Christine Kling's Posts - SeaKnots2024-03-28T09:44:50ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKlinghttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2518401784?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://seaknots.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=ChristineKling&xn_auth=noJust Like a Womantag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-08-23:900123:BlogPost:308322008-08-23T04:22:41.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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Cooley’s Landing Marina<br />
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26 07.03N: 80 08.96W<br />
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Southeast winds 10 to 15 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet. Intracoastal waters a moderate chop. Isolated showers and thunderstorms.<br />
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I met a fellow today who told me that Tropical Storm Fay is behaving just like a woman – she just won’t leave us alone.<br />
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Then I got an email from a dear friend today who wrote, “The world assumes you made it home safely…..”<br />
<br />
I’m not sure I know what that means, “just like a woman,”…
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Cooley’s Landing Marina<br />
<br />
26 07.03N: 80 08.96W<br />
<br />
Southeast winds 10 to 15 knots. Seas 2 to 4 feet. Intracoastal waters a moderate chop. Isolated showers and thunderstorms.<br />
<br />
I met a fellow today who told me that Tropical Storm Fay is behaving just like a woman – she just won’t leave us alone.<br />
<br />
Then I got an email from a dear friend today who wrote, “The world assumes you made it home safely…..”<br />
<br />
I’m not sure I know what that means, “just like a woman,” but I’m afraid I’ve done a quite proper job of leaving “the world” alone. And this is the second time. It’s easy to write about my travels when I’m out there, but it seems that every time I return home and find myself back in the familiar rut, I stop posting to ye old blog. Or maybe that is <i>just like a woman</i> with all that teasing build-up, but no big bang of a finish? Anyway, this time I intend to wrap it up, look back on my weeks of sailing solo in the islands, and deliver some sort of a (albeit late) climax.<br />
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I must admit, however, that my voyage back from Bimini, across the Gulf Steam was a bit anti-climactic. I wound up staying at the dock of some friends who own a home on South Bimini (see photo above), and I went aground entering their canal. My friend Owen (who had come to help me find the channel) and I sat there on the bottom for over an hour waiting for the tide to rise. Once I heard that he was coming along, I stopped worrying about the navigation and I learned a valuable lesson – check the tides even if you have a pilot.<br />
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Three days later, I left at daybreak, at near high tide and motor-sailed across the stream in 5-10 knots of wind. I was headed for an anchorage off Key Biscayne where I was to meet friends for the Fourth of July weekend. I made good time and found myself six miles off the Miami entrance buoy when the city disappeared in a pitch-black squall. I shifted the radio over to the Coast Guard weather station and they reported current condition in Miami Harbor as 40 knots of wind, gusting to 55. I cupped my chin in my hand and I thought, “Hmm… I guess I’m not going into Miami.” The squall was reportedly moving toward the NE, so I headed south down the coast toward the southern channel south of Key Biscayne, figuring I would spend the night tucked into No Name Harbor just inside Cape Florida. I tried to outrun the squall, but when it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen, I dropped all sail, put on my oilies, forced the dog below, put in the drop boards and tied my harness to the helm. And I held on.<br />
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It got rather exciting for a bit. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the howling wind or the howling dog protesting at the indignity of being left below.<br />
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When it finally let up, I made my way into No Name and called the Homeland Security/Customs folks only to get yelled at over the fact that my passport had expired while I was gone and the fellow grew apoplectic when I said that I couldn’t imagine it really mattered when a couple of weeks before the thing had been perfectly good. That whole mess ended up with a decree that I had to present myself to officials in the Port of Miami within 24 hours or else. He never was quite clear on what that was, but the next day I motored around to the Miami Yacht Club anchorage and made my way to the officials and was dutifully contrite and I was granted access to the land of my birth after all.<br />
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Welcome to Miami.<br />
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Looking back now on the six-week trip through the Abacos and back, one remarkable point stands out in my mind. There are lots of male solo sailors and hardly any females. As it turns out, I just about had a guy in every port, so to speak. Well, not in the Biblical sense, mind you, but I enjoyed the pleasure of their company over drinks, dinner, just chatting, snorkeling, hiking, or talking over many a glass of wine under the stars. There was Richard in Green Turtle, Todd in Marsh Harbor, Alan #1 in Hopetown, Alan #2 in Little Harbor, and Wright at Lynyard Cay. I think this is the greatest and best-kept secret about sailing solo. I really do love the company of men and having somebody to hang out with – and I met such fascinating people who had wonderful stories to share. Solo sailing isn’t all about solitude, although there certainly was lots of that. For me, it was about meeting new people and making new friends - and okay, I admit it, a free meal now and again.<br />
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So now my boat is tied up back at the city marina on the River in Fort Lauderdale, and the rain from the remnants of Fay is pounding on the cabin roof. This week I started back teaching my college classes. I haven’t yet finished my novel, but I’m working on it. Most days now when I drive to work, I dream about taking off again next May, sailing solo to some more distant anchorages, and just like a woman, I wonder what new fellas I’ll meet when I arrive.<br />
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Fair winds,<br />
ChristineThinking the Worst Can Be the Besttag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-06-30:900123:BlogPost:239022008-06-30T02:07:07.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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Bimini<br />
25º43.61'N:079º17.95'W<br />
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I’m sitting in the main salon of my boat docked at the Blue Water Marina in Bimini listening to the sound of lapping water, distant music and the thrumming of a boat’s generator one dock over. At least tonight, I’m still awake past nine. Last night I was dead to the world at this hour.<br />
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I made my first overnight passage alone and nothing went wrong and I wasn’t scared out of my wits. Partly it was due to my own ability…
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Bimini<br />
25º43.61'N:079º17.95'W<br />
<br />
I’m sitting in the main salon of my boat docked at the Blue Water Marina in Bimini listening to the sound of lapping water, distant music and the thrumming of a boat’s generator one dock over. At least tonight, I’m still awake past nine. Last night I was dead to the world at this hour.<br />
<br />
I made my first overnight passage alone and nothing went wrong and I wasn’t scared out of my wits. Partly it was due to my own ability to dream of the worst. I can be pretty negative when I think about all the things that might go wrong. But in a sailor, that can be an asset. I remember one time when I was sailing with a fella and as we were returning to his boat, I saw that it was heeled over and cross-wise to the wind. I said, “Look, I’ll bet we’re aground. Did we check the tides?” We jumped aboard and I went below to open the tide program on my computer and he checked the depth finder and found we had plenty of water beneath us. It was just the current holding the boat sideways to the wind, which then was heeling us over. He said to me, “You’re so negative! You always think of the worst that can happen.”<br />
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Guilty. It’s true. I do. But much of the time, by thinking about the worst and planning for it, I avoid some of it.<br />
<br />
Friday morning, I ran the dog ashore in the dark, and then came out and boarded a boat made ready for departure. But I still had to get the outboard off the dinghy and the dinghy into the davits, so it was 7:00 by the time I was motoring out through the narrow cut in the reef, dead into the wind with the full main up and flapping. The swells were running about four to five feet, and in the cut I was headed straight into them and the boat was rearing up and slamming down with horrendous crashes. I just kept hoping that the next slam wasn’t going to be onto something solid. The dog was terrified of all the noise, and there was nowhere he could run. It seemed to last forever because we had to get far enough offshore to clear the next reef, lovingly called The Boilers. Finally, I was able to bear off.<br />
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It was a lovely close reach for the thirty miles down to Hole in the Wall, but as the wind kept increasing, I finally had to throw a reef into the main. My boat develops way too much weather helm with more than 15 knots forward of the beam. The Autohelm was making some ugly noises too, so I steered for part of every hour to give it a break. When we rounded the corner and turned downwind, the fun part stopped. Without a spinnaker or a drifter, going downwind is the pitts. The boat slowed from six knots to three and the jib became useless. The swell was too much for wing and wing. I shook out the reef and tried sailing on main alone with a preventer to avoid a gybe, but still, I wanted to get to Bimini before the fourth of July. So back on came the engine and I was able to add the lovely odor of exhaust to the hot, rolly, ship dodging motorsail across the Northwest Providence Channel. The joys of sailing.<br />
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Just at dusk, around 8:30, we were off Little Stirrup Cay and I nosed my way in to see if we could find protection there for a few hours sleep, but the wind had too much east in it and the swells were wrapping right into the anchorage. I turned off into the night and told the dog, “Sorry buddy, it’s gonna be a long night.”<br />
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And it was a black night. We were out of the main shipping channel, but I still worried about pleasure boats and fishing boats. It was so dark it was difficult to make out the horizon. At one point I was startled by something that seemed to light up the whole sky to the south, and it was just a shooting star or meteor, but the sky was so dark, it looked brilliant. At midnight, I switched on the radar just to check and I saw two targets nearby, within four and six miles, but there was no sign of any lights. Thinking about the possibility of hitting some unlit boat, I decided to leave the radar on the rest of the night. The moon was supposed to rise around 2:00, but there was so much haze on the horizon, I didn’t see the little sliver until nearly 3:00 and it did little to lighten the sky until 4:00. By that time I was wondering why I hadn’t brought some Red Bull.<br />
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Dawn was sweet. There was no lovely sunrise thanks to the haze, but I could see the horizon and I felt I had a chance of seeing something before hitting it. Yeah, that’s thinking negatively, but hey, it’s darn creepy motoring along at six knots all alone in what looks like a black void. But it’s also exhilarating and awe inspiring to be out there under so many stars completely on your own.<br />
<br />
Well, there was the dog. And come dawn, oh what he problem he was. He had finally agreed to go to sleep in the forepeak around 2:00 after driving me crazy in the night, but at dawn, he woke up and decided he wanted to go up to the foredeck to do his business. I had him on a 15-foot tether that allowed him access to the cockpit and the forepeak, but he couldn’t get out of the cockpit. I walked him up to the foredeck on his leash, but he looked at me with that dopey dog grin that said, “This is fun.” I said, “No play, go pee-pee.” He looked at me. See, like a person, he demands his privacy. So, I took him back to the cockpit. He tried to get out and go forward again. I couldn’t let him go up there without a tether and I didn’t have a tether long enough to send him up there alone. Finally, I crawled into the forepeak berth, opened the hatch, stuffed him out there on his leash, closed the hatch and waited. He looked down through the plexiglass and knew I was there. He wouldn’t do anything. I was ready to hand him out a magazine! The things I do for that dog. Finally, he peed and managed to do it all over his leash.<br />
<br />
I arrived in Bimini at 11:00 a.m. and tried to anchor on a coral pan bottom and even dove on the anchor to try to set it, but it just couldn’t dig in and with 15-knot winds, I finally came into the marina, exhausted, but happy that through imagining all the terrible things that could go wrong, very little had. And boy, after only one beer, did I ever sleep well last night.<br />
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Fair winds!<br />
<br />
ChristineGoing to Seatag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-06-27:900123:BlogPost:234612008-06-27T01:03:38.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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26 21.23N:76 59.15W<br />
Scattered Clouds. High: 86° F. Wind ESE 8 mph.<br />
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The time has come to say good-bye to my summer sail through the Abacos. I have been down here at the southern end of the sea of Abaco going into Little Harbor and enjoying beers and the company at Pete’s Pub – and going out and anchoring off of Lynyard Cay and snorkeling and playing fetch with my dog Chip on the long empty sandy beaches. It has been a glorious five days.<br />
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I caught up…
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26 21.23N:76 59.15W<br />
Scattered Clouds. High: 86° F. Wind ESE 8 mph.<br />
<br />
The time has come to say good-bye to my summer sail through the Abacos. I have been down here at the southern end of the sea of Abaco going into Little Harbor and enjoying beers and the company at Pete’s Pub – and going out and anchoring off of Lynyard Cay and snorkeling and playing fetch with my dog Chip on the long empty sandy beaches. It has been a glorious five days.<br />
<br />
I caught up with my friend on CIRCE and we got together with the folks on HOT LATTE-TUDES and snorkeled on the reef off the southern end of Lynyard. They found three conchs and that evening, we enjoyed a lovely dinner aboard with cracked conch, conch salad, rice and peas, fried plantains and fresh mango. I caught up with the ARTFUL DODGER in Little Harbor and together with Marlene, another solo woman sailor, we explored the caves at dusk with a flashlight spooking each other out. At Pete’s Pub, I met Stanley from Cherokee who told me stories about lobster fishing and what it is like to stick your hand into a hole and have a moray eel clamp his teeth on one of your fingers. And snorkeling off a little protected reef, I saw a baby turtle with a shell about a foot and half across asleep on the reef, and when he took off on his slow and gentle flight it was magic. In the span of an hour, I saw him and a sleeping ray on the bottom and a pair of amorous lobsters enjoying their dark hole. And last night as I put my steak on the grill off the stern, a pair of dolphins surfaced and blew not two feet off my stern and they proceeded to swim circles around my boat as Chip barked at them. In the past few days I haven’t written as much as I would like on the book, but I have lived well and gathered memories that will work their way into my fiction one of these days. A day spent on the reef is never a day lost.<br />
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So now my alarm is set for 5:00 a.m. when I will run the Intrepid Seadog to shore for his last leg lift and then I will hoist the outboard, hoist the dinghy in the davits and hoist the anchor. The cut through the reef here is only about a tenth of a mile wide and I’ll have my laptop out in the cockpit on the seat with the GPS NavX running and I’ll make my way out to the open Atlantic. The weather forecast is for only 8-10 knots of wind, so it may be a motor sail. I have a little more than 150 miles to cover. I’ve prepared everything I can think of and now I am enjoying an evening glass of wine and then to bed. It will be a 30-hour sail, at least and I’ll see if I can stay awake and if I can coax the aging pup to pee on the boat tomorrow night.<br />
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I’m excited. My greatest fears? Ships and falling overboard. I have fashioned a line to trail that will be tied to the power cord to my autopilot. I always wear my safety harness, too. But I know myself. I got myself one of those fancy PFD harnesses for this trip. It’s got this high collar in back. I hate it. I always start out with the harness and then as it gets hot and itchy, I often abandon it. I get cocky. I’ve sailed tens of thousands of miles and I’ve never fallen overboard. The thing is, nobody who ever fell overboard though that it would happen to them. It’s always a surprise. I’ve considered gluing a piece of salami to the stand-by button on the autopilot in the hopes of teaching the Intrepid Seadog to go for the salami should I go overboard, but it hasn’t worked out yet. In the meantime, I’m going to force myself to sweat it out with the harness. Someday, I think I would like to sail across an ocean by myself. Tomorrow’s 150-mile sail is just the beginning.<br />
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Fair winds!<br />
<br />
ChristineBy the Booktag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-06-21:900123:BlogPost:226142008-06-21T02:09:38.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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Hopetown Harbor<br />
26 32.25N:76 57.60W<br />
Scattered Clouds. Low: 80° F. Wind ESE 8 mph.<br />
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I’ve been sitting on a mooring in Hopetown Harbor, Elbow Cay for about five days watching all the boats come and go here in this very busy little harbor. There are ferryboats, fishing boats, dive boats, dinghies, charter boats, and cruisers. The harbor is so small and tight with moorings, they don’t allow anchoring. As soon as anyone gets settled here, they become…
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<br />
Hopetown Harbor<br />
26 32.25N:76 57.60W<br />
Scattered Clouds. Low: 80° F. Wind ESE 8 mph.<br />
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I’ve been sitting on a mooring in Hopetown Harbor, Elbow Cay for about five days watching all the boats come and go here in this very busy little harbor. There are ferryboats, fishing boats, dive boats, dinghies, charter boats, and cruisers. The harbor is so small and tight with moorings, they don’t allow anchoring. As soon as anyone gets settled here, they become part of the crowd on the boats and in the waterfront bars all watching the next guy to see if he knows how to pick up a mooring the proper way.<br />
<br />
This is an aspect of boating that I really dislike. It doesn’t matter if a guy has been boating for three months or thirty years, he figures he is in a position to laugh at the next guy who comes along. Now, I am using the male pronoun here because it is mostly guys who do this, however like all generalities, there are exceptions to the rule. But the fact is, boating is a male dominated sport and while the men sit around and make fun of everyone else, they then turn to the women in their lives and ask them why they don’t want to give boating a try. Well, duh!<br />
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I’ve been sailing for more than thirty years now, but the other day a fellow gave me a lecture on the proper way to tie a line around a cleat and he told a story about a woman who just couldn’t learn to do it right. The relationship fizzled as a result. I’m sorry, but there just isn’t a proper way. Yeah, there are ways that will cause the lines to bind under extreme pressure, and it will make it difficult to free that line in a hurry. Sometimes, when I want a line to hold for just a few minutes, I just circle it around a cleat a couple of times – and for what I want in that moment that works. Like most beginning sailors, I once read all the books on how to do things, and I have evolved ways that work for me. There are so many different ways to do things on boats, and I just don’t like this idea that you must do something BY THE BOOK.<br />
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Years ago when I sailed down to the Marquesas in the South Pacific, we arrived to find a small red Chinese Junk anchored in the bay at Nuku Hiva. We later met the Brit singlehander on board and he went by the name Eric the Red. He was on his second circumnavigation. He had no money and when he left Panama he had sailed to Cocos Island off Costa Rica in the hopes of provisioning with free fruits and vegetables that he foraged. He didn’t find as much as he’d hoped and with a boat that did 4 knots at best, he had been some 40 days at sea and when he’d arrived, he’d been eating the barnacles off the bottom of the boat and he looked like a POW. Eric didn’t do anything by the book. He was writing his own book. Literally.<br />
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When I was married, my husband and I built a 55-foot sailboat from a bare hull. I was there in the boatyard every day working on that boat, 365 days a year for 3 years. We sailed that boat for 14 years and I used to ask to learn how to dock her. He always said to me that his boat couldn’t take my learning curve on docking. In all those years, I never once docked the boat.<br />
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Here in Hopetown, I have watched bareboat charterers take five or six tries to grab a mooring. Yeah, there are better ways to do it than that, and they will learn, but we all were once there on that learning curve, and if you want to learn, you have to be willing to allow for mistakes and for other ways of doing things. I don’t mock them or feel superior because I know I may very well screw something up tomorrow. Maybe it’s my nature as a teacher, but I just don’t get off on sitting around with a drink mocking others in order to make myself feel superior.<br />
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These days, I sail alone on my own boat and I am enjoying every moment of my learning curve. I have learned to dock without disaster most of the time, but tomorrow morning I have to go to the Hopetown fuel dock and I make no promises. I follow few of the rituals of the sea and most traditional sailors would not call my boat shipshape. I do lots of things my way. Here in this rather snazzy harbor, I’ve been rowing my inflatable dinghy because I need the exercise, and because I have no seat in the dink, I use a big fender. My dinghy also has a hole in the bottom that I’ve tried several times to patch – most recently with 5200 – and it continues to leak and I’m always ankle deep in water. I bail it with a super shooter squirtgun. Not exactly by the book.<br />
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So, like Eric the Red, I am writing my own book. I think that’s what makes the cruising community so interesting. And next time you’re sitting in a bar laughing at someone who misses a mooring or who gets pinned to pilings by a cross current, think about the people around you and how many of them are either saying, “forget boating” or, like me, “someday, I’ll get my own boat and do it my way.”<br />
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Fair winds!It's All About Amps, Babytag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-06-18:900123:BlogPost:219942008-06-18T01:56:54.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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There are people who have written to me and asked about the snorkeling and diving in the Abacos and they have tried to remind me that the beauty of this part of the world is all under water. They are right. I can’t argue that point. However, that isn’t why I am here.<br />
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I have to go to work every day. Okay, sure, I am in paradise if you are a sailor and a diver, but the fact is that I must finish this book. I know people who live in some lovely places…
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There are people who have written to me and asked about the snorkeling and diving in the Abacos and they have tried to remind me that the beauty of this part of the world is all under water. They are right. I can’t argue that point. However, that isn’t why I am here.<br />
<br />
I have to go to work every day. Okay, sure, I am in paradise if you are a sailor and a diver, but the fact is that I must finish this book. I know people who live in some lovely places in the world, but they insist on placing their desks away from windows or distractions of any kind. Writing isn’t easy in the best of circumstances, and most of us are quick to leave the project at hand for the slightest reason. I decided to come over here this summer to get away from the distractions of every day life and find a quiet anchorage where I could write. What I didn’t think about is how much power my computer would require.<br />
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I am the sort of writer who likes to work for AT LEAST eight hours a day. I talk to myself and pace and search the Internet for details. Now, I am on a boat running my laptop through a 200 watt inverter and it is sucking my batteries dry. I have three solar panels and a wind generator and often I find myself having to shut down because my batteries are crying UNCLE. Normally, this just means that I should start the engine to charge the batteries, but recently I’ve had issues with my engine overheating.<br />
<br />
I am not a mechanic. My eyes usually glaze over when sailor guys start talking about diesel engines. But, hey, I need the juice to write. Suddenly, solving this raw water flow issue has become the center of my writing existence. I was down bent over the engine for the last couple of days pulling off hoses, checking the raw water strainer, pulling off the water pump and looking at the impellor and examining the diagrams of the raw water system in my engine manual for hours. Now you have to realize that these were hours that I should have been writing, but I can’t write if I don’t have the amps.<br />
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Finally, I figured it out. The wingnut at the top of my raw water strainer was leaking water out and I figured if water was getting out – then air could be getting in and I fashioned a gasket out of some gasket material I had and presto – water was flowing, the engine was cooling, the batteries were charging and I could write.<br />
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It’s a domino effect on boats, but once you find the root problem, the sense of accomplishment is as sweet as the rum drink you allow yourself to toast the cure.<br />
<br />
Fair winds!What's in a Name?tag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-06-10:900123:BlogPost:201322008-06-10T23:07:03.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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Late on the 31st of May, hours before the first day of the 2008 hurricane season, the first tropical storm of the season was named: Arthur. I was at Manjack Cay anchored just off this lovely little island sloop. I had gone over there for the evening to celebrate getting off the Roberts Marine dock and finishing my business with George. When I heard the news about Arthur on Saturday morning, I got to thinking about names.<br />
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Why do we name storms and…
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<br />
Late on the 31st of May, hours before the first day of the 2008 hurricane season, the first tropical storm of the season was named: Arthur. I was at Manjack Cay anchored just off this lovely little island sloop. I had gone over there for the evening to celebrate getting off the Roberts Marine dock and finishing my business with George. When I heard the news about Arthur on Saturday morning, I got to thinking about names.<br />
<br />
Why do we name storms and boats and the like? Why do we anthropomorphize and turn these things into human-like characters with human names? While doing research for a book I am currently writing, I discovered a great archive of information about past hurricanes on the Weather Underground site at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/hurrarchive.asp. It's fun to check back and look at certain seasons and remember the characters of certain hurricanes. Remember Francis? Oh, yes, that was when I was in the condo for 3 days with no power when suddenly there was a knock at my door and the word was passed by flashlight - party in 306 and bring your own drinks. And Erin back in 1995? That was when Chip was born. And to everyone who was in South Florida in 1992, Andrew is a name we will not forget. We get to know these storms well when we live through them, but somehow by naming them, we give them personality and we give ourselves the sense that we can survive.<br />
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Now there are certain superstitions about boat names and one is that you are not supposed to change the name of a boat. I have simply never believed in this, so when I bought my boat in 2005, I promptly changed the name. For some time I had been dreaming of a boat named Talespinner. I've been making up stories and spinning tales since I was a little kid - okay, my parents sometimes called it lying - but after having been a sailing girlfriend, wife and mother, the name seemed to fit my dream of a boat that would take me to new adventures as a singlehander. And although I have lived aboard and sailed her a little bit, she never really came alive for me until this trip.<br />
<br />
When I was tied to the Roberts Marine dock last week, waiting for George to come help me with my battery problems and watching all the juice drain out of my boat, I honestly began to think that my Talespinner was dying. I would talk to her and say, "Come on, girl, you'll make it through the night." I knew that in the morning, the sun would come out and the solar panels would start their magic and the lifeblood - electricity - would flow through her veins again. We had come to rely on one another and she most certainly took on a life and personality of her own.<br />
<br />
Finally, George arrived, we solved the electrical problem and it didn't require new batteries (at that my checkbook sighed with relief) and we were off early on a Monday morning sailing through Whale Key passage with the solar panels pumping and the wind generator humming and we tacked our way towards Marsh Harbor - where George had recommended we (Talespinner and I) see another expert about the starter. It was a lovely sail that included sightings of both turtles and dolphins.<br />
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So now, here we are, anchored out in Marsh Harbor, thinking about another name. This one is Sonith Lockhardt of Abaco Electric Motors. It has been four days and I can't track him down. The winds have been blowing strong these last couple of days and Talespinner, now that she has developed this personality, seems to be trying to tell me something. She sails around on her anchor like a horse trying to get the bit in her teeth, ready to go. She's telling me to forget the experts and to count on her. She'll get me home, she's saying, and I think I can trust her. I think we'll look up the name of some starter guy when we get back to Florida.<br />
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Fair winds!The Glass Half Fulltag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-05-31:900123:BlogPost:147422008-05-31T01:00:00.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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26 45.60N:77 19.47W<br />
Chance of a Thunderstorm. Partly Cloudy. High: 82° F. Wind ESE 12-15 mph.<br />
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Most sailors would think I’m talking about the barometer when measuring the glass – or perhaps a measure of rum, but in fact, I am talking about one’s perspective on life, and getting stuck waiting for George, the mystery man at Green Turtle Cay. I could see it as a problem, but in fact, it has been one of the best things that could have happened to…
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<br />
26 45.60N:77 19.47W<br />
Chance of a Thunderstorm. Partly Cloudy. High: 82° F. Wind ESE 12-15 mph.<br />
<br />
Most sailors would think I’m talking about the barometer when measuring the glass – or perhaps a measure of rum, but in fact, I am talking about one’s perspective on life, and getting stuck waiting for George, the mystery man at Green Turtle Cay. I could see it as a problem, but in fact, it has been one of the best things that could have happened to me.<br />
<br />
Life in a small island community is a mysterious thing to a big city gal like me. The relationships and the intimacies in such an environment are unknown to folk in the South Florida fast lane. There are some 500 residents here on Green Turtle Cay and they all know one another. The boaters and fly-in tourists, people like me, are the outsiders. However, most people, George included, make their living off the people like us. I’m sure that if I had a 75-foot fancy yacht, I would have seen my mystery man the first day here – and I would have been handed a bill that fit that stature. However, my little 33-foot boat is easy to overlook. So easy, in fact, that for the 6 days I have been here I have come to feel like I am invisible.<br />
<br />
The first relationship I have made is with Eddie, George’s assistant. Monday morning a cold front had passed over us, and the temperature was in the low 70’s. I was wearing a sweatshirt and when I saw Eddie, he was wearing long pants, a big jacket and a straw hat. I told him that I was worried that my boat was dying, the batteries were bleeding out, and I couldn’t start my engine to charge them. By afternoon he was there and he found the issue was merely a bad connection in the digital battery monitor. The batteries were good, just the meter was bad and he fixed it. Later, he brought me a bunch of tiny sweet tomatoes the size of marbles, each on its own green stem and I made myself a delicious salad with them that night. He has since brought me another batch of them, and I am rich in fresh mini-tomatoes these days. Now my only other problem is the engine start switch which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t and I am determined to stay until it is fixed.<br />
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So go my days, I get up in the mornings and make my coffee and walk my dog. The island has such strong scents of salt and brush and morning wood fire smoke. The roosters crow and the local parrots squawk and my dog and I explore the back roads and trails around our end of the island.<br />
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Then it’s back to the boat for a day of writing. I work until 4:00 or 5:00 and most of the time, I simply take another walk, but yesterday, after days without much human contact, I decided to run the dinghy and make a visit to the bar at Coconuts. I met for the second time the bartenders – Yvonne Big Dog and Beryl. And there I met Sybil – the other female singlehander in this place. She had electric blue eyes and a knowing smile. She had just finished hauling her boat out at the yard across Black Sound and she was preparing to leave by plane in the morning for her other home in Boulder, Colorado. She was there with a fellow who was a yard manager and the two of them spoke so intimately of the local folk – who was a cousin to whom, and who was a Cooper or a Curry – and woe be to he who mistook the two. She has been coming to winter on her boat in the Abacos for four years now, and I found myself envying her that lifestyle. She bought the three of us a couple of rounds and we shared Conch fritters and Jerk chicken wings, and I sat back and listened and learned. Maybe, if I get to spend the next few years visiting these islands, I will be accepted as an almost local like Sybil.<br />
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Today, Wednesday, I tired of peering out the ports looking for George and I decided to go out to lunch and I leashed the dog and headed to the other local eating spot that has outdoor dining – The Wrecking Tree. Chip and I enjoyed a Conch Burger and grapefruit juice whilst watching the local 6-8 guys work on a truck across the road. A half dozen or so dogs came by to sniff at Chip and we probably watched another half dozen golf carts full of bright red tourists pass looking for something to do. The pace on an island like this is most definitely slow and it’s only when you get stuck on the end of a dock for days at a time that you can begin to slow down enough to appreciate the beauty and kindness that such a place exudes.<br />
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Back on the boat tonight, I was sipping a glass of wine when a boat approached from the entrance to Black Sound. There was one man on board, his long blond locks flying in the strong easterly breeze. He tied up to boat not 10 feet away.<br />
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“Hi” I said to George, the mystery man.<br />
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“How are you doing?” he asked.<br />
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I had thought that once I saw him, I would be desperate to get him to work on my boat, but suddenly, I realized that his absence had been a gift. I didn’t have four years to get to know Green Turtle Cay, but he had given me a week, and I had come to love the place in that time.<br />
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“I’m doing fine,” I said.<br />
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“I’ll be down to look at your starter tomorrow. I’ve been off-island looking at a boat down at Spanish Cay.”<br />
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“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”<br />
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I watched as the blond, bare-foot mystery man walked up the dock toward his house and I realized that I didn’t really care whether it would be tomorrow or sometime in mid-June. Getting stuck in Green Turtle Cay had just changed from a problem – glass half empty – to a treasure – glass half full.<br />
<br />
Fair winds!My blog and my dog's blogtag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-05-24:900123:BlogPost:114842008-05-24T18:59:35.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
The Intrepid Seadog and I are having adventures galore in the Abacos. Check it out at<br />
<br />
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/kling/<br />
<br />
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/intrepidseadog/<br />
<br />
<br />
Fair winds!
The Intrepid Seadog and I are having adventures galore in the Abacos. Check it out at<br />
<br />
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/kling/<br />
<br />
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/intrepidseadog/<br />
<br />
<br />
Fair winds!Island Timetag:seaknots.ning.com,2008-05-24:900123:BlogPost:116282008-05-24T11:30:00.000ZChristine Klinghttps://seaknots.ning.com/profile/ChristineKling
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26 45.60N:77 19.47W<br />
Scattered clouds, chance of thunderstorms. High: 82° F. Wind South 11 mph.<br />
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The sweat slips slowly down the small of my back. My hair is damp and stuck to my head. Off in the distance, thunder rumbles, but here on Black Sound at Green Turtle Cay, not a whisper of wind ruffles the water. I’ve got my computer set up in the cockpit so I can work trying to catch whatever wisps of wind come my way. I’m on the dock.<br />
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It’s not good…
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<br />
26 45.60N:77 19.47W<br />
Scattered clouds, chance of thunderstorms. High: 82° F. Wind South 11 mph.<br />
<br />
The sweat slips slowly down the small of my back. My hair is damp and stuck to my head. Off in the distance, thunder rumbles, but here on Black Sound at Green Turtle Cay, not a whisper of wind ruffles the water. I’ve got my computer set up in the cockpit so I can work trying to catch whatever wisps of wind come my way. I’m on the dock.<br />
<br />
It’s not good policy for a sailor, but all my life I’ve been a procrastinator. I’ve lived on Island Time. I figured if there was a issue that looked like it might become a problem, the best thing to do was to ignore it and hope it would go away. I’ve been doing this for quite some time with two problems – my engine start button and my batteries. Of course, neither issue has done anything but become a more serious problem, so now here I am on the dock at Roberts’ Marine in Green Turtle waiting for the attention of the most popular man on the island: George.<br />
<br />
George is the electronics man. Abaco Marine Services will work on everything else, but only George and Donny are the battery guys. I started this little odyssey by asking two local men who were sitting outside the grocery store at the Green Turtle Yacht Club if they knew anyone who looked at electrical systems. One fellow was large (or at least his midsection was) and white, the other slender to the point of skinny and black. Both had seen their years of sun and they squinted off across the harbor, then looked at each other nodding. “Ought to see Donny. You keep your radio on?” I told them I did and they said Donny would call me on channel 16.<br />
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I returned to the boat, put the handheld on 16 and went to work on the computer. At 6:00 when I quit, I noticed the radio’s battery was dead and I didn’t know when it had gone. The next day, Thursday, I motored from White Sound over to Black Sound at high tide, and started the hunt for “Donny.” I was walking the dog through New Plymouth when a stranger came up along side me in his golf cart (the primary vehicle used here) and told me that Donny had been calling me on the radio and to get in. I grabbed the dog, jumped in and was whisked up the hill to the home of the most talkative Bahamian man I have ever met.<br />
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“Yeah, well, it might be yo batteries that have gone bad, but then again it might be that your solar panels are overcharging and then if it is one of your batteries that one cell will pull down all the others like it did that time with this fella’s golf cart and you say you have the golf cart batteries…” and on and on. The man used absolutely no verbal punctuation and he shifted over to the weather and then local politics and it was hot and my batteries were dying along with me.<br />
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Finally, he said he thought the real man for the job would be George. He would send George round to see me if I would go back to the boat. I escaped, returned to the boat and began to wait peering out, looking for the magical, mythical George. I turned on my radio and I began to notice that everyone on boats from all over the island was calling for George. No wonder the locals had suggested Donny. He might talk your ear off, but he has time to do so. George is the most popular man on the island.<br />
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Just before 6:00, a boat pulled alongside with a white fellow with long curly blond hair and bare feet. He had a shy young Haitian man with him. They introduced themselves as George and Eddie, and they said they would be back the next day to look at my batteries. The next morning at 9:00, Eddie came out in the boat, and he told me move my boat in to the Robert’s Marine dock, that George would look at my batteries then. I spent all day yesterday on the dock and no sign of George.<br />
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In the afternoon, I went into town with Eddie and I told him I was a writer. I learned about his 2-year-old daughter and his wife who was in the hospital in Nassau with cancer. Eddie ran for the ferry and Donny pulled up in his truck and asked if George had fixed me up yet. I told him that I hadn’t seen much of George and after a 10-minute monologue, he drove off saying he was going to call George and chew him out.<br />
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Now today is nearly gone and the only sign I have seen of George is when he came down last night about 7:00 and told me that he had heard I was a writer. He talked about his work, about life on the island. He waved at all the boats in the sound. “There are a hundred stories on everyone of ‘em.” I nodded. I was tempted to give George my sad story of how much I wanted to get off the dock, out to cleaner water with a working electrical system that was needed to write my stories, but I’ve been told that George only does work for those he likes. I can’t afford to make him angry. I don’t have until Christmas. I’m trying to be patient, to be nice and to go along on Island Time, and hope that George will finally find time to get to me. Tomorrow is Sunday. I don’t suppose I’ll see George then. Maybe sometime in June.<br />
<br />
Fair winds!<br />
<br />
Christine