jon if by sea

Pretty uneventful ride up the coast….  mostly stayed out about 50 miles off the coast.  Lots of thunderstorms around us but we didn’t run through any.  Following seas 5′ - 8′ the first two and a half days made for a pretty uncomfortable ride.  Hard to sleep with the boat rolling both ways.

Got in to NY Monday night, got tied up and went into town for some beers.  Getting used to the subway.  Not a bad way to get around but effing hot & smelly.  Oh well…

Gonna’ head out tonight & try to find a decent sports bar in Hell’s Kitchen (the origin of the name Hell’s Kitchen is not known for certain.  Suffice to say that it was a pretty crappy area until the last 20 years or so).  That seems to be the area where there are a number of dive/sports bars that don’t all charge $8 for a beer.

Yankees vs. Angels tomorrow for a day game.  I have to get a hotel for tomorrow night because Todd messed up on the start date for his new cook/stew.  She starts Wednesday instead of Thursday like she should and will be taking my bed.  Then I get to spend the day figuring out what to do until my 6 pm flight back to Seattle.  Hope to have some cool stories by then!

Just got into Thunderbolt (Savannah) in thunderstorms.  Sail goes on tomorrow and we leave for Manhattan with the tide on Friday.  Pull out from the dock at 10am or so.  These early mornings are going to be tough….

The only cool boat around now is the Calixe (rough translation is “handsome one”) owned by Bruce McCaw’s wife.  It just got painted & splashes Friday so we may see it go in.  I’ll see about updating during the trip.  Looks like crappy weather most of the way.

This is what they say about Calixe:

Calixe was back at her builder’s yard earlier this year for some upkeep. The yacht is among the few owned by a woman: Wendy McCaw, who also owns the Santa Barbara News-Press and who uses the yacht for personal trips, not charter.

These are the boats in the Broward East yard.  Stupid the number of giant yachts ar0und here.

I intend to do something cool appropriate for south Florida before I write again.  I do have some pics of Muchos Mas getting pulled out of the water that I will post when I get the time….

Pulled in today, lots of work to do on the boat for the next month or so.  Crappy marina but the boss rented us a duplex or something like that (haven’t seen it yet).  Will try to do as much fun stuff as possible while I’m here but it may be tough.  Here are pic’s of the other boats here in the marina.  Again, these are stock pic’s and you can find more info on any of them by searching on megayacht or motoryacht plus the boat name….

I was asked over a month ago to provide some additional pictures of the boat I’m on.  Finally remembered….  here’s a link:

http://www.ardell.com/pdf/sail-yacht-altair.pdf

Well it’s time to say goodbye to Isle of Hope and hello to Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island http://www.fbfl.us/ .  The trip should take about 10 - 12 hours and we’ll stay there until Thanksgiving when the owner comes back onboard and we head south to Ft. Lauderdale.

We had one final entertaining adventure to cap off our stay here on Saturday night when Todd and I took the tender in to Thunderbolt in the afternoon to catch some college football at the local sports bar.  As the evening came to an end we headed back to the tender for the 6 or 7 mile ride back to the boat.  It was a beautiful night with absolutely no moon or wind, leaving the water looking like a mirror.  That’s great when there are lots of landmarks and things to keep you oriented, but once out in the channel with no lighted markers at dead low tide the difference between land and water becomes impossible to determine.  Remember that everything here is VERY flat, so the land is only a few feet above the water at high tide.

Anyway, the ICW is supposed to be dredged to a depth of 13.5′ at mean low tide and the tender doesn’t draw much more than a foot so we should be O.K., or so we thought.  About a mile short of our destination and in the center of the channel we ran aground.  At this point we started second guesing ourselves, tried several other directions which all resulted in additional groundings.  After about an hour of stumbling around in the dark and with just enough fuel to get back to where we started from we turned the boat around and headed back.  We opted for the $20 cab ride back to our marina and picked up the tender the next day.

As I brought the tender back I found that if we had made another 100 yards or so we would have been able to see the sailboat.  Oh well, lesson learned!  We now have a 3 million candlepower spotlight that will travel with us on any future nighttime excursions.

It’s been a little while since my last post so I figured I should get an update out…

Had a few interesting things happen over the week - where we are on the Intra-Coastal is the sharpest bend (according to the locals) of the entire 3,000 mile stretch.  With this in mind I was surprised to see a tug a few days ago with a tow that had to be 1,000+ yards long coming around the corner.  Especially odd since only 2 months before a tug had lost control of its load around this very same corner and took out the dock that we are currently tied to.

Anyway, that long tow consisted of a total of 8 barges strung together, a stretch of pipeline at least 600 yards long and 3 tender tugs to keep it in line.  Pretty entertaining to watch.

Now for the fun part - they came back the other way at 4am at dead low tide and ran the tow aground this time.  Next to us.  Next to us like “I’m going to step off my boat and onto your tug” next to us.  I watched until I decided I should get Todd up so then we both watched.  The owner never seemed to wake up.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were up late last night at a pretty cool convention for private rail car owners.  Basically it’s the land version of owning a boat.  Amtrak is the only carrier that will haul them and they get hooked up as the last car on an Amtrak train and watch the country go by.  I am including a link to a page from last year’s convention where you can see a few of the cars that we got to tour.  Many that we were on are not shown and these things are ultra-private, but at least you can get an idea.  http://www.aaprco.com/convention/2008/Cars%20Attending.html

The Georgia 300 we spent some extra time on is the train car that the last 4 Presidents have take to their inauguration speech.  Lots of other celebrity types have used many of these cars.  Here are a couple of links for the Georgia 300 http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2009-01-16-obama-inauguration-train_N.htm

http://www.zimbio.com/Ann+Nixon+Cooper/articles/10/PULLMAN+CAR+HISTORY+PRESIDENT+ELECT+BARACK

Well, I’ve got to go clean something now.  Should hit high 70’s again today and until….  well, I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be like all winter!

I had to take Todd to the doctor where he got 6 stitches in between his third and fourth toes. We were cleaning the deck and he kicked a piece of metal accidentally. Went probably 3/4″ deep at least splitting the toes. Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture until after the stitches….

Not a whole lot to report over the last week.  Lots of cleaning the same thing over and over again.  Oh well…

Lost a couple of our neighbors to the Ft. Lauderdale boat show coming up this weekend.  Blue Moon and Man of Steel are both gone.  Just got a new one in today - Lady Ann Magee.  164′ and it’s for sale if you have 16.5M Euros available.  http://www.charterworld.com/index.html?sub=yacht-charter&charter=lady-ann-magee-1222

Settled in, high 70’s and sunny.  Could be 80.  Thought I’d attach some pictures of our neighbors here in the marina.  If any of them look interesting you can do a google search on “mega yacht” followed by the name of the boat (which is also the name of each pic).  For the sailboat use “sailing vessel”.  The sailboat is pretty amazing.  Oh, I numbered all of the pictures with the number 1 after each.  Didn’t know if i was going to add others, so boat names don’t have the 1 in them.  Of course the Erica XI is the name of the sailboat….