Will we ever have to leave all this

Week 15   -  Will we ever have to leave all this?

Due to continuing windy conditions, the Bimini Blue Water Marina is fairly full. And about half of the boats in this marina on any given evening are registered in Quebec. We are inevitably hailed in French because our own Panacea displays her Port of Registry, Quebec, on her stern. There is a steady flow of Quebecers through Bimini. My neighbour here tells me that he has been able to spend 6 months of every year in Miami for the past 48 years, going home to the Matapedia Valley only for summers. His motor cruiser is almost new, and the young Quebec couple who left this morning were on the maiden voyage of their brand-new 44 foot cruiser. They were replaced that evening by a young Montreal couple on their Bavaria 44 sailboat.

We are definitely the ‘poor cousins’ with our old boat. This month will see Panaceas 44^th birthday.

 Panacea among the others

We installed our new shift cable on Monday. Because it required us to completely dismantle the binnacle, we had been putting it off. The engine is still idling poorly (due to a too-short rotor, erratic primary voltage, and whatever) but at least we are now able to shift gears from the helm. I even devised a heat shield from aluminum-foil layered with steel wool and encapsulated with an aluminum pie plate. The cable otherwise lays against a hot manifold.

 The anchor windlass restoration continues, with more corroded electric terminals discovered. The windlass now runs. Susan, as Panaceas  ‘winch-wench’, is absolutely delighted. 

She was a slightly less than ‘delighted’ to spend a half-hour in the forward chain locker bolting on our new ‘tipper’ roller for the # 1 anchor. Hopefully the aches and pains acquired there will soon be over.

Our replacement autopilot, bought used off a bulletin board, would not work correctly when I installed it this week. It turned out that the drive belt had been fabricated from a larger (and much stiffer) belt. In addition the new belt housing was slightly undersized – so it appears that we shall have no autopilot until after we arrive in the land of overnight deliveries.

Susan went to the liquor store Tuesday at supper-time to get a bottle of wine and a couple of cans of mix. When she returned she advised me that one of the local ‘boys’ tried to pick her up. Apparently he was pretty ‘saucy’.

western side of the Island

“This wouldn’t have happened if you had been there” she advised. 

I am not sure if that means that I should accompany her on trips to the liquor store in the future or not.  She seems to have enjoyed the experience. She has been chuckling about it all day.

A windstorm has the boats all rocking tonight. Peter and Cathlene of Now or Never, (Pearson 323) met on E-Harmony and they have been cruising together for two seasons.  Their cruising season was nearly wiped out by mechanical issues earlier in the winter.  When they arrived back in the marina early this week, Larry of  Afterwards , (Hatteras 63) – advised me that these two are “live-wires” and “party animals”. Last night the party was mainly over on their dock. Tonight Peter knocked on every boat, inviting one and all to a lobster barbeque and social by the pool.

     

Lobster party

These two organized the whole deal and everyone brought interesting things to eat and drink.  The lobster tails (there were at least 72, and probably more) were provided by fellow Kentucky farmer-cruiser Al. Al, spent a small part of the evening trying to convince Susan that she would be happier with him on his boat. Among his enticements was a promise that he would never send her into his chain locker!  This guy could be tough competition with crazy promises like that!

 “Susan, what was that thump?  Sue?”

She still loves me, despite a nasty bump received while I was ’forcing her to work in the chain locker’. Or maybe she still loves me because of the bump on the head?  Hmmmm.

Al went on to work the rest of the gathering, looking to abscond with a first mate. When I last overheard him on the subject he was offering to do all of the cooking and cleaning and to work the ship solo. He was not specific about what the first mates duties would entail – but then, what the heck is left?

It seems to me that E-Harmony would be a great place for him to start looking. Peter and Cathlene submitted a 300 item personality profile that connected them on E-Harmony. Their story is increasingly common in the cruising fraternity.

Two years ago we met Bev and Mike on Quieequeg , their newly acquired Irwin 39, at Marathon. They too met online over a year before. On the strength of a totally electronic courtship she left Utah and joined Mike on his homebuilt sharpie on the Hudson River. They proceeded to do the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Florida Coasts and the Chesapeake before returning to Marathon. When we met them they were selling the sharpie. They had received the Irwin 39 as a distressed gift from a Canadian, because they were “handy at fixing boats” and they were getting it ready to cruise the Carribean.

There have been several other examples of such cruising couples, some of whom simply return to their ‘other’ lives (as in ‘not together’) at the end of the cruising season. One couple whom we met in Boot Key were on their second season under these arrangements. We have met several men cruising solo who really want a cruising mate, and whose spouses have no interest in sailing and will not be cruising with the men.

It is an interesting world.  There is something new around every corner.

Sara-kins, maybe you should have come from Largo on this cruise, just to research an un-mined vein for your online dating (?) service.

The SJPBC Winter Invoice was finally communicated to us. Thanks GG! Much appreciated! Our request to have it forwarded to our new address (i.e. c/o Justin) has apparently fallen on deaf ears.

We are looking forward to the day when an e-mail would come to us to tell us how much we owe, and to which we can respond with an e-transfer of the correct amounts. We haven’t used cheques for several years.

The SJPBC is the one and only holdout to this ‘streamlining’ in our financial world.  

How about this for an idea? (Whoa!- Overload Warning! Aooogah, Aooogah! Here he goes again!). Why don’t we just make a monthly automatic direct (bank account to bank account) payment. The money would simply appear in SJPBC’s bank account in monthly bites that would accumulate to whatever the annual bill totals plus a small ‘cushion’. No trips to bank, no handling of intermediate stages – just the transaction code showing up in the Clubs bank statement as proof of payment!  The cushion would be created large enough to keep ahead of the ‘three lumps’ of the SJPBC billing cycle by maintaining a credit balance at all times.

Gotta love that, huh?

Ah well – I am not getting my hopes up!  Past experience tells me that trying to force a move into the twenty-first century on this will only be interpreted as being ”all about me”.

I will be delivering the ‘coin of the realm’ money in the traditional carpet bag on my return to NB. That has been retro enough for the Power Boat Club over the years and so it will continue! I just thought I would share this parochial taste of home with my general audience.

SJPBC, I love ya. But some of the quirks – ohhh – they are almost unique!

We are looking forward to cruising the Billy Joe B and Jane Ann in NB and NS with all of you again in August and September.

We also look forward to cruising the Panacea next winter with some of our hometown friends as crew.

We would not be down here doing this today, had we not received an invitation from another hometowner. Gary (Adastrelle) has introduced several friends to southern cruising. We too shall do this and look forward to having some visitors from home aboard as we cruise southern waters.

Gary and Adastrelle

The story of Garys invitation that we join him in southern cruising was published a year or two ago. I will re-publish it in next weeks blog. 

Our sail to Bimini was still only the first official sailing trip of our Panacea. The shaking out of glitches and bugs continues.  The second sailing trip will take us to Florida and a NAPA store. As soon as we acquire a rotor that is 1/8” longer than the original brand in our distributor, I expect that we will be able to motor without the periodic shutdowns needed to clean melted plastic off the rotors outer contact area.

Over and out. Panacea clear on six-eight.