End of an Era?

    Even though I had meant to continue publishing blogs again after a long lapse, I was surprised to see the that last entry was in June. Where has this year gone?

  Faithful followers of this blog may recall the bird problem we had at Clearwater Harbor Marina and that for no apparent reason, the Gackles that had been plaguing us just decided to go somewhere else. As a result, we quit flying our decoy goose that was very effective in keeping the birds away that flew in at first light and left right at sunrise, and conversely, came in a horde at sunset and made their departure at last light. It was like clockwork, and they made a hell of a mess. I also employed a predatory bird call recording that was played at those times that I felt worked to a degree but annoyed the residents of a condo complex nearby, so I was considerate and eliminated the use of the recordings which appeared to not make much of a difference at the time.

  However, Hurricane Ian made an appearance this fall and although we had no ill affects after that storm passed to the south of us, the birds came back in droves.

  We had already been going to Swing Set less and less over the summer due to the fact that we were enjoying our new home, but red tide in the area put a damper on boating as well, so we found ourselves just going to the boat to wash it and come back home.

  I began toying with the idea of selling Swing Set. The construction at Coachman's Park in Clearwater was in full swing and left the parking situation less than to be desired, and having guests out required a complex regimen of instructions as to where to park and I'm less than forgiving when it comes to insisting guests to be on time for departure, as I rely on tide and current tables to determine when we leave the dock. The indicators that I started focusing on were telling us it was time to put our boat on the market.

 Another event was Hurricane Ian itself. The boat manufacturing industry was just getting back from the Covid shutdown, and now Ian had just destroyed thousands of boats in southern Florida. I felt like there would be an increase in demand for vessels in good shape, which we know Swing Set to be one of those vessels.

  I threw an ad on Boat Trader at an embarrassingly high price and immediately got a call from a guy whose father had a boat on our dock. He was apparently interested in our boat and be came down with his dad to take a look. He didn't appear to be asking the right questions as far as my experience was concerned, and before he left he said he liked the boat, but his wife would really want two staterooms. I thanked him for coming and wondered if his wifes opinion mattered (and it does) why didn't he bring her instead of his father? Soon after that we listed our boat with a broker.

  The proprietor of Tierra Verde Yacht Sales came to our boat soon after and really liked our boat. We decided on a more realistic price to offer her at, and within two days I got a call from the broker with an offer, albeit a low one. We countered with a nudge up in price just a bit, but they were pretty firm, but I got the broker to lower his fee and we reached an agreement pending on a sea trial and survey.

  It turned out that the purchaser was a multi-millionaire from Africa and he was having his "agent" do the purchasing and handling the inspection. At first I was miffed by the low offer, but then decided to not let those type of things bother me, so we scheduled a date for survey and a haul out at our chosen boat yard for an out of water inspection.

  The night before we were all to meet at our marina, we get a message at 9:30P.M. that the sea trial was off. The surveyor was "ill" and was not going to make it. I sent our broker a one word response, "Bullshit".

  It turns out that the purchaser was not happy either, and he told his agent to fire the surveyor and use one that our broker would recommend. We were back in business and scheduled the sea trial for the week after Thanksgiving.

  In the meantime, we were so certain that all would go well that we started looking at a replacement for Swing Set that we could leave on a high and dry storage rack and eliminate all the cleaning and maintenance of having a boat in the water. We found one all too easily and unwisely put a deposit on a smaller center console, contingent on us selling our Sea Ray. I'm not entirely ignorant of winding up with two boats, or three, if you count the dinghy.

  On the morning of the sea trial and haul out, our broker and the surveyor was late in getting to our marina, then he tells me the haul out is to take place in just over an hour, which was two hours before what he had initially told me. Not only that, but the all important agent wasn't even going to ride along, but meet us in Tarpon Springs as he was running late. This development required us to run at our cruising speed of 24 M.P.H. up to the boat yard, something we hadn't done for over an hour in some time.

But Swing Set was up to the task and ran like a top. One thing that helped is that while we adjusted to the new sea trial date, Rosie and I removed about four carloads of stuff from the boat that we had accumulated in the 18 years we've owned her. I had also left the dinghy at the dock, and didn't leave room for argument when I told the broker that we were marketing the boat as a trawler, and if I was being asked to run it like an express cruiser, the dinghy was coming off.

  The sea trial and inspection seemed like it went off without a hitch. The surveyor said he saw nothing to indicate that the sale would fall through, and as we waiting for word from the buyer, based on the surveyor report, our excitement grew in regard to the purchase of a new center console, but we had reservations about where we were going to have to keep it. The nicer facilities were all full up, with as long as a year waiting list. Still, our enthusiasm grew.

  Then the bottom dropped out.

  The oil analysis came back "bad". We were not privileged to the data, but had to take the word of the agent. Our surveyor also mentioned that the engine blocks for some 1996 3116 Caterpillar engines were also "bad" and there was a recall that according to him was never done on our engines and the serial numbers indicated that those in that series were part of the recall.

  We have heard this all before over the years, and the reality is that those blocks that failed all had less than 1000 hours on them, most failed within 300 hours. Our engines have 3000 hours on them and we just proved they could run like new.

Our broker was undeterred. He suggested the sampling method was suspect. Even though we had only 20 hours since the last oil change, he suggested we change the oil and resample after running 10-15 hours on the new oil. At first I balked at his advice, which is typical for me, but then part of his reasoning made sense.

  Our oil changing system is a pump with a manifold. A hydraulic line runs from each main engine as well as the generator. That line never gets completely empty, and residual oil is always in there, and any metal traces are condensed in that line over time and can find their way into the circulating oil. As an aside, the generator oil analysis came back good, as did the transmission oil samples.

  I agreed to change the oil the next day and told our broker to be ready to take oil samples on the day after that, in order to give us time to put the hours on the boat for a resample.

  We spent the night in Tampa Bay after running the boat until dark. We had put a good eight hours on Swing Set and just got set on the hook. We started wondering if we were doing the right thing in selling the boat in the first place.

  The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn. When the brokerage opened I called our broker and told him we would meet him that afternoon and resample our oil and it was his intention on getting an analysis from the same lab, but he was paying for it so we could get the results.

  In the meantime we cruised by the marina where we had intended to keep the center console we had a deposit on. We hated it. It was in an area far from the Gulf of Mexico, a bit of a ride up into Tampa Bay, and the marina was just a bit too industrial for our tastes. But we adjusted our mindset to consider the aforementioned marina as a temporary location until we could get into one closer to our home that was a nicer facility, Marker 1 in Dunedin. We had berthed Swing Set there when we first came up to this area in 2016. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  We met our broker at the marina near his brokerage and he took oil samples. That was on a Friday. On the next Wednesday, our broker called with the news that the lab saw nothing to indicate abnormal wear on our engines, and that at the age of our boat, the advice was just to monitor each subsequent oil change. No kidding.

  At any rate, the buyer has moved on. He has a contract on another boat, and the $800 we spent on an oil change that we didn't need, as well as the fuel burned in order to resample just bought us some experience.

  We did get to spend a couple nights on the hook that we enjoyed, and we cancelled the purchase of the center console. We feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of our shoulders.

  Swing Set received the benefit of a weight reducing regimen and we've re-instituted our bird thwarting tactics and it's working. Swing Set remains for sale, but we've adjusted our thinking in regard to just giving it away at a reduced price. In the search for insurance for the smaller boat, we found a broker for a well known company that will insure our boat for ONE THIRD of what we were paying! We also found out during this process that what we are paying for a slip at a floating dock in Clearwater is a bargain compared to other places further from our home, and the construction at Coachman's Park where our marina is seems to be getting close to being finished.

  So, are we still selling? Not sure.

  

You Know What They Say About Advice

   In order to provide some motivation to keep our boat instead of placing it on the current sellers market, I joined two Facebook groups, and you might have found this post by being a member of one of those groups.

  I'm encouraged by many of the nice comments in regard to the pictures I always like to post to accompany any post. I feel like a picture draws a reader into the story if the total alone doesn't do it.

  It would be a great stretch of the imagination for anyone to think that this photo would encourage anyone to to anything except run like hell, but our small engine room housing two Caterpillar 3116's, a Westerbeke 8KW generator, two fuel tanks, one water tank, a bunch of batteries, a holding tank, and all of the other stuff that goes along with it to make it all operate has been the impetus for many of my stories. If you stay until the end, you may enjoy the reward.

  But first, the subject at hand is advice. On both Facebook groups I belong to, many members will ask the advice of other members in regard to mechanical issues that they might be experiencing. I'm finding this highly entertaining.

  If it's not the first time I have admitted this, let me state here again that I am not a mechanic. I don't pretend to be a mechanic, nor do I play one of T.V. But, boy I've sure had a lot of experiencing trying to fix stuff that break on Swing Set. That's where you'll find the search engine on this blog to be helpful, in terms of how to fix stuff, or also in terms of what NOT to do. Both methods have their value.

  Entering the engine room of our boat is similar to stepping down into a viper pit. I don't want to do it, but ya do what ya gotta do. As if our dog Holly somehow found herself stuck in a viper pit somewhere, someone has to go in there to rescue her, and if Crocodile Dundee isn't readily available, be assured that I'll jump in. This is sort of how I view most repair issues on the boat, although if it's standard stuff, I'll get in there more readily, like if the vipers were asleep and I can get in and out in quick order.

  Anyway, what I have never done in this age of social media, is ask anyone on a Facebook page on how to fix anything, and I've been at this blog thing for a long time.

  I understand it if a neophyte will ask a question to complete strangers, and by neophyte, I mean someone who barely has an understanding of where the wheel and throttle are, let alone the rest of the components that make the boat go.

  But folks, if a guy asks why his "bilge" isn't working, you have to consider what you tell him, or her. If someone says their boat is acting like it's "starving for fuel", you give him the easiest answer possible, you don't have him rebuilding carburetors and adjusting timing. That guy needs a mechanic.

 What I'll never do is disagree with someone else's mechanical advice that is given to someone else, even if it is in opposition to an answer I've given already. The 27 different opinions that an author will receive in answer to a simple question will all be sat aside as evidence under the label "stuff to check next time this happens".

  I've been places, The Bahamas for one, where finding a mechanic was a story in itself, and I have some doozies, so I've fixes some things that otherwise I wouldn't have attempted. But listen, you might be trying to save a buck by asking complete strangers on a social media site on how to fix what ails your boat, but if you don't understand most of the answers, get a professional to your boat ASAP, and try to be there when the work is done. You'll be paying for the expertise and you might just pick up some knowledge for yourself.

  The photo I posted at the top of this blog was taken just after I painted the floor of the engine room, and I mean only the areas I could reach easily. The rest you can't see anyway. Why I wound up painting the floor of the engine room in the first place was because a couple of years ago a part fell off of our fairly new generator which was installed in late 2013. I called Pitman Yacht services, the local yard we had used for a haul out when we first arrived here in the Clearwater area. They told me to call their mobil mechanic, Alan Pitman himself, who agreed to meet me a a marine nearby where he was currently working on a boat.

  We arrived at the marina and Alan came down to our boat, and all the pride in ownership that I had in what I thought was a shipshape vessel evaporated when Alan not only told me the part in question not only had fallen off due to rust, he began to point out various other things that I had been overlooking in  regard to the basic care of Swing Set. I was mortified.

  We set up a date for him to come to our marina to replace the part that had to be ordered, but I was intent on getting all of the things he pointed out back in order before he came back. One big item was the fact that the handle for the cockpit hatch into our engine room was the source of water entering the engine room and dripping on the generator where rust was thriving. So I made a shield out of isinglass that covers the front of the generator that roles up easily for quick oil checks, but I could see through to note the information of the generator control panel. The isinglass doesn't touch the generator, so melting is not an issue. I also replaced the soundproofing on the undersides of not only the cockpit hatch, but also the main hatches in the salon. I scrubbed all the areas I could reach, scoured the bilges, and I installed oil socks under each engine and oil pads under the shaft seals so I could detect how much water was leaking through those "dripless" shaft seals.

  I touched up a lot of white paint on the Cats, and some red paint on the Westerbeke, and I sanded some areas on the inside of the hull where paint was flaking, and otherwise prepared the inside of the hull for some epoxy paint where I could reach.

  It was a bright sunny day when I decided to paint the floor of the engine room. I decided to use a small roller, and also a small brush for where the roller couldn't reach and I got to work. I had put the paint in a small tray and kept refilling the tray as needed, placing the can aside in a place where it couldn't be tipped over if I bumped it. 

Do you see the train coming?

  As I painted, and this I will state unequivocally, the fumes from the epoxy paint clouded my judgement, and I reached for the paint and gave it a quick shake before dumping some of it into the tray. 

The train is now about to run me over.

  Of course the lid flew off and gray epoxy paint coated the whole front of my near naked body, as I only had on a pair of gym shorts, and what didn't go on my chest and shorts, wound up inside my shorts, over EVERYTHING.

  The timeline here gets fuzzy, but epoxy paint burns like hell. I found myself out on the boat dock hollering for Rosie to bring me the acetone, the paint thinner, and the turpentine. They all burn too. I peeled off the shorts immediately, not too concerned that it was in the middle of the day and other boat owners were present, arriving to their boats with wife and kiddies in tow for some wholesome fun.

  I'm not sure how long it took to remove enough paint to begin scrubbing down with the hose and enough Dawn dishwashing liquid to do the job, but it took days for Rosie to completely remove all of the paint from every nook and cranny of my body, and I've got a few nooks and crannies.

  I will say that the floor of the engine room looks pretty nice.

  Not sure what to think of the fact that I was naked on a public dock for at least an hour and no one complained. If you think about it, no one is too upset when mosquitoes fly around naked all the time and no one says a word about that fact that they're not even wearing gym shorts.

Put the Cart Before the Horse Sometimes

 

  My first post on this blog was in 2011. A lot has happened in over ten years and since I've recently decided to start posting again, I might repeat some things I've written before. Let's face it, I frequently find myself reading books almost all the way through before I realize I've read it before. Same with movies.

  But this next subject might be a new one.

  Pictured above is Swing Set shortly after we bought her in 2003, snuggled into her slip up on the Mississippi River, in a "dockominium" at the Duck Club Yacht Club. We bought Swing Set (called Lady J at the time) from some folks who were renting the slip, but I was interested in buying the slip as much as I was in buying the boat.

  We joined the Facebook Group, Sea Ray Owners Club because we started considering selling Swing Set after 19 years of ownership. Inspired by other owners and the networking on the Owners Club, we've decided to go for at least 20 years, for now anyway.

  But back to why this post. When most people start thinking about getting a boat, they go to a dealer nearby (if they have deep pockets), or they start perusing online to see what is available. What I did when we bought our current boat was decide where we wanted to keep a boat and look for one that was already there. It turned out that the owners of the slip our boat was in was interested in selling the slip too, so we made two separate deals and closed within days of each other.

  In our travels, we've found that slips are hard to come by, and so is rack storage, especially in the really desirable locations. Price dockage in Key West sometime.

  So, you might try "putting the cart before the horse" and look into places to keep your boat that are in your area or price range, and go from there. You might not hit your target on the model of boat you most desire, but even with rack storage, or slip rental, most businesses don't care if you switch boats if you are a good customer.

  Our current slip at Clearwater Downtown Harbor has it's advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that we are on not at the beach, so we don't have to sit in traffic going over the causeway to the beach marina, but we still have restaurants within easy walking distance. The sunsets are good too, as we have a nice view of the Sand Key Bridge and Gulf beyond. We do get a pretty good current as the inlet is right there, but because of that, the water is not stagnant at any time. The floating dock is the best thing, though.

  Right now, the Clearwater waterfront is undergoing major construction. A project called "Imagine Clearwater" is transforming the whole area and it's really torn up. This means our easy parking is now blocks away, and the dirt from construction blows onto our boat on days when the wind is coming from the east. Luckily, the wind doesn't typically blow from the east, but we drive the 35 miles from our home to the marina once a week just to give Swing Set a scrubbing no matter what.

  Our 400 Sedan Bridge was not the first boat we looked at when we decided to begin our search, but it was the closest to what we thought we would like. A couple of items of importance were diesel engines, a flybridge with stairs for easy access, showers in the head that was separate from the toilet and sink. We didn't do too much to the boat until we made the decision to move onto it in 2011. You can read about that stuff in the earlier blogs.

  Since we aren't living aboard full time, or traveling, most of what I post will be experiences in basic maintenance and ownership, but like the Clint Eastwood character says in the movie, A Perfect World, 

"I don't know a damn thing."

Let's Get Back In the Saddle

   We have lots of catching up to do since my last post, and we've been busy.

  We're still berthed at Clearwater Downtown Harbor where we've been since Hurricane Irma came through this area. We still highly recommend a floating dock if you can find one. As in the photo above, anchoring out is our favorite activity and getting a sunrise photo is something we always look forward to.

  

  On a personal level, my father passed away since I last posted. His care and health management took a lot of my time, and posting trivial things in regard to Swing Set just didn't seem like a priority to me. 

Recently, Rosie and I have been kicking around the idea of selling the boat, mainly because it's a sellers market, and to be honest, we've moved into a new neighborhood north of Tampa and are enjoying time at home more than time on the boat. But we know it's only because it's new.

  When Covid first hit, we devoted a great deal of attention to making some much needed changes to Swing Set, so back in 2020 I contacted a local upholstery shoppe and made a plan to install all new upholstery to the outside seating on the boat.

 As you can see, we matched the factory design, except I felt no need for the gold piping, and we didn't have the nerve to ask the shoppe to match the Sea Ray logo on the seat backs. One thing we did that other owners might like, and you can see it plainly in the last photo, is that I made a seat back from starboard and hinged it at the base and the cushion for the seat back has a sleeve that goes over the attachment, and part of the back swings out and holds the seat back up for a more upright position. It makes all the difference in the world when sitting on the lounger. For naps the seat back lays back against the dash like the designers intended.

  I was able to take the seat parts in two batches at a time after taking everything out. The whole process only took a couple of weeks, but matching the seats was the most time consuming for them, but it was worth having the look of factory seating instead of something resembling an add-on after the fact.

  Our radar shot craps too, and even had it not, an update was definitely in order. We decided to bite the bullet and install a 16" Garmin unit on our dash, which incorporates a depth finder, so the screen was placed where four other instruments were originally. A new dome sits atop the post on the radar arch, and it looks like it belongs there.

  To the right of the helm, a starboard panel was installed in place of the old radar unit and that's where we placed the VHF radio, a mount for the iPhone, as well as a bracket for the iPad. I'll use the iPad for redundancy if we do some long distance traveling again, but I'm so happy with the Garmin display, the iPad is not getting much use these days.

  Since my last post, our inverter quit working, but it was able to be repaired, and I've replaced all eleven Group 31 batteries, but that is to expected every 4-5 years.

  On a major note, two years ago we had to haul Swing Set out at Pitman's Yacht Services in Tarpon Springs. The bottom paint that I had applied when we were in Marathon was about gone, and our boat hull cleaning crew was grumbling about the additional effort it was taking to keep the bottom clean, even at a twice per month interval.

  Since the bottom had to be painted, I had the yard raise the bottom decal by two inches, so that the bottom paint line was well above the waterline and we now avoid any brown dingy stains, keeping the hull sides looking nice and clean. 

  Not a week after splashing Swing Set back in, we were cruising out Hurricane Pass out into the Gulf and I got tangled in a boat that was sunk in the channel and we scraped up our new bottom paint some. I dove under the boat and determined that I wasn't going to haul the boat out again, but promised the hull cleaners that I'd do it again on the following year, knowing that we'd be due for another buff and wax in a years time anyway. So last year, we hauled Swing Set out again at Pitman's and did a "half bottom job", replaces the dripless shaft logs (one had split) and had all new decals replaced on the upper structure, omitting the gold pin striping that doesn't last in the sun anyway. We used all black and also left off the script that tells everyone that the boat is a 400 Sedan Bridge. We wound up with a nice clean look, and if someone doesn't know what model we're cruising down the waterways with, well, who cares?

  Not two weeks back into the water we were anchored off our favorite spot at Three Rookers, and the wind, which the forecast promised to blow out of the northwest all night, decided to change its mind and nudged us into the shore and the picture above is what I found in the morning at sunrise when I felt the hull bump the bottom. I had to make a call to Towboat U.S. and get a guy out of bed on a weekday to come and pull us off as the tide was going out. I have no compunction admitting to such a dumb mistake, as well as saying I didn't have the anchor alarm set either. If you've kept up with this blog, you know that if it wasn't for dumb stuff I've done over the years, there wouldn't be much to write about.

  Lessons were learned, but the next time the boat bottom got cleaned, the boat report stated that there was paint missing along the centerline on the hull. Once again, the divers were informed that they would have to work around the damage until the next year, which was just a couple of weeks ago when we were customers of Pitman's again. We're on a first name basis at this point.

  We got another "half bottom job", as well as a thorough buff and waxing. Before we left the boat in the yard, I had removed the sunscreen around the salon windows and painted it. Yes, painted it. That sunscreen was over $2000 several years ago and the vinyl was wearing thin on it. For the last three years I've removed it and spray painted it with fabric spray in a can. It looks pretty good, no?

  Not to waste the chance, I had Pitman replace the two belts on each engine (I've done it, it's a pain in the butt.) I also had them replace the impellers on each main engine. (I've done that two, another pain in the butt.) They did a look see in the rest of the engine room and pronounced Swing Set to be in perfect health otherwise. The picture above is the day we returned to our slip.

  Earlier this spring, I called Boatswain's Locker and got on their list to make a flybridge cover to replace the original one that had a three inch rip in it. There is no sense in repairing rips that start, the fabric is shot and you're just throwing money away. Now all of the canvas matches. I had them modify the design for a better fit around the bimini frame, as well as add some flaps to cover the scuppers on the rear overhang so birds can't get into the upper deck and nest.

  Since my last post we had to replace our tachometers too. The original instruments are no longer in production but we found a pretty good match by another manufacturer. Only one tach was bad, (the needle fell off.) but for appearances sake, I replaced both of them. Tachs with a mechanical hour meter are nearly impossible to find anymore, so I had to add a digital unit to the instrument panel and there was room between the tachs. I kept an old one to verify our total hours which I add to the digital total when figuring out maintenance intervals. I'll send along more info if anyone needs it.

  I better save something else to post in a few days, or else it will be another two years before you hear from me again. Use the search engine on this blog to find items in regard to maintenance issues, or information regarding our time in The Bahamas. Wow, that was nine years ago!