Contents
Introduction
I will keep the journals in the same format in 2014 but I
will try to update it as we do projects and cruises so it will be more like a
real blog.
Projects
We continue to do some boat projects in 2014 but we are
thinking that it is time to stop improving and start using Questeria.
Peek-A-Booo Shutters
We install Peek-A-Booo shutters. They are kind of pricey but they really open up the boat. We are happy we spent the money for them.
Bimini/Enclosure
We had a new bimini and enclosure made in 2009. We paid A & J Canvas to do it. They used our existing frame and gave us a good price, but there were several things we did not like about it. When they installed it they took the frame apart, fit the top piece of canvas to it, and pop-riveted the frame together. So you could not remove the top piece unless you cut the zippers or dismantled the frame. Other problems were that it did not completely keep the rain out and some zippers were exposed and wouldn’t last as long as if they were shaded from the sunlight.
We lived with it for a while and then started making some adjustments. We added pieces to help make it more rain proof and cover up the exposed zippers, but this did not completely help. Eventually we decided that we needed to remove the top so it could be thoroughly cleaned and patched and have “rain gutters” added along the top. We figured out a way to modify the zippers so we could put everything back together when we were done.
We also added screens to keep the heat out and give us more privacy.
Countertops
We install new Formica™ countertops in the galley. The galley countertops were in bad shape when we bought Questeria and over the years they got worse. We had holes patched from changing faucets and the old butcher-block laminate was coming up in places. We picked out some new laminate that looked like our granite countertops in our house in Raleigh and installed them.
Cruises
In 2014 we plan to take Questeria up to NC in the spring. We need to be in Charlotte by the end of April to ensure we don’t miss the birth of our grandchild. We are planning to leave on March 19th and slowly make our way to Southport, NC. Then we will leave the boat until after the birth. Alicia’s due date is June 4th, but since Jackson was five weeks early, we need to be there by the end of April.
After that we want to take Questeria up to New Bern and the Outer Banks and then return to the Keys in September.
FL Keys to NC
16-Mar-2014 – We are planning on leaving on Wednesday the 19th. We have been looking at weather. There is a cold front coming on Monday and things look to clear up by Wednesday, but we want to make sure the winds and seas aren’t bad until we get to Ft. Pierce because we want to go outside to miss all the bridges between Miami and Palm Beach. We are thinking of going under the Channel 5 Bridge and going up the ICW before Miami for a change.
We have been preparing for the trip over the past few weeks. We replaced the anchor light with an LED and got the red and green nav-lights working. We also defrosted the freezer and made an inventory of the freezer and pantry. We still have to clean the prop and fill the jerry cans with diesel and gasoline.
18-Mar-2014 – We have been closely monitoring the weather for our upcoming trip. There was a cold front that came through today but things are supposed to calm down for a few days. It looks like we should be able to leave the dock tomorrow, but we may have to wait out a few days in Biscayne Bay before we make our outside passage to Lake Worth.
We have been checking off items from our to-do list, such as filling jerry cans with diesel and eating blackened fish sandwiches and fries at Burdines. We think we have enough provisions for about a month (including beer and wine).
19-Mar-2014 – The adventure begins. We got up this morning, checked the weather forecast, finished some last minute tasks and left the marina at about 12:20. Dena and Phil came by and gave us a gift, Teriyaki Sauce. Debbie came by and threw flowers in our wake, for good luck. We also saw dolphins today, which is also good luck.
It was a beautiful day on the water. The winds and seas were a little higher than forecast. We tried sailing but the wind changed to on-the-nose and we had to bring them down.
We grabbed a mooring ball at Indian Key at 4:45.
track20140319.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
20-Mar-2014 – Today was a good day on the water. We got up at 6:30 but didn’t get underway until 8:11. We motor sailed for a while, but then the wind completely died so we took the sails down and motored the rest of the day. We went up Hawk Channel to Angelfish Creek and cut over to Biscayne Bay at 3:55. It looked like it would rain so we anchored by Long Arsenicker Key. We got the anchor down just in the (Arse)nick(er) of time.
Sandy had a pretty good day as well. She peed after 26 hours of holding it. I bet that felt good.
track20140320.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
21-Mar-2014 – We stayed put today. Last night we found that we had a diesel leak, so today we looked at the problem and found that it is a gasket around the fuel lifter pump. We couldn’t stop the leak at anchor so tomorrow we plan to get a mooring ball in Key Biscayne and look for a new pump, or a rebuild kit.
This is a beautiful anchorage. It would have been great just to sit here if we didn’t spend most of the day working on the engine.
22-Mar-2014 – We had a rough night at anchor. We woke at 1:00am, rocking like crazy. The wind was blowing at 25 knots, but we already had a 100’ of anchor chain out so we didn’t change anything. Then at 3:00am it started raining and we got up to close everything. It rained again at 8:00am, so we didn’t get underway until about 9:45.
We called three places looking for a mooring; Dinner Key, Crandon Park and Rickenbacker marinas. We chose Rickenbacker because Dinner Key offered no protection and Crandon Park couldn’t give us a single ball for a week.
We had some wind today so we put out the jib, but it was changing direction from behind us so we pulled it back in. It later veered to a beam reach and we put the jib out again and motor sailed. We made it to Rickenbacker mooring at about 2:30.
We checked into the marina, had beer and crab dip at the restaurant and got back to the boat a little after 5:00.
track20140322.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
23-Mar-2014 – This place is a mad house on the weekends. There are all kinds of boats, jet skis, kayaks, paddle boards, and even a sea plane going around us. Another sailboat got on the mooring ball next to us. His name is Rick and he is here with a bad alternator. He is from Melbourne on his way to Key West. Rick tells us he found a guy who will bring him an alternator tomorrow, so I call him about the fuel lift pump. He says he will call me back, but he didn’t seem to know much about what I needed, so when he doesn’t call back we are not surprised. I look him up online and see that he’s a Jet Ski mechanic. It is Sunday, and most places that would have a fuel lift pump are closed so I look online, but don’t call anyone else
We don’t get much accomplished today, but we do get our TV antenna hooked up, so we can watch TV on the inverter. (You can’t get TV in the Keys with an antenna.)
Adventures in Miami
24-Mar-2014 – We call Rickenbacker Marina and they say we can have our fuel lift pump by tomorrow, for about $90. We decide to get Sandy groomed at Pet Smart, since we are waiting on the fuel pump. We make her an appointment for 2:30. We eat lunch and then redo our mooring lines. We start to leave at 1:10, but it looks like rain so we take time to close everything.
We get to shore at 1:45 and call a taxi; they say they will be there in 10 minutes. We wait, we call back, and they say they are on their way, we wait… The taxi arrives at 2:30. We get to Pet Smart at about 3:00. They say they will call us when Sandy is ready, about three hours.
We walk to Miracle Mile. Miracle Mile is a famous stretch in Miami/Coral Gables. It is not really a mile, its only 0.503 miles. I guess they count each side of the street. It has lots of bridal and formal ware stores, not something you really need on a boat. We stop for beer and nachos, and then we go to Winn Dixie and buy some bread and bagels, then we have another beer. It’s only been 2 ½ hours, but we don’t have anything else to do so we go back to Pet Smart. They haven’t even started clipping Sandy. We do some shopping at Pet Smart and she is done after 6:30.
We call a cab at 6:45, there are no cabs available. We call another cab company, they say wait ten minutes and call back if nobody shows up. We call another cab company, they say we’ll be there in ten minutes (we’ve heard this before). We wait, we call back, and they say they are on their way, we wait… The Sony Open Tennis match is going on and nobody wants to get two people and a dog from Miami/Coral Gables. We finally go back into Pet Smart and the wonderful people there call and get a cab to come get us. Lesly even offers to drive us after she gets off of work at 9:00. A few minutes later there is a taxi waiting for us. We get back to the marina and decide to eat at Whiskey Joe’s, the restaurant there. While we are eating Lesly, from Pet Smart calls to make sure we got back okay. We dinghy back to the boat, and get in before it starts to rain.
25-Mar-2014 – It is raining when we wake up. When it stops, we dinghy in to the marina. We walk around and go to the office to check on our fuel lift pump. It is on its way. They will call when it comes in. We wait at Whiskey Joe’s and start to get hungry, so we split a sandwich; grilled chicken on Cuban bread (yum). Our fuel lift pump comes in at 2:00. We pay for it and dinghy back to the boat, but Sandy seems hurt. We’re not sure but we think she got some gasoline on her paw, or twisted it or both. We wash it in olive oil and dish detergent a couple of times and give her an aspirin. After a while she calms down and seems to be okay.
26-Mar-2014 – The wind blows hard all night and it is only 57° F when we get up. We decide not to go ashore today. Sandy is not happy about that, but her paw seems to be okay. We install our new fuel lift pump, but it is not working, so we redo it. Its working now, but we are having trouble bleeding all the air from the lines. We give up until tomorrow.
27-Mar-2014 – We go through the procedures to bleed the fuel lines, but still no good. We call George and he suggests loosening two fitting on the injectors. It works! We clean up all the diesel fuel and dinghy ashore to throw away trash and let Sandy potty and the day is almost over.
We spend the rest of the day deciding our plan. We really want to go outside to avoid all the bridges between Miami and Palm Beach, but the weather looks really bad for the next few days. So rather than hang out here any longer we think we will leave tomorrow and try to get up to Ft. Lauderdale.
28-Mar-2014 – We had another disappointing day. Our plan was to get up and dinghy to the marina to throw out trash and let Sandy go potty. Then we planned to go up the ICW to Ft. Lauderdale and anchor near the Port Everglades inlet. On Saturday we would decide whether to take the ICW or go out inlet to Palm Beach. The disadvantage of the ICW is all the bridges between here and Palm Beach and the disadvantage of going outside is that the seas look to be rough and it would probably be uncomfortable.
Everything was going as planned and the new fuel lift pump was working perfectly, but after about 30 minutes we hear the Coast Guard announce that the Broad Causeway Bridge is stuck in the down position. This bridge is about seven miles ahead of us. We decide to turn around and go back to where we started, but this time we anchor instead of using the mooring ball.
Now we are looking at the weekend weather and thinking we will either go outside all the way, or turn around and head back to Marathon.
track20140328.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
We Finally Made it Past Miami
29-Mar-2014 – We got up early and headed out Port of Miami. We expected it to be rough and it was. We put up sails, more for stability than speed, but with the wind behind us we had to pull in our jib. We had hoped to go all the way to Lake Worth inlet, but we went in Port Everglades, Ft. Lauderdale. We thought it was rough until we turned to go in the inlet and the waves hit us on the side. Then we really started to roll. A lot of stuff went flying below and some jerry cans of diesel came loose and spilled some fuel on our deck. Fran got it all cleaned up after things calmed down.
Once we got into Ft. Lauderdale things calmed down a lot. But now we had to deal with all the bridges which have different opening schedules. We did manage to get through eleven bridges and anchor in Delray Beach. Shortly after that we got severe thunderstorms with high wind gusts, but we did fine. Overall, it was a very stressful day, but we are glad to finally be making some progress.
track20140329.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
30-Mar-2014 – We go 42 miles, through 16 drawbridges, in 12 hours. It is Sunday and there are thousands of boats out, especially around Peanut Island, in Palm Beach. One time we feel like we are in a boat parade when we are following three huge motor yachts through a bridge. It is a very stressful day, but we get to Hobe Sound Anchorage, North of Jupiter. We got delayed at Donald Ross Bridge, when we pushed the engine too hard and it overheated, because the V-belt loosened up. But we made it and we are delighted to have all those restricted bridges behind us.
track20140330.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
31-Mar-2014 – We sleep like logs at this great anchorage, but it is cold in the morning and we don’t want to get out of bed, but we do get out of bed and get underway by 8:00. Today we only have two drawbridges and they are not restricted, so we just go in a straight line. We tighten up the loose V-belt and the engine runs at a cool 185°F all day. We make it to Vero Beach fuel dock by 4:18, get 33 gallons of diesel, pump out our holding tank, and fill our water tank. Then we get a mooring ball for one night for $13.90 (it cost us $150 for a week in Key Biscayne). We are moored shortly after 5:00 and have cocktails while watching dolphins swim around the mooring field. Days like today are why we like cruising.
track20140331.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
1-Apr-2014 – Today Questeria was boarded by a Russian nuclear submarine in the Intra-Coastal Waterway. When we explained that we were running behind schedule because of a leaky fuel pump they agreed to tow us all the way to Charlotte NC via an underground tunnel.
Okay, really it was a very nice day on the water from Vero Beach to Titusville. We were able to put up the sails for part of the day and it was great. We are still concerned about our engine running hotter than we think it should, but we will look into that tomorrow.
track20140401.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
2-Apr-2014 – Looked at engine, tightened V-belt, pulled some grass out of raw water hose. We got a late start because of looking at the engine. We got to Seabreeze anchorage and had some problems finding a good place to drop the anchor because there were already a lot of boats there, and the current was pulling them in an odd direction. After we anchored the anchor rode got twisted and got stuck coming out of the windlass. We had to use hammer and screwdrivers to get it unstuck.
track20140402.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
3-Apr-2014 – Nice calm night at anchor. We tightened the alternator belt so we got a late start. Tachometer was acting up again, but engine temp was good. We got a mooring in St. Augustine. We Dinghyed to shore, registered and went to dinner at OC Whites for a great dinner. We will stay here for a couple of days and catch up on laundry, boat supplies, and groceries.
track20140403.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
4-Apr-2014 – Today we slept in until 7:45. We looked at the alternator and found a loose bolt, tightened it up and cleaned it up. Maybe our tachometer will work better now. We charged the cold plate and took the dinghy to shore. Once ashore we let Sandy go potty and then did five loads of laundry. It’s been 17 days since we’ve done any laundry. We picked up a Cuban sandwich from a nearby deli for lunch. It was really good.
We took the clean laundry back to the boat, put it away, left Sandy to take a nap, and went back to shore in the dinghy. We walked to Marine Supply and Oil company to buy some boat supplies. Then we took a taxi to West Marine and Winn-Dixie to buy more boat supplies and groceries. Then we took a taxi back to the marina and dinghyed back to Questeria. We feel like we got a lot accomplished today and we need a day to relax, so we will stay here another day.
5-Apr-2014 – We decide to stay in St. Augustine another day. We go to the marina lounge and down-load the latest Garmin Map update. While it is loading we walk to Cruisers Grill for lunch and have some really good burgers. Then we walk back to finish the down-load. We also buy 5 gallons of gas for the dinghy and generator.
6-Apr-2014 – We leave the mooring at 7:23 and make the 7:30 opening of Bridge of Lions. Engine temperature is good so we motor at 1900 RPMs. We have wind and current against us, so our average speed is only 5 knots.
We get to Fernandina Beach at 6:26pm and it is pretty rough so we grab a mooring ball and register by phone. We reserve it for two nights because the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms tomorrow.
track20140406.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
7-Apr-2014 – Winds calmed down overnight and we decide to take the dinghy to shore while the weather looks good. But we get a call from Alicia, and she is in the hospital having contractions. We book a month at Amelia Island Yacht Basin, get a flight from JAX to CLT and get a shuttle from the marina to JAX. The marina advises us to wait until 11:30 to enter the channel, so we have time to book the flight and shuttle and pack. Fran gets to Charlotte a little after 5:00pm and spends the night with Alicia. They get her contractions to stop and send her home the next day.
track20140407.kmz (down-load and open in Google Earth)
8-Apr-2014 – This will be the last update to this journal. From now on you can follow us on our new WordPress blog Questeria.info/wordpress.
About The Website
Note: While this website is about
boating, cruising, and living aboard, I thought I should have a small section
talking about how and why I started the website.
I started this website shortly after purchasing Questeria in 2005. I wanted to share our experiences as new boaters, but also wanted to learn how to build a website from scratch. I wrote most of the source in HTML using the VIM editor, but some of the pages, like this one, were written in Microsoft Word, and saved as HTML. The website, itself was hosted on an old PC, running Linux, and was sitting in a spare bedroom of my house in Raleigh, NC. When we started getting ready to sell our house and move aboard Questeria, I realized this would not work, so I started hosting the website on ipower.com.
When I first started doing this, in 2005, I had not heard of Blogs or Wikis, or knew any people with an on-line presence. There are a lot easier and cheaper ways to go on-line these days, but I still enjoy developing my own website in this format.
When I started this website, the only way to surf the web was with a computer. Now, like most people, I use my smart phone and tablet to do most of my web browsing. I hadn’t done much with this site since about mid 2009, and it did not look good on my phone or tablet. I started looking on-line for tips or suggestions on creating a website that would look good on any browsing device, and saw a lot of commercial products that wanted to charge a monthly fee. But, www.questeria.info is a non-profit venture and I wouldn’t pay for it, even if I could afford it. I eventually found the information I needed to select a cascading style sheet depending on the device being used. So I now have three separate CSS files depending on if it’s a phone, tablet, or computer.
Of course, I didn’t figure this out all at once. It took a lot of experimentation to get everything to look right on each device. My first device is my laptop running Windows 7, with Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers. The next device is my iPhone 5, and then my Kindle Fire (the original, which I understand is different from the newer Kindle Fires available today). Sometimes I use my wife’s iPad (when she’s asleep) to see what it looks like on there.
Previewing web pages on the computer is really simple. I double-click or right-click on the file and open with one of my browsers, and there it is. But it’s not that simple with phones and tablets. I thought I would be able to use something like Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive, but they aren’t really meant for hosting websites. I got some things working with Dropbox, but I had to reformat each page to contain the CSS style sheet, rather than just reference it, so it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Another method I used was to upload all my files to my hosting site, but that wasn’t ideal, because the pages would be cached and it would take time before I would see my changes.
I finally found something that worked for me. I discovered that Windows 7 has web hosting software that can be enabled. You can go into Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features On or Off. And select everything for Internet Information Services. Next, copy your website to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ folder, or reset your inetmgr starting page. Then, if your phone, tablet and computer are on the same network, you can preview on them all. You need to know the IP Address of your PC, so bring up a Command Prompt window and type “ipconfig” and look for your IPv4 Address, for example “10.1.10.76”. Then on your phone or tablet, go to the web browser and type http://10.1.10.76/ or whatever your IPv4 Address is, and you can see your website.
My Goals for the last update were:
· Make the site look good, and readable on a computer, tablet, or phone
· Use HTML 5 with no errors from http://validator.w3.org/
· Portability between browsers and devices
· Pure HTML, no fancy Javascript or CGI.
I think I have achieved these goals. However, I cannot see this website from every device and browser. If you see something wrong, or have any suggestions, please email me at ron@questeria.info.
Notes
· Annoying Fan – The engine room gets very hot when we are motoring so we put in a fan with a vent hose that runs through the cabinet and vents outside of the cockpit. It works great but it is loud so we call it the annoying fan to distinguish it from the other fan we set to blow into the engine room..
· Centerboard – The centerboard on Questeria has a mind of its own. The cable was broken when we first got her, we repaired it, but ever since then it will stay up when we try to drop it and eventually go down on its own. When cleaning the hull we sometimes use a crowbar to un-stick it. One time it actually got stuck in the down position, but we finally got it back up by forcing it up from underneath.
· Coffee – Fran and Ron do not function without coffee. We have an electric coffee pot with a thermos carafe that works great at the dock. We used to have a Coleman camping coffee pot which worked on our propane stove, but we put that in storage and run our Honda 2000 generator to make coffee. We have a 1500w modified sine wave inverter, but it came wired to a 15A breaker, which tripped when trying to make coffee. We later wire it directly to the house batteries, with a 150A fuse, and can then make coffee, using the inverter, and without starting the generator. (We call this “inverter coffee”.) This makes for a more peaceful morning on Questeria. When the batteries start to go we have to run the generator to make coffee.
· Cold Plate – We have a freezer on Questeria with a cold plate and a 120v AC compressor. When we are at the dock, on shore power, the freezer will come on 2-3 times a day and the cold plate will keep the food frozen. When we are cruising, or at anchor we have Honda 2000 generator that we run twice a day. Sometimes we turn on the water heater for ten minutes while charging the cold plate and we have hot water for dishes and showers. We have thought many times about replacing our compressor with a 12v compressor, but we can buy a lot of gasoline for the price of a 12v compressor.
· Crab Cake Sandwiches – Jolly Rogers, a restaurant in Ocracoke, serves excellent crab cake sandwiches. We know there is a lot of crab meat in them because they crumble easily. If they don’t crumble much they are mostly bread crumbs.
· Death-By-Chocolate – There is a slushy stand in Ocracoke that sells hand-dipped ice cream cones. Death by chocolate was our favorite flavor. As the name implies, it has chocolate in it.
· Dinghy Motor – Our Honda 15HP dinghy motor has always been a cause for frustration. We had the water pump replaced in 2006, but it likes to stop pumping water. We have a red straw from a can of WD-40 that we use to clear it. We also have problems with it running at idle speed. We replaced the gas tank and the hoses, which have started deteriorating. We also use only ethanol free gas and drain the carburetor if we don’t plan to use it for a while. We think its biggest problem is not being used enough.
· Fog on the ICW – When navigating the ICW you look for red and green markers to stay in the channel. There are often stretches with no visible markers. In that case you look at land. Your chartplotter should only be used as a back-up. When fog suddenly appears, as it seems to do once a trip and I can’t see markers or land, my first reaction is to slow down and look at the chartplotter. The chartplotter shows me what direction I am heading, but it is delayed. I then get off course until I can figure out what compass bearing to steer to. When I look at my tracks from the chartplotter I can usually tell when the fog hits because it goes in a circle.
· Tachometer – The tachometer on Questeria was replaced in 2006 and worked fine until October 2010. After that it works most of the time, but occasionally will stop working, and then start working again. We looked for loose connections and rewired it using a larger wire size but it would still randomly stop and start. One day when it was not working, we went under a fixed bridge and it worked when we were shaded from the sun. We start to see a pattern; it usually stops working mid-day and then starts working later for the rest of the day and it started happening after we got the new solar panels. We surmise that the alternator stops charging if it thinks the voltage is high enough. When it stops charging it also stops driving the tachometer. So now when the tachometer stops we disconnect the solar panels and it works again.
· V-Berth – We start out using the aft stateroom as our sleeping quarters. We have a nice thick mattress made and a memory foam cover to make it more comfortable, but it is a small bed and is usually the hottest place on the boat. We add a board and cushion to the top of the v-berth so we can sleep with our heads at widest point and our feet at the narrowest point and still kiss each other goodnight. Then we buy a 3 inch memory foam topper and a nice mattress cover and make the v-berth our main stateroom. Eventually we buy a nice king-size comforter and it looks like a real stateroom.
· Vanceboro – Vanceboro is a town in NC that we would pass through when driving to our marina from Raleigh. There is a paper mill in Vanceboro, which you can smell if the wind is blowing the right way. The tide in the Neuse River is wind based so we could tell if the water would be high or low when or if we smelled the paper mill. Vanceboro NC and Fernandina Beach FL smell about the same.
· Water Bug – Personal watercraft.
· Weekend Warrior – A boater who comes out on the water once in a while on Saturday, Sunday or a holiday who doesn’t understand navigation rules, or even simple courtesy. They also think that VHF channel 16 is their personal communication channel.
· Wine & Cheese - Wine & Cheese is not necessarily wine and cheese, it can be any beverage, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, (but usually alcoholic) and any appetizer.
Updated on 11-Jun-14