Crew

Yesterday, I finally have hung the sails and the boat is read to go out.

The interesting thing is that as much as I always want to sail, I have hard time getting people to go.

Swaging wires

On the photo you can see me thightening the bolts of the swaying tool to crimp down the sleeves on the wire loop. I did this way all 3 halyards that raise the sails. The process is very simple really. I cut the excess wire using a grinder with cut-off wheel after I crimped it, this way I am assured that it will be flush. To assure the I don't cut the wrong wire I put a piece of steel sheet between wires.

There is another type of swage tool that looks like a big bolt cutter, but the one I have works perfectly
and tales very little space.

Fort Myers

Ft. Myers

The waters around south Florida are very shallow and only narrow channels permit sailboats to pass.

Fort Myers - sunset

Liliann watching sailboats coming back at the sunset by Fort Myers Bodwitch Point to Estero Pass.

New engine

i forgot to post this picture before, but here is the new engine Johnson 9.9 hp. I have put the high thrust propeller on it to help move the heavy boat (3,000 pounds of lead in it). The high thrust pro and relatively small engine will not get me anywhere fast. 

Quote - persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Chay Blyth, sailor

Close to the wind

Raphael was 160 miles away to windward in this atrocious conditions.
But I had to go, I knew that.

The decision had been made for me a long time ago by a tradition of
the sea.

Pete Goss

Quote

IT IS NOT BECAUSE THINGS ARE DIFFICULT THAT WE DO NOT DARE...
IT IS BECAUSE WE DO NOT DARE THAT THEY ARE DIFFICULT.
SENECA

Steel boat with the telephone pole masts

I had a real "Wow!" moment while finishing Bernard Moitessier's book "Tamata and Alliance". 

To make a long (but good) story short he lost his boat "Joshua" in the storm while in port at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, 25 other boats were lost that day. After digging in tons of sand and gravel they excavated the boat on the beach and found out that despite the total loss of mast, rigging and rudder the 21 old steel hull was intact and watertight and was afloat the same day.

This is the first lesson I have learned, if I ever go to the big blue Pacific for some serious time I will make sure to have a "tank" of a boat made of steel with a full length keel that will allow me to beach and paint the boat in the low tide on the sandy beach anywhere in the world.

Later on, in the book, his friends have built him another boat, Tamata. After buying the steel sheets and welding the boat within weeks according to a design plan, he used telephone poles for the masts which they smoothed with a simple electric plane!

Now, cheap boat like that will not win any speed races, or beauty contests, but think about it... no super-expensive aluminum masts just a common sense set up that have worked for him time-and-time around the world thru the lifetime at the sea.

The picture is of a nice wooden-mast ketch in the Kenosha Harbor.

Swaging the wires

One of the last things left for Lil Walkabout to happen is swaging the halyard wires...

Here it is how it is done "Thimble and Ferrule Swaging":

Bernard Moitessier "Tamata and Alliance"

See articles I wrote about this book:

Steel boat with the telephone pole masts

Guam

Masthead installed

Art installed the mast head which was welded at the break, then the aluminum plates on both sides were added and welded for additional support. This fix cost me several hundred dollar, but I figure it was still cheaper than ordering a new one that is approximately the same size and trying to customize it to the mast.

George from "Boat Farm" did a very good job machining the aluminum.

Guam

Reading of the book by Bernard Moitessier "Tamata and the Alliance" makes you think about the Pacific and its islands. 

Pacific has always been a realm of dreams for me. As a child I have read Julius Verne and watched "Dolphin Oum" cartoons. Later, in life I visited some of these places. 

The coast of Washington and Oregon are by far the most beautiful places I have ever been to. California carries its dreamy spirit where I have spent many evenings sitting on the beach looking at the balmy sunsets. I lived in Okinawa for three years and dove countless times on the coral reefs. I visited Hawaii twice in transit, but I have never been to the South Seas.

The closest I have ever gotten to the equatorial paradise on Earth was Guam.

My visit to Guam was brief, just a long lay over on the flight from Hawaii to Okinawa. I was on the military flight in the enormous Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo plane, I don't remember anymore if Guam was a scheduled stop, or not, but I remember vividly that our plane broke down and we had an emergency landing and evacuation on some back-strip of the Andersen Air Force base in the middle of the night amongst tall cane, or grasses. The evacuation was brief, we were not to take any personal things with us, we stood some few hundred feet away from the plane, and I just remember seeing some kind of hydraulic fluid shooting up in the fountain from the port wing. When I asked on of the crew if that happens often, he said "Every time you get on it..."

To give you some idea about what it means to realize that your plane broke over the Pacific you have to imagine that the distance from Hawaii to Guam is twice as far as California to Florida and there are only couple of small islands between: Wake Island and Marshal Islands far to the south and absolutely nothing between, except sharks. Okinawa is another New York to Denver distance away.

Next day, I needed to find some other arrangement to fly to Okinawa and that would not happen for the next 16 hours, so I hitchhiked to the beach.

For someone who spent 3 years in Okinawa, you might think another island will not make much impression, but Guam was different. It is not so much for the climate (Guam is about 12 degree north of the Equator), but rather for the coconut palms and the people. I remember walking the sandy groves of the coconut palms and watching the absolutely cute brown skinned local kids playing between the palms and on the white sandy beach. Absolute paradise.

I did not see much of the island but my trip to the beach showed me enough, it planted in me a desire to come back to South Pacific.

Since I was really shaken about flying the military craft so soon again, especially since I know that our own Marine jets are old and held together on duck tape and chewing gum, I was glad to jump on a small slick looking medical jet only to find out that I was the only passenger there that wasn't on the verge of dying.