Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 62

I’ve never really been a singlehander

I lasted two months.

And in those two months, I flew to Annapolis to give a talk at a yacht club, I flew to St. Thomas to cover the Rolex Regatta, and I flew down to the Exumas and helped Bruce sail Wild Matilda the 800 or so miles down to Culebra. I was doing everything I could do to stay busy.

What I didn’t do was spend any time on my own boat all alone. You see, I’ve never REALLY been a singlehander. I always had my canine crew. And as the time grew closer for me to take off aboard my own boat for my summer trip to the Abacos, I began combing the rescue sites looking for a new little buddy and first mate. And I found him.

Meet Barney.

 Barney is an 8-month old, 11-pound pup who was picked up as a stray on the streets of Miami by Miami Dade Animal Services and rescued from there by United Yorkie Rescue. After an approval process that was only slightly more rigorous than that required for a tenure-track teaching position, I adopted him and brought him home on May 25th – last Friday.

And the fun began. Since Chip was sixteen and a half years old when he died, I was quite accustomed to living with a blind, deaf, geriatric dog who slept about 80% of the time and walked at the speed of a sea slug.  Boy, have things changed around here.

I’ve been working all week on the scanned text of the last two novels in my Seychelle series that I’ve been self publishing. I had the mass market versions of the books scanned by Blue Leaf Scanning. I’ve been formatting the plain text rtf file they sent, and I’ve had to clean up all the mistakes that the OCR introduced into the text. For example, all the words spelled “stern” became “stem.” Most of us boaters know there is a big difference between the stern and the stem of a boat! All the “corners” became “comers.” Many of the instances of capital I (quite a few in books written in the first person) had become the numeral 1. All the italics were gone and a third of the returns were screwed up. And so on. This is tedious, nit-picking work. You can do some search and replace stuff, but you have to be able to spot the errors in the first place, and it’s not easy. I really have to concentrate.

By now I know that any of you who have ever lived with a puppy are laughing. Right? Concentrate with a new puppy around? Yeah, right.

I have a stack of new flooring in my apartment that is all wrapped in plastic, and those needle-sharp puppy teeth start gnawing on the plastic as soon as I get to the second line of the first paragraph. I throw a ball which he grabs and then he dashes under the futon. He emerges a few seconds later with a red plastic pen (from my old teaching days) that he has nearly chewed through. I rescue the pen and return to the computer, make it through one more line and I hear an odd noise from behind the couch. He has one of my flip flops and when I try to grab it, he scoots off to the other side of the room dragging the shoe that is nearly the size of him, then sticks his butt up in the air and dares me to chase him for it.

In one week, I have learned to type one-handed while playing tug-o-war with the other. And it occurs to me that he is training me very well to play with him whenever he is bored – which is 80% of the time.

So, I find myself editing between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. when the exhausted puppy is out cold, and while I pushed publish on Bitter End yesterday, I will need another couple of days to finish Wreckers’ Key. It takes these books 5-6 days to chug through the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing system as they must ask me every time if I am absolutely positively sure I have the rights back. This time I had to send them my reversion of rights letter, too.

I’ve had Barney on the boat at the dock and tried to do a few little jobs out there, but I am about as effective with Barney around the boat as I am on the computer. He has already figured out how to climb the steps from the main salon to the cockpit, and he is fascinated by the water. He wants to run out on deck and stare at the water. Like many dogs who ended up loose on the street, he is frightened of loud noises. I haven’t started the engine yet – but today, in preparation, I bought a collapsable dog crate so I can at least keep him safe when I can’t attend to him underway. By the end of the summer, though, I expect I will have turned him into a good little boat dog.

I expect that to start within a week because the good news from Mike and Mary a couple days ago was – Houston, we have ignition. The engine is running and we are ready for lift off! So, if all goes according to plan, I will have to write up an early blog post next week since I hope to be sailing Talespinner across the Gulf Stream next Thursday night with my buddy Barney by my side and Rough Draft – my buddy boat – on the horizon.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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Free time…

C.E. Grundler

It doesn’t exist at the moment, at least not for me, but we’ve decided that’s the name of my next boat. It hasn’t been built yet, and would be no more than ten feet, with a single gaff-rigged sail, it would be set up for easy rowing and a three horse outboard, and it would be constructed from all the left-overs from Annabel Lee’s restoration. We’ve come to realize by time we’re done, between salvaged wood, my miscalculation when ordering some fiberglass and resins, (I hate running short mid-project,) and skills we’ve acquired along the way, we’ll have both the supplies and abilities to construct a lovely little tender.  There’s only one thing we’re severely short on, and thus, the name if/when this presently imaginary vessel comes into being.

Judging by the posts here at Write on the Water, I’m not alone, and that makes me feel a bit better. You could say that misery loves company, though I don’t think misery is really the right word. I’d like to believe everyone here is still messing about in boats because, despite their occasional inherent aggravations, in the end the pleasure outweigh the pains. I feel for Mike and Mary and my hopes are that their engine problems are sorted out simply and inexpensively. I wouldn’t wish what I’ve been dealing with upon anyone. Still, those who know me will tell you I’m happiest when I’m working on the boat, and the satisfaction the seemingly endless work brings me is incomparable. But I will also admit there is a side of me that longs for the day when we can start actually using the boat again. Weekends spent afloat, rather than going to battle armed with power tools, clothed in Tyvek haz-mat suits and wrestling wood, glass and resin into the shape of a boat. Using her, cruising, or simply relaxing aboard and going nowhere in particular.  And who knows? If we ever get bored and run out of things to do, (said with a straight face,)  just maybe, over the winter months, we might even decide to build her a pretty little sailing dinghy… in our free time.

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Back in the water

By Mike Jastrzebski

There’s not a lot to add this week. We are back in the water but the engine is still not working right and we had to be towed to a dock where we await the arrival of a new mechanic. Here’s our boat at its new, temporary (we hope) dock.

Hopefully this mechanic can track down the problem and help us on our way. We are teetering back and forth with what to do. If we can get the engine going in the next week and if the weather permits we would still like to go to the Bahamas for a month before heading north for the summer.

If the engine has to be replaced we’ll stay here in Ft. Lauderdale until next November and put in a new, or more likely rebuilt, engine. Money has been flowing a little too freely since we went into the yard and we hope the repairs will be minor, but whatever happens we’ll roll with the punches and get on our way as soon as possible.

On the writing front, I am starting to rethink the ideas for the next Wes Darling book. I had planned to set the book in the Abacos in the Bahamas, but that was when I was sure I would get there this year. Now I’m thinking that if we are forced to head straight north the book may become St. Augustine or Charleston or Savannah Blues. If we are stuck here until fall then the book will be set in Key West again. How about Duval Street Blues, or maybe Conch Fritter Blues. I’m open to ideas if anyone out there wants to chime in.

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Reflections on sales and sails

Boarding the plane for the first leg home

Tonight, I am back in Florida sitting at my desk in my little one-room efficiency apartment after my flight on the little puddle jumper plane from Culebra to San Juan and the jet flight home. I’ve been reflecting back on my trip down to the Caribbean aboard Wild Matilda. Of the many people we met on other cruising boats, there is one couple that stands out in my memory. They spoke of cruising along the south coast of Haiti and visiting Ile-a-Vache, and they are one of the few boats I’ve ever met who visited Haiti – and that is resonating with me tonight.

I suppose we all have our bucket lists of places we want to visit, and Haiti is on mine. You see, I wrote my second novel CROSS CURRENT [image error]about the Haitian community here in South Florida, and looking back on my writing career now, I wonder if that subject matter influenced my writing career as much as the fact that my editor got canned, and I was “orphaned” at my publishing house. Americans seem to be uncomfortable talking or reading about Haiti –much less visiting the country.

Sometimes we writers are asked which of our novels is our favorite, and I always give the PC answer which is “I can’t answer that – I love them all.” But if I am really, really honest, CROSS CURRENT holds a very special place in my heart kind of like a dog who is so homely it’s cute. Haiti is like that stray dog that’s got mange and fleas and that beaten-down look, and you just don’t know if you try to reach out to him whether he will bite your hand – and yet he steals your heart.

When Ballantine first released that book, it did not sell well, and now that I have the rights back and I have re-released the book, it isn’t doing very well under my watch either. Right now, CIRCLE OF BONES has 54 reviews on Amazon and SURFACE TENSION has 38 reviews. Most of those have all been written based on my new digital editions. But my poor little baby CROSS CURRENT only has 7 customer reviews. That book is still the runt of the litter.

I know very well when I set out to write a book that I am not trying to write the Great American Novel. I am in the entertainment business. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t write about something that matters to me. I don’t think writers should use their fiction to push some social or political agenda, yet we need to be passionate to write a good story. When it comes to Haiti and all the wonderful people I have met who come from that island, I feel that passion. But then again, I’ve always cheered for the underdog.

So, when I met the family aboard the S/V Sunrise in Salinas, Puerto Rico and they told us about taking a load of old blown-out sails to Haiti through an organization called Sails for Sustenance (located right here in South Florida), I knew I wanted to learn more about the organization. This group recycles sails by collecting them and sending them down to be distributed to the fishermen in Haiti where they can change lives. Check out this video and notice how it looks like the fishermen are trying to use plastic sheeting for sails before they get some Dacron.

The story about Sunrise is on the Sails for Sustenance page here: http://sailsforsustenance.org/2012/04/17/sails-delivered-to-haiti-by-s-v-sunrise/

I have a blown-out genoa in storage. I haven’t known what to do with the thing, and now I’m glad I didn’t pitch it into a dumpster. I have affiliations with three different sailing clubs here in the Fort Lauderdale area, and I’m going to see just how many sails I can collect from my friends. Have any of you got old sails? Start your own collections and I promise to help you get them down to Miami.

See cruising is really entertainment, too, and for me anyway, I need to feel like what I am doing matters. Whether it is writing entertainment or living entertainment, there has to be that something that makes it more than just personal satisfaction.

I don’t know what I’m doing next or where I’m going at the end of the hurricane season next fall, but my eyes have been focused on the Caribbean. I’ve been contemplating taking my own boat down there. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to scratch another item off my sailing bucket list and take my sails down there myself.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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Escaping the Rat Race…

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Coolest 'rat race' image courtesy of the Harrison Lake Sand Sculpture Competition 2006

C.E. Grundler

It’s interesting how certain characters and plot twists can break free of the original outline and take on a life of their own. By this point I’ve almost come to expect it, so there’s no surprise when characters I’d intended as minor background players step forward and start calling out their own actions and dialog, taking the plot in a new direction. And such is the case with a married couple in my third story, a pair of live-aboards from a distinctly different background than my main characters. But now I find myself needing to flesh out a bit more of their back-story, and I realized perhaps a bit of insight from a few of you would be invaluable.

None of these details are set in stone, so I have leeway to change facts as needed, but here’s the general picture. We’re talking about a married couple, together since college. They’re in their early fifties now, their two children are grown and out of the house, it’s just them and one very lazy cat that only moves to the sound of a can-opener. They had the perfect life: good, high-paying jobs, a beautiful house in the suburbs, and a 38’(?) sailboat (suggestions?) they presently have little time to use but dream of cruising aboard… someday, when they both retire. But then there’s a health scare, a close friend suddenly passes away, the commutes are getting longer and more stressful, taxes are climbing, life is consuming them. They both wonder what are they waiting for, and decide to jump off the treadmill – sell the house, put the money in the bank, and live aboard the boat. That brings us to the present, but it’s that breaking the bonds to land and decades of possessions that has me scratching my head. Myself, I’m still balancing both the house and boat, and when I consider the magnitude of what’s involved I wonder: how did you all do it?  The house itself is one thing, but what about the contents? Furniture, heirlooms, photos and paintings, books… the list goes one. Yes, some can go to the kids, but what of the things they can’t take/don’t want/the couple might want to keep for themselves if they decide this ‘boat life’ isn’t working for them and they want to return to a house down the road.

So, simply put, how did those of you who have taken those steps deal with those possessions from life before the boat, and why?

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Tarpon On!

(Boca Grande Pass at Sunset)

I saw my first tarpon on a trip to the Florida Keys, back when I was twelve. We were visiting my aunt and uncle and Florida and the Keys were a land of magic to a young kid who loved the water.

At the time, the old Seven Mile Bridge was the link between Marathon and parts south. Portions of the bridge still exist and if you are ever down that way I encourage you to pull over to give the old span a look-see. Chances are, you’ll immediately question how two-way traffic made it across that narrow old bridge. The truth is it helped if passing trucks tucked in their side mirrors.

That old bridge wasn’t so accommodating for cars either, especially if you were in my aunt’s wide-bodied convertible. Fortunately, she was an experienced driver. Unfortunately, her way of avoiding oncoming traffic was rooted in the belief that you should cross those seven miles as fast as possible, foot to the floor.

I remember zooming over that bridge one day back then, 500 cubic inches of her big block General Motors engine powering us toward Key West. It was all sunshine and turquoise water with the wind drowning out any other sound until my aunt called out, “He has a tarpon!” It was an angler below, fighting an acrobatically inclined fish. Like many memories from that first trip, the image burned deep into my brain.

In the years that passed I kept an interest in the gamefish known as the Silver King, but I had only a few chances to fish for tarpon and none led to success. That changed earlier this month when Sally and I made a visit to the Gulf Coast.

Dave Hayden from Parsley Baldwin Realtors on Boca Grande asked me, “Going tarpon fishing while you’re down here?”

“Probably not,” I said.

“They’re here,” Dave said. “Might want to see if you can fish an evening half tide. Sandy Melvin from Gasparilla Outfitters is probably all booked-up, but he might be able to fix you up with someone else.”

I remembered Sandy from a fishing trip with my nephew on my first visit to Boca Grande fifteen years ago. “Maybe,” I said.

Two days later, Sally and I were heading out at sunset aboard Sandy’s boat, Boca Blue.

I’ve been fishing since I was old enough to sit upright on a dock, but when that first tarpon struck it was like nothing before. The rod bent over so far I was sure it would break. The first fish was 100 pounds, the second, 115. We released them both and before we were done Sally and I jumped two more tarpon that broke free.

Before we headed back in, Sandy, Sally, and I used a couple of small nets to scoop-up some crabs. We even managed to net a small sea horse that we examined before we tossed it back in. The three of us were on our knees leaning over the gunnel, nets in hand, while Sandy talked about a kids fishing tournament he started. In the background, we’d occasionally hear jumping tarpon that were likewise interested in the crab hatch taking place that night.

More than a hundred and twenty-five years have passed since Mark Twain wrote about Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher. A lot has changed since then. Every once in a while, though, it seems some things seem to have stayed pretty much the same.

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Key West Mystery Festival 2012

The KW Mystery Festival turned out better than I expected! Which is good. The panel was informative, the audience was a full house. Well, let me explain that. Not many people sat in the front row. Not sure why because we all bathed beforehand and only drank moderately (KW standards apply here). Someone said we scared them. That I can believe!

I’ve been asked by next year’s coordinators to be involved in the 2013 festival and I’ve agreed. Agreed to meet with the two coordinators and discuss it. I think the island is ripe for such a festival and can see readings at various bars (remember, this is KW we’re talking about and most of the good meeting places (places that won’t charge for space) are in the local waterholes).

Meet and greets as well as readings, mixed in with a panel or two at the end of the event, would be fun and might catch on so the festival can grow into a major event. There’s no shortage of Florida writers to choose from and most would kill for a three or four day stay in KW, especially if the rooms were free. I can see a festival with events from Wed-Sunday.

I’ll keep you informed as events move forward and hope some of you will make it next year. I am guessing that the event would be in the second week of May, again, but being KW I wouldn’t bet the house on it.

Take a good look at the photo below and tell me if you’d sit in the first row!

KW Mystery Fest Panel

www.michaelhaskins.net

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Winding down

By Mike Jastrzebski

Things are winding down here at the yard for us. We’ve been doing odds and ends work, splicing some ropes, making sure everything can be latched down properly, etc. We’ve been doing this all in anticipation of getting out of the yard.

We were tentatively scheduled to go into the water on Friday afternoon, but alas, the shaft and collar were still not ready. Danny, the guy who is doing the work, assures we’ll be ready to go in Tuesday so we rescheduled to be the last lift on Tuesday. We’ll see what happens.

The kitty is being seriously drained by this stay in the yard and time is running out if we still want to get to the Bahamas. If we can’t get on our way by June 1st I think we’ll just head north for the summer. The fact that a tropical storm has already formed off the Carolinas makes us wonder if we shouldn’t just head North and save the Bahamas for the fall.

Hopefully our next blog will be from somewhere other than the yard.

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Island Time

"Downtown" in Culebra

by Christine Kling

Okay, so there I was enjoying lying in my bunk long after sun-up (the blasted sun rises here just after 6:00 a.m.), nursing my beer-soddened head, lazily wondering what day it was, when I suddenly sat up and thought, Holy Crap! It’s Friday! And I haven’t written my blog!

Yes, that is what happens when you spend too much time on a cruising boat in the islands. All of that – including the beer. I call it getting on Island Time.

I spent all day yesterday here in Culebra thinking that I was going to write a well-reasoned treatise on the situation with big publishers and the Department of Justice and Indie publishing and . . . what happened?

We went ashore to the Dinghy Dock Restaurant, met up with a group of four sailors we had met in Salinas, were joined by a single hander we met here in Culebra, we ordered more beer, we went out for Pizza, we ordered more beer, we all told stories following the “first liar doesn’t have a chance” dictum of all sailors’ get togethers, and dinghied our way back to the boat in the dark and – I forgot all about the blog deadline. I blame it on Island Time.

So, instead of a well-reasoned blog, this morning I will provide a slightly hung-over travelogue of our time and around the amazing islands of Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgins.

First of all, let me state that Puerto Rico is the USA. While this seems obvious to me, I can’t get over the number of conversations I’ve had with people asking me if they will be charged extra to use their cell phones or if they will have to pay duty on items shipped here. It is the USA, folks.

The big harbor at Ponce

Anyway, we arrived here in PR in Mayaguez and cleared customs and immigration (because we had arrived from the Turks & Caicos) and motored down to Bouqueron on the southwest end of the island. It is a very big island. After a couple of days there, we took off at 6:00 am and rounded Cabo Rojo to the south coast and we discovered that we had used up all our good luck as far as beating into nasty winds goes. We motored straight upwind, pounding and crashing into 18-24 knots of wind and discovered that the boat could take more than we could. We had intended to go all the way to Salinas, but we stopped short in the major port of Ponce. We anchored, exhausted just off the Yacht Club and after a short dinner, we crashed early. About 10 minutes later the music started up ashore – and then we discovered it was Kareoke Night. There was only one thing that could have kept me awake that night and bad karaoke was it.

There is a book about how to traverse this part of the world by a fellow named Van Sant and he claims that the trick is to get up in the early hours of the morning and to motor close to the island taking advantage of the light offshore breeze that happens from the cooling of the land in the dark. In Ponce, we got up at 4:00 a.m. and motored on to Salinas in blissfully calm seas. Score one for Van Sant.

One of the rain forest visitors' centers

Rain forest waterfall

Hiking paths through the rain forest

In Salinas we rented a car and drove around the island a bit, with the final destination of getting to the El Junque Rain Forest. This is a National Forest area on Puerto Rico that is a spectacular must-see. We hiked a bit on our own, and we took a short guided hike with a young lady who had recently got her Masters Degree in ecology and preservation and she taught us all sorts of things about the special type of forest that grows up in the clouds on Puerto Rico.

From Salinas, we staged out about 15 miles to Patillas by leaving at 5:30 and arriving at 8:30 a.m.

Anchorage off Patillas

We were anchored just inside a reef and though the boat rolled a bit, it was a great place to swim and clean the hull and take care of chores that required clean water. Since our previous anchorage had been in Salinas, a mangrove area, the water had been murkier.

The next morning, if you can call it that, we got up at 3:30 a.m. and left at 4:00 to round the west end of Puerto Rico and we decided we would either to the island of Vieques or on to Culebra, whatever the wind permitted. These two islands are part of the territory of Puerto Rico in terms of government, but they are referred to as the Spanish Virgins because they resemble the US Virgin Islands more in their geography and they are equally close distance-wise to the Virgins. The winds were great when we approached Vieques and it was barely dawn, so we pressed on and made it into the large harbor called Ensenada Honda here in Culebra.

Chart of our location in Ensenada Honda, Culebra

Back in the days when I used to work on a charter boat in St. Thomas, we called this our preferred hurricane hole. It’s got lots of little coves and anchorages and boats galore.

This is as far as I will go on this trip. Sunday, I fly out of the Culebra airport (which I suspect will make flying in to Staniel Cay look like arriving on a jet into a metropolis) and I’ll head out from San Juan. It’s been a great trip, but it’s time to get off Island Time and get to work on being a writer.

Fair winds!

Christine

 

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At last…

C.E. Grundler

(For those of you who follow my regular blog, you’ll forgive that this is simply a repost. For everyone else, what follows is a summary of a major step in the largest undertaking we’ve had on the ongoing elimination of leaks aboard Annabel Lee, replacing a massive section of delaminated ceiling/deck. For more information on what brought us to this point, as well as other work we’ve been doing aboard this collection of projects shaped like a boat, brace yourself and click here. Warning: it’s not for the faint of heart.)

Last week was a rough one that blindsided me, and home feels a lot emptier for it, but I’ve been dealing by lavishing attention onto the other four-footed residents and by keeping busy.  And keeping busy at this time of year means boat work, in this case in the form of the salon ceiling/bridge deck, which is at long last securely in place.

When last I left off, we’d been prepping out the areas where the edges would join. This included the forward edge of the remaining deck, the salon bulkheads and underside of the bridge.

Think of it like a layer cake – one where the upper and lower layers are fixed in place, and the inner layer (the new laminate core) would be *very* carefully slide in between. Only this layer measures approximately 8’ x 8’, weighs I can only imagine how much, has a camber to match the original curves and exact dimensions of the opening with only millimeters to spare and would be eased in by two people, (one of which is only 5’2”.) Add into this equation that every edge, inner and outer, upper  and lower, needed to be prepped in epoxy, and upon alignment, lagged into place before that epoxy set.  In other words, there was zero margin for error.

Below: The space we need to slip the core through. (Small scrap piece of correct thickness in place to test clearance.)

Below:  The Gazebo with the core on top — this made things much easier.

The key to pulling this off was tons of preparation and planning, repeated ‘dry-fit’ test runs, and everything coming together just right. We had everything in place. Resins, mixing pots and spreaders, fiberglass, brushes, hardware, tools, clamps, stands to support the wood, braces for alignment, etc. With the frame we’d used to originally laminate the wood set up on legs and looking like a gazebo in the cockpit, it supported the core at the right height and allowed us to slide it smoothly into the cabin.

Below: the view from the cockpit. This extends slightly further than the original bridge, which will provide more space above and more protection to the cockpit door below.

Once inside, we angled it down, braced it, wet out all areas that would meet with West System epoxy. We eased strips of pre-cut chop strand mat up from beneath where they would extend down, and smoothed the upper halves of these strips onto the top edges of the core.

Next,  we quickly spread West, thickened to a peanut butter consistency with 406 filler, along the salon bulkheads and bridge underside. At this point I wasn’t taking pictures, as we were racing to cover large areas and get everything in place before the epoxy began to cure. That, and were I to pick up my camera it would likely still be covered in resin. Once everything was wetted out the core was raised into final position and screws went in to set it into position, joining it to the leading edge with clamps, the bridge, and temporary 2’x4’s shimmed and angled to match the final alignment.

And there you have it. Next round, screws out and we’ll be laminating ribs in. After that, we’ll re-glass the underside, then go above, fill all the screw holes with epoxy, and glass the bridge deck.

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