Bye Bye Georgia

 

Thought I better catch up and put some wrapping on this adventure. Above is Georgia leaving the dock in New Bern, North Carolina on her way to her new home in Deltaville, Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay. I'm onboard as lowly crew and Jeff, half of the new owners, is onboard as apprentice captain. Definitely a bittersweet day for Chris and I. 12 years cruising, 10 years on this boat and 8 years completing a circumnavigation.  Now what? more on that latter.

It took us 5 days to travel north on the Intracoastal Waterway and into the Chesapeake. We were expecting cold November weather only to be surprised by nice days in the 70s. The bridges are a little puckering. Georgia is approximating 64 feet 4 inches from the water to the top of the hard stuff at the masthead (that's with a typical load onboard). We heard the VHF antenna twanging on the underside of the bridge while going under the bridge associated with this height reader board. No harm, no foul.

Jeff and Christy are the new owners of Georgia. Clearly a salty crew. Along with new owners, Georgia is getting rechristened to Rosalee. She's ready for new passages and adventures once she breaks in the new crew.

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Georgia was our only home. We currently have a 2011 Honda CRV in North Carolina and 2010 Honda Accord in Oregon as our choices to live in. Not sure which is the primary home and which is the summer cottage.  We are off to find a dirt dwelling to base life out of. We aren't too sure where at this point. Most likely somewhere on the west coast. Chris has some strict criteria for our new abode. It must come with a front opening refrigerator and a flushing toilet. I'm hoping for a garage/shop. Not too much to ask for.

 We both wish our reader a healthy, enjoyable and adventurous 2023 -- with a recycled 2015 Xmas card.

Paul 

More Proof the Earth Is Not Flat

If you have Google Earth installed on your viewing device, you should be able to click on the image above. It will take you to a Google Earth live image showing Georgia's path around the world that you can manipulate. Kinda fun to play with.

Let me know if it doesn't work for you (I will arrange a full refund).

(If you don't have Google Earth on your device, install it before clicking on Georgia's path. If you get a choice between Open in Drive or open in Chrome select Drive and then select Earth. If you are using Google Earth Pro on a Windows laptop, you will need to download the file and then open it in Google Earth. You might need to zoom in or change the colors to see the positions. )

Georgia's path on Google Earth. 

Download Google Earth in Google Play Store 

Download Google Earth from the Apple Store 

Playing with the Google Earth files is filling my day here, as we sit out hurricane Ian's remnants. We tied off with extra lines to the dock and pilings yesterday. Filled our water tanks, made sure the genset and main engine run, and did shopping trip to get a baguette and soup. Now its just sitting out the rain and a few gusts. The picture above is last night before I moved our east coast Honda to higher ground. The water is now about a foot higher and flooding the parking area. Hopefully it'll start to fall tomorrow, so we can actually get off the dock.

Paul

Octember Weather

 

Summer is good and over here in the Pacific Northwest. Local berries are no longer in the grocery stores. It's cold with spells of rain. Typical for when October blends into November: Octember. Now that our mail-in ballots are here we can plan to return to the boat in Malaysia. That is after we resolve the debate on who to vote for. Many of our international cruising friends look at us and want to know how could the US elect a president like the one we have. That is the international cruising crowd with the possible exception of male Australians, who seem to often have a penchant for the orange-haired leader.
The best explanation I've seen for the Trump phenomenon is that 80% of the country knows he is an asshole. 40%, or half, love him because of it and the other half hate him for it. In 2016 I predicted Trump would win. In 2020 I predict he is going to get his ass handed to him. We'll see.
The other day we were shopping in the local Costco. We both slipped into daydreams about how easy it would be to provision the boat if we could do it here. The shelves are stocked high here. About the only thing in short supply is ammunition at the gun shops. Want to get ammo for your newly acquired Glock? Limit 5 boxes per customer. Even Costco is now carrying the old military style ammo boxes. If you have been collecting guns over the years here, then now’s a nice time to list them online so you can get 4 or 5x return on your investment. It’s reported that 40% of gun purchases are first time buyers this year. Pretty crazy situation. 

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It has been a journey trying to figure out how we can be reunited with Georgia.  The Malaysian borders are closed to tourists and the US is on the high risk list of countries. Malaysia is seeing a new wave of Covid cases like much of the rest of the world. Compared to Washington state they are at about 1/5  to 1/10 the infection rate per capita (depending on when and what you compare). And Washington is one of the better states in the US for Covid-19 control.
The first plan to reunite with Georgia was to have her delivered to Singapore and then do a "crew transfer" where we would fly into Singapore and the delivery crew would fly back to Malaysia. Singapore is one of the worlds largest shipping ports. They have a very detailed procedure for crew transfers on and off these ships. We had hoped to sneak into this procedure. In the end it seemed like it might be possible, but expensive. We would be paying a delivery crew for close to a month as they had to deal with multiple country quarantines.
Then we got wind of a couple of UK cruisers who got permission to reunite with their boat.  We headed up to the Malaysian immigration site and applied online for special permission to reunite with Georgia. We explained that she is our only home, that we will be spending significant money readying her to cross the Indian Ocean with the local establishments, etc. They quickly responded with a single entry permission beginning Dec. 1. We are allowed to fly to Kuala Lumpur. We will be met at the airport and transferred to a local hotel for a 14 day quarantine stay. Then a Covid test and we are free to continue on to Langkawi.  At least that's the current plan.

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To keep myself busy and stave off additional mental decline, I needed a project. I found this 1955 Shopsmith woodworking tool in a barn near here. The owner wanted it to go to a good home and offered it for $100. What a steal. They still make these machines and the new parts fit the old system.

Pulled the thing entirely apart, found the original paint color and got her looking pretty, This thing is a drill press, table saw, lathe, jointer, planer and boring machine, all in one.

Till we make it to quarantine.

Paul

A Differnt World of Coronavirus

We spent two nights in the Sama Sama airport hotel in Kuala Lumpur so we could pickup the early morning All Nippon Airways flight to Narita airport in Japan. Total travel time from leaving the boat in Rebak island to landing in Seattle was four and half days. Fortunately we got one day back when we crossed the International Dateline. 4 flights, 5 airports and 2 hotels. The Kuala Lumpur airport was basically empty when we arrived at about 5:30am. This airport handled 62 million passengers last year. It was a ghost town now as we started the international portion of our travels.

Normally I wouldn't bother to comment much on the public health safety precautions being taken at the airport because they are just plain common place in Malaysia now. Before you enter the airport you have your temperature checked with an infra-red imager. You have to show tickets for a flight that day and you must be wearing a face mask. Before you enter the hotel, a non-contact forehead temperature check. Everyone is wearing a mask. At this point I might as well mention shopping in Malaysia. Outside a store will be an area marked off with 2m (6 feet) taped off zones for waiting your turn to enter. Busy stores will have spaced seats. At the door there is a log to write your name and phone number. The phone number is to assist in contact tracing should someone latter show exposure. There's a spot on the log to note your temperature taken by the attendant. A bottle of hand sanitizer to use once your done with the pen going in, and another bottle at the checkout.  Stores limit the number of people inside based on square footage, actually square meterage.

The photo above might look like I stole it from the HBO Chernobyl special, but its not. These guys are just the hotel staff cleaning the halls on our floor. If you are one of the few traveling now, social distancing hint: one couple per hotel is pretty safe.

The ANA 787  Dreamliner flight out of Malaysia to Japan was basically empty. We each had a row to ourselves with no one seated within a row of us. Friendly crew and decent food. We only had 45 minutes scheduled between our flights in Narita. It was an easy connection, being routed directly from our landing gate to takeoff gate with minimal interaction with anything or anybody. This next flight was also a 787 but operated by United. Not sure the flight attendants were happy to be on this flight based on their attitude. And United has decided for our safety onboard during these stressful times there is no coffee or hot tea, nor any beer or wine. I had about 10 hours on the flight to think about this situation.

Landing in San Francisco at SFO airport was pretty surprising, it being our gateway to the country with the most covid-sars-2 infections in the world. SFO requires face masks, but it's not strictly enforced. Turns out that is the limit of any pretense of protecting the country. No temperature checks on incoming passengers. No one asked us where our travels originated. No suggestions of self-isolation or quarantine. Show your passport and come on in. To be a little more thorough in my story I should also note that we were asked if we had any fresh fruit such as an apple, orange or banana. Hopefully this will protect our indigenous banana plantations from catching the coronavirus. 

We are doing some self isolation in a Holiday Inn in Bellingham right now. It is similar to self isolation on the boat in Rebak except you don't have to march 15 minutes in the scalding heat to the toilet. But, you don't have the beach either. To test the precautions in practice in the US we decided to go to Walmart. We also needed a water filter for our trailer, as the last one broke in the hard freeze we had just before left last time we were here, along with some new cell phone SIM cards. If a good percentage of the customers and staff are being careful at Walmart, you can safely say the country is on a good path to getting over this pandemic. The country isn't on a good path.

Paul

Where's Georgia

I've added a new map to the bottom of the blog page that shows where we are and if you zoom out our old tracks (courtesy of Farkwark.com). Let me know if you have problems using it.


Coming up from the Gold Coast was a trip. First night out, coming up the Fraser Island coast was really cold. The 30+kts of wind didn't help at all. The second night we both looked a bit like the Michelin man after dressing for night watch. It's winter down here. We had 30+kts pretty much everyday for the next week of hops north. We are finally up in the Whitsundays islands with some nice weather. The Whitsundays is the charter boat capital of Australia. It has a reputation for being crazy crowded in the anchorages, but so far it has not been for us.

Maybe this is why??? This sign is in the first anchorage that most of the charter boats go to after they leave Airlie Beach on the mainland, Cid Harbour. Its a crappy cellphone picture, the jest of it is don't swim here because of the sharks. They decided to add these signs after 4 different shark attacks here at the end of last year, including fatalities. Tiger sharks appear to be the predator. We didn't see anyone swimming at Cid, but there are people all in the water at the other stops just a stones throw away. Chris and I keep coming up with reasons that we'll go snorkeling tomorrow, not today.

Of course if the sharks don't get you, the killer jelly fish will. They rent and sell stringer suits in Airlie Beach. Basically head to toe Lycra  body socks. If you talk to the locals about sharks, they tell you its not that big a deal, but you better watch out for the Salties (saltwater crocodile). If you start by asking about the Salties they say they are not that bad but you better watch out for the sharks. Just to make the location more comfy are the deadly poisonous snakes that you see while walking on the island tracks.  Oh, the locals say the snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them.

We are off the Double Cone Island tomorrow to hunt for cone shells (hopefully not live, as they too have deadly poisonous harpoon) and then continuing on up the Queensland coast.

Paul

Compromise to End the Shutdown

Even though we are half way around the world we hear a lot of the BS that is the US goverenment shutdown. Compromise is the only way to end the government shutdown. I have a plan. Offer up a bi-partisan bill that builds the wall with matching grants. These will work much like the NPR pledge week matching grants where you call in and pledge $100. Your pledge is then matched by a corporate donor for a total of $200. The bill will offer the full 5.7 billion dollars for the wall in a kind of installment plan. For each billion dollars Trump gets Mexico to pay for the wall Congress will match it with a billion. This should really satisfy everyone and open up the government. Trump gets to meet two of his campaign promises at the same time: build a grand wall and Mexico will pay for it. The Democrats get to offer up a true comprise while being fiscally responsible by only potentially spending 50% of our money on the wall money. And the Republicans get to do what they like best, offer up legislation that doesn’t actually do anything.
Paul

Inauguration Day - 1829

Now you might think that inauguration day, at least this one, is really special. Some might think it is the beginning of a disaster. But take a look at some of things said about President Andrew Jackson --- and remember we did survive his presidency.

“Americans tend to forget that Andrew Jackson was the first westerner elected president. Tall, lanky, with the rawboned look of a true backwoodsman, he wore the harsh life of the frontier on his face and literally carried a bullet next to his heart. Ferocious in his resentments, driven to wreak revenge against his enemies, he often acted without deliberation and justified his behavior as a law unto himself.”

“…president, he supported the forced removal of the Cherokees from the southeastern states and willfully ignored the opinion of the Supreme Court. Taking and clearing the land, using violent means if necessary, and acting without legal authority, Jackson was arguably the political heir of the cracker and squatter.”

“Democrat Andrew Jackson’s stormy relationship with Crockett was replicated again and again with any number of contemporaries over the course of a career that was built on sheer will and utter impulse. Most of his loyal supporters eventually ended up on the opposition side of the partisan divide”
“Because Jackson had relatively little experience holding political offices, his run for the presidency drew even more than the normal amount of attention to his personal character.”
“Whether supporters portrayed him as the conquering hero or his enemies labeled him King Andrew I, all focused on his volatile emotions. He certainly lacked the education and polite breeding of his presidential predecessors.”
“Jackson did not look or act like a conventional politician, which was a fundamental part of his appeal.”
“His fiery temper and lack of scholarly deportment permanently marked him. A sworn enemy put it best: “Boisterous in ordinary conversation, he makes up in oaths what he lacks in arguments.” Not known for his subtle reasoning, Jackson was blunt in his opinions and quick to resent any who disagreed with him.”

So how will it turn out? I’m unfortunately betting on the image above.
Paul
Quotes from: Isenberg, Nancy. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Kindle Locations 2365-2367). Penguin Publishing Group. 

2016-2017 World Apology Tour

I’m a news junky. While up in Bellingham I had an unlimited, very large Web connection pipe. Fast enough that if I had stayed just a few more weeks I would have been done with all of Netflix. With all that I was getting a little overwhelmed with too much news of the repugnant election. So I was looking forward to getting away from all that and working on getting the boat ready to restart cruising. I ‘m calling this year’s cruise the 2016-2017 World Apology Tour. Not sure if we should sell t-shirts yet.
When I arrived at the boat from the airport and the ladder that was there when I left was missing. I wandered over to the yard office and the crew was on a tea break. Karl and Shane gave me hardy Kiwi welcome back, then the first comment was So how’s Mr. Trump. Guess you can’t get away from it.
The pic above shows coat #1 of the blue bottom paint. Two more to go.
Paul

Alt Reality

I've lived in this country for over 60 years. Yea, I know Older Than Dirt. I thought I knew the place pretty well. I've read a newspaper almost everyday of my adult life. I've lived in Florida, California, Oregon and Washington. I grew up in Florida when Florida was really part of the South. I drank from the Whites Only drinking fountain when I went to the grocery store with my Mom. I saw blacks attacked with thrown soda bottles from speeding passing vehicles because they were black. School integration occurred for me beginning in junior high school extending into high school, where police at the corners of classroom buildings were needed on occasion. I remember when Roe v. Wade became the the law of the land. I remember working in the defense industry where they took women engineers resumes for job applicants and threw them directly in the trash. Chris remembers high school friends being thrown out of school, pregnant because birth control was not available to them and illegal abortions were killing American women. She remembers having to join the boys sports teams in high school, before Title 9 was passed, expanding girls access to public school programs including physical education.

I really thought that those were mostly long gone days. Wow, I feel like I am now in an alternate reality.  How anyone could overlook the racism, bigotry, misogyny, policy shallowness and glaring contradictions of our president-elect is beyond me. These people apparently dream of going back to the good old days of the 1950's, when taxes were high, racism was the law, women's rights were still under male control, and government subsidies for education and housing mortgages, not capitalism, drove the economy and national growth.

While the popular vote is close, it appears that the president elect didn't actually win the popular vote. Even without that, it is still a mandate. The Senate, House and soon the Supreme Court are all heavily weighted to one side. Its a mandate. Can the president elect deliver for his followers his promises: deport 11 million immigrants in a 100 days; build the Mexican border wall and force Mexico to pay for it, get rid of the EPA, get rid of the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, and replace it with something so much better, cherish women, ban Muslims, ban Syrians refugees, prosecute Hillary Clinton and throw her in jail, cut the NASA budget, bomb the shit out of ISIS, bring back waterboarding, renegotiate the Iran deal,  bring back jobs from China, Mexico, Japan, etc, force Nabisco to make Oreo cookies in the US, grow the economy 6% annually,  cut the deficit by $18 trillion, renegotiate the budget to get a 20% discount, get rid of banking regulations and consumer protection laws, cut taxes on the rich, get rid of corporate tax loopholes, fix the mental health system to stop mass shootings, allow concealed carry in all 50 states while enforcing a 5 year minimum sentence for committing a crime with a gun, provide more money for drug addiction treatment.............


Its a mandate, can you deliver or will the people that voted for the president elect look like the picture above along with the rest of us.

I guess I feel like I should just jump on a boat and sail off into the great blue ----------

Paul

Updated Travel Map

Georgia's travels from June, 2010 to Oct 2016. You should be able to click on the icons to get the date and time any comment made when the position was logged.

Updated Travel Map

Georgia's travels from June, 2010 to Oct 2016. You should be able to click on the icons to get the date and time any comment made when the position was logged.

Not Much to Say

A Full Ride

When I first saw this picture I thought it was a wanted poster hanging in the Post Office. Nope. Its our son, Derrek, featured in a full page ad for Ride Snowboards. Pretty cool --– but thinking as a parent it sure looks like a long way down from that wall he’s on.
Good on Ya, Derrek
Paul

Alarming Article

I forgot to post on the blog that I got an article on boat security alarms published in the December issue of Blue Water Sailing. The article isn’t up on their site as freebie yet. Magazine articles pay even better than this blog does.
http://www.bwsailing.com/bw/
http://mx.zinio.com/magazine/Blue%20Water%20Sailing%20/pr-500383335/cat-1169

Paul

Here Comes the FOB

Its been a long time since I did any blogging. We spent a month up in Bellingham, WA (actually Ferndale). Most of the time was working hard getting Tyler and Meghan’s 5 acres ready for their wedding, or as Chris puts it: Working like rented mules.  Lots of gravel hauling, bark dusting, weed whacking, mower riding and goat kennel preparing. The place looked great for the wedding and it went off without a hitch. Here’s Meghan and Tyler in the field in front of their house with Mount Baker in the background after the I Do’s.

The hit of the ceremony were the Flower Grandmas going down the aisle tossing flowers before the bride and FOB walked in.

This is Meghan walking the FOB (Father Of the Bride) down the aisle. Actually my job was to make sure Meghan didn’t go too fast – I think she was ready to get the show on the road.
 

Here’s another quite cute couple at the wedding.

Paul

The Colonel

1930-2014

Chris’ dad, Colonel Hunter passed away last week. He’s going to be missed by a lot of friends, co-workers and most of all family. For me, he wasn’t an easy guy to get to know. He held his United States Marine Corps military career adventures close, only letting out a few stories of his times in Korea, Vietnam and the Pentagon. You could tell he always had a deep respect for the military and those he served with and strong feelings about the country he lived in. The feelings were strong enough that I wasn’t allowed to talk politics with him.
He raised 3 kids along with his wife Barbara – the Colonel and 4 women. I’m pretty sure that was one of his toughest challenges.

He held onto that look even in retirement.

Promotion time

Going to work

To a life well lived and to man you had to respect!
Paul

The Rebel Heart Kid Controversy

From NPR to Fox News to the New York Times and the British Telegraph the Pacific Ocean rescue of the crew aboard Rebel Heart has made some entertainment for the worldwide news peddlers. If you haven’t heard, the basic story is that a couple, Eric and Charlotte, spent two years cruising in Mexico with their first born. While there they have a second child. They waited till the new kid was about 13 months old and headed off for a trans-Pacific crossing to the Marquesas, French Polynesia. This is one of the longest, if not the longest, passage that most cruising circumnavigators sail. Its about 3,000 miles and takes 3 to 4 weeks. The crew were reasonably prepared, although they did not have significant ocean passage experience.
When they were offshore Mexico about 900 miles the youngest child got sick. The boat also had developed some issues; the steering had problems and they were taking on water when the engine was run. Charlotte was clearly tired out after the first segment of the passage. A decision was made onboard to request outside rescue help to deal with the young child’s --or do you still say baby at 13 months -- condition.
  These pararescuers grabbed an unscheduled C130 flight and four of them donned swim fins and jumped out into the Pacific along with a rubber raft. The baby was stabilized onboard but the decision was made that she should be evacuated to shore for further medical evaluation and treatment. A Navy frigate arrived a day later and evacuated the family and the pararescures. In the top picture you can see the wheel from Rebel Heart being passed over to the Navy rescue boat prior to Rebel Heart being scuttled.  I assume they saved the wheel as a memento – not that it is likely they they will forget about this adventure. The boat was scuttled – sunk – to avoid it becoming a hazard to navigation.
In many articles, Internet forums and blog posts and comments there have been some hard-core slamming of the family for putting their children at risk on this adventure and for abandoning the boat. When I’m on a commercial plane flight and there’s an infant within about 6 rows of me, I feel trapped and pray that the owners have appropriately drugged the child for the 3 or 4 hour journey. The last place I’d want to be is on a 3 week ocean passage on a small, bouncing sailboat with an infant. Of course, that doesn’t make it child abuse. My feeling is that when you take kids on a cruising boat it is an amazing growth opportunity for them. Life without The Mall and continuous i-connectivity. But they need to be old enough to have some sense of it. Maybe by 5 or 6 before they can really start to become part of the adventure. All parents take risks with their children. They drive them on the freeway. Some refuse to vaccinate them. Others delegate their care to outsiders. A wait of a few more years cruising closer into Mexico surely would have worked out for the better for Rebel Heart, but their decision to attempt long passages with an infant is really just a personal parenting decision, no different than the thousands of less obvious decisions that parents in suburbia make everyday. It’s not a decision I would have made, but others have. This one just turned out for the worse.
As to the abandoning of the ship. I’m sure that was a tough decision decision. The medical condition of the child was clearly beyond the state where the parents felt they could manage it. Once outside rescue help has arrived, the ball is rolling fast. The rescuers aren’t going to come out twice. The captain could have stayed with the ship and single handed the vessel the 2000 additional miles to French Polynesia, or tried to sail to windward and slogged back the 900 miles to the Mexican coast; both have been done before, but this in a boat that had reported steering and engine issues. And there would have been that small issue of not knowing how the family is doing in a time of crisis. Making the decision to abandon and scuttle the boat was probably what seemed the most reasonable at the time and it was probably pushed fairly hard by the Navy rescue team. As far as Internet facts go, it appears that the boat was uninsured, meaning they have lost their home and its contents – except the wheel – and will have to start over on land – hopefully with their family’s health intact.
Paul

Sailing with Foreigners

I was reading an e-mail that Chris sent to one of her friends recently and figured it just seemed somewhat appropriate for April 1st. Here’s a long snippet.

…We've been in the eastern Caribbean, the Windward Islands, for awhile now, getting further and further away from the N. American crowd, and I've got to tell you, being among the Euros is such a trip! Paul of course is thrilled by the fact that none of the women wear tops. The highlight of the Iles de Saintes, for Paul, was the topless snorkeler. But, they don’t even wear tops while they’re sailing. We towed this young German couple’s boat a few miles the other day and the girl was topless the entire time. You know it's one thing to sunbathe with the girls hanging out there (be careful not to burn the nips!) but all together another to be working the winches! Ouch. The other day a young woman (w/two small children) who was on a French boat anchored near us (the French like to come into an anchorage, even one with plenty of room and see just how close they can anchor to the other boats) was walking around on the boat in her birthday suit. Paul is watching her, of course, and she bends over and just totally browns him out. He almost fell off the boat… ewwww. Saw another couple last night anchoring in the nude – completely starkers... explain that one to me. The German ‘'boys’ like to walk around their boats in their birthday suits all the time, especially the big boys.TMI! But I mean really, guys, do you  want those dangly things any where near the windlass??
Ok, I know I come off sounding like an American prude, but as a health care provider I think it’s my responsibility to point out the hazards involved when you sail without your safety gear… Just a public health announcement.

Happy Holidays

And best wishes for the New Year.
From the crew of Georgia!!!
Paul and Chris

Lessons Learned from the Bounty Sinking

“Experience in a vacuum doesn’t make us smarter. Experience has to be processed. It has to be considered with full disclosure.”
G. Anderson Chase

The sailing ship Bounty was lost in 2012 on passage from Connecticut to St. Petersburg, Florida after sailing into the fury of hurricane Sandy. The Captain and one crew member died after a daring rescue by the US Coast Guard of the other crew. There has been a lot of second guessing and armchair analyzing the captains choices and the ships seaworthiness.  Anderson Chase does an excellent job of going past the Coast Guard Enquiry and looking at the issues that effect the decision making when crews take on the risk of going to sea. His analysis applies to any endeavor where groups willingly take on risk. Its a good read.
The article is here: Lessons of the BOUNTY
Paul