All dug in – Key West 09

January 30, 2009   

I know I have been useless updating the blog. Here are my last three weeks in pictures.

Sleeping on the boat in the original A2 when I forgot my sleeping bag in the yard office that had closed for the night. Luckily it was warm in Florida. Some long days before the charters arrive for Lauderdale to Key West Race. See http://yachtrace.net/Yeoman08.html

Cooking Coq Au Vin at Steff’s in the middle of the night. It was very tasty but for half the crew they didn’t get to eat it as there was a all hands call on deck just as I was serving up the second lot and so it was never eaten. It was a large effort next time spagetti bolognaise will do the trick just as well!

Start of the Key West Lauderdale Race. The race down was not as eventful as 2007 but we did manage to go the wrong side of one mark and have to unwind ourselves and then had a close call with a coral head. We didn’t get the surfing speeds of last time and there were a lot of gybes as we had electronics so we stayed in shallower water the whole time. Got a little cold at night.

After settling everyone into the crew houses in Key West I flew back to Lauderdale and picked up the van of delivery items and crew gear and did the costco shopping. This is one of 3 cart loads of food it took me 3 hours in Costco. Feeding 15 people for 10 days required wholesale quantities of food. I also did a few supermarket runs on top of this one which as you can see there is a lot of beer.


A screen shot of my excel spreadsheets for the food required during each part of the project in Florida.

Some of the days in Key West were like sailing in the Solent with a cold northerly blowing. We got some good starts and some poor starts. The good ones were depressing as within a few minutes we would be rolled by the TP52’s or the STP65 and that would be that. It was encouraging to see our speed relative to Sjambok has improved the bowsprit has made a large difference to the bow not digging in and getting around the corners is that much easier.

Repair done during race week after we were hit by Sjambok’s bowsprit. Luckily it just punctured the outer carbon and didn’t damage the inner skin. This will last till she gets back to the UK for a proper repair and paint job.

After race week I hoisted out at Robbies and due to her draught they didn’t have stands large enough so they ‘dug’ Yeoman in with a back hoe. Actually really stable and easier for me to get her ready for delivery. The two blue drums are diesal drums for delivery to Antigua as I only have a 10g built in tank. I spent 4 days getting her ready for the delivery south next week.

This is the 4 month old puppy that was living on the houseboat next to Yeoman at Robbies. I looked after her for the day as the owners girlfriend was hit by a hummer when on a scooter and was taken to hospital. Very cute and she enjoyed riding around on the cart at Home Depot much more than Draeger the dog does at home!

 


Days with Ashley

January 10, 2009   

Life around Ashley is like life inside a tornado…not that I’ve ever been in one but that’s the closest description I can think of.

As I type this, she’s here in my kitchen, which never gets used for anything more than a steak and some steamed veggies ora sandwich… and she’s cooking Coq au Vin for 14 crew for the race to Key West! I wonder if the crew has any idea how much she goes out of her way for them…probably not.

Oh, and I should mention that it is now near 2300hrs and she flew in from SF on Thurs. night at near midnight, and went up to Palm Beach on Fri and worked on the boat all day and slept aboard in an older spinnaker and worked all day and and arrived back here at about 2030hrs or so and has been cooking ever since.

I spent the day with Ashley on the boat on Friday trying hard to be useful… just little tasks like taking inventory of their packaged food and the first aid kit and emailing them off to where they needed to go. I also managed to get the lifeline cushions on the port side, though I must confess it took me 2 tries to get them right.

So, that’s my story for the moment. When she finishes cooking, we’ll vacuume seal the food and clean up the kitchen and try to get a bit of sleep and tomorrow we get to go SAILING!

We’ll do a bit of a car shuffle, and head back up to Cracker Boy Boat Works to get Yeoman XXXII and SAIL down to Ft. Lauderdale so she’ll be here for the start of the Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race on Wednesday.

The above was written by my gracious host Steffi who is now trying to revert the raping of her kitchen back to virgin status. The coq au vin will NEVER be made again. Started at 8pm and it is now 12:20am…. bed time.

Article in the Marin IJ

January 5, 2009   

You can read about a day in the life of RYM in todays Marin IJ article.

Diving Monterey

  

So after a day in the classroom with 3 exams and mulitple knowledge reviews towards my divemasters certificate on Saturday I got to help with an open water class on Sunday. We did two hours in the swimming pole and then two open water dives. The students were brothers one 19 and the other 22. They hardly needed teaching! To them the dives were very exciting. To me I had a cold was finding it hard to equalize and it was 51F in the water which even with a drysuit was cold. I ended up with blocks of ice for feet which took a long time to unthaw. But on the positive side I was moving along in 40 feet of water when something came at me from above like a rocket – turned out to be a cormorant. Took me a bit by surprise at first I was thinking that is an odd fish and by the time my slow brain clicked the bird had taken off along the bottom. Amazing site.

I did my Nitrox course on Saturday so at the end of the month when I do my wreck diving course I will be doing the dives on enriched air. A little bit of extra oxygen isn’t a bad thing unless you get hit by oxygen toxicity which is totally counter intuitive to me. So this week I am finishing off lots of little jobs on all my Bay Area boats and packing for 3 weeks working in Florida.

Splash and Dash

December 24, 2008   

A splash and dash according to pilots is when they run out of fuel and need to land to refuel! I did two in two days one in a boat and one in an airplane!

Arriving in Florida late on monday night from the UK very tired I found that as I had thought Yeoman had not unloaded and I was taking her off the ship that had brought her from Southampton. I stayed with my friend Steffi and in the morning we headed up to West Palm Beach and Cracker Boy Boatworks. Lots of security to get onto the port including fingerprinting and picture taking.

The forecasted 25-30 knot winds made things interesting as the boat was unloaded to weather of the tanker so we were plastered against the side of the tanker and combined with the throttle cable being broken (I had a new one to replace it but the reason for the cable breaking meant we needed another part as well) we asked for a tow from Towboat US.

They hip towed us to the haul out at Cracker Boy and were very good about it the guy knew his boat – sometimes they don’t so I was a little worried.

After hauling out, pressure washing all the salt off of her deck and hull I crawled around inside for 4 hours getting a to do list and question list going as I haven’t seen her in 18 months.

Christmas eve is not a time to fly needless to say the airport was packed at Fort Lauderdale and sadly there were 4 wrecks in the airport area with one car turned over. The flight from Fort Lauderdale to Philidelphia was on time and uneventful. However, we left Philidephia late and completely full and then the pilot announced we were running out of fuel due to un forcasted 155mph headwinds and would have to stop at Salt Lake city for a Splash and Dash. Amazingly it took the 15 minutes they said it would and we arrived only 2.5 hours late into SFO. I was amazed at how the passengers treated the flight attendants like personal servents with the call buttons being pressed continuously! US Airways is not a great airline – no inflight entertainment (not even music), even water has to be purchased and box meals for $7 each. I felt bad to for the flight attendants having to deal with upset people for 9 hours in the plane!

Merry Christmas everyone

Christmas display in Lauderdale – the kid who lives there says they start putting lights up in September! Even their sportsfishing boat behind their house is covered in lights.

Another airport!

December 22, 2008   

I am sitting in Washington DC airport waiting for a flight down to Fort Lauderdale.

On Thursday last week I flew to London arriving on Friday and after dinner with my parents drove on Saturday morning 3.5 hours to Dartington Hall in Devon. It is a very beautiful venue for a wedding and the weather was good. I got dressed in a dress for the first time in many years much to my friend Charlie’s surprise and met up with my friends from university at the church for a short sweet service. The church was relatively new (19th century) as it replaced the 16th church but for those in the US that is old. The original pews meant there was no falling asleep as they are so narrow and make sure you sit bolt upright. The reception was in the great hall with a lovely vaulted ceiling I believe originally built in the 14th century. With Christmas decorations the place was magical. Charlie (the bride) and I lived together at university for 3 years. It was fun to catch up with other friends, the meal was delicious and we all managed to keep each other awake until past midnight (we are getting old as it was hard work to stay up that long!).

On Sunday morning I got up early and met the group that had to travel for early breakfast before a 3.5 hour drive back to London. I decided to break up the trip with a few jaunts down memory lane taking the exit off the A303 to Gasper the small hamlet where we had a country house when I was a child. The house is still looking good although it needs a new thatch roof sometime soon. I remember working with the thatchers putting that roof on. My parents did a beautiful job of the restoration of the place it fact it was in a magazine.

I quickly stopped by the house to meet up with my parents for christmas lunch at the Lensbury (their country club) which put me in the christmas spirit and I got my British sunday lunch which is a must when I am home. Back home in time for the street christmas party that my mother started 13 years ago. Most of the kids on the street are all grown up and have left home but the ones that were at the party I hardly recognised and had to stop myself for saying the boring ‘my you have grown’!

Home for a quick 5 hour nap before taking off to the airport for my flight to Washington. Next stop Fort Lauderdale to unload Yeoman before going home on Wednesday for Christmas in San Francisco.

Happy holidays everyone.

Christmas fun

December 16, 2008   

I took the day off on Sunday and had great fun with my nephew and mother in San Francisco walking around seeing all the lights and window displays. It was raining so there weren’t many people. The Macy’s display was very cute with puppies and kittens and the Hyatt had a very large gingerbread house display. Henry was pointing out all the details some which I missed it is amazing what little kids notice. After an attempt at a nap which didn’t happen it was time to go to SFYC for the yacht club childrens christmas party. Santa arrived by boat and Henry was very quite taking it all in with wide eyes. He sat on Santa’s lap and said ‘merry christmas’ than we had a green reindeer made from a balloon and decorated some christmas cookies for mum and dad. I have a great week of christmas dinners/parties to attend it is nice to be home at this time of year.

Good times.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Launching

December 13, 2008   

The launching of the 40 footer went well at Svendsens and she is now having electronics installed and interior cushions done while I finish off the deck hardware and we await the mast delivery in a few months. The owner seems to be happy to finally have his boat in the bay and now I have to fix all the leaks which we are finding in the inclement weather. Hope all of you with office jobs appreciate the warmth and dry inside! I got hailed on today big pieces of ice falling out of the sky. In fact it is warmer in London than San Francisco.

Off to LA for the last time

December 5, 2008   

The Saga 409 build is drawing to a close so I spend Monday thru Friday in LA finishing off last minute stuff/decisions on the boat. She will be loaded onto a truck next week and I will be in the Bay to unload her and hopefully the owner will have a smile on his face. The boat was taken out of the shed to have the bottom sprayed and the graphics look great on the hull. There is a lot to finish off in the bay – small details always seem to take time.

I had a great time staying with the Leths – family friends who have known my dad since before he married my mum… It has been a great project for me getting to see them every month.

My nieces

November 30, 2008   

So I got to see my nieces who are called Charlotte Beatrice Perrin and Phillip Ione Perrin. I think they are going to grow up to be pretty special little kids but than again I am biased!

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