Other people’s boats

SEATAC, 17-JAN-2022 – I was speaking to John Riley not too many weeks ago. I was telling John that being away from my boat meant that I don’t have much to write about. John said, write about other people’s boats.

And so I shall.

I’ve been back and forth to John’s boat a few times over the last while. We have mostly been working on his solar panel charger controller. The lugs to tighten the cables to the controller are very counterintuitive.  Until I took the cover off the first controller I had no idea how the connections worked. And even then I got it wrong. Getting it wrong potentially destroys the controller, which is what happened to the first controller.

Because I had taken apart the first controller, when the second controller arrived it was quite easy to connect and install. In John’s boat, which is a Cal 27, not a Catalina 25 (I was always so very impressed on how a 25-foot boat could have that much room), the controller is installed in the port cockpit locker, which is where the access to the engine is. The locker is large enough to climb down into and sit upright in the bottom of. I connected the cable to the battery, then to the controller, and finally, connected the solar panels. For this controller, like every controller I have connected up, there are imperative instructions that one must connect the batteries before the panels, and disconnect the panels before disconnecting the batteries. I presume something terrible happens if you connect them in the wrong order.

On my last trip to see John, I brought him a new 20-pound-capacity aluminum propane tank. In the winter, the propane is not lasting very long. John hopes by having as many cans on board as he does now, he can make it for two weeks without having to find someplace for new propane.

It was going to be very difficult to connect up a diesel-fueled heater. Given the short time that the propane lasts, I seriously wonder if it wouldn’t have been worth the engineering effort to install a diesel heater.

When John was preparing to come to the Gig Harbor dock to see Jennifer and me on a visit to fill his propane tanks, he couldn’t raise his anchor. He was forced to cut the anchor rode, attach a boat fender as a float and leave it there. As far as I know, it is still there in Gig Harbor. Next time I see him in Gig Harbor, perhaps he and I will go out and try to get it off the bottom. It may take a second boat with a strong winch to get it up, if it can be raised at all. In the interim, John will buy another anchor, chain, and rode. Anchors are remarkably expensive hunks of metal, and John will wait until the beginning of his next fiscal month to afford it.

The pandemic continues to have unexpected side effects. For boats in Gig Harbor, the three-day limit on the town dock seems to have been relaxed with many boats staying multiple weeks at the time.

Municipalities everywhere are trying hard to discourage people from living aboard their boats. The state government limits how many liveaboards, as a percentage, can be inside a marina. This may have made some sense when vessels discharged sewage into the water, but now every boat has holding tanks. Admittedly, in most places, boats still discharge gray water. Some municipalities are requiring gray water also to be tanked and pumped into the municipality’s waste treatment facility.

For people like John, who live aboard their boat and are not in a marina, they are generally forced to find a new anchorage every two weeks to a month. At one time, if you were anchored in saltwater and did not go under a bridge, your vessel was governed by federal regulations. But, that has all changed.

Florida and Georgia are making it onerous to anchor any place outside of a marina. In Florida, it has been driven by condo owners who do not want to see boats anchored within view. In Georgia, I’m starting to get the feeling that this is driven by marina owners who want to get as much revenue as they can.

In both states, if you are in their waters for more than 30 days, you must pay sales tax as if you bought the vessel there, and were to register in that state. On most cruise boats, this runs tens of thousands of dollars.

So living aboard, irrespective of the amount of money you have or your socioeconomic status is becoming more difficult.

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Thank you, everyone, who reads this blog. I am startled by its reach.

A few weeks ago, the owner of a boat I talked about in a piece about walking through Boat Haven and hull shapes contacted me telling me he owned one of the boats I discussed. He said that the characteristics I attributed to the vessel were correct and that this was the boat for him. We talked about meeting and taking me on a tour of his boat, but somehow it never came together.

For the next month or so, I’ll be writing about James Everson’s new boat, the replacement for his catamaran, Zingaro, which broke up west of the big island of Hawai’i. The new boat is a monohull, a 48-foot, cutter-rigged, Oyster 485, that sat on the hard for six or seven years: not good for a boat in the tropics. 

As I write this, I am in the SEA lounge at SEATAC waiting for the first of two flights that will take me to Aruba, where James and Ana, and I will sail his boat from Aruba to St, Maarten in a circuitous route. I’ll be back in the PNW in mid-February.

Yes, you’ll get to see me on James’ channel.

Before we leave, we’ll be working on his boat. Installing the replacement roller reefing and doing a very thorough inspection for fractures in the stainless steel, which cost the previous roller reefing, and I don’t know what else. I’ll learn to fish and free dive, spearfish, improve my limited Spanish and get a suntan.

I’ll have some to write about, even if it is not Caro Babbo. Videos are generally a few weeks after the event, so the real-time news will happen here.

I’ll be sailing in warm water. A rare experience for me. I’ll tell you about the differences in sailing in the Caribbean that I know about and that I learn about. My Sicilian heritage should be an asset in the heat.

I’ll post again soon.