Flirting with the dark side

I'm sure by now all our readers are wondering if we fell of the edge of the blog. As it happens, the foot surgery, while ultimately successful, had it's share of problems in the form of a bone infection. No, we never made it to the Bahamas. By the time I could be sure it was totally cleared up, getting to the islands would have been akin of paying full price to see the last 15 minutes of (insert your pick for all-time best movie EVER).

So we stayed in Fl. had fun locally, saw many friends and worked on some house projects. We also started thinking about how much we were missing on the water. We are surrounded by rivers and of course the Gulf of Mexico and all it's small Keys and shoreline is within an hour of us. "We need a small boat." I told Al. It only makes sense to have something we can explore the shallow areas and wilderness that can only be reached via water. Besides, I have a boat blog. No-one wants to start reading about how my gardening is coming along, or what color I painted the spare room. We need to be on the water for multiple reasons.

We settled on a pontoon boat. Comfy, large enough for a few friends, able to host a porta-potty (critical at our age as I don't see myself shlepping onto swampy wild shores to squat among the gators and skeeters.) Something we can trailer and putt-putt around Fl. on while maintaining a level of comfort.

I have a queer knack of deciding to get a boat, then stumbling across someone wanting to give away the same type of boat. My luck holds. All we had to do was remove the boat, hanging in straps, under a covered boathouse, over a dried-up lake. Of course the lake bottom was still soft and mushy. Of course the SUV had to remain up on the original shore, nearly sixty feet from where the boat lay. Of course half the boat had to be dismantled to get clearance under the boathouse. But six hours after we started, we were staring at a new to us boat in our backyard.

Then the cleanup began. Did you know that bats find an unused outboard compartment to be an excellent bat-house? Al found four inches of bat guano in the bottom of the cowling. Everything was in good shape, but stained to the color of creosoted fence posts. Out came the boat wash. The boat laughed at it. so the arsenal of outdoor bleach, acid wash, and comet cleanser took it on and won.

Al tore apart the 40hp outboard, and found three frozen carburetors. We should pick them up any day now. He didn't have the carb cleaner and tools to rebuild them himself, but has been working on the wiring, and cleaning the fuel tank, replacing the kinked fuel line, and everything else that needs to be checked out before launch.

So here she is. All 20 feet of her, cleaned and getting ready to take us (and you, via the blog) along on our summer of fun on the water.

I'm naming her "Summer Journey".

Go-fasts, whomper-wakes, and idiots.

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Casting Bubba's

Now we've seen some weird stuff over the years on the water. Heck, we've even done some weird stuff. But this was leading the pack so far for this trip south. There we were, in south Georgia, in the middle of NOWHERE, nothing around for miles and miles. I kept seeing this bunch of dots off on the distance. First I thought they might be stumps, but as we got closer, it became obvious that it was a rather large gathering of Bubba's.
They were generally two to a boat, and not anchored, just bobbing around. Every now and again two boats would bump, and one arm would reach out and push off. No engines could be heard, I was getting a mite nervous as we approached. There were a lot of them, they were right in our path, what were they doing there?
I had been using the binocs to get a better glimpse of the non-action ahead. I could see no fishing rods being used. But then I didn't see any rifles or shotguns either, so that was a good sign. Every now and again, it looked like one would stand up for a minute. Were they watching us as we approached? The Dueling Banjo's theme thrummed in my head.
Finally we got close enough to start threading our way through them. And saw what the Bubba's were up to. Cast-netting! Each Bubba had a cast net between his legs. In turn, one would stand and cast, retrieve, and sit. Then the other boat occupant would stand and take his turn. I'll bet there was over 600 years of cast-netting skill and knowledge in that grouping, and I was sorry that I didn't have the opportunity to stop and learn what I could from them. Funny how I had cast those Bubba's differently from a distance.

Home on the Ranges

Today we went through 12 ranges on our way south down the Intercoastal Waterway. I spoke a bit about ranges on Journey's facebook page, but for our non-sailor friends, a picture is worth a bunch of nonsensical words, so....

 Now, in this first picture you see what looks like a orange sign, with a white stripe running right down the middle, top to bottom. In the second photo, you notice there are actually two signs, and they are not directly over one another because Journey has already begun her turn, and left the range.

The trick is to line the sign posts up so that when you are seeing them like the first pisture or risk running aground. There may be lots of open water around, but it's all shallow outside of the range. Now how do you do this, when some of these ranges are over a mile long and the signs are that far away when you start? Simple: look at the lower photo again. The bottom sign is off to the right. Move the boat to the right until the signs line up again. (you would never want to get this far off of the proper alignment in a real range, you'd be aground.) Al and I are partying on Miss Ruby tonight here in our anchorage, along with Partner Ship, so I will leave you with this navigational "lesson of the day". We are just above Jekyll Creek in Ga. for the night.

Lonely Days and Lonely Nights

12/9/11
I've definitely noticed a trend on this migration south. We are all alone. In marinas, at anchorages, there are really no other cruisers out here. Last time south, we traveled in a pack, lots of us grouped together each day, headed towards warmth. The anchorages were full, as we all jockeyed for our little piece of bottom grabbing.

We are very late this year and it shows. We see a few crabbers and small fishing skiffs out doing what they do, but outside of one or two big power cruisers headed fast towards the sun, we are really bringing up the rear this time around. So as we head south, we are turning out all the lights. We are the last ones in the ICW.

We made it to Southport Marina today around noon. Our batteries are overcharging, and Al has it isolated (we hope) to the internal regulator on the alternator. I figured it would be a lot easier on him to change to our spare alternator in a marina, plus if it turns out we are wrong, we can get parts since we are in town. He changed it out and says it is working fine so far. Here's hoping!

We must be invisible. I say that because the other day we had the kite boarding guy zig-zagging in our path like we weren't there and today it was fishermen. Now here we were, headed down a distinct channel, shallow water to each side. A small john boat type skiff can be seen ahead, far in the distance, barreling towards us. No problem, there is plenty of room to pass us on each side in a small boat like that.

But wait, the guy pulls short a few hundred yards in front of us and his partner tosses out a bouy. They proceed across the channel in front of us (one side of the channel to the other) laying a freaking fishing net! What the Heck?? Then they proceed to signal us that they have a net in the water. Oh yeah, get it deep buddy, 'cause I'm about to go right over your several hundred dollar investment. No way I'm running out of the channel, or coming to a dead stop because you were too lazy or stupid to go 100 yards further and lay it behind me. It's not like there another boat out here for 50 miles. So over it we go, with them mouthing off at me like there's no tomorrow. I play as deaf as they played at being blind. 

I told Al: next time we pull the boat, I am installing one of those line cutter thingies. Nets under the boat, crab pots in the channel, with the line cutter, they will all be fair game.