Tag Archives | trawler

First Overnighter of the Season

  We are on day three of our travels. Our leisurely morning is spent fixing things, Glen sweating over a drawer that will not work on the sliders anymore and me trying to get our computer to talk to all of our navigation equipment. We had some wo…

Two Ships Head Out

  The beginning of our dual trip (Oso Blanco and Mystery Ship) out of Mooloolaba began with a “bash”. We were lead boat out of the harbour entrance and where there were markers buoys on the sand bar when we arrived, now there was nothing, but the…

On toward the Chesapeake Bay Region

If we have not stated it before, there is a lot of secluded and undeveloped parts of this country.  As we finished our trip in North Carolina the last but certainly not the least was the Dismal Swamp Canal.  This river is part river and part …

Moving Northward

The weather over the Easter weekend was absolutely perfect. Calm winds and flat water. We should have been making northward tracks, and we thought we were, stopping in Manly for two nights then heading up to Mooloolaba for our next stop. Except that t…

Moving!

I have recently moved my blog over to yachtblogs.com, where there is a plethora of boat-y blogginess going on. www.lifeonkj.com will still work. Come join me, Magic Brock and the continuing adventures of KJ there!

What de…?

Was just wondering how the ‘panoramic’ button on me phone worked. If you can bend your head around it, you’ll see it’s the nearly completed engine room (upper) head lining.

Splash!! Heading North Take Two!

April 14,2012 – Finally all of our parts (prop,shaft,rudder,rudder bracket) came back this past week and the mechanics went to work promptly to reinstall all. The shaft turned out to be fine but the prop needed to be rebalanced,. The rudder, on the other hand, received the most damage. The rudder post was cracked and the bracket that connects it to the hydraulic system was cracked. The specialty shop had to fabricate a new post and bracket. All of that is what came back.

New Cutlass Bearing
 Installing the Shaft
Installing the Propeller
Installed the rudder with it’s new Rudder Post
Coating the Rudder and Propeller with Prop Speed

Since we were up in the air anyway we decided to have the bottom of the boat repainted since it had not been done in almost 2 years. When it came out of the water it was in perfect shape with only a few barnacles on the bottom where we had run aground and scraped the paint off.

Summer Wind Heading Back to the Water

We were launched on Friday April 13th! Hey we’re not superstitious..  With the service manager and mechanic on board we took the Summer Wind out for a sea trial. A few adjustments were made while underway and then back to the dock.
Now all we had to do was close up our home, return the rental car and put a lot of stuff away.
About 3:00 o’clock we left the marina and started heading north. Watching the waters very closely so not to ruin the expensive job just finished. Mother nature was not cooperating and we were not very far from the marina when the sky became black and the wind started to howl. we did get the fringe rains from a huge storm that we found out later on the news produced “water spouts” farther south. We dropped the hook in the north part of Lake Worth and had a good nights rest even though the winds were blowing all night.

It is now Saturday and we made it to a beautiful little anchorage in Ft. Pierce,FL. The winds have been 15 to 20 knots all day from behind us and I (Dick) had to hand steer all day because the auto pilot finds it difficult to keep us straight in wave conditions from behind.
Every thing is running beautifully and we are going to try and make some long days. We are missing the MTOA rendezvous but may get there the last day. That one we will be playing by ear.
Keep watching for the latest news of the Summer Wind and her crew.

"…Three Days on a Boat…

…looking for some peace and quiet, maybe keep her dreams afloat.” – Jimmy Buffett, FinsWELL…in reality, we sailed back from Antigua, and it took us more than three days, as you know. But this very last passage, well, it was indeed three days! With …

Post-Loop, What Next?

Upon arrival back in Stuart, FL, after eight and a half months on the go, we were bombarded with a whole host of varying emotions. First of all we were excited about having completed the Great Loop Cruise, and we wanted to celebrate that enormous acco…

Chaos and Mayhem.

I’m sorry that I haven’t posted for a while, the first thing out of the window when life gets turned upside down is always de blog. And boy, has our life ever been turned upside down. Quite apart from wedding preparations and work-work-work, three othe…