So, this is not actually a blog post for sailing. Today is Reneé’s birthday. We are in Tennessee, getting over being sick. We attended a Navy reunion in Seattle, where we toured a US submarine, and saw some of the guys that I served with on the USS POGY (SSN647). Unfortunately we spent a significant amount of time being sick. We also saw her brothers, Steve and Dan. The return flight was less than fantastic. We were a couple of hours late taking off because of a significant medical emergency on the plane the flight before ours. This resulted in our missing our connection from DFW to Nashville. The airline put us up in a hotel and we were eventually delivered to Nashville. Once we got home, we spent a few days sick in bed.
While we have been here in Savannah, some things have gotten started on the boat:
Engine work:
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- clean both heat exchangers (one for the oil and one for the engine coolant)
- change the oil
- service the alternator
- replace the voltage regulator
- replace impeller on water pump
- replace fuel filters
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AC work:
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- replace the aft AC unit with a DC powered unit
- replace the fwd AC unit with the one removed from the aft stateroom
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Refrigerator work:
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- install a dryer on the refrigerator
- get it working!!
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When we get back to the boat we will schedule a haul out to touch up the bottom paint, and install the depth sounder correctly.
We are evaluating what to do next. We have friends coming down in January of 2025 and perhaps 2026. We plan to sail in Mexico for the next several years, and then move to the Great Loop. Side story here on the great loop:
The Great Loop, sometimes called America’s Great Loop, is a boat trip that is about 6000 miles long. I will choose to start our trip in Savannah TN. We would head south to Pickwick Lake to start our trip, it is done by boat, and we would go south on the Tenn-Tom and Tom Rigby waterways and come out in Mobile Bay. From there we would head east to Florida and go around the peninsula and up the east coast to New York. In the rivers and canals to Chicago and south on the Illinois river to the Mississippi. At the Ohio river (near Paducah KY) we would transition up the Ohio and then up the Tennessee river (it flows from north eastern Tennessee south to Alabama then west to Mississippi and finally North to Paducah KY). At Pickwick lake, we would “cross our wake” completing the loop.
Some considerations on the boat to do the loop in compared to our current boat:
Bridge clearance there is a fixed bridge in Chicago that is about 19’6” that does not have an alternate route (there are quite a few bridges that are slightly higher but this is the shortest one. This means that even if we got around this one, some other bridge that was around 20 ft would be the limiting factor. This means the boat needs to be less than 19’ from the water to the highest point.
Our boat Make Me Laugh Again has a mast height of 62 feet.
Suggested maximum draft (how far down into the water it sticks) is 5 ft. obviously less is better. Our boat has a 5 ft draft.
Maximum length is not really a concern as there are barges on the various waterways that are 100 + feet long.
Maximum width is about 23’ our boat has a beam of 14’4”.
One possibility is to remove our mast, this would drop our height down to about 12’ The solar arch and dinghy rack. This is not an ideal situation, in that the mast has a bunch of stuff in it.
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- Navigation lights
- Radar
- Radio
- Loud speaker
- Wind speed
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Oh yeah, it also plugs a huge hole in the deck.
So, to do this trip with Make Me Laugh Again, would require pulling the mast, and installing a short mast for all the electronics and navigation lights. It would require converting the boat to a power boat for the duration of the trip.
Advantages: we really love our boat, probably cost less than buying and later selling a trawler
Disadvantages: there would be no sailing at all and we would have to undo all of these modifications when we got back to Tennessee.
Other considerations: Pickwick lake is long and narrow, not optimum for sailing. The other water ways around here are also rivers. Again, not great for sailing.
When we got the boat and planned our trip headed south, we bought a handheld radio the Standard Horizon HX890. This was in July of 2019. This year, I could not get it to take a charge, so I replaced the battery as that was the first suggestion by the company. Since that did not work, the next option was to send it in for repair. Today I got the word that it has water damage and as such it can’t be repaired. So, we got 5 years of use out of an electronic device on a sailboat that is actively cruised for half the year. I am pretty satisfied with that life expectancy. I looked on line and found a new one for about $200. The company is also sending a $50 coupon to assist in buying the new one. Something they really did not have to do.
So, the above was written in September. It is now January, the company customer service has been absolutely abysmal. This saga started early last year when I could not get the handheld radio to charge. I eventually called customer service/tech support who told me that the most likely reason was a bad battery. So, I got a new battery (which is difficult in Mexico) and when that did not fix the problem, they said send it in no charge if they can’t fix it. Well the real problem was water damage. Not too surprising as we bought it in 2018, and we have had it on the boat in a salt atmosphere since then. So, I talked to the person in charge of this situation and pointed out that I was not near my mail (by now it was November and we were visiting Kyle and family), so was there a way to get the rebate with our having to fill out a mailed in form. She said no problem when you buy the new radio, call me and we will work it out. I got the new radio delivered to Kyle’s and attempted to contact this person. No answer, voice mail, fax machine sound, no response to email’s etc. this is over a $50 coupon. By now it is late November, I have her phone number and contact info saved, I eventually called customer service who said, “She is the only one who can deal with the coupon, so i left a message”. Eventually after many attempts I was pretty ticked off and wrote it out in an email to her. Detailing all the run around she had put me through, her response was a really weird email. I don’t know if she put it all in the subject block or what, but I could only see the first few words.
Somewhere in here she managed to tell me what I needed to send her, I scanned everything and sent it via email, she responded by sending me the coupon in the mail to Tennessee. Oh and they have a “must complete within 45 days” statement in the letter. Well as you might have surmised by this point it way past 45 days since I bought the new radio. By this time, i have probably attempted to call her more than a dozen times, exchanged a half dozen emails, sent in all required documentation, etc. So, that $50 coupon is still not in my hands, I am so done with anything STANDARD HORIZON or YAESU. I will never recommend or buy any other products. Yes, they do make good equipment, but the customer service is truly horrible. Oh, by the way the battery I bought that I did not need was about $50. I now have a new radio, and there batteries for it. Of course the only way to charge a battery is inside the radio.
Enough about that, we had a great time with friends and family in November while we were in California, Renee’s family decided to get together in December so, we altered our return trip.
We stopped in Apple Valley to help my uncle with his computer, then headed east, we visited quite a few people then dropped our trailer off in Fulton MO at a friends place and drove up to Decorah. Where all of Renee’s siblings were. A family meeting was held to discuss what the plan was to help their mom (Bonnie). She is 89, and dealing with Parkinson’s.
Bonnie is probably coming to live with us in Tennessee, sometime this year.
This is a topic Reneé and I have been discussing for years. The time is this year. So, we will sell the boat, and move everything to our home. We are about 15 miles north of the intersection of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee in the town of Savannah. This location is on the Great Loop.
The plan is to purchase a trawler and prepare it for the Great Loop. When her mother passes, we would then do the Great Loop in our new to us trawler.
So, the next topic how to get our stuff off the boat. We have a tandem Kayak, and two standup paddle boards. The longest is just over 13 feet long. A replacement would be between $1500 and $2000. So, we evaluated moving the boat, hiring a captain to assist us in getting it done in a reasonable period of time to get from Puerto Vallarta to Mobile bay. The captain I contacted pointed out it would be pretty expensive and perhaps we would rather ship it on a ship, so I checked into it. While it was less than he suggested he would charge it was still $43,000.
We thought about what we would do with the boat in Mobile. While the bay is very large, it is also very shallow, which means 3 or more hours of motoring to get into the gulf to sail, During Hurricane season we would have to leave the marina, the nearest “safe” harbor is about 150 miles up the waterways towards our house, oh yeah the bridges prevent it from getting there with the mast up. Etc.
In the end, we bought a cargo trailer 16 ft enclosed tandem axle trailer. First plan was to drive to Puerto Vallarta, this was straight across Mexico and numerous cartel zones. Pretty much a significant risk for three days of driving. We thought about it some more, and decided to take the truck and trailer to Puerto Peñasco at the north end of the Sea of Cortez.
Now, we have to put the boat back together, put things away and get ready to haul out on Jan 23 for a touch up on the bottom paint, and some other things, then visitors from Iowa in early February. They will be here for a week, then we will take the next six weeks or so to get to Puerto Peñasco, then unload the boat and then back to Puerto Vallarta and into a slip to prepare it for sale. We will fly back to Mexicali, take a bus back to Puerto Peñasco and drive back to Tennessee. This should be early June 2025.
While we were in Puerto Peñasco at the boat yard, I tripped on a step down into the cruiser’s lounge. The trip was not what hurt, but I landed on the corner of a padded chair with my face, right under my nose. Reneé says there is some swelling and it is very tender. As I write this it has been a couple of days and it still hurts.
