Saturday, December 25, 2010

Merry Christmas from Venice!!!!


The trip from Kemah to Venice was, overall, pretty good.  We didn't do as much sailing as we had hoped.  The wind and current were on our nose most of the time but we still made pretty good time.  We saw lots of oil rigs, some crew boats and not much else.  The guys with me saw some dolphins but I didn't see a single one until we were coming up the channel to the marina.  We lost of our buddy boat, Storyville, shortly into the first night and didn't see them again until we got to the marina.  We tried calling them on the radio but could never reach them.  They think my radio is messed up, I think it is theirs.  It was hard to tell how much electricity the wind generator made because we ran the engine so much but it appeared to work very well.  I tried using the new satphone to pull in email and weather once.  It was a bit frustrating at first but it did finally connect, no idea what I did to make it work so will probably be trial and error next time as well.  It was fun getting the free texts on the satphone.  The front hatch leaked a bit when we submerged the bow under some waves and the head wasn't sucking water in like it was supposed to.  I think we have fixed both o these issues, won't find out until we get under way again.

Venice itself is a fishing community, we our the only sailboats here.  Lots of shrimp boats.  The marina was open yesterday until noon, closed today and open part of the day tomorrow.  From what I can see there is no grocery store or really any other amenities here.  We were able to get fuel though.  We added 65.5 gallons.  We burned about 3/4 of a gallon an hour on the way here which is normal.  When we left Kemah the tank wasn't full, now that it is and with our extra gear I will probably need to raise the waterline on the boat.  I'm gonna try to hold out until get my next bottom job.

We are watching the weather closely, a front is supposed to be blowing through right now.  We had some rain earlier and the wind is picking up.  If all goes well we will push off the dock tomorrow and see if we can get South and East as much as possible.  I would like to make some of these bigger jumps while I still have crew.  That being said I am not too excited about sailing in 40 degrees and 30 knots of wind, even if it is downwind & I have crew.  We will wait and see.

Some Stats:
Engine hours at start 2600, at end 2666
Distance traveled:  311 Nautical Miles
Did not run the generator

Sunset over Venice, LA

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Ready?

I can't believe how much money and time I am spending on a boat that
was pretty much ready to go.
Seriously, if push came to shove I probably could have cut the dock
lines and been fine. However I find that the longer I stay here the
more stuff I think I need so I buy.

Why haven't I left yet? Two words... wind generator. Troy from
Storyville(http://love2sail.blogspot.com/) gave me a pole to mount a
wind generator about two weeks ago. At the time I didn't have a wind
generator but thought it would be a good idea to get one. Bought the
wind generator but since then I have been waiting on a stainless
welder to mount the pole on the boat. Monday!!!! Monday is the day
he is supposed to be here.

So today to keep myself busy I purchased & installed the line for the
third reef(hope to never ever need to use it), went up the mast and
inspected the rigging(no problems), showed the boat to Trey Harris,
the guy that is going to crew to Key West(http://www.freewebs.com/boathippie/
). I also ran the wiring for the wind generator. Trey worked on
mounting extra jerry cans.

The plan is to leave Wednesday, hope to get out of here!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Welcome

I am not much into writing and have never had a blog before but I have had a few requests that I set this up so that others can follow me as I sail about.  I don't expect to be a fanatical blogger so please don't be disappointed if considerable time passes between posts.