Living On The Hook
Underway Paradise Cove to Marina Del Rey.

Sea state: Calm. Visibility: 1/2 mile.
Overcast/Fog. Motoring 4 knots. Course 88 magnetic.

I just upped anchor after a week in Paradise Cove in Malibu. The place has really become my favorite anchorage. I've never had a hailing port on my transom. I think Paradise Cove would be a good one. Heck, I see people putting hailing ports for Nevada, ( Lake Mead, I guess) and Tempe, Arizona on their boats. I have even seen Golden, Colorado on a serious cruising boat floating in the Pacific. I wonder, had it once been
floating in a beer vat at the Coors Beer Brewery in Golden?

I don't worry about advertising Paradise Cove's beauty too much because most people who have visited it by boat usually experience it's wide variety of winds an get scared off by the night time East winds that blow your boat toward shore and kick up quite a swell.

The fetch of wind waves build up from the southern end of the Santa Monica Bay, from Palos Verdes Cove. When I was anchored there last week, the night wind blew me away from the cliff. During the day I was on a lee shore. It's just the opposite in Paradise Cove. The west/southwest to north/northwest winds blow you away from the cliff. But, at night the land breezes can gust down the canyons and build up quite a rough chop over the thirty miles across the bay, blowing from northeast to southeast.

The sun comes up over the water in Paradise Cove. Just like in Santa Barabara. Something the travel brochures for that town like to advertise. Point Dume juts out and curves enough for the cliffs to face east here on the west coast.
The sun sets on the cliffs in the evening.

I got a good easterly blow the third night I was here. I was on a single 11 kg Bruce anchor, 80 feet of chain and another 100 feet of nylon rode in about 27 feet of water. The boat bounced around a bit and the mast shook and wipped a bit in the gusts. It became enough of a disturbance that I turned off the Nova TV special on the formation of the earth, got dressed warmly and went out in the cockpit. In the glow of the anchor lantern and the full moon's light, I watched anxiously to see if this spectacle of howling wind would take me to shore.

During such blows I try to line up a part of the boat with lights on the shore to see if I might be dragging. Two hundred yards inshore of me was a dinghy on a mooring. I flashed my flashlight a number of times on it's white hull occupied by several Comorants and Pelicans. As long as the gap between us didn't close, I had nothing to worry about. It was nice to see the birds there with me in the darkness and wind.

I usually have the engine intake valves open, the battery set to ALL and the key in the ignition during blows. I also gather up anchor line on deck so that it can be quickly dropped overboard in a clump should I need to start the engine and slip my anchor. All three of my anchor rodes have a lobster bouy attached to the bitter end so that I can come back and pick them up later.

After about an hour of watching wind, waves, moon and stars and swinging from Northeast to East, the wind finally filled in, the gusts died and I knew I was hooked well. I went below and fell asleep to the sound of the swells lapping against the hull underneath me.

It's blowing 10 knots behind me now. I'm motoring with the headsail out, doing closer to 5 knots. Time for for a jacket, a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee. Ciao.

Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057

Coverunner Radio - Ocean/Island Music
Listen: http://www.live365.com/stations/coverunner

Site: www.coverunner.com

Sent wirelessly from the sailboat, "Shearwater" off the Southern California coast.

Living On The Hook
Now Playing: Living On The Hook - Marina Del Rey
Living On The Hook
Santa Monica Loews Hotel
Digital Hollywood Conference Sept 28

Caroline (Friend in Arizona) asks:

"Is living on the hook arduous?"

And:

"Is it cheaper that way?"

Anchoring out is mentally and physically taxing. But, it's also the most serene if you chose anchorages away from any easy landing to a town. Remote anchorages are free from constant boat wakes, noise and worrying about poorly anchored boats next to you.

You are also on your own should you get in a situation with weather. Help is not readily available. By sundown all passing traffic and daytime fishermen have gone back to their marinas. You are left with darkness, the stars, the moon and the lights of multi-million dollar homes high on the cliff that may or may not even know you are there.

On the plus side you see Pelicans dive on fish and gulp their meals down right next to your boat. You can see Dolphins feeding in the moonlight and hear them blow as they surface. There's no light pollution. So, the stars stand out magnificently.

As winter weather intensifies I'm going to have to secure myself to moorings and pay to take a berth in marinas. Most of my money has been going to renew a boat that hasn't been worked for a number of years. In the LA area, there are just no slips available even if I could afford it. There is six month to three-year waiting lists for permanent slips for boats my size. Even then, liveaboard status isn't granted right away. So, you have to lie and sneak aboard, give a phony address where you supposedly live, or an old address and lay low, so no one figures you are living aboard. It's a lot harder to do than years ago when there was less interest in living aboard and boat slips were more available. Marina managers looked the other way. County laws regulate how many of the slips can have liveaboards on them. Usually, about ten per cent of the berths are allowed.

I recently had a liveaboard slip for ten years with my ex-wife that I could have kept for $625. a month. However, my ex- wife bought a boat two slips down from where we had lived and I really didn't want to stay around.

In wintertime through spring the moorings on Catalina Island lower their rates from roughly $21 to $24 a day ($600-700 per month) to around $200 a month. After October15th, Avalon Harbor on Catalina Island allows you to pay for two days and you get the other five days free.

Tourist traffic is down and they can keep their stores and restaurants afloat by locking in wintertime temporary boater residents with the lower rates who may patronize their businesses.

Further south in Long Beach, Alamitos and Dana Point slips with electricity and water, laundry rooms are available for around $15 a night. You can stay usually for 15 days out of each month.

In December and January when passages to and from the island become treacherous due to heavy weather, I may leave the boat somewhere secure, rent a car to come into LA to work or take the bus or train into LA and stay in a motel while I work.

I could sell Shearwater, a 34 footer and get a smaller boat, a 29 to 31' boat. Then I'd not have a boat payment and could afford any slip that became available. There are more slips in that length as well. I may even have enough cash left over to leave the country for a while. Once I left, who knows if
I'd come back if I could find a cheap, secure berth south of the border.

My Catch 22 is that I work several days a month in Hollywood, which brings me a couple grand a month. I really need an extra thousand a month, but then who doesn't? Any Monday through Friday job that I would get would perhaps give me more to live on, but I would have to have a permanent place for the boat and a car and insurance and so the extra income I might get would be a wash.

I'll float around until I find a community and opportunities that work for me and I'll settle down again. I'd rather do it physically rather than through applying on-line for a corporate job again.

With the dearth of available slips I may be like the old folk song, "Ballad of The MTA"...He's the man who never returned" and I'll never be able to get back to a shore side berth.

Knowing Jehovah Jirah, The Lord Provides, I accept this temporary experience, even relish it. The boat had stayed so long in it's slip the past several years.

So far, so good. Living on the edge has its perils. I'm having fun experiencing each locale in Southern California. One place can become boring so quickly.

I need to invest in some oil lamps to keep the boat warm while offshore and get a down comforter to sleep under. I'm still a tuff ol' guy and will be just fine under the worst conditions, as long as I keep my wits about me and focus daily on enjoying the experience.

Stay Warm.

Noel

Living On The Hook in LA
Now Playing: Palos Verdes Cove - Birthday
Lat N 33 52.86 Long W 118 25.73

I turned 52 this morning at 8:43 amthis morning. Foggy morning, light wind. Motorsailing from anchorage at Palos Verdes Cove at the south end of Los Angeles' Santa Monica Bay.

Spent the last three days anchored fore and aft in-line with the three foot swell just outside the surf zone.

At night the wind veers from the Southeast and by morning straight up my stern, down through the cliff canyon and straight up my stern. Every once in a while, usually in the evening when the day's wind generated swells finally reach me, I get a cross swell that sets me rolling violently. Then, I'm playing Catch the coffee cup before it hits the floor. By 9 pm things settle down and I can think about sleeping.

Going to sleep while hanging from an anchor or two out in a dark anchorage, especially on the first night that you drop the hook is a little unerving. To think you'll be out, fast asleep and a wind could come up, wrench an anchor loose and cast you and the boat ashore makes for fitful sleep.

The only saving grace is that anything, wind or waves that can cause danger while you are asleep makes noise or causes movement will eventually wake you up or roll you out of bed.

I had shifted the mainsail boom out over the water and attached. An anti-rolling device, a flopper-stopper. The wire topping lift that holds the boom up when the mainsail is down had parted at the looped attachment point. Luckily it didn't break onto the canvas dodger or my head. The boom was already pretty low to the lifeline so nothing was bent. I brought aboard the flopper stopper, tied off the boom to the backstay, secured the loose topping lift and went back to bed. I repaired it in ten minutes this morning with some odd parts I had. Good as new.

Foggy now as I'm headed to Marina Del Rey. Going to go dinner with my old, new friend Bruce. He's 83. I'm supposed to say he's 73. He sails every day of the year and plays racketball. He sailed out to the cove yesterday to visit me. I'd laid an anchor for him.

He tacked right towards me from about a quarter mile away. I got into the dinghy to show him where I'd buoyed his anchor. But, then he tacked away and head up around the point. He just didn't see me. I tried to hail passing boats to go turn him around to no avail.

A few hours later he came back down the point. This time a half mile out. I stopped a couple in a motor boat and told them the situation. Then, I changed my mind about getting them to steer him over to me. He usually ends his sails around two. If he visited with me, he would sailing back in the dark (and fog as it turned out). I let him go.

Later...at the dock:
Now, hopefully he can navigate his way by car and find me so I can go to my birthday dinner. If not, it's nice to be secured to a dock at the park, in spite of all the activity.
I never know if there's going to be a slip open for me. There was.

I'm all secured, back on AC, hot running wate and no anchoring worries. I can sleep soundly the next few nights. What more can you ask for on your birthday?


Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057

Living on the Hook in LA
Now Playing: Paradise Cove - Getting Around LA Without a Car
It's strange to wake up one morning at anchor on the island, with it's low noise level, very few cars and slow pace and find yourself the next morning on the 30th floor of the St. Regis Hotel in Century City working on a TV press junket with Billy Bob Thornton.

To get there, I unlock and straighten the handlebars of my electric bike that I keep on board the boat strapped to the mast for going to sea. I screw back on the left pedal, removed so I don't bang my shins on it going forward. I haul it up on deck and onto the dock, install the 9 lb. battery and scoot off under electric power that assists my pedalling up to 15 miles per hour for about 18 miles.

Work usually is up in Beverly Hills or Century within a ten mile radius of Marina Del Rey. If I'm tired or have back or knee problems, or I'm just plain lazy, there are buses I can take.

I throw the bike onto the bus' front rack. Often they are late or MIA. So, I just end up cranking like a mad man up through Culver City and through the nice neighboorhoods of Beverlywood and Beverly Hills.

I run every red light I can in Culver City. I received a $360. automated photo red light ticket there in my former car for being in the intersection for 1.2 seconds. It's such a racket. The city makes $400,00. a year off this system. By law, city employees are supposed to run this system. Instead! It is run by Austrailian company, Redflex who installs and oerates the system for free and revenue-shares with the city.

A class action lawsuit is in order for many California cities that operate these systems illegally. A radio host in San Diego was responsible for a win for about 400 ticketed red light offenders. The court ruled that the city was not following the law in their operation of the systems. City personnel did not operate the systems.

Even the ticket and court summons are issued by a RedFlex affiliate. The traffic officer's signature on the Certificate of Mailing required for being served a court summons is a photo copy. There's a case for perjury on the statement associated with the signature that says that the Traffic officer deposited them in the mail. The tickets are generated at a data center in Flagstaff, Arizona. Most likely the statement on the ticket by the Redflex person affirming his submission and deposit of the ticket in a specific mailbox in Culver City is perjurous as well.

That ticket was one of the reasons for me giving up on driving a few months ago. With payments, insurance and the high cost of gas, it just didn't seem worth the $600 a month to have a car. Plus, I didn't know where I could park it in LA without paying a hundred a month.

Now, I run the red lights at most of the stops when it's safe. The Redflex cams won't go off unless you are driving over 19 miles per hour.

I use the sidewalks early in the morning, moving to the street only for pedestrians. My only hazards are people making fast right hand turns into the crosswalk, drivers with cell phones to their ears, dogs on long leashes, cars backing out of driveways, darting out of alleyways. It's a real sport, a bit of BMX and with the poor state of the roads in LA, a bit of mountain biking. In the nicer neighborhoods, squirrel-dodging adds to the obstacle course.

I smell an international array of breakfasts cooking, meet many dogs being walked and run a guantlet of morning lawn sprinklers in my hour of biking up Beverwill, Bagley, and Dohny n eighborhoods.

I pull into some of the nicer hotels' parking structures and lock up. At the ritzy hotels like the St. Regis that don't allow acess to the parking area, I check the bike at valet parking along with the Lambouginis and Mercedes and they'll lock it up for me.

I charge the battery up in one of our shooting rooms while I'm working and then get to ride home free courtesy of the Four Seasons Beverly Hills or The Regeant Bevery Wilshire.

If I'm tired after work, I'll ride to a bus stop on Robertson Blvd. that's in front of a French Cafe and get a cup of coffee while waiting for the bus.

I ride home with the busboys and maids, most likely from the same hotels. I practice my Spanish listening for future days in South America.

The bus is moving very slowly through traffic. A blonde woman sitting on a seat reserved for the eldery and handicapped, her feet up on seat in front of her, looked out of place and very unhappy about having to ride the bus. It was obviously beneath her, but some emergency left her with this last mode of transport.

By her nice apparel, she Looked like she might have been involuntarily separated from her BMW or Camry. "Can't this thing go any faster", she complained haughtily and out loud to no one in particulalr.
I wanted to tell her to get out and walk or to get a cab. No one answered her. We all ignored her. Regular bus riders are well-practiced at ignoring wierdos on the bus.

Most people in LA would go through an identity crisis with the loss of their car. For me, it gives me an opportunity to answer my email on my Blackberry. Before I'm finished, I'm back at the boat.

Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057

Coverunner Radio - Ocean/Island Music
Listen: http://www.live365.com/stations/coverunner

Site: www.coverunner.com

Sent wirelessly from the sailboat, "Shearwater" off the Southern California coast.

Living On The Hook
Now Playing: Living On The Hook: Hen Rock Cove
I got out of the isthmus because of reports of strong NW winds that would have kept me bouncing around for two days.

My back was still killing me and the thought of pulling up two heavy anchor rodes of 80' of chain each were more than I wanted to deal with if things got out of hand and I had to leave in the midst of a windstorm.

So while the wind was calm, I got in the dinghy and I tried to pick up my first anchor, which was sitting under an anchored ketch near the cliffs. I was able to gather up the 250' of nylon rode ok but, when I got to the chain it was difficult to get the leverage on it with my bad back and no bow roller to ease the chain over the stern of the dinghy. I had to stick my arm in the water a couple of feet down and pull the anchor up and over the edge and then lean back on the thwart (seat) of the dinghy and use my weight and the dinghy as a fulcrum and lever to break the chain out of the sand, rocks and kelp to make any progress.

The old guy in the ketch enjoyed my lack of progress with his morning coffee only a few yards away. At least he offered no advice.

Dave is a young, blonde guy who was anchored upwind of me for the last few days in his Columbia 40. He's on his way to Puerto Vallarta.
He spent each day surfing around on his inflatable while standing up. While holding onto a bowline up front and controlling the engine with a throttle extension he'd fly as fast as he could through the water powered by a 15 horsepower outboard. He looked like a sea god being pulled on a chariot, like Aphrodite being pulled on the shell by the dolphins.

First, he'd dart to shore, then stop at any boat with people in the cockpit, chat for a few minutes and then speed off to a new location. When he first visited me his first announcement was, "I'm retired...I mean retarded". He is a bit hyperactive. I got a few such short visits over the next couple of day. Soon, his socializing scored him a rather plain looking woman companion who also rode around with him all day, although the boat ran much slower and he had to sit down.

He got up for some coffee and saw me struggling with the anchor, hopped in his chariot and sped over to help me. Even with his being twenty years my junior he had difficulty bring that anchor up even my second pair of arms. But, we got it up with bruised arms. He was out of smokes and refused to pay the high price at the local store, so I gave him a pack in thanks and thanked him for his help.

I got back on the boat and used a piece of line and the jib sheet winch, tied a sheet bend (a knot that grabs a straight piece of line) on the anchor line and cranked her in. When I got to the chain, I tied on a chain hook and cranked the chain up until I could budge it another inch. I threw the engine in forward, and broke the anchor out and dragged it to deeper water, then pulled the remainder up by hand with an aching back. I need a windless. I'm too old for this crap.

I motored seven miles down past Long Point and checked out the first anchorage, Button Shell Cove. The Marine Institute has a campground there with a few moorings and room for a few boats to anchor. It still had too much wind for my taste. I went around the next point to Hen Rock Cove. It was fairly protected from the west wind and was calm. I took a day of rest here and did nothing but read H.G. Wells'," The Time Machine" to give my back time to heal. I had to grab open windows or the dodger's railings to get up. Couldn't get up using my muscles.

It's a little scary to be in a fairly remote anchorage at night and know that if an emergency should arise, I'd be unable to do much about it. But, other boats anchored around me soon. Fishing boats, dive boats and a few other sailboats filled up the anchorage behind this big rock on the cove that just didn't look like a hen. Later I saw a much larger rock deeper into the cove that did indeed look like a hen lying on her nest.

This was a pleasant anchorage and has a good diving reef. Lot of people came by to snorkel it. There's a Red-tailed Hawk that has nest high up on the cliff in a rock spire. I watched her come and go all day as I read or slept in the cockpit under the sun awning.

There's no T-Mobile coverage here or even just around the bend from Two Harbors. I kept thinking I'd row the dinghy around the point and see if I had any messages. Glad I didn't, it would have been a waste of time. I was expected a call for an upcoming press junket and didn't want to miss it.

As it turned out the next day a producer was hunting me down for a last-minute shoot the next day.
However, I was feeling better and had my body twisted down in the bilge in the aft-cabin tightening the prop shaft-packing gland that was leaking too fast. The bilge pump was going on every twenty minutes. I was a whirlwind of activity, fixing lots of small, irritating things that I'd ignored for months.

By mid-afternoon an east wind was blowing strong, towards the rocks all day and built up some swell. So, I upped anchor and went back to Two Harbors, making lunch en route and checking on the dripping frequency of the packing gland. It's supposed to be ten drops of water per minute to serve as cooling/lubrication for the prop shaft. I counted seven. Close enough. It always loosens up until it drips a stream anyway.

When I reached Bird Rock (a guano covered islet, white in color. There used to be a picture of a guy at the store with snow skis and poles supposedly skiing the rock) outside Two Harbors, my Blackberry started beeping like crazy as all the messages poured in. I got the call for work but had no desire to make a six-hour crossing at night and without a reserved berth for the boat. I got the call for a weekend of press junkets later that night.

Had a clam night at anchor here. Got up early and got my laundry and shopping done and stopped to talk with a Canadian guy from Vancouver, B.C. on steel sailboat on his way to Mexico. May entertain and record an interview with them later.

I'll cruise back to the mainland tomorrow to work the weekend as well as the following weekend.
I'll have to come back and finish my tour of the island after that and then I'll move onto a secure mooring in Avalon and see what kind of dent I can make in the community both economically and socially.

My Canadian neighbors just left their mooring and are anchoring next to me. It's a bright yellow and green craft, very salty, flying the
Maple leaf on the wind vane.

Ciao for now,

Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057

Coverunner Radio - Ocean/Island Music
Listen: http://www.live365.com/stations/coverunner

Site: www.coverunner.com

Sent wirelessly from the sailboat, "Shearwater" off the Southern California coast.

Living On The Hook
Now Playing: Two Harbors. September 11, 2004
I'm anchored off the little island town that I was married in for the second time at the age of forty. I was my intended's fourth try at marriage.

She had moved aboard months before and took to boating life very well. Her first sail, sitting on the bow with both legs sticking out through the bow rail, clutching the forestay, screaming with joy every time the waves leaped up to splash her feet, oblivious to the slight danger of the 18 knot wind sail, told me she was the girl for me. After a year or so of such continued enthusiasm for our lifestyle I felt this even more.

We had moored the boat on the other side of this isthmus and rented a room at the historic Banning House, Room 7, one of the two bungalows on the hillside overlooking Cat Harbor. We could keep an eye the boat from there through the large window of the room. I had proposed to her on the boat before we took the room.

We planned a simple wedding months later in the courtyard of the Banning House. We got rooms for each of our mothers with an adjoining patio overlooking the harbor where they compared our childhoods with each other.

Their ride over on the Catalina Express boat was pretty magical, with a lightning storm, galloping dolphins and Flying Fish.

We sailed the boat over with our comedic budding actor, John who impersonated every sailing character from film and TV he could think of. With his dark blue captain's cap on and behind the wheel in a good beam breeze he was more than a little inspired to give his renditions of characters from Moby Dick, Popeye to Humphrey Bogart. John ultimately ended up as one of the hundreds of destitute people on the tanker screaming for water in the film, "Waterworld".

I had arranged for him and my best friend and best man, Rick (who the night before the wedding warned me to not marry this woman) to sleep in one of the camping tee-pees available for rent overlooking the beach. We thought it was a cute idea and both guys were game for a bit of open sky. On inspection we found the tents were crawling with earwigs. No problem for Rick who is an avid High Sierra camper. Little Johnny squeamish about sleeping with bugs wandered around town all night and ultimately that the door to the Harbor Reef Restaurant was unlocked and so he found a booth to sleep on.

My son and his girlfriend were attending and were sleeping on our boat. That was the extent of our wedding party.

Doug, a world cruiser who had left his boat in Panama and had flown back to LA to work for the Harbor Patrol at the Isthmus for the summer, married us the next day. We had followed his sailing adventures in one of the local sailing rags. From him moving his wife and two kids out of the house and onto a 31-foot sloop to their first year of cruising through Mexican we learned the joys and pitfalls of a couple living together on a small boat.

At this point, Captain Doug was on his own. The kids had gone off to school, and the wife had left the boat and him for a more conventional life ashore. Cruising is responsible for the break up for a lot of relationships that just don't meet the tests required of living in a confined space. It probably is also responsible for bringing together those of a like mind who are ready for adventure.

Doug married us with the authority of his pastorship in the Universal Life Church. I think you used to be able get the license through mail order for ten bucks. But, Doug had spiritual and wise things to say and we had our own vows to exchange.
Those vows were valid for twelve years. People change. Goals change. The past is always there for you to savor. The future is always unfolding.

A few days ago I pulled back into this harbor with a large school of dolphins passing under the boat. And in the middle of the night I awoke and saw flashes of lightning and counted, "one thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three". Then I hear the thunder rumble from somewhere on the east end of the island. "Three miles away".

I lay there in between intervals of flashing and thunder and thought about the above account of the wedding and the magic of the electrical storm at that time.

I get up in the dark with just the anchor light glowing from the backstay, unplug the antenna to the TV that's clamped onto the rigging and unplug the computers from the electrical system and fall back in bed. The thunder moves off into the distance. I fall back to sleep.


Noel Diotte
coverunner@tmo.blackberry.net
310 376-7057

The Only Thing Holding Me Down is Velcro
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Preparations

I've spent the last few weeks loading and unloading the boat with gear and personal belongings I think I'll need while on the hook. I closed out a substantial storage unit and placed a lot of audio visual gear on the 24' Del Rey sailboat. I even raced it with all of that gear and boy, did it tracked well in a blow! I sold it to a young guy for $500.00 and unloaded the boat onto the dock next to Shearwater. It took me three days to stow it all. I finally had to rent another storage unit for most of the AV gear. As Jimmy Buffet said, "I got too much stuff".

Just had a childhood flash of me at four years old in Santa Monica. I was in an alley-way behind our house holding a mostly empty suitcase. I told my mother I was running away to Mexico. She told me, "OK" and let me walk down a ways and then I soon turned back. Another time, while living in an apartment complex in a corner of Playa Del Rey called "The Jungle", we kids wandered south outside the limits of the neighborhood. Upon returning I claimed to my mother that "We went to Mexico". Just one trip in the back of my Father's produce truck to Mexico's border town, Tijuana made a big impression on me. At least I knew which way was south. I've been there many times since and will return again someday but much further south.

Incidently, that same stretch along The Jungle is where I'll be parking my car for free while I'm offshore. It's just a hop over Ballona Creek from Marina Del Rey to get to the car. Every other place has street-sweeping days where you have to move your car or get a ticket. You can spend $60.00 a month to securely park your car. There's no free parking in Los Angeles.

I sold enough gear to buy a great hard dinghy, a solid little nine-footer with built in flotation, a storage locker, two sets of bronze oarlocks, a riding bit in the bow, a built-in centerboard and a complete lateen sail rig, all for $250.00. It's registered as a Fisher-Price which happens to be the early brand-name of Boston Whaler. Think I'll name her PLAYSKOOL, with the letters placed all askew on the transom and then add in smaller letters, "Made by Fisher-Price". It's got the look of a miniature 11' or 13' Whaler. The centerboard trunk protrudes into the water for about four inches, so the boat tracks real well when rowing. I need to pry out the centerboard which is stuck in the well. For now, I'm glad it's stuck up in there. I've got a regular Marconi-type, two piece mast with a luff groove/halyard set-up for which I'll only need to find a small sail to be in business. The big triangular lateen rig is too cumbersome for efficient sailing. I like to sail back and forth to the dinghy docks in Catalina. There's so many rubber boats with expensive motors, it's nice to do something different, plus it's not noisy or polluting.

I acquired three 8HD gel batteries that are only a year old. There were used to power a Duffy Electric boat. The owner switched over to a new battery type and let these go. They list for about $395.00 new. I got all three for $150.00 total. They're about 148 lbs. each, but yield about 265 amp hours each when new. I can barely lift them. I installed one on the starter bank along with a 70 amp hour type 27 battery. It rides in a well that used to hold four smaller batteries. I put another on the house bank, stored under my studio desk on the starboard side. The third one is installed in the port-side cockpit locker in a space forward that is usually impossible to reach unless you empty the whole locker. I ran heavy cable back to the starter battery in order to be able to charge it. I'll disconnect it and leave it in reserve. I figure I've now got about 900 amps hours of DC juice to work with. The grumpy little 21 hps Universal diesel is quite happy to start now. What he doesn't know is that for now he is going to have to run an awful lot to put all that electricity back into those big batteries or at least until I can install a wind generator/solar panel combo.

Why so much power? Well, I do run a complete video editing bay in two computers, mixer, two monitors, printer, etc. I'm able to run it all without any ill effects off of one little 250 watt inverter. The only measurements of current draw I can make for now is in voltage. I can see a drop in a hundredth of point per ten minutes. An amp meter is in order. Possibly a small generator? We'll see how fast it drains in use once I start computing without the shore-power charger on.

I'll be without Internet access (accept for the Blackberry: email and limited browsing) for a while until I can get an 802.11b wi-fi card in one of my towers. I can't afford a laptop just yet for use at wi-fi hotspots in town. http://www.catalinas.net in Avalon on Catalina Island has created a super wi-fi hotspot in town. They have antennas aimed from the Green Pier and from the Casino across the water to give any boat with a vertical antenna wireless coverage. They are splitting up a T1 connection between five email kiosks in town that the tourists can use and whoever else is on the line. They say I can expect 300 kbps on the water. For $36.00 a month I can do live, wireless webcasts from the boat while I'm on a mooring in Avalon. The mooring rates drop in mid-September and make Avalon affordable. Most of the summer boaters have gone home, making more moorings available. I think I'll be spending a lot of time in Avalon this winter.

Velcro? Well, yes, a lot of the preparations for cruising require using the Velcro that has the peel-away adhesive on one side. So, I spent a day cutting small pieces of both the hook side and the nappy side and sticking them on the bottom of TVs, video decks, printer, accessory bowls, picture frames and the microwave. We have sailed in recent years, but we always stow things low in soft berths or dog them with books so they are wedged in their spot. At some point in the sail something always goes flying with a bang that we missed or didn't secure well enough. I bolted the VGA monitor's base down and strapped down the top. The computers and big battery are held in place by a teak strip screwed in securely at the foot. I'm ready for 6-8' seas and 15 degrees of heel.
Velcro is great in that it becomes even more secure as the little hooks work their way into the fuzzy side. It takes both arms to wrest a TV from a boxed, four-sided Velcro application. If only I could use Velcro for anchoring....????

Noel

Getting Ready To Move Offshore
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Goin' Cruisin'
After 15 years of living aboard Shearwater with wife, Diane and dog, Holli I am now about to be "Alone Again....Naturally" (Thanks, Gilbert). The plan had been for me to get a smaller boat (which I did....Frodo) and cruise south, starting with Baja. The wife, now my ex, wanted to stay here and work and live on the boat, but, instead decided to buy a big power boat to live on and hopefully invite her aging mother to live on as well. I give her points for her 12 years of living on Shearwater and for at least staying on the water. Also, big points to her for seeing and facing reality, taking care of herself and being a real friend. It really is the nicest gift you have ever given me, my Dear Girl. Sincerely. Thanks. So, now I push out old Shearwater into the Pacific with older sails, rigging and aged mechanical systems, to live "on the hook" along the coast and possibly find a home on Catalina Island. I look forward to clean water and many ocean passages & adventures up & down the Southern California coast. The Journey begins Monday, August 2, 2004.