I can saw a woman in two,
But you won’t want to look in the box when I’m through.

—Warren Zevon; For My Next Trick, I’ll Need a Volunteer
(added to HJ Sailing playlist)

A couple weeks ago, my friend Sarah forwarded me a text:

Sarah, tell your sailing friend that I have been listening to his HJ Sailing playlist. I really liked it and loved the old sailor songs. I forwarded it to Charlie and his friends—who are sailing right now on Lake Michigan! So other sailor are listening to it too. Thank you.

I have no idea who wrote the original text or, for that matter, who Charlie is—but it made my day…made my week. As I prepare for more voyaging, I’ve been thinking a lot about how important human connection is and how wonderful it is to think of others—other sailors—enjoying this playlist out in the unsalted Lake Michigan.

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In a couple posts, I’ve peripherally mentioned that I’m building a proper dinghy for Hazel. That work is progressing and even before her hull started to take shape I named her “Lil’ Dinghy”—kind of like a young couple choosing baby names before they’re pregnant.

When I say “proper”, I mean a hard-dinghy (not an inflatable). Inflatable dinghies work fine with noisy outboards on the back but they row terribly. Well-designed hard dinghies row well but they are cumbersome to store on the deck of a small boat like Hazel.

Therefore, Lil’ Dinghy is going to be a nesting dinghy. “Nesting” being that the dinghy comes apart and one half nests inside of the other half (like a Russian doll). Fingers crossed it only comes apart when I want it to.

To make sure that the two halves of Lil’ Dinghy would fit together well and her lines would be fair, I built her in one piece and then cut her in two. While it took some guts for me to take a wood saw to her, I’m sure she had a lot more trepidation than I did, and she wouldn’t have volunteered for it. Kind of like having a surgery when you are feeling well versus surgery when you are sick and in pain. Here’s a photo journey of the event:

So now we’re ready for her to go under the knife (in this case, under the saw). The secret to cutting her in two is the bulkhead. The bulkhead is actually a sandwich with a bow half and a stern half. Between the two is a cardboard spacer. In boat-building parlance it’s a “sacrificial” spacer since it sacrifices itself to the greater good. Beefy bolts (carriage bolts to be exact) secure the layers of the sandwich—like those frilly toothpicks in a club sandwich. They also ensure the halves align when putting the halves back together again.

Drumroll please!…

Now, we’re on to sanding, painting and varnishing.

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All this talk of Warren Zevon and sandwiches got me thinking back to one of his last public appearances. It was October 2002 on the David Letterman Show and he was dying of lung cancer.

From the beginning of his illness, he was very public about its prognosis. David asked him if his condition had taught him anything about life and death. Warren replied, “How much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”

I’m looking forward to lots of sandwiches on Lil’ Dinghy.

Fair winds and following seas…

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PS: For Charlie and his crew on Lake Michigan, I added a couple versions of “Into the Mystic” to the playlist, one of the greatest old sailing songs there ever was.

Over the weekend I got an email from my dear friend, Jon, in Northern California. It began:

Hey Dan – after you paused your blog in June and it left me wondering if maybe that was a wrap for this epoch, I just discovered that I had quite a bit of your blog to catch up on, cool!

My first thought was, Holy shit, have I not made a blog post since June? I checked back to my records and was glad to see that my dear friend was totally wrong, I’d made 2 posts in June, 2 in July, 2 in August, but only 1 in September.

Still…he has a point. From a blog posts per month perspective it would appear that my writing has slowed down. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve actually really buckled down on my book writing and have been spending 2-3 hours per day on it over the past month or so. As I said in my previous post in September: it’s a marathon and not a sprint.

With all that being said, Jon’s email was a wonderful wake-up call to me. A call to pop my head up from the slog of the marathon, and take today off from book writing and just focus on a sprint, a blog post.

Thanks Jon.

Compared to book writing, it’s fun to just write (type) as fast as I can think, and not worry about pacing myself or how what I’m writing links and fits into some bigger story.

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What comes to mind is a quick travelogue from our time at Waterlemon Cay and Leinster Bay, and my visit to the Annaberg Plantation ruins on the island of St. John, USVI. This was back in early-March of this year, my how things can change in seven months.

It was an absolutely beautiful spot as the picture below will attest. This photo was taken from the ruins of the plantation owner’s house and we are looking to the west. Given the trade winds blow consistently from the east, Leinster Bay is well protected by the weather. In the photo below, Waterlemon Cay is the small piece of land to the right surrounded by the shallow turquoise water. Hazel James is the small boat to the left on a mooring ball. Above Hazel James is a red arrow pointing to the manufacturing complex and slave’s quarters of the plantation. In its heyday, many of the hillsides would have been cleared, terraced and planted with sugarcane.

Yes, it is “Waterlemon” and not “Watermelon”. I’d heard from some locals that it was originally called Watermelon Cay but then some cartographer messed-up and the name stuck. “Cay” is another spelling of the word “Key” (like the Florida Keys), and both are pronounced the same. A cay or key being a small, low island consisting mostly of sand or coral and situated on top of a coral reef. The English word cay comes from the Spanish word cayo and this from the Taíno word cayo meaning “small island”.

The Taíno (pronounced TIE-know) were an indigenous people of the Caribbean and the first New World people to be encountered by Christopher Columbus’s during his 1492 voyage. At the time, they were the principal inhabitants of Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and the northern Lesser Antilles (including the Virgin Islands).

Speaking of history, the Annaberg Plantation ruins surround Leinster Bay and are a fascinating reminder of how much of the economy and history of the North American content were built on people enslaving other people.

The plantation was named for the owner’s daughter Anna and literally means “Anna’s Hill”. While it’s main output was sugar, molasses and rum were also produced (other great information here if you are interested).

If the wind was blowing sufficiently, the windmill powered rollers that would crush the sugarcane. The juice was collected and then boiled down to make molasses or sugar (some of the molasses was fermented and distilled to make rum). If the wind wasn’t blowing, horses would be hitched to a long lever arm and plod in a circle to power a stone roller/crusher in the center of the circle.

What was most impressive to me (impressive in a terrible way), was the difference between how the slave’s quarters and the plantation owner’s house had aged.

As in the continental US, enslaved people generally built their own quarters and often used “waddle and daub” construction for walls with thatched palm leaves for roofs. The waddle was comprised of sticks and small branches packed closely together. The sicks were then sealed with mud (the daub).

You’ll notice above that there are very few remains on the site of the slaves quarters. Compare that with the picture below of the remains of the plantation owner’s house on the adjacent hill.

It was fascinating to think of the “Cay” in Waterlemon Cay coming from the Taino people, and then the subsequent history built on their lands fueled by an enslavement economy. It’s even more poingent as I write about it today, in the fall of 2020, some seven months after my visit there. At the time of my visit both the pandemic and racial justice protests were simmering and would soon boil over.

As a species, we’ve come a long way and, in our voyage, created a lot of beauty while causing a lot of suffering for others and for the planet. It’s clear that we all have an even longer way to go.

Recounting all of this reminded me of student-painted murals outside a schoolyard that I would see later on my voyage.

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I’ll leave you with two other photos from the Annaberg Plantation owner’s house.

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Thanks as always for reading and following. Writing this travelogue makes me want to get back to my work on Hazel James and Lil’ Dinghy to prepare us for more voyaging as soon as Hurricane season is over!

Fair winds and following seas.

In a twisted way, it feels good to be through the first year without Colleen. Not that I’m happy about it, but it feels good to have proven to myself that I can do it.

If anything, it feels increasingly real—that she’s not coming back.

This reality was punctuated by an email from Colleen’s parents with a picture of her just-installed headstone. Between the frozen ground of the Buffalo winter and the pandemic, it took some time to get it set. I looked at that picture for a long time and thought about all that had happened in the last year. There were the funeral services and the seemingly endless details of an out-of-time and out-of-hospital death—all happening at a time in my life when I least wanted to be bothered with little things. There was the work that my sister, brother and I did to try to get my dad out of skilled nursing and into assisted living. We were successful, but only for 10 days. At least now he seems happy back in skilled nursing. With his cognitive decline, it’s hard to say if he’d even remember his brief stay in assisted living. That in-itself is a silver lining. There were the end of year holidays last year with Thanksgiving falling on Colleen’s birthday. There was stepping off of my dock and sailing for 2,500 miles and 120 days. Finally, and to the present, there’s the construction of a new life which inevitably involves deconstructing an old life and discarding what I don’t need.

There is a parallel between my feelings today and my feelings back in January of this year, shortly before embarking; I’m not sure how any of it will turn out. Maybe that’s the message though: if I were to stay around home and do what I’ve always done, nobody really knows how that would turn out either.

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When Colleen died last August, we were in the midst of a major house renovation. The entire central core of our house (living room, kitchen, den) was reconfigured. The only parts of the interior of the house not touched were the bedrooms and bathrooms. Prior to the renovation, Colleen had put a vinyl peel-off sicker on our old refrigerator. The sticker simply said, “Never Alone”. While I’m not sure where Colleen got it, I’m sure her seeking it out and giving it a place of prominence in our kitchen was inspired by her last AA sponsor. Previously, Colleen had several sponsors that didn’t click with her. One was actually struggling with active relapses herself while trying to help Colleen (that made for some interesting times). However, Colleen’s last sponsor—Elizabeth—was integral to Colleen’s success of 12-months of sobriety prior to her death. I don’t know what we ever would have done if Elizabeth hadn’t entered Colleen’s life. I hope she reads this and smiles, thinking about all the people she has helped. Elizabeth sponsors many women and also hosts a private weekly meeting for all her sponsees.

Colleen once told me the story of meeting Elizabeth. They had just attended the same AA meeting and Colleen was going through an especially rough patch. In the meeting and in the sharing of stories within the meeting, Elizabeth had noticed Colleen’s evident distress. After, Colleen was sitting on the curb outside the meeting hall trying to compose herself before continuing on with her day. Elizabeth sat down next to her and looked out at the palm trees and sun for a couple minutes before saying or doing anything. She then reached in her purse and pulled out a single, unsharpened No. 2 pencil that she kept there for just such occasions. She showed it to Colleen and said, “Could you break this?” Colleen, a little miffed at having her solitude broken, looked quizzically at this woman she had never met and replied flatly, “Of course I could.” Nonplussed, Colleen’s sponsor-to-be put the pencil back in her purse and sat for a moment. She then reached back in her purse and pulled out a whole handful of pencils—all No. 2, all unsharpened. She countered, “Well then, could you break all these pencils at once?”

Elizabeth then introduced herself to Colleen and went on to say that the point is that any of us can be broken individually. Our strength, our collective strength, lies in staying together and being a cohesive whole.

I’m reminded of this story because when our old kitchen was demolished, Colleen moved the “Never Alone” sticker from the refrigerator to our master bathroom mirror. Part of my deconstruction involves selling our house and to facilitate that I’m having some additional home renovation work done. This will include replacing the bathroom mirror. Prior to the bathroom mirror going, I plan to move the “Never Alone” sticker to a place or prominence on Hazel James.

While that thought comforts me, it also pains me that, despite all of her and our best efforts, Colleen died alone—in the front seat of our car, in our driveway, of an undetermined cause.

After my blog post on August 21st, the anniversary of Colleen’s death, My friend Mike (I have a couple good friends named Mike) dropped me a note. In it he said while being at Colleen’s funeral service a year ago and listening to the remembrances, he thought of the Jackson Browne song “For a Dancer”. While I like Jackson Browne, I had never heard this song. When I listened to it, it floored me (I added the live version to both my HJ Sailing playlist and the My Sister Colleen playlist). While all the lyrics are poignant, the line, “In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone”, brings me to tears, even as I write this.

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As part of my deconstruction, I gave my 1985 Jeep CJ-7 to my daughter and her fiancée in California. As the auto transporter drove off with it I had such mixed emotions. Feelings of loss combined with the joy of a simplifying life; also the flood of good times we all had in the Jeep. It’s nice to know that it will stay in the family.

That was a month ago and now I really don’t miss it. I’m sure on my deathbed (if it is a bed), I will smile at the memories of tooling around town, no top, enjoying the sun and the breeze.

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The work on Hazel is coming along well. Her solar arch has been fabricated and is installed. I got her bow rail re-bedded on the deck and installed a new anchor that will give us increased holding and security when it’s blowing and we’re at anchor. We stripped, cleaned and oiled all of her teak trim. I pulled out her old, non-working refrigeration system and had a new system professionally installed. I recently heard from the sailmaker that her new mainsail is ready to be trial fitted to the boat and I’m having a new asymmetrical spinnaker made as well that will better fit her dimensions and give us improved downwind performance.

At the moment, I have 4 major projects remaining in her 2020 refit:

1) Electrical – I’m putting in new battery banks and charging systems. The good news is that I’m re-learning more about Ohm’s law than I ever thought I would.

2) Steering – I’ll be installing in a new steering system to replace her 30 year old system. The company that manufactured her original system is no longer in business and spare and replacement parts are near-impossible to find.

3) Haul Out – In the fall, I need to haul her out of the water and do some routine below-the-waterline maintenance and also install a seacock. A seacock is a heavy-duty valve below the waterline and through the hull to allow water to enter or exit. This seacock will intake seawater to feed the watermaker.

4) (This is the fun one) Building “Lil’ Dinghy” – I’m building a proper dinghy for Hazel that can be rowed and sailed. It will have an overall length under 8 feet and will be “nesting”. That is, the bow section will nest in the stern section. That will allow it to be stored on Hazel’s coachroof, just aft of the mast (behind the mast). If you compare Hazel to an RV, her dinghy is analogous to the small car often towed behind the RV. Most modern dinghies are soulless inflatables with noisy outboard engines. While some ascribe to the notion that, “Life is too short to drink cheap wine”, I believe that “Life is too short for homely boats”. Hazel’s dinghy, which I’ve pre-named “Lil’ Dinghy” will be a thing of beauty.

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In addition to my deconstruction and reconstruction work, I’m also in the midst of writing a book and am so grateful to all of you for this. A year ago I never would have thought it possible. I so appreciate your supportive comments when reading my shorter pieces here on the blog and suggesting that a longer-format story could emerge.

I’m learning that the aphorism, “It’s a marathon and not a sprint”, is so-true for writing a book. While these HJ Sailing blog entries are sprints—I tend to draft them in one sitting, set them aside to marinate for a day and return to edit and publish—the book requires a whole other level of weaving and organization. I have an outline with 21 chapters and just this morning finished my draft of chapter 8. I’m getting there and trying to spend a couple hours each and every day on it.

Thanks again for your encouragement to get the effort started. The process itself is painful but healthy: recounting details from the past and linking them to how I’m feeling today. It’s cathartic to tell a story and see the words grow on the screen, etched in some virtual stone in the cloud—or maybe in the clouds.

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Fair winds and following seas.

Well…here I am, or—better said—here we are, on this morning of the first anniversary of Colleen’s death. We’ve made it this far which is, in itself, an accomplishment.

When I say “we”, I could be referring to my three dogs who almost never let me sit on my screened-in lanai alone (it’s where I do most of my writing when I’m home). They always want to be out here with me and this particular morning is no exception. I could also be referring to all of you, who have provided such wonderful support, love and listening ears, and shared your own experiences and perspectives. That is something for which I am eternally grateful and has been one of the best parts of these past 365 days—this most-recent trip of the earth around the sun.

Along those lines and while I am thinking of it: if you want to reach out to me via text, phone call or email on this special day, I would appreciate it so much. However, don’t be put-off or concerned when I don’t pick-up or reply. I’m planning to spend the day quietly and pretty much by myself (which means by myself and with the dogs). I will get back to you at some point, just don’t be concerned about “how I’m doing” if you don’t get a response for a couple days or a week.

Another thing you could do if you feel so moved, is to go to Colleen’s Forever Missed site and leave a tribute for her and what she means to you. My friend Mike and I launched that site the weekend after she died. At that point who knew, in less than a year, the importance that virtual grieving would have in all of our lives. Also, if you have some quiet listening time this weekend, you can check out the playlist My Sister Colleen, that Colleen’s brother Tim started; while you’re listening, feel free to add a song for Colleen.

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In late-2014 after my sister Amy had died of cancer, I was talking to a friend Shannon whose father had recently died. Together we agreed that one of the most difficult things about reentering “normal” day-to-day life after a significant loss, is realizing that life has the audacity to go on. Your whole world has been put in a blender, filled to the brim with feelings, then turned on high without the top. After a week or so—with your insides raw—you tentatively start to renter life. What’s most shocking is walking down the street and seeing people going about their daily lives. You simultaneously experience the open-wound of your loss, with the realization of how insignificant any of our 50 or 100 years on this earth are when compared to the 200,000 years of human history, the 3,800,000,000 (3.8 billion) years that life has been on earth, or the 4,500,000,000 (4.5 billion) times the earth has spun around the sun. Though it all, you realize that somehow you’ll make it. It’s a twist on Dr. Ian Malcolm’s line from Jurassic Park (played by Jeff Goldbloom):

Dr. Ian Malcolm: If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.

Henry Wu: You’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed?

Dr. Ian Malcolm: No. I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.

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Several weeks ago, I started seeing my therapist again and that has been a great help to me. I originally sought her out in 2017 when Colleen was in-residence at her third treatment center. While I didn’t want to not be hopeful and I wanted to be that cheerleader that Colleen so needed, I also needed to protect myself. I was torn that if Colleen were to return home after treatment and soon relapse—I just wasn’t sure if I could take it again. Also for Colleen’s sake, if you think of addiction like a cancer (while it never goes away, with hard work and a little luck it can be coerced into remission), perhaps I was her carcinogen. The catalyst that bear-baited her addiction out of the shadows. During that initial course of therapy, I saw my therapist weekly for several months.

A few days after Colleen died, I texted my therapist and she got right back to me. During that course of therapy, I saw her 6-8 times and she helped me work through the initial stages of grief and loss in my head.

In early-August of this year, as I felt myself entering the dark tunnel of Colleen’s and my wedding anniversary and Colleen’s death anniversary, I texted my therapist yet again and—yet again—she got right back to me. We’ve done several video visits and I can’t tell you how comforting it is to have a therapist who knows your history and can help get to the heart of the matter quickly. By this point in our relationship, she (my therapist) knows me and my hopes and dreams well. During my most recent visit a couple days ago, we were talking about my sailing voyage this past year and she said, “You know Dan, someone who didn’t know you well and was looking at your life from the outside could think that your voyage was merely a reaction to Colleen’s death.” A reflex, like when your doctor hits that spot below your kneecap with the little hammer. My therapist added, “In reality, you were doing something that you had dreamed about for a long time.” I thought about it a bit and replied, “While that’s a helpful attempt to reframe my situation, I don’t agree 100%. I don’t think it’s an either/or answer. I think it’s an ‘and’ answer.” Yes, I had dreamed of a sailing voyage for a long time but couldn’t clearly see the logistics to embark. However, the way I did it, with so much solitude and reflection, and scattering her ashes at sunset several hundred miles from any land in the North Atlantic ocean, was clearly a reaction to the loss of Colleen and an honoring of her life and all she meant to me.

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After all this heaviness, I’ll leave you with some levity on the lanai. A couple weeks ago, I got myself a GoPro action camera. I’m excited to get some better real-time pictures and videos of HJ sailing, and also underwater flora and fauna. This is my first video with it and I thought you’d enjoy, just messing around. My dog Jengo (a Rhodesian Ridgeback) can’t help singing along to a melancholy tune.

Thanks again for all your support. I am forever grateful. Fair winds and following seas.

I’ve been feeling a bit down and out-of-sorts lately. While Hazel’s refit is proceeding well, emotionally I’m in a staring contest with the month of August and at the moment it’s unclear who’s going to win.

Regarding the refit, we’re in that classic middle-stage with a million things started but very few totally completed. In addition, given I’m having some of the work done professionally and many of the parts needed are special order, it’s important to get things moving in parallel to allow for ordering lead time and to get on professionals’ calendars. With all this being said, I’m sure I’m being overly hard on myself. If I step back, we’ve gotten a lot done and the progress is stunning. However, human nature—at least my human nature—defaults to what’s not done. I also find myself working on her obsessively and in really thinking about it (the way Winnie the Pooh would scrunch his eyes, scratch his forehead and say, “Think, Think, Think…”), I’ve been using the work on her as an escape mechanism to focus on something and thus not get too caught up in the enormity of the times.

It does feel good to “break the seal” and get into August and start the staring contest. Bottom-line, I have been dreading August. August 11th would have been Colleen’s and my 30th wedding anniversary. Ten days later, August 21st, is the first anniversary of her death. September 1st will be my 56th birthday. On top of all that, my son and his girlfriend moved out of our house in late-July and I’m readying the house for sale later this year.

I was talking to a good friend about how I’ve been feeling and she said, “What you’re going through is totally understandable. You’re going through the last of the firsts.” Hearing my condition, phrased poetically, was so helpful to me.

Over the past month I’ve gotten serious about writing my first book. I’ve got a working title and chapter outline. As a way to reorient myself to details I might have otherwise forgotten, I have been reading all my journals chronologically since I started journaling in-earnest mid-2016. A couple days ago I got to a year ago and read my accounts of the events surrounding Colleen’s death on Wednesday, August 21st, 2019. Speaking of firsts—and dreading the last of the firsts—it’s comforting to read my entries on the first Wednesday after Colleen died and on September 21st, one-month after she died. If I somehow figured out how to get through those days, I surely can get through August and September 2020.

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Speaking of friends and the wisdom of friends, my July 1st post was titled “Summer 2020 Refit – Part 1 of ???”. My brother-in-law (my late-sister Amy’s husband) replied, “Dan, this (blog post) makes me contemplate how at times we have to refit our lives so we can continue to sail.” He went through so much with my sister Amy’s death from cancer. His observation was brilliant and, I dare say in retrospect, obvious; however, I never saw the connection until he said it. Maybe this summer is as much of a refit for me as it is for Hazel.

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Speaking of the refit. Some items of note are:

Her water-maker has been installed! The water-maker works via reverse osmosis. Sounds complicated but not really when you break it down. Imagine two fluids separated by a semi-permeable membrane that allows the fluid to pass but not the dissolved solids in the fluids. Left to their own devices, the two fluids will attempt to reach a state of equilibrium (i.e., fluid will pass through the membrane from the lower concentrated solution to the higher concentrated solution in an attempt to bring the two solutions to the same level of concentration of dissolved solids). This is osmosis. As an example, think about the water and dissolved solids in your cells and your bloodstream. Imagine working in the hot sun all day, not drinking much and eating salty popcorn before bed. You wake up the next morning dehydrated and feeling like crap. It’s because you didn’t have a lot of water in your blood but you had a lot of salt floating around. Your cell walls are semi-permeable membranes and, via osmosis, water migrated from your cells in attempt to find an equilibrium…bottom-line, you woke up dehydrated.

The operative phrase above is left to their own devices osmosis will happen. However, if we take two solutions and a semi-permeable membrane and apply enough pressure to the higher concentrated side, we can drive the fluid through the membrane and end up with pure fluid on the lower concentration side. So—back to the water-maker—if we think about seawater at 35,000 parts per million of salt (3.5% salinity) and and our goal of producing drinkable water at less than 1,000 parts per million of salt, if we have the pressure and the membrane, we can do it. This is the essence of the reverse osmosis water-maker.

The water-maker unit is installed below HJ’s galley (kitchen)—see photos below. While it’s installed, I haven’t commissioned it yet (started using it). I still need to install a sea cock (a valve through the hull to take-in seawater). I’ll do that work when I haul her out this fall. When running, the water-maker will produce about 5 gallons per hour of very pure water from seawater and solar energy. When running, it will draw about 10 amps of electricity from Hazel’s battery banks. The good news is that I can run it during the day when the sun is shining and Hazel’s solar panels are pumping.

Hazel carries about 70 gallons of water in her tanks and when cruising by myself, I could just get by on 2 gallons a day all-in. However, that was very minimalist living (some would say crazy). It will be nice to not be constrained by water and get a quick daily shower.

While the water-maker might not look like much in photos. It’s an amazingly compact and energy efficient piece of kit. As of several years ago, water-makers were never found on boats Hazel’s size, they were only on large yachts.

I’ve also been doing a bit of epoxy work. Epoxy in South Florida in the summer is a bit of a challenge. Two-part epoxy consists of resin and hardener and the rate of cure (i.e., how long you can work with it after its mixed and before it hardens) is heavily dependent on temperature. The hotter the mix is, the faster it cures. This is exacerbated by the exothermic (heat producing) nature of the chemical reaction of epoxies. An epoxy resin and hardener that’s rated for 4 hours of working time at 70 degrees fahrenheit, could easily cure in under an hour at 95 degrees. Adding to that, the exothermic nature of the reaction could easily take the mix well above 100 degrees, making it unusable in a matter of minutes (and melting your epoxy cup and producing smoke to boot). To keep going in the summer I’m using ice baths to keep my epoxy cool so I can work with it on the boat before it sets-up and cures.

I’ve also pulled off Hazel’s bow rail and pulpit to replace the bolts that hold it on (some of which were dangerously degraded—they probably had never been touched in her 30 years). This was an important step given that, when sailing, all the forces of her head stay (the cable leading from the very top of the mast to the very front of the boat) are concentrated on her pulpit. In addition, when at anchor, much of the forces from the anchor chain are also absorbed by her pulpit.

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As you can see, lots going on outside my head and inside my head. Let’s cross our fingers that the second-half of the North Atlantic hurricane season is not as active as the meteorologists are predicting. Looking to what would have been Colleen’s and my 30th wedding anniversary next week and ten days later the first anniversary of her death, I feel like we’re mariners on the open ocean with tropical storm “The Last of the Firsts” bearing down on us. While we’ve done all we can to prepare and we don’t think it will be too bad—not some cat-5 hurricane—it will be a bit rough and bumpy. As I look to the horizon and our approaching storm, I so appreciate everyone’s support, love, texts and calls, and good thoughts.

Fair winds and following seas.

Lines of latitude are also referred to as “parallels” and the refit of Hazel James parallels my grief for Colleen. They are both so big, so enmeshed in the fabric of life, enmeshed in the weave of the fiberglass of Hazel’s hull—it seems like they will never end, they will never be “done”.

Perhaps that’s the message of it all, the lesson to be learned. They never will end, never will be done.

I’ll never forget Colleen and all that we shared. In parallel—as any sailor knows—there’s always work to be done on a boat. However, the intensity and frequency of the memories mitigate and reduce over time. Likewise, I’m confident that as I complete more projects on Hazel and get her put back together, although there always be something that needs to be done on her, the projects won’t be as big or as frequent.

Maybe the second message is: that’s how it was intended to be, all is as it should be. As I’ve said, I love to work with my hands. I never would want a new and shiny boat without anything to fix. Not only would I not want it, but the mere concept is a myth. The rigors of the sea dictate that constant attention is needed to keep a vessel seaworthy. In parallel, I would never want the grief, or the memories, of Colleen to be totally gone.

Building on these themes, the concept of maintaining the boat is as important as maintaining one’s mental and emotional health—which is even more trying during the perfect-storm of a global pandemic and economic recession, protests for racial justice, and a U.S. presidential election. Meditation, journaling, exercise—whatever you choose—stick to it. When on passage, I would make a point to walk the deck daily and examine every line, every fitting and do my best to identify problems and remediate them before they happened. On my passage home from the Virgin Islands I got lucky when the spinnaker halyard parted during mild weather during the middle of the day. Odds-are that should have happened during a squall during the middle of the night. I’ll take luck any day of the week and will learn from it.

Back to the refit and the grief: yes, it’s important to “have a list” and to see the enormity of the collective work as it helps identify the interdependencies between projects (e.g, replacing my refrigeration unit and installing a water-maker will require added solar capacity, etc.). It’s also important to pop my head up from time-to-time and look at the list and adjust the overall plan. However, it’s more important on a daily basis to keep my head down and work through projects one-by-one and remain confident that progress will be made on Hazel—that my grief will process and allow me to go on living.

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In the midst of the Sisyphean refit, it’s fun and healthy to think back to the adventures I had earlier in the year. It’s a reminder that what I’m doing now is preparing us for future, and further-reaching voyages.

It’s doubly-fun to reminisce when I’m in Florida in the summer of 2020, socially distanced and missing travel and interaction. Florida is accurately described as an epicenter of the pandemic so I’m doing my best to hole-up and stay healthy. Hazel enjoys the attention.

With all that in mind, here’s a photo-journey of The Baths. The Baths are a stunning granite boulder-field on a Virgin Gorda beach in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). I entered the BVI from the USVI at Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda. The Baths are couple miles south of Spanish Town so I decided to make a day of it on March 12th and walk there rather than take a taxi.

On the way, I stopped at Mama Africa’s Roti Stand. In addition to delicious food and homemade drinks, “Mama Africa” crochets purses and belts, and I bought a couple for special friends back home. In getting to know her, she said, “‘Mama Africa’ is not my real name but after I put the sticker on my truck, it’s all anyone calls me.”

A Caribbean or West Indies roti is a wonderful street-food mash-up of the Indian whole-wheat roti flatbread wrapped around a curried Caribbean stew. Rotis were brought to the Caribbean by indentured laborers from South Asia and are especially popular in southern Caribbean islands with large Indo-Caribbean populations. I discovered that Mama Africa is originally from Grenada in the southern Caribbean so she knows her roti well.

After the roti stop, I walked over some higher ground to get to The Baths and observed how seriously the threat of tsunamis is taken. Let’s not forget that the Caribbean was created from volcanic and tectonic activity.

I then walked by a school with wonderful murals painted by the students on the walls surrounding the schoolyard and athletic fields. Looking back on these pictures now and thinking about the pandemic and racial justice protests, I’m reminded how much we all have changed for the not-so-good and good over the past several months.

I finally made it to The Baths. I was fortunate that the brewing pandemic had cleared-out the cruise ship crowds there so I had the place virtually to myself.

Fair winds and following seas!

Well…right now, I’m kind of focused—perhaps overly-focused—on the question marks in the blog-post title. The overall refit of Hazel James reminds me of my consulting days when a client would call and request an assessment of their troubled, multi-million dollar project. Often, in assessing the project, under every rock we would find ten more rocks; under each of those ten rocks we’d find ten more rocks…and so on.

Being the recovering project manager that I am, I have a spreadsheet with 107 lines of to-dos. Some are big and structural projects, many are small items to make our lives at sea more comfortable. On one hand, I feel like I’m spending money at an alarming rate. On the other hand, I’ve concluded that I want to sell my house and live on HJ for awhile. Therefore, I can think about the big projects as capital investments (ahhhh…the things we do to rationalize what we do).

I also feel a bit like a general contractor. I’m doing a majority of the work myself but having professionals do some work that I’m just not equipped to do. At the moment I have lots of parallel efforts going on. While the approach is overall more-efficient than doing the work serially (finish one project before starting the next), early in the process it feels like everything is going backwards—it’s just ripping apart and ripping apart. In the few instances so far that I have been putting things back together, it’s a real thrill.

Here’s a rundown of some of the major projects in process: keel bolt inspection, head plumbing replacement, re-bedding of deck fittings, water-maker installation, steering system replacement, refrigeration replacement, solar arch fabrication, sailing-rig inspection and sail replacement, and building a proper nesting dinghy. In the next several posts, I’ll go into some detail on these projects. As I review them, keep in mind that Hazel is 30 years old and many of them have likely never been done to her.

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Let’s start with the keel bolts, which have always made me nervous—not for any specific reason other than they are 30 years old, made of steel (albeit stainless steel) and have spent more than 29 of their 30 years below the waterline and sloshing around in bilge water. If they suffered extensive corrosion and were to fail in the middle of the ocean, and the keel were to separate from the hull—it would be really bad…catastrophic.

First, some terminology and background. The “keel” is the fin that sticks down into the water underneath Hazel’s hull.

The keel does a couple things. First, it provides resistance against the wind and sails thus allowing her to sail into the wind. Second, the keel stabilizes the hull. Unladen, Hazel displaces (weighs) 11,000 pounds. 4,000 of those pounds is in her lead keel (that’s over one-third of her total displacement). While the hull and keel look like one contiguous piece, the keel is actually a separate piece of cast lead that is bolted to the hull.

A second term to know is the “bilge well”. It’s the lowest part of the inside of the hull where leaked seawater and rainwater collect (in modern usage “bilge well” is almost always shortened to “bilge”).

Hazel is a Pacific Seacraft and Pacific Seacrafts are legendary for their over-engineering (i.e., pieces and parts designed and engineered to handle loads significantly higher than they would normally be exposed to). In HJ’s case her 4,000 lead keel is secured to the hull with 10, 3/4 inch diameter stainless steel bolts that are secured inside the hull—down in the bilge—with backing plates (think large-washers) and nuts. In the bilge, the nuts and bolts are covered with thickened epoxy and paint to seal them. While that sounds great, 30 years is 30 years. If those bolts were to be exposed to enough seawater and other corrosive conditions over-time, they could rust. I talked to Thumper Brooks, my key contact at Pacific Seacraft (anyone named “Thumper” has got to be a straight-shooter). He suggested that rather than drop the entire keel to inspect the bolts, I should just expose them from the inside of the hull and inspect them. If that inspection yielded suspicious results, I could go forward with dropping the keel and then figuring out what to do (a costly proposition). He added that’s what they would do in their shop with a hull of Hazel’s vintage, so that’s exactly what I did…

The refit process is a win-some-lose-some game. Some projects are simpler and/or cheaper than expected while others are wildly more-complicated AND more-expensive. Like Vegas odds, the deck is stacked against the mariner but it’s the game we play.

Fortunately, the keel bolt inspection process cost me less than $100 in materials (we’re not counting my time to do the work). If I would have found problems with the bolts, remediating the situation would have been very expensive. In the worst case, the keel would have to be re-cast with new keel bolts embedded in the molten lead. As I highlight other projects in future posts, you’ll see how other projects end up a lot more expensive than anticipated.

On one hand I love getting my hands dirty and knowing how things work. On the other hand, I haven’t sailed since late-May. Through the refit, I have to keep thinking about the days I enjoyed while sailing and how all this work will get me back there…eventually—and will get me back there with greater peace of mind that I’ve done all I can to make HJ as seaworthy as possible. If Hazel were to be “retired” to a life of day-sails and coastal cruising, I wouldn’t worry about things like keel bolts. However, as I’m hatching a plan to do transatlantic sails with her, in good conscience, I’m doing all I can do.

While life during a pandemic is challenging, I’m grateful that a vessel refit is a naturally socially-distanced endeavor. I’m grateful too that I have the time to do much of the work myself and the means to hire professionals and help them through this economy.

Fair winds and following seas.

While I’m still deep in the midst of Hazel’s summer re-fit and also dealing with a potential Coronavirus exposure, I thought you’d enjoy this blast from the past…

I spent March 18-24, 2020 anchored off the British Virgin Islands (BVI) island of Anegada. The map below shows just how far Anegada is separated from the other Virgin Islands (note how St. Croix, USVI is even further though). It’s interesting also that while the other Virgin Islands, both BVI and USVI are quite mountainous, Anegada is relatively flat and low-lying. The island gets it’s name from the Spanish term for flooded land, “tierra anegada”.

If you’re contemplating a crewed or bareboat cruise of the islands, you’ll find Anegada is a popular spot, and is often one of the last overnight stays on a circuit of the BVI. It’s famous for spiny lobster cooked on the grill and served on the beach.

When I arrived on March 18th, I was anticipating staying for a few nights but the combination of rapidly-unfolding pandemic and some unsettled weather kept me anchored there for a week. As I write-up this post from my desk at home in Pompano Beach, Florida and look out my window, I think wistfully to that week exploring the island.

Given it’s low-lying topography, it has wonderful, sparsely-inhabited beaches. I took the better part of a day to do a seven-mile beach hike documented below.

These next two photos are interesting because, if you look carefully, you’ll see the effect of the pandemic on the island’s economy. Both photos are of the primary anchorage at Anegada. I took the first soon after I arrived and there were 50-60 yachts in the anchorage. I took the next photo several days later after all the charter boats had cleared out with the advancing pandemic and weren’t replaced by other charter yachts coming in.

Note that these are spiny lobsters which differ from the classic Maine lobster (with the big claws)