Tank Racks

You’d think that getting a couple of tank racks would be a simple thing. First things first: tank racks are racks that support SCUBA tanks on the boat when you’re not diving. The most common ones are called pelican racks which are made from heavy gauge steel wire coated in a soft plastic similar to the coating you’d find on the handle of a wrench. The wire is formed into a triple tiered grid most commonly holding four tanks in a row. The grid is then bolted at its bottom onto two rectangular pieces of wood that run perpendicular to the row of tanks and protect the deck of the boat from scratches. The problem with this type of rack is that invariably, the plastic coating fails to protect the steel from the elements and the rack begins to rust, depositing messy little pieces of grime all over the surface of our nice clean white boat. Can you guess who’s writing this blog? I’ll have none of that.
While Jim and I were tooling around St. Thomas, we happened buy “Chris Sawyer’s Dive Shop”. He had stacks of tank racks made from 8 inch PVC pipe tied together with quarter inch white line. Ingenious! No fuss, no mess and white goes with everything. With my goal insight, I strolled into the shop and asked to buy two of his best PVC masterpieces. How much could four pieces of PVC and 20 feet of quarter inch line possibly cost? One hundred and sixty US dollars, that’s how much. Oh wait…each. Exorbitant! Those of you who know me know that in addition to loving a challenge, I love to save a few bucks. My calculations brought the total cost of these tank racks to about $75.00 for both not including my time which, we all know is right now in abundance and at a very reasonable rate.
I didn’t want to haul eight pieces of eight inch PVC from St. Thomas to Tortola so I decided to wait until I got back to Barecat’s dock to start my project. Jim and I sailed back to Tortola and I began my search for the pipe. When you go into most shops “down island” they’re shelves are somewhat sparse but they always seem to have quite a bit more “somewhere in the back.” It’s like they only want to show it to you if you’ve expressed a genuine interest in making a purchase. You’re never allowed in “the back” and “the back” must me a 4 acre maze with a few coffee shops and TV playing reruns of Gilligan’s Island because, once they head into “the back”, it’s quite a while before you ever see them again. In the States, you’d just leave and go the hardware store across the street. In Tortola, there’s only one street and only one hardware store. So the employee comes back with a smile (ha, I just wrote that to make me smile) only to tell you that they don’t have it. I smile back (because my mother taught me to) and asked if they could recommend another place we could try. Then the game begins. They tell me where, I politely ask them to repeat what they said, they say it again, even more softly, I smile more broadly, make a joke about the heat and how it affects my hearing and ask them to repeat it again. They reply more loudly and with intended frustration at my unreasonableness but with no more clarity. I mumble back something in the same way people sing the lyrics to songs even when they don’t know them, thank them, leave the store and ask the first person I meet on the street where I can go to get PVC. Usually they point to the store I just walked out of and ask me if I’ve tried there.
Eventually we discover that the only place stocking the pipe is the Department of Waste Management. Delightful. I asked Jim if he would mind going to get it. Bless his heart, he says, “Sure.” Four trips to the Waste Depot later, Jim comes back with two, four foot long sections of pipe. It takes four trips because the first time, the guy who cuts the pipe was at lunch. Jim was told he would be back in fifteen minutes; three more trips and three hours later, he was there. Apparently he had lunch “in the back.”
Ok, so now I have the pipe. How to cut really big pieces of PVC at right angles? Mike and Tom, from Barecat charter are more than eager to crack open a few Old Milwaukees and watch me use their “Saws-ALL.“ Much to their entertainment disappointment, I manage to cut the pipe (and just the pipe) by tying it to what was left of a wrought iron and wood slat park bench. Then I used the grinder-from-hell to trim the bottoms flat. The grinder is from hell because as soon as it came out of the box, the West Indians removed and threw away the protective finger guard attached to the back of the grinder. What was left was a grinder with a very bad attitude and Rick with a few bloodied knuckles and one bloody knee. The bloody knee is because while sitting and grinding, I bent over to see if my line was parallel and didn’t pay attention to the grinder…ouch. But now I’m done and covered from head to toe in PVC dust. Do you know what PVC dust sticks to? Sweat. Got the picture?
I have the PVC cut and now need to tie it together. Unfortunately, I didn’t look that closely at the ready made, somewhat over-priced tank racks Chris Sawyer wanted to sell so I have to wing-it from here. I decide to drill them and screw them together. I can drill them from the outside and then counter sink the screws in from the inside so the racks are smooth. First I have to make a template so the screws all line up. No problem, I use an old strip hinge which I screw to the leg of the work bench. I’m impressing myself with each innovation. An hour later, I’ve drilled all the holes in all of the pieces of pipe however, I now find out that the initial “Saws-All” cuts were not square so the holes only line up with the guide and not with the to-be-joined sections of pipe. Out comes that nasty little grinder.
An hour later, the grinding is done. Once again, I’m covered in sweat and PVD dust but elated with being one step closer to being finished. At this point, I’m taking as much joy from each accomplishment as possible. The power of positive thinking. Now I’ll attach the counter-sinking bit to the mini drill and counter sink the 24 holes. I’ll be done in 5 minutes! The drill bit is a quarter if an inch too long. Sigh. I remind myself about the positive thinking. An hour later, all of the holes are counter sunk and my thumb and forefinger are starting to blister because I had to spin the countersinking bit by hand. Still, on the bright side, the holes are ready and the racks are almost done. I screw all of the screws in only to find that counter sinking the holes made the ends of the screw stick out the other side. Drat the luck. So I reluctantly get out the grinder-from-hell, grind down all of the screw tips and a few knuckles and am done. Or so I thought. The heat generated by grinding the screw seems to have weakened the PCV a bit. No worries, a little industrial strength epoxy in each seam will take care of that. The smallest can of epoxy available at the Chandlery (marine talk for super expensive hardware store) is $35.00 each – you have to buy two and mix them together. Before you apply the epoxy you have to wipe all of the surfaces down with acetone. Acetone cleans the plastic and burns the living hell out of your ground-down knuckles and your ground-down knee. How did I get it on my knee? You know the little boy who just has to lick the frozen light post? By now I’m wondering if Chris Sawyer went through all of this when he was making is moderately-prices tank racks.
The next morning I get up, eat my cereal and dash to the work room, or more accurately, the steel shipping container turned into a work room, to find my epoxy hardened like steel. Oh the sweet smell of success. Hey, wait a minute; my epoxy dried an ugly brown. Positive thinking, positive thinking. We just got a new, dark blue sail cover. I could cover the tank racks in blue and white ticking! You can take the boy of out the city, but…
Back to the hunt, or more to the point, back to asking Jim to go and find me white and blue ticking, which, of course, he does gleefully. He found white nylon ticking and Linda from Doyle Sails was kind enough to give him blue cotton ticking. The cotton will stretch but the nylon wont, but if I get a few pieces of teak and cinch them together with some nice black line, that would take care of the stretching. My tank racks are going to put Chris Sawyer’s very reasonably priced tank racks to shame.
The next day, I went to the teak store and asked Junior if I could get eight pieces of teak cut 12x2x1 inch, fully expecting him to say, “Sure, it will take me about ten minutes.” Instead, I got, “When you needem?”
“Today?” I replied sheeplishly.
“What time tomorrow you needum?”
“By noon?”
“They be ready at one.”
Damn, they’re good at that. So the next day at one, Jim went to pick them up. They were ready at 4:30 and only cost $80.00.
So I’ll wrap this up. Two more sessions with screws for the ticking and grinding for the screws (but thankfully, no knuckles involved) and one session with teak, clamps, knots and swear words and the racks are done. The finished appraisal comes in at two tank racks with blue and white ticking and teak accents….$300.00 each. The experience….priceless.

St. Maarten the easy way

We made it. We had a little trouble with our autopilot when we left the Sir Francis Drake Channel, but Jim fixed it on the fly. The wind was light and the seas were mild so for a "to weather" trip, it was really great.

Because of the light seas, or was it because or the Benadryl, the little monsters were much more relaxed for this crossing than they were for the last one.

Jim and I did 4 hour watches, but because this was our first big crossing of the trip, neither of us got much sleep. It was waxing gibbous moon that seemed to wash the surface of the sea behind us with a river of mercury. As the moon set, the night sky over our bow opened up to reveal the Milky way, Mars and Saturn. Orion was laying down on his side and his belt seemed to point right down to St. Maartin.

The sunrise greeted us around 5:50 and because of the Sahara dust blown over from Africa, the horizon took on many different shades of gray and blue. The sun peaked above the dust and some cumulus clouds at about 15 degrees above the horizon as a blazing ball of white.

At about 7:00 we saw the faint outline of St. Maartin in the distance. We could make out the difference between the tops of the island, but not between its base and the sea. We were escorted into Simpson's bay by dozens of schools of flying fish flitting just about the surface of the waves on wings that looked like they belonged to fairies. Yeah, that was a nice way to get to St. Maarten. We'll be here for a few weeks and then it's off to points south. We'll keep you posted.

St. Maarten Bound (Take 2)

It's been six days since our first attempt at a BVI to St. Maarten passage. During that time, we've installed a new outhaul, run three new reefing lines through the boom, reconfigured both the jib and the jennicker sheets, cleaned all the stainless steel, fixed the starboard air conditioner (again) and built and installed new tank racks (stay tuned for an individual post describing that fiasco). That's more work that I did in Virginia all last year! We've had time to monitor the weather for the best window to make the jump. We've re-provisioned, had a long talk with the dogs and are set to leave tonight for St. Maarten.

Now mind you, it's not a long sail as sails go, just over 90 miles. It's the point of sail that kicks your ass. This passage is a "passage to weather." There's a saying in the BVI, "Nothing goes to weather better than a 747." Going to weather means we're sailing into the wind. For those non-sailors out there, the physics of sailing allows you to sail in any direction EXCEPT the direction from which the wind is blowing. For example, St. Maarten is east of the BVI and guess where the trade winds blow in the Caribbean? You got it, they blow from the east. Some might ask, "Why Rick and Jim, why subject yourselves to such a beating from dear old Mother Nature? You seem like pretty smart guys, what's the point?" Well, we understand that in St. Maarten, there's Starbucks and Jim has it bad for a chi tea.

If all goes well, you can expect a post on Saturday detailing our successful crossing.

St. Maarten Bound

OK, here's the story of our trip to St. Maarteen (and a picture taken just prior to our leaving):


We headed out for St. Maarteen - Martin - Marteen - Maarten depending on who is doing the spelling - two days ago at about 7:00 pm. It took us about an hour to clear the British Virgin islands and head into the open ocean and by that time, it was already dark. The wind and waves were both a bit stronger than forecast so it was a bit of a bumpy ride. Coco and Cooper weren't happy about the rocking and rolling the boat was making and to top it off, when you're in seas like that, there is also a great deal of sloshing and banging to go along with the rocking and rolling. Well, if you're a dog, you either pee or throw up...and they did both.

Jim and I were each feeling a bit queasy and also respectfully afraid of the sail to come. We considered turning back, but decided that we needed to get use to harsh conditions and what we were going through wasn't all that harsh. So after we got ourselves psyched to weather out the storm, we heard this big BANG and discovered that our outhaul (the line that secures the clew of the sail) had snapped, leaving our mainsail "flapping in the wind" in a bad way. The sail had to be controlled and the best way to do that was to release the mail halyard and let the sail drop into the sail bag attached along the top of the boom. We took a vote and I was elected "vice-president in charge of crawling up to the mast in bad weather". So into my jack-line harness I went and up to the mast I scurried. Eyes of the World was in about 7 foot seas which, when you're heading into the wind, equates to up to 14 foot plunges into the troughs of the waves. I was facing the front of the mast with my back to the front of the boat. Every time we dove into a trough, the water sprayed up though the nets and gave me a cool, refreshing, dousing...well, maybe not so refreshing. With my back to forward, I couldn't see what was coming, nor could I focus on the horizon (please refer to the prior sentence describing the queasy feeling) and as a result, my stomach wasn't any happier than I was. Jim was behind the helm, holding the boat into weather so that when I did release the halyard, the sail fell straight through the lazy jacks and into the stack pack. Had he not been able to do that, the sail could have blown free and fouled itself in the rigging.

All went well with the dropping of the sail and we turned ourselves around on a heading back to Peter Island. Our initial plan was to head out at dusk and arrive after dawn. The theory being, "Leave with light, arrive with light." Now we were arriving back amongst the British Virgin Islands at 10:30 PM while it was quite dark. Being the prepared sailors we are, we had a watertight monitor installed in the cockpit so we could benefit from our GPS without having to be in the salon of the boat. The damn monitor was so bright that when we turned it on at night, it ruined any night vision our eyes had developed in the dark. What we did was flip it on for a few seconds and then shut it off, wait for our eyes to adjust and then make sure we weren't going to run into anything. Not the best way to come into a landing at night. We made it through the safest passage between Dead Chest and Peter Island and headed for Great Harbour to pick up a mooring ball for the night.

Most mooring balls are covered with a highly reflective paint and will light up like a beacon when illuminated with a flashlight. We pulled out our 1 million candle power spot light and began sweeping the harbout with enough light to tan a local. I'm sure the other boats in the harbour were a little peeved. However, safety first, a good night's sleep for the other folks resting in their already moored boats....a distant second. I navigated through a field of other sailboats and Jim grabbed the mooring ball with the boat hook like a pro. We snapped the shackle shut on our bridle and both gave a huge sigh of relief only then to discover that we'd lost both dogs overboard during the chaos. Ok, I made that part up. Both dogs were fine but after the peeing and the throwing up...who knows what I could have done.

We hope the next attempt at St. Maarteen will be nothing to write a blog about!

Our Dogs

About two months ago, our Cocker Spaniels had their lives turned upside down. We've always traveled a lot and when we do, we have a good friend, Ken Kraft, come and take care of our little monsters. They love Kenny, but really hate to see us leave. Being the more precocious of the two, Coco, the brown one, realizes that when the suitcases come out, someone is leaving and from that point on, she won't leave my side. We started packing the house up about two months before we left so for two months, Coco was beside herself (actually, she was right beside me). Cooper is another story. If ignorance is bliss, then that dog is in bliss heaven. She's so laid back, she could have been born in San Francisco in the 60's.

Jim and I were both stressed out about getting the dogs down here. The airlines are cool with dogs weighing less than 20 pounds riding in the cabin, under the seat in front of the owner. Our "little monsters" aren't that little. The porkers each weighed in at 27 pounds...yikes! Jim went immediately into doggie diet mode and allocated them each two pellets of food, twice a day. I of course, supplemented their diets with plenty of dog biscuits and the occasional piece of cheese that just happened to "drop" on the floor. In spite of my sabotage, Jim was able to slim the girls down to a fashionable 22 pounds.

For several weeks before we left, we discussed alternative ways to get Coco and Cooper down to the boat. Jim looked into chartering a private plane. That came to about $26,000.00. We could buy two new dogs in every port we visited for the year and still not spend $26,000.00. Needless to say, that option was out. We looked into taking a cruise ship down. They only allow service dogs on ship; anyone who knows our dogs knows that they are the ones who demand the service. That was another option down the tubes. We looked into booking our flight on a wide-body plane but the only wide-body planes that fly out of the Washington area head for a different continent. One more idea bites the dust.

In the end, we gave each dog a Benedryl, stuffed them into their Sherpa dog carriers, walked up to the ticket counter, paid the ticket agent $80.00 each for the dogs's fare, and got on the plane. Nobody even gave them a second look. I have to admit, I was the one doing most of the worrying.

They did great on the first plane but really didn't want to get back into their Sherpas for the second one. We're bigger and stronger; they got in the Sherpas.

Now they're on the boat. They love being with their two dads but are a little freaked out when their whole house starts to move. But as you can see from the two pictures below, they've adjusted just fine. Coco does what she did in Falls Church. She looks out the window/hatch hoping to find something to bark at. Cooper does what she does best....ZZZZZZZZ.

Ahhhh, it's a dogs life!

Preparing for Journey

We have a lot to get done in the next few weeks. Preparing to set sail for a year has turned out to be quite different than coming down for a few weeks. First of all, when we come down for a few weeks, all the work has already been done by Barecat Charters, the company that charters our boat for us.

So after we arrived, we spent a few days getting reacquainted with "Eyes of the World." I hadn't seen her in nearly a year - and Rick hadn't in over nine months. She looked great! We had a new "stack pack" made, which is a fancy word for the main sail cover, as well as the teal boot stripe replaced with a matching dark blue.

We have lots to get done before we can leave. We bought a compressor to fill our dive tanks - so we have to go to St. Thomas to pick that up and then come back to Tortola to have Mike and Tom at Barecat Charters help us install it. Both Mike and Tom have been fantastic to us while we've been here!

Well, we're leaving the US!

After several false starts, we've actually left our home outside Washington, DC too live on our boat for a year. We were successful in getting our two Cocker Spaniels, Cooper and Coco, onboard our American Airlines flight from Washington Dulles to San Juan, PR. For those of you that we've talked to recently - we had quite a bit of angst about whether we'd be able to get these dogs down to the islands.

How It All Began

Nine years ago, in an airport in Miami, Jim and I were talking about all the places we wanted to go scuba diving. We had just been diving in the Florida Keys and were trying to plan our next trip. The list of places was getting pretty long and I jokingly said we should learn to sail and take a trip around the world. That way we could hit all of the best dive sites on our own schedule.
A few weeks later, Jim told me that he’d booked us a three week, learn to sail, dive vacation in the British Virgin Islands. We spent a few years honing our sailing skills and logging hundreds and hundreds of dives until we felt confident enough to take the next step, finding our own boat.
We had a lead on a 50 foot Privilege that was lying in Florida so we hoped on a plane and went down to take a look. That boat was a behemoth! She slept 14, had 9 fuel tanks, a hydraulic winch system and even an infrared night vision camera mounted on the bow. I took one look at all that stuff and said, “That too much stuff to fix.” We didn’t even take that boat out for a test sail. Since we’d flown all the way down to Florida, the boat broker, Staley, offered to take us to a few other boats.
A few years before that trip, Jim and I went to the Annapolis boat show and went aboard a Lagoon 410 and loved it. At that time, we weren’t ready to buy a boat so we quickly forgot about the Lagoon 410. Can you see where this is going? Staley said that he thought he had the perfect boat for us but wanted to show us a few others first. We went along, liking most of the boats he showed us. Everything changed when we stepped foot onto LEO. She was a customized Lagoon 410 built in 2000 with 4 previous owners. Each previous owner had taken her out for a year sail, brought her back and then sold her. She was in excellent shape with just enough add-ons to make her a “sweet ride”. Needless to say, we walked on, looked at each other and both said, “This is our boat.”
We flew down to Bimini on December 28, 2005, bought her and sailed her 1250 miles, with the immense help of our Stepmom/mother-in-law, Sam and put her into charter with our friends, Sidney and Mike Fallis, the owners of Barecat Charters.
We spent the next 18 months preparing to leave our home, businesses, friends and family (sniff, sniff…tissue please) and periodically flying down to the BVI to practice sailing on the newly named “Eyes of the World.”
So we're finally on the sailing trip that started as a conversation in an airport magazine store. We’ll leave the British Virgin Islands in a few weeks and head toward St. Maarteen. Our plan is to sail down the Leeward Islands, across the top of South America, through the Panama Canal and to the Galapagos Islands. If all goes well, we’ll turn around in 6 months and head back to Tortola. Stay tuned for more updates.