Stuck in the ATL

Decatur, GA, 23-NOV-2018 – There is no joy working on these houses. We won’t get the first two done before we head north for Christmas. Jennifer won’t be going to Berlin.

We might get one house done, the second underway, and the third, perhaps, contracted to completion before we return to Atlanta in January.

Our, well, at least my life revolves around Caro Babbo.

The course for a one-hundred ton captain’s license starts some time in January. As does the Seattle boat show. I’d also like to get Caro Babbo documented.*

Everything is aimed at two events that require various ducks to be in a row. The major event in my mind is sailing to Hawaii. In Jennifer’s life, it is living in her beloved Port Townsend house this spring.

Facilitating all of this is selling our real estate investments in Atlanta: five houses. This first house has been the learning experience. We’ve learned how long things take, how much money it takes if we pay others, and sharpened our pencils on ROI.

We’ve met a legion of real estate agents offering to help and giving mountains of advice. Much of it is consistent, but enough of it conflicts with other agents and conflicts with increased profits such that I am getting much more confident in my opinions.

An agent suggests we spend $40K on a house to improve its value. How much will it improve the value? She names a sales price. If I don’t make those improvements? The number is $50K less. A forty thousand dollar project can easily run over by 25%, we agree. There goes the profit. But, that would have fed her recommended contractors, perhaps, given her a kick back and definitely raised the commission by $3000.

Lots of assured money, for everyone but us.

Living in Atlanta, we are living in my residence, but as guests, because we’ve rented out our space in the house. But, we were here when Hilary broke her hip stepping down a stair step. She is strong and heals so quickly.

Hilary is in rehab, in a beautiful Alzheimer’s facility that unfortunately costs four times where she lives now. Her life expectancy is another fifteen years. We must husband her money to support her.

She is more engaged at this facility, and in the moment she seems in better spirits. But in seconds that is gone, because there is only the present. It hurts Jennifer.

Superior, it’s said, never gives up her dead…

Caro Babbo rests in her slip, looked after by our friends Carly and Jason, monitored by all our marina mates. We’re away in a city that has become someplace we don’t know. In the interval we’ve been gone, prosperous times have renewed neighborhoods raising taller structures, increasing housing density and reinforcing my desire to be away.

I watch sailing videos instead of sailing, but I tire of them. I don’t learn much anymore and the sailing they do is so different than the sailing we’ve done. The popular youtubers, perhaps all youtubers, sail warm water. It’s not that I don’t have much in common with them, but the novelty has worn off.

In April, Erwin will fly out to Seattle to redo Caro Babbo’s electric with me. He is an EE who specialized in interfacing off-the-shelf electronics with military avionics. I’ve also come to realize that in 2019, Erwin and I will know each other fifty years.

Caro Babbo came with a single battery and a small fuse panel. The original wiring is zip-style household lamp wire, which has held up fabulously. An additional, custom 12V fuse box was added when new electronics were added, but the job was half-assed, non-compliant and as additional electronics were added more and more short cuts were taken.

The new fuse box has all soldered connections. The solder will melt in certain circumstances meaning a hot, unfused wire could start a fire. Rather than connect to the fuse box, other connections were made directly to the batteries yielding a spider’s web of connections, some of which were just bare wire held in place while the battery connector was wrenched down.

Like every boat I’ve ever worked on, none of the no-longer-used wiring was removed, complicating any electrical work or debugging.

I’ve fixed much of this: removed lots of unused wiring, added two bus blocks for the direct-to-battery wires and moved some of those wires to the new fuse box. But, it is time to renew the fuse box and wiring. Last spring I chose the new circuit breaker panels I will install and started making notes on how I will reroute much of the wiring. I’m also thinking of what communications standards† I want to implement to allow the various smart devices to speak to each other.

I’ll be pleased to have Erwin help with, and at times, direct all of this work.

In terms of capital improvements, in 2019, I want to replace the radar and the auto helm. The technology improvements since those items have been installed are multigenerational.

It is also time to get serious about the Portland Pudgy’s role as a life raft. There is a self-inflating cover I want to seriously consider.

I also must, finally, replace all of Caro Babbo’s windows.

Beginning in January, Jennifer and I must start reading in earnest about sailing from the PNW to Hawaii. It is a matter of not only how, but when. The crossing west is in November/December, generally; after hurricane season. We can sail south down the coast, either offshore, or daysail. We can also sail it in one go. It is about forty days that way.

Over the last two and half years, we’ve spent more than half our time living aboard Caro Babbo.

Going forward, I had envisioned – no, defined – our sailing as living aboard full-time without ever living ashore. I convinced myself and believed that anything else wasn’t going sailing.

I envisioned wintering on board Caro Babbo in cold places, alone with Jennifer. The first few years will take us into the great lakes – Jennifer hears in her head Gordon Lightfoot singing, ‘‘Superior, it’s said, never gives up her dead,’’ and shudders. She doesn’t consider the more consistently dangerous places we’ve sailed already.

But, Jennifer is not onboard with the romantic notion of being locked in a hundred square feet with me across the dark winter months when we have houses in Port Townsend and Phoenix that we could either just not rent for those months, or just stay in one because it is unlikely they will be rented then.

Here in Atlanta, for the first time since college, I work each day on something I don’t enjoy, pushing things forward to a goal that is far away, and becomes more illusory the longer I am away from our boat.

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*Documentation is basically a federal registration, rather than a state registration. Outside the country it is more easily recognized. 

† The are a number of communications standards in terms of protocols and also physical infrastructure. Not all protocol standards can be run on all infrastructures. For example, the newer marine device communications standard, NMEA 2000, is not implemented using WiFi, Bluetooth or Ethernet, all of which can run internet protocol (IP). Instead, 0138, which is a very old point-to-point protocol is layered on top of IP. A new open protocol Signal K may be gaining traction, but it is not an industry standard and I haven’t seen anything but novelty implementations.