The bonus with appreciating such niceties while you're still dockside is there's no anchor watch to pull, and no having to worry about dragging into the shallows or whatever. NBOABIAM? O yeah, it's great!

Podcasting Pleasure

Some of you who regularly read Power & Motoryacht may know that I turn my "At Sea" column into podcasts, available on PMY's Web site and iTunes. Well, I'll be making them available here, too, for your listening pleasure. Here's my most recent ditty.

Craftsmanship

I was testing a boat the other day at the little marina at Pier 66 in Ft. Lauderdale when a sight hove into view that blew me away and had a similar effect on the folks I was with. As a bunch of us strolled down one of the docks that adjoin the parking lot, having just destroyed a few sandwiches at a little waterside open-air cafe, I noticed a megayacht in the outboard fairway adrift for all intents and purposes, except for a couple of TowBoatU.S. vessels, one hawsered to the bow, the other bridled to the swim platform at the stern.

The two little boats had just pulled the megayacht into the fairway stern-first and were proceeding with their vast charge toward the inner end where we stood along a face dock. They looked like two mice harnessed to a huge, sleeping cat.

"Wow," said young Jon Viestenz, Product Manager for Cruisers Yachts, just about the same time I uttered an identical exclamation.

The sight was rather thrilling, actually, and put me in mind of a couple of tugs working a ship into a tight berth in an inner harbor.

The sound effects were cool. You could hear the studied laziness of the drawls of the two guys on the two TowBoats reverberating within the fairway from their respective VHFs. Had you only listened to them, you'd have thought they were playing a leisurely game of poker or shooting the breeze at the back of a feed store, instead of maneuvering a multimillion dollar vessel amid many other super-pricey vessels with wind gusts afoot and some swooshy currents running.

But what was even cooler was the lead boat. There was one solitary guy onboard and he was a consummate boathandler--I mean he was so good that at one point, with his port quarter maybe a foot from the stem of a whopping motoryacht and the push-knee on his bow a foot from the swim platform of the mega, he was able to precisely spin his boat in place--one engine ahead and the other astern--so he could show off just a tad and reposition for a slightly different angle of thrust.

Although the owners of the motoryacht charged out to the foredeck to look on with alarm, the pure, mathematical artistry of the guy in the TowBoat was so utterly apparent that Jon and I sort of looked at each other and simultaneously agreed, "They ain't got nothin' to worry about--not with somebody like that at the helm!"

Heck! I don't know if boat handling in close quarters is a sport or not, although it can devolve into some rather intense sportiness sometimes. But I tend to admire great boathandlers the way I admire great athletes, whether well known at the national level or not.

Craftsmanship is at the bottom of it all, of course: the ability to gracefully bend a hulking piece of waterborne machinery to one's will, no matter what conditions Mother Nature happens to be dishing out on any given day.

It's a beautiful, artsy thing to watch. And with time, practice, and a little bit of luck, it can be a beautiful thing to experience as well, even for a modestly-talented guy like myself, if only for a moment or two, here and there.

Beauty Beyond Consistency

Okay, I've been taking a few hits on my decision to have Betty's teak rails and trim wooded down, as they say. You know. Where some stalwart soul, with sandpaper, heat gun, power sander, and other assorted tools and ointments, removes all (or virtually all) the finish from the brightwork of a vessel at vast expense and with great and tedious expenditure of time.

"What about that story you wrote in PMY last year tellin' us all that synthetic varnish was the greatest thing since salty water," a friend and colleague protested. "Was that all baloney? What ever happened to good old-fashioned consistency?"

Huh! Obviously, the blog entry just previous to this little beauty was not as clear as it needed to be!

Yeah, the synthetics worked fine, even looked passable to the naked eye. But the trouble with the synthetics, at least on Betty's teak, is that there are (today, but not for long) just too many of them. I mean, the way I got it figured, there are products from Cetol, Armada, West Marine, and Epifanes slathered on by myself and others, to say nothing of the various paints and stains some wag slipped in to cover dark spots and other eyesores.

The result? These days, Betty's luscious brightwork is lookin' a little less than bright and maybe a little less than luscious. And on top of that, for one reason or another, I was constrained to miss my most recent reapplication-of-synthetic-varnish window, a sin of omission that's since allowed blisters, bubbles, and all other manner of horrors to pop up like measles.

So Betty's gonna get wooded down, no doubt about it. And I'm going with regular ol' mainstream varnish--not synthetic varnish--as her overcoat, in large part just because I've never seen my lovely old boat thus arrayed.

And besides, I'm 61 years young. Why the heck bother with consistency anyway? Is it not often unwise?

Gang. I'm just theorizing here, but I bet the day my wife and I see Betty gleaming in the sunshine with eight new layers of pure ol' maple-syrupy varnish on her teak is gonna be a star-spangled-bannered doozy.

"It's gonna cost a freakin' fortune," chides my friend and colleague, a warning the art lover in me prefers to loftily ignore.


I reiterate (with feeling): What the heck!

Awwww, What The Heck

See the caprail and rail on the starboard side here? Well, over the past couple of years I've made a big deal about using synthetic varnishes of one kind or another to keep the shine shinin' on such components and cut labor of the hands-on variety

I have backed up this nifty course of action by citing a maintenance philosophy I learned from a guy named Manley Fulcher, a lead AB (Able Bodied Seaman) on a tug I once worked aboard maybe 25 years ago. Manley didn't care about the finer points of cosmetics on the ol' Sara Hayes. He simply wanted surfaces susceptible to rot, rust, and other horrors covered up with paint (mostly) and varnish (sometimes), so to protect them from the ravages of the ferocious saltwater environment.

Well, guess what, Manley! I hope you are not reading this because I am going against my better judgement (and yours) straight into the realm of museum-grade maintenance--I have hired a professional varnish guy (I ain't got the time is my excuse) to wood down the totality of the Betty Jane's rails, caprails, nameboards, and trim pieces, thereby removing scads of various coatings (even a little paint here and there to cover up darkened mildewed spots) and rendering all ten acres of her glistening brightwork fresh as the driven snow or, since my home port's in Florida, rain.

Once the wooding down is done, multiple coats of regular old-fashioned varnish will be applied...with great and expensive artistry. More details will be forthcoming since I have suggested that I lend my time to the job on weekends. Why not pay and work at the same time, thus adding insult to injury?<

Varnish heads in the marina are overjoyed, of course. They tell me I am going to be blown away by the final product, a product that will make my synthetic efforts look crass, even unclean and unwholesome.

Hmmmm...while I am not sure about this, I am pretty sure I'm gonna be blown away by the ultimate price of my little voyage into high-end beautification! Stay tuned.<

Fixin' Old Teak Decks

Quite frankly I'm not sure whether I invented this particular method or not (probably not) but it seems to be workin'. Let's say you own a classic (old boat) like the Betty Jane and you're seeing some dark staining around the bungs that cover the screws securing the planks to the deck.

Yikes! Right? The staining means water is getting past the bungs more than likely and the darn things need replacing.

Well yeah, but what if there's not enough clearance over the head of the screw to make replacement with a reasonably thick bung possible? Whataya do then?

Here's my nifty little modus operandi. I remove the old bung with a screw driver, pocket knife or some other groovy tool. Then I back the screw out and (this is the inventive part in my humble, yet excited opinion) cut a smidgen off using the tool shown above.

The next step entails using a 3/8" countersink (or some other countersink that fits your situation) to deepen the bung hole by the same smidgen you just cut off the screw. The point here, of course, is to keep your planks secure but not turn the screw over-far into the cored laminate underneath and set up a deplorable deal wherein water leaks around the screw and invades the coring. Double yikes!

The rest is straightforward. You dip the cut-off screw in marine silicone, insert it back into its hole, tighten the dang thing down squeezing silicone out, slather a new bung with epoxy (I use West System's wondrous stuff), and set the bung in the hole with a hammer--Whop! Once the epoxy sets and the new bung's solid, you simply whack it flat with a chisel and sand down with 220 grit sandpaper.

Sound complicated? Heck, I've replaced as many as 15 plugs in a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon!

To Catch A Rat

There's a first time for everything, right? My good buddy Bruce Prevatt and I zoomed over to Panama City so we could take a ride in his Pursuit 2500 fishboat on Saturday and meet with an interesting fellow by the name of Capt. Ric Corley, a guy who's got a few sea stories that'd boggle the mind of Homer. Anyhoo, after talking/dining with the Cap for a few hours on Friday evening and sleeping a few more Friday night, Bruce and I met next morning for breakfast and the ride.

And the ride was good, albeit rough. Winds were still blowing sportily. During the night I'd rested poorly onboard the ol' Betty Jane mostly due to the wind which was blowing a steady 40 mph with gusts going higher...in the marina! Being a retired naval officer (flyboy not water-winger) Bruce had rested well at the BOQ on the Navy base in PC. So the breezes out on the water cleared the cobwebs from my frazzled, up-half-the-night-checkin'-mooring-lines consciousness and semi-brought me up to speed mentally. They seemed to supercharge ol' Bruce's consciousness, though.

Supercharge? Yup! When we got back to the dock he was so dang enthused about everything that he simply had to show me his genius scheme for nailing the dirty rat that ate half of his electrical wiring (to the tune of $750 in damages and repairs) last fall while his boat sat around in dry-stack storage at the Navy base marina.

"Just in case the darn varmint comes back or he's still around," Bruce explained, after fishing the above implement of destruction from a locker, "This oughta get him."

Now I've seen a few rat traps on ships and larger commercial vessels of dicey character, but this was the first time in my life I'd come across a trap large enough to snag a robust rat-type rodent on a 25-footer pleasure boat.

Is there some deep meaning to it all? Does Bruce's naval background enter into the whole affair in some way? Or hmmmmmmm...wonder if Capt. Corley ever trapped any rats while sailing the North Atlantic?

More On That Windshield Panel

Some years ago I sea trialed a great little 30-something cruiser with one big problem--the dang windshield had absolutely no vent or opening for the wafty breezes to pass through. Consequently, the air conditioning system onboard could not even begin to contend with the heat generated by the intense Florida sun. Sweat city!

What I like about my boat is this center windshield panel that lifts like a trap door. It's especially lovely at anchor. Unlike many boats that'll lay side-to in most any sort of sea condition when at anchor, Betty holds her nose into wind and seas virtually always. Hence, she sets herself up for wondrous ventilation if you simply open that center panel.

See the cellphone laying just above the wheel? Big freakin' mistake, gang. My take on boating is you leave all or most complexity ashore, especially technological. The concept of hauling onboard all the electronic communications ephemera we use today to drive each other nuts is totally foreign to my nature. Only reason I can give for the cellphone here is a brief lapse in judgment.
I'll try never to let it happen again.

Salty Reading

Yeah, I'll admit I'm nuts about boats. One reason I love my current beauty is her ability to put me into the tugboat mentality. I used to work on tugs and sometimes, when I'm lucky, like I was this past weekend, the ol' Betty Jane lets me pretend I'm still workin' on one of the tugs I used to get such a kick out of.

The weather was gorgeous for this little jaunt, as you can see. And Betty was runnin' like a top, thanks to a recent bottom job at a local boat yard. On this particular day my wife and I were headed for Shell Island, a favorite anchorage. We enjoy coasting in towards the shore, dropping' the hook in a little over a fathom of water, and then just relaxin'. My wife likes reading the New York Times while sitting in a deck chair in the cockpit. I usually read one of my good seafarin' guys. Like right now I'm reading Desperate Voyage by John Caldwell. Nothin's better than laying on the settee in the teaky saloon, with the front windshield panel open to let the breeze blow through, reading a great and salty book.

Made it back to the marina without incident, by the way. Had fun, and that's what counts.