First 2 days of the trip from Kemah to Corpus

The trip has been really nice so far from Kemah to Corpus.  We headed out on Saturday morning from Kemah, TX on Clear Lake.  We made our way out to Galveston Bay, ran South down the Ship Channel.  We went West on the InterCoastal before going out Bolivar Point to the Gulf of Mexico.    From there we just went a few miles to Harborwalk Marina in Hitchcock, TX.

We had a real nice slip and were able to all shower and then head over to the pool for a nice refreshing Dip in the pool.  After having a few drinks in the cockpit for a sun downer with the sun setting, we all changed and went up to the restaurant at the Marina.  It was "Floyds on the Water" and the meal was really good.  The Service was even better and it is so true that a server can make the experience.  She was so attentive and even when asking for things like "where is the restroom" she would walk you there instead of just pointing and saying "that way".

We woke to a nice cool morning of low 60's and heavy overcast skies with a forecast of high winds and rain.  Early in the morning we saw some lightning off to the North, but it faded quickly.  We got under way about 10am and headed into the wind and weather.

Dark skies as we departed Harborwalk

The bimini and eisenglass worked great keeping the majority of the water out and people warm in the cockpit.  We had a nice relaxing trip for just a short 30 miles or so.  The newly installed AIS was great to provide warning and ship data for all Tugs and Barges encountered.  We could get a warning of a ship approaching even when around the corner in "the ditch".  It allowed us to see their name and call them to discuss the best approach for passing.

Loaded down for the passage

We tied up for the night in Freeport at Surfside Marina.
They have Transient slips with Power, Water and nice floating docs.  They have showers, ships store and security 24 hours a day.    We were able to top off the water tanks, took on diesel to make sure we have plenty for tomorrow and created our routes  and waypoints for tomorrows departure offshore.  We programmed it all into the Helm GPS, the IPAD and PC as backups.  

After getting the fuel and relaxing for a while, we walked over to a little place called "Cast-Aways" for dinner.  It was a dark little bar and we didn't have high hopes, but it was one of the best burgers I have had in a long time.  We watched a little bit of the Cowboys game, had a beer and then walked to the little corner store and picked up some small munchies for the trip. Since we will be running a 25-30 hour passage, we grabbed some sunflower seeds, beef jerky and what not to keep the people on night shifts busy and occupied.  As we walked back to the Marina, we were greeted with a beautiful sunset over Freeport and all of the refineries.  They look like Christmas if you forget the fact that they are stinky and dangerous.

Red Sky at Night - Sailors Delight

We should be  departing out the Freeport Channel (as this is blog post is going live) to the outer light about 4-6 miles off shore.  From there we will turn Southwest and head toward the Port O'Conner outer light marker.
From there we will head toward the Aransas Pass outer lighted ship marker and at 27 51.55N 96 55.23W we will bear in toward the first channel marker for Aransas Pass.
From there it will be in the ship channel and over to the Corpus Christi Municipal Marina.

This will be our offshore route leaving Monday 10/6 at about 10am from Freeport

The prepping for the sailing trip is complete

We are planning a sailing trip down the texas coast this coming week.  The plan is to sail from Kemah to Corpus.  The big question is which route to take.  As you can imagine if you are from this area, we are keeping a close eye out on Tropical Storm Karen that is still out in the Gulf and heading North and expected to go East.

Based on weather and wind predictions, we are expecting some pretty strong winds, 25-30 or so on Sunday, so we are planning on making the first part of the trip on the "inside".  This means that rather than sail 15 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico, that we would sail (likely motor) along the intercoastal waterway for part of it.

The plan is to leave the dock Saturday by 10am.  We will stop and fuel up before heading out into Galveston Bay and we plan on just taking the InterCoastal to Dickson Texas and stopping at HarborWalk Marina (Larry, if you and "clocked out" are there, let me know).   This will make the first day a pretty easy trip. it is about 30 nautical miles.

The second day, (Sunday) we plan to stay on the inside and go to Freeport Texas and stay in a Marina, where we can top off on fuel one more time before the "rest of the trip"

The current plan, and I mean current because it can change based on weather and wind, is to then sail from Freeport to Aransas Pass on the "outside".   For us the outside will mean between 12 and 15 miles off the coast.  There is a "safety zone" there where it is prohibited to have drilling platforms, etc.  This will make the night sails safer since some of the oil rigs in the Gulf are not lit at night.

I will continue to Post as we progress and where I have a connection.     I spent some time tonight setting up the network on the boat to allow the Chartplotter at the Helm to also have "AIS" overlay which shows commercial ships and any potential courses where there is a chance of collision based on their heading and speed as well as ours. 

Preventative Maintenance (Engine Room)

We are planning a small cruise from from Houston to Corpus Christi and in preparation for that, I was doing maintenance in the engine room prior to the trip.  This started with the simple stuff

• Change Oil and Oil  Filter
• Fill and Check Transmission fluid
• Run the engine with a load to just validate everything is good to go for a trip

Timing was great, because I found my preferred oil on sale for $12.99 per gallon.  Since we have a 50 Horsepower Perkins 4-108 diesel, I like the heavy duty oil made for diesels.  Shell Rotella T is the brand I use.  Given it was on sale, I went ahead and picked up 2 gallons.  

I also keep a good supply of WIX oil filters for this engine on hand.  I bought a dozen of them 2 years ago.

One of the things I like about having an engine room (and not just a compartment the size of the engine) is the ability to store spare parts and have a little bit of room to work when needed.   I keep a small wire shelf on the rear wall of the engine room that has spare parts and required tools close at hand at all times. 

This is certainly not a complete supply of all of our spares and parts, but these are some of the things I like to keep very handy and nearby the area they will be needed.  The top shelf (not shown in this picture) contains 3 different funnels; small oil funnel, large funnel with flexible hose and a diesel filtering funnel.  

Maintenance supplies in Engine Room

The next shelf down has a small battery tester (you can see the red bulb on the syringe.  It is a glass tube that can determine the quality of each cell of a lead acid flooded battery.

To the right of that is a kitchen spatula that stays in the engine room.  It is used to clean the inside of the site glass of our water strainers (Engine, Air conditioner, shower, etc)  To the right of that is a spare Fuel lift pump in the event we ever need to replace it.   The WIX box is the oil filter and I always keep 2 on the shelf.  You will notice there is only 1 here as I just used one today and have not put the other spare on the shelf.  I also store 2 plastic bags (to the left of the fuel pump) these can be used in a pinch to capture all of the oil when removing the filter and keep any from going into the bilge (See attached video for explanation).  To the right of the filter behind the exhaust riser, there is also an oil filter wrench.

The next shelf down contains two diesel fuel filters and o-rings.  Additionally I have my antifreeze tester there as well.  For those who are really observant and want to know why there is a shot glass also on that shelf, I would love to give you a cute little answer about needing a shot each time I work on the engine, but actually we put a dollop of Kanberra Gel in that about once a month to help keep odors down in the engine room.  

One of the great things that the Previous Owner (PO) has done on this boat is install a permanently mounted oil removal pump.  To "draining" the oil is as easy as running the engine to temperature so that the oil is nice and warm, then opening the oil fill cap, and putting the end of the small hose in a gallon jug and pushing the button.  That's it.  This little pump will pump all of the oil from the drain pan into the jug.   Great little tool and one of my favorite "makes life easier" tools.  Once empty, I changed the oil filter as well.  I have to thank Mike O'Barr for showing me this great little trick for removing the oil filter and keeping oil out of the bilge.  He showed me this on my last boat, and I certainly have carried it forward on this one.  I fold up a few paper towels, or a "puppy pad" under neath the oil filter. I then use the oil filter wrench and loosen up the filter until I can turn it by hand.  Then I take a 1 gallon zip lock back and slide it over the filter and the filter housing, holding the opening of the bag as high as possible.  Then it is just a matter of spinning the filter off it's post.  The oil drips in the bag, once off, I pick up the paper towels underneath and wipe off any oil sitting on the filter housing and drop them into the ziplock.  Zip it up and viola, the oil, filter and oily towels are all in that nice little package.  

I then topped off the transmission fluid.  I have a Borg Warner Velvet Drive transmission in this boat and it can use just about any transmission fluid that meets the Perkins standards (which are most of them).  

I also took the time to treat the water in the holding tanks and install new cartridges in the whole boat water filtration system we built earlier this year.  I added a sediment filter (5 micron) as well as a 1 micron Coconut shell carbon block filter.   The first stage removes any debris, sand, dirt, etc that may be in the water, the next one, removes any chlorine, bleach or other chemicals that may give the water an undesirable taste.  

The work moves to the V-Berth

Our plan of starting our refit inside the boat from the rear and moving forward has worked pretty well.  We are now to the V-Berth which is a pretty good sign.  This is an area that will require quite a bit of work due to leaks that were in the large opening hatch on the coachroof.  Like most things, you don't quite see how bad it is until you take out all of the molding and really start looking closely at things.

We have removed the headliner from the coachroof, and removed all of the molding carefully labeling it all with a sharpie so we can put the puzzle back together.  Sadly I broke a piece of the molding, but as this project has gone on, I have been getting better at correcting my mistakes.  One of the things we learned how to do was  make our own molding to match what is on the boat.  It takes some time and creativity but we have been able to replace it all and keep making them out of solid Teak.

Dry fitting curved Mahogany wall in place (lots of work to still be done)

We removed the opening port, cleaned all of the old bedding material off of the fiberglass both inside and out.  We removed every bit of sealant and bedding from the port as well as the decorative trim that goes on the outside.

We have made new decorative wall sections out of Mahogany plywood like it was originally.  This will cover the raw fiberglass on the inside of the coachroof.  We put a thin layer of insulation behind each panel and then start the re-assembly.  This particular piece was a bit interesting because it is curved.  We have certainly dealt with curves before but this one is not as wide so the curve it a bit tighter.

The picture is just the first step where we have just dry fit the curved piece in place.  The next step will be to bed the port later today and install the other 2 sides of the mahogany walls.

We have been putting the work in the V-berth off since we moved aboard, but we are expecting some friends to visit in a month or so and want to be sure that this room is ready for them when they arrive.

Frankly, the toughest part of this V-Berth work is going to be the fact that the forward bulkhead is rotted and is going to have to be replaced.  It's purpose is to essentially store the anchor chain and rode.  For those not familiar with it, when pulling in the anchor, the chain or line goes through an opening called a hawse-pipe and drops into this forward compartment.  It allows the topsides to stay neat and not have to find a place up there to store 200-300 feet of chain.

Getting the most from your Provisions

As you likely know from reading this blog, we tend to blog about projects and things we are doing or refitting on the boat.  The thing is now that we have moved aboard, we don’ just work on it every waking hour (though at times it seems like it). 

This morning before the heat of the day, I was relaxing in the cockpit and decided to do some food preparation for the upcoming week.  Deb and I had made a roasted chicken for dinner earlier in the week.  We had wrapped it up and put it in the fridge.    While living in our house, we would have left it in the fridge and either heated up a bit or tossed it in the trash when it had been in there a “little too long”. 

Rather than do that, we decided to prep all of the chicken for use in other things this week. 

First I stripped all of the skin from the bird (there was still a whole bird short of one breast and one wing).  The next steps was to remove the chicken from the bones.  Breaking off each piece (Breast, thigh, wing, leg) I just pulled the chicken from the bones being careful not to get any of the cartridge from the joints.  Each piece of chicken was pulled into a small ¼” to ½” wide strip of meat.

 All of that went into a Ziploc baggie to be used late.  We can make chicken sandwiches, chicken soup, or even to be seasoned up and rolled into a tortilla for a quick lunch/dinner.   This would be a great meal to do quickly and easily while under way.

To make sure we get the most use out of this, we also broke the carcass into two parts and put it in a pot of water along with the chicken leg and thighbones.  We added, salt, pepper and just a bit of cayenne and heated it up on the stove.

 This will then be strained and cooled, when cool, we will scrape any fat off the top of the stock and put it in a sealed container to use as chicken stock in rice or soup later in the week.

I know this is a departure from our typical blog, but hope that over time these become more about what we are doing and where we are going than just what we are rebuilding J. 

Until next time, we will be enjoying our upcoming meals.

Bones simmering to make Chicken Stock

May the wind fill your sails, and your keel stay down.

Maintaining the Water strainers - How to and what not to do

I have been saying for about 2 weeks that I need to clean the water strainer.  We used to clean them about every 4-6 weeks.  When we moved aboard, the air conditioners were running much more often than when we were not, meaning these filters were seeing a lot more circulation than ever before.  I suspect in the 5 weeks or so since we have been living on board, we likely ran as much water through the air conditioners as we had the entire previous year of just weekend use.

I had been putting it off knowing it was going to be a bit of a nasty job.  Today I decided that since I was going to do it, I would make a video of how to maintain them.  In this video I go through the steps to clean them, however waiting this long is an example of what not to do.  I can already tell that the flow is not back to what it was a month ago, which means I am going to have to flush all of the lines.  This is not going to be a simple job unfortunately.  I will likely buy a flushing kit that has a way to ensure you can put in a solution to all of the lines to break down all of that nasty growth that will be in there.

I have always had some goopy silt that gets in the water strainer in this location but this time it really felt like the texture of a jelly fish or congealed fat in the strainer bowl.

Well here is a video of how to clean it, but this stuff was pretty nasty.

Lets all do the Organization Shuffle ...

Even after paring down a lot of our belongings that we had in our apartment and separating into "things to take to the boat" and the "get rid of" piles, we still had a LOT of things we were thinking we would be taking to the boat.  We started to get nervous, but each load we took to the boat found a home and we were starting to feel pretty good about the amount of storage the boat really has.  We still have behind the settee's we can fill up, but I still have a slight leak where the Chain Plate comes trough the deck.  It is never a lot of water and if I put a wash cloth there, it tends to dry before the next bit comes on board, but if we were taking green water over the deck for days at a time, it would e an issue.  So…  I need to mix up some epoxy with a bit of filler and will fillet it along that seam.  The moral of that story is that I think we still have another bunch of storage area that we will be able to use there as well when I fix that leak.

We certainly want to be comfortable where we sleep and installed a memory foam mattress (12" thick) in the owners stateroom.  It is almost too thick.  I have raised up and bumped my head before on the ceiling under the aft deck :)

Given this is an older boat (1978), it was before all the manufacturers started looking at putting center line queen berths in the boat.  So this one is the traditional U shape, wider forward than aft with a removable section to convert it all to bed.  We decided to set this up so it will be our permanent bunk and wanted it comfortable.  The problem was that the bunk fore to aft is about 4" inches shorter than a king sized bed.  At the aft end of the bed, it is about 8" narrower than a king sized bed, and at the forward section, where our feet would go, it is actually about 9" wider than a king sized mattress.  Knowing that we could sleep comfortably with something narrower than the king, we cut our memory foam mattress (all 4 layers of it) to fit tightly in the aft end of the bed (where our heads go) and then we sleep at an angle with our feet toward the Starboard forward part of the bunk.

This opened up 26 inches of available space on the port forward side of the bunk which in the long run we will likely build storage and drawers for a nice permanent solution for storing clothes, etc.  Before building it, we bought some cheap plastic drawers and a frame to sit in that spot so we can see how well it works for keeping things there.  The 24" of height of the drawers makes it perfect to keep the satellite/cable receiver on and just below where the TV is mounted in the rear stateroom.

You can see from the pictures a bit of the open and available space on one side of the bunk.  Right now, it just drops down off the side of the mattress, but we will get creative on what we build here.   Whatever it is we will have to make sure it still allows access to all of the openings below to access the steering quadrant, steering cable and pulleys and air conditioning duct work.

We also started to bring the clothes we will need on a regular basis.  We gave SO much away, I am still shocked how much we still have.   Really, I gave over 20 shirts, 12 pants, 9 pair of shoes, boots, etc.  It is crazy how much stuff we acquire through our lifetime.  I had 2 pair of cowboy boots that I just don't see being worn and used on the boat…Gone.

We converted the hanging locker in the rear stateroom to a series of shelves to store folded clothes on.  We will still have the hanging locker in the walkthrough and across from the forward head.  I suspect that we will be replacing the rear air conditioner unit that was mounted right in the middle of a hanging locker rendering it completely useless for any storage, so I am fairly certain we will install that somewhere else and will get that locker back as well.

My biggest clothing challenge that I still haven't come up with a great solution for yet, is my suitcase.  I travel for work a lot, and normally at home, I would pack my suitcase the day before a business trip and off I would go.  Even a small carry-on roller bag is pretty big to have on board, so right now I am keeping it in my car and taking my clothes to it in a bag that I then transfer in the car as I leave for my trip.  There may be a better way, but so far, I haven't figured it out .

Lastly, we decided to move the fan in the rear stateroom to a location that may get a bit more circulation.  I tapped into the 12volt power at my light fixture and mounted the fan right near the ceiling aiming at the bed.   One of these days I will write a blog on how you can take a fixture you like from the hardware store designed for 110v household wiring, add a switch and convert it to a DC fixture to run on the boats 12v system.  I have also converted some of these fixtures to LED lights as well to reduce the amperage they use.  The one in the picture below is not LED but is 12v DC.  Being Texans we really like the single star on these lights.