Timeless Sunsets

I was recently asked: "You must get to see a lot of sunsets" 

Up until that point, I have taken for granted the fact that I get to see every sunset. I see the ones that light up the sky with a red glow and the ones that fade out into blue obscurity as the night encroaches. Seeing the sun set simply becomes a daily occurrence becuase I pretty much live outside and connected with nature. As the sun begins to go down,I notice it because the sun comes in at a harsh angle, this alerts me to look in its direction and enjoy the splendid display in the sky above me.

Sunsets will never loose their majesticness, but they will lose their count. I honestly have lost count of what day we are, and how many days we have been cruising, as such the number of sunsets I have seen is also lost to me, but the wonder always remains the same. 

This timelessness of the setting sun brings peace to each day as night comes over us and we relax our way to sleep. 

Sailing Up a River

When you think about sailing, you probably picture a yacht under full sail slicing through the blue sea! The only thing around the yacht is more waves as it chugs along through the water towards an endless destination. This thought might seem romantic, but at some point, the yacht will arrive on a shore and make its way up into a port. Old ports tend to be located up a river, offering them ease of access to the open waters but yet still protected from the fury of the waves during a severe storm.

For those with a powerful diesel motor onboard, these journeys up the river to the port city are no challenge at all. All you need to do in these cases is turn on the motor and power your way up the river until you reach your destination in a timely manner. For those of us who have opted to forgo this luxury, traveling up the river may be a bit more intimidating. 

Rivers have a few standard qualities, and understanding these features will make navigating them all the easier. A river will always flow from the land to the sea. There may be a slight flood as the tide rises, but it will be much weaker than the current as the tide retreats back into the ocean. This preferred direction of rivers is due to the fact that rivers drain runoff from the land into the sea.  

This means that the force of the current is directly correlated to the amount of rainfall that has occurred in that area . If they have been having heavy rains, expect a stronger current pushing against you. If it has been dry lately, expect an easier to at sailing up the river. 

The other challenging thing with rivers is their width. Rivers can be wide, but they can also get very narrow at times. The area of deep water will also be narrower than the width of the river as well, meaning that you will be forced to sail in a relatively narrow space. This can make it difficult to work your way up a river, especially if your are working into the wind. Short tacking against the wind and against the current is equivalent to Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountainside forever.  

It may sound like rivers are the worst thing you can encounter on a sailboat, and you may be inclined to think that you need a motor to get to the port town located miles up the river. This thought may seem well founded, knowing all the natural forces are stacked against you, but remember that these old towns were established long before diesel motors existed. All trade that occurred in these old towns was done by sail, and if the town is old enough, by square rigger! 

While it may sound like it is next to impossible to sail up into a river and reach a port town, the truth is it is very doable; you just need patience.  

When sailing up a river, you want to plan on traveling with an incoming tide, after a period of dry days, when the wind is blowing you up the river. This will give you the easiest go at it, as the river will not be flowing too hard, the tide will give you a bit of a push, and the wind will carry you all the way up. 

Winds are another problem with rivers. You might start out with the wind on your stern, but as the river bends and twists, the wind may begin to blow from the wrong direction. Trees that line the river will also make winds light and variable, further adding difficulty to the entire process. Traveling up a river can be tricky at times, and if you find that you are loosing ground, the most prudent action would be to drop anchor and wait for conditions to improve in your favor. 

Arriving at a small port town by sail can be fun and exciting, especially if you had to time it with natural events and work for a few days to finally get there!  

On a side note, an important thing to carry while sailing up a river is cheese. If you get stuck somewhere and have to wait for conditions to improve, cheese may be your best tool to free yourself from your predicament. Sitting in the cockpit waiting for the winds to change or the tide to come back into your favor will drive you crazy! These events take hours to change, and the changes occur very subtly, especially that far up a river. Cheese will work to take your mind off of the situation, help you relax, feed your belly, and keep you happy. As you sit back and relax with cheese in your stomach, you will stop worrying about time and simply enjoy the sights of the river bank as you await better conditions. Once conditions do return to your favor, you can raise anchor and continue on!

Working With Pets

Pets are a big part of your life, even when you are cruising. They are with you while you relax, while you eat, and even while you work! No matter the circumstance, your pet will want to be right by you or on you while you toil away on your latest project.

While covered head to toe in a tyvek suit, Sammy, my parrot insisted on being with me. She was not happy in her cage alone in the boat, and she was not happy in her cage near me. Sammy insisted on being right on my shoulder while I worked, no matter the circumstance. Since they don't make tyvek suits for birds, I had to be extra careful not to get any bottom paint on her feathers! 

It might be hot, it might be uncomfortable, but your pets will be right there with you. 

Cruising Mindset

Cruising is not just the act of taking long trips on your yacht, it is an entire mindset that becomes you as you cruise. 

Maddie and I have cut the dock lines to society and set off as full time cruisers. We have no schedule, no itinerary, no nothing! We simply pick a place and start heading there. We get there when we get there is a good way to sum it all up. 

When we had taken "extended vacations" before that we called cruising, we had a set amount of time available to us. We had a destination in mind and a return date already set. Everyday that we weren't heading towards our destination was a day lost, because we did have to turn around at some point to return to work. 

While the trips were relaxing, they were still speckled with stress. If the winds were not right, or we didn't get far enough on a day, we felt like we might not actually get to our destination and we would be forced to turn around by our jobs. 

Now, we don't worry about these sorts of things. We wake up when we wake up, raise anchor when we feel like it, and sail until we decide to stop for the day! 

We were anchored in Harness Creek in South River when we decided to visit a little town called Easton. This town is located far up a river and was rather far for us by sail. We didn't care and we set off towards this new destination.  

After three days of sailing, we were nearing this town on the river and were only 0.3 nautical miles from the place we want to anchor for a while when we ran aground. 

Running aground is never a fun time, but the truth is it isn't that bad for us.  Wisdom, our sailboat, has a full keel. Running aground simply means that we are sitting on the bottom of the river with no worry about damage to our undersides. 

We checked the tide table and found that it was nearly low tide, and the tide was going out. We tried to heel over with the sails, kedge off, even be pulled off by the assistance of a passing powerboat. Alas, the tide had gone out too fast and our waterline was about 6 inches higher than normal. Our keel was stuck in the mud and our only hope was to wait for high tide to lift us off. 

The tide would take a few hours to come back up, and instead of stressing our situation, we simply got out some cheese and a game to eat and play in the cockpit while we waited. 

That is the true sense of cruising. Time no longer matters, as you simply take each day as it comes and each moment as it presents itself. There is no worry about deadlines nor schedules, as we are merely sailing along as best we can in the direction of our next destination. 

Blister Repair

Osmotic blisters may be the bane of a fiberglass hull, but it is a small problem that has been blown way out of proportion. The truth is, all hulls suffer form some form of degradation: wood hulls rot and get worms, fiberglass hulls get blisters, steel hulls rust, and aluminum hulls disappear by galvanic corrosion. You simply need to choose a hull material that you feel comfortable repairing yourself.

Blisters are caused by the osmotic pressure of water that passes through the layers of fiberglass and exposes areas of delamination. When the hull is lifted from the water, these areas will bulge out like lumps. When you crack them open, water will pour out with intense pressure. 

Fixing blisters can be a very costly endevour if you pay to have someone else do it, but they are actually very easy to fix yourself. You only need a grinder and an sander. 

Using a grinder, you can rip through the blister, tearing out all the delaminates fiberglass that is overtop. Then you can begin to tear out laterally, as you follow the damage from the blister. As you work, the affected area will be wet and have a slight brown color to it. You simply want to grind away until you no longer see any brown or wet, and you can't even see where the different layers are of the hull. 

At this point you will have a gaping hole in the side of your boat. This may seem like a major problem, but it is easy to fix. 

If the blister is not too deep, the repair is very straight forward. If the blister is rather deep, then you simply need to take a few extra steps to fix it. Neither of these two methods are difficult, and both can be done in a few minutes. 

If the blister is shallow, and not passing through many layers of the hull, you can simply fill the hole with thickened epoxy. How deep is too deep for just epoxy is dependent on the hull itself. If you have a 1/4 inch deep hole on a 1/2 inch thick hull, you have just compromised 50% of the hull in a blister! Yet, if the hull is inches thick, this is a small surface scratch that is inconsequential to the total structural integrity of the hull. 

In my case, the hull in this area is 1.5 inches thick, and the blister was 1.4 inch deep. This comes out to be 1/6th the hull thickness, so I simply repaired it with thickened epoxy. 

Regular West System Epoxy can be mixed well, then 406 thickening agent can be added until the entire mixture looks like thick peanut butter. This thick mass can then be stuffed into the hole and wiped over with a plastic spatula. The spatula will contour the blisters surface to be flush with the hull, taking all the work out of fairing the repair job! It is just that easy, simply smear it in and smooth it off! 

If th blister is deep, you can wet the area with untickened West System Epoxy, and then add some chop strand mat to the hole. This will provide new fibers that will add in the structural integrity of the entire repair. Over this layer, you can then add more unthickened epoxy to fully wet the strands of fiberglass. When they are all wet, you then proceed with the thickens epoxy just like before. Simply smear it in and scrape it smooth! 

Blisters may be an eyesore, but they are more an annoyance than anything else. Small blisters will not sink your boat, only it's resale value! Keeping your boat out of the water through winter allows the hull to dry out well and reduce the incidence of blisters as well. If you live aboard though, your boat will always be int eh water and blisters will become a fact of life when you haul out. 

You can choose to ignore them until they get big, or you can choose to repair each and every one of them as they occur. Which ever way you choose to go with, just keep in mind that blisters are not a death sentence to a fiberglass hull, simply an annoyance you get in response to your relaxed maintenance schedule of haul outs.