Chasing the Illusion

Blowin outta this town

Click play on the song above for a little taste of Chuck Taylor goodness.  For more music you can find bits and pieces scattered around the internet like his Facebook Fan Page.  The music is down on the left hand side, they’re all great but White Picket Prisons and Pedro’s Bridge have been in my head for about 6 months now.

In the summer of 2007, Lara and I crewed on a catamaran in Europe for a few months and then traveled around the continent for a while. I wanted to build my experience a little, show her life at sea and explore part of the world I’d never been to. Getting my own boat was my next goal, the trick was where to base ourselves so I could work to get enough money to buy one. We flew out to the Pacific Northwest to check out Vancouver, Seattle and Portland as possible bases. They each had their own appeal but, I had a job offer open in Charleston at a decent pay rate. After being away for three years, going back “home” sounded like a nice compromise.

When we came back, we found that a lot of our friends from college were here and three of my best friends from growing up had since moved to Charleston…..ready made friend group — sweet. The last two + years we’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful, intelligent and creative people. Even though I’ve been pretty much consumed with the boat (got to be somewhere nearing 1,000 man hours of labor on it) since I bought it there’s always been an outlet for fun not far away.

Bocci on the beach? check…..serious game of short white men hoops? check……Guerilla disc golf in Hampton Park? check……oyster roasts? check….last minute convincing to hit up a show at the Pour House? check…..kayak trips? check

Work got me an Iphone which served as my ball and chain for two years, 2 am phone calls from the Harbor Pilots because their database was frozen, panicky hoteliers with crashed servers or whatever else came up. That’s the crappy part, the blessing in disguise is that I took pictures of little things all the time on it — I’ve got close to a 1,000 that make like a little slide show of our time in Charleston — lots of remember whens.

It has been a blast, and somehow people have put up with my constant dreaming and hearing about this trip that’s just over the horizon for two years. We’re leaving Monday….for real. The boat is floating, the engine is running, the mast is on, the head works, hell even the radio works. These last few months have been some of the toughest I’ve ever been through. I thought we were ready to leave about a dozen times, or the work was almost done only to have the rug pulled out from under me with a new relatively serious problem. I’ve spent all of two + years worth of savings bailing myself out but even then there’s no way I could have gotten this far without the help of my friends.

Last March (that’s a year ago now for those of you keeping score at home), Lara and I moved onto the boat to commence final countdown to departure, but our clock was broken — the countdown kept going up, then back down, then way up, then we’d whittling it back down only to have it shoot way up again. Adjusting to life in the marina was a little strange, we felt in between two worlds and a little out of place. The first few months we didn’t spend much time there, we didn’t find that many people that we had much in common with, the place had a nazi dockhand with a pencil thin mustache that threw out our herb garden and most of the residents seemed interested in talking about what idiots everyone else was and how crappy everyone elses boat is.

Towards the end of the summer, a boat pulled into the first slip on our dock with a cool hand painted name and from what I could tell a young couple on board. Over the next few weeks, I’d walk past Wildflower on my way to and from work and hear Chuck picking on his guitar and Lara met Michelle around the marina. They just got back from a year + of cruising and were in Charleston to work and for Chuck to play music. After my mandatory two hours of sanding in the afternoons, I’d crack a beer and walk up the dock to listen to Chuck play and eventually we’d get into those long bs conversations about life, politics, religion and whatever else I can argue about that make me so happy (devils advocate….ahhhhhh so much fun).

The long and short of it is marinas kind of suck, especially when all you want to do is get out and away from it all but all you do is sand, having friends a few slips away to share a meal with makes a ton of difference. People say the best part of cruising is the people. When I was backpacking people said the same thing. Whether you’re in some random town in Thailand, an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, at the southern tip of New Zealand or in someone’s backyard in Charleston — the people are what make it, and we’ve been surrounded by some pretty good ones.

Peace y’all — now lets do this thing.

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It’s raining again, but the boat is closer than ever to departure time…..even closer than we were three months ago before we figured out how much was wrong with the boat. A little piece of advice to anyone thinking about buying an old boat…..get a survey. No matter what anyone says about the condition of the boat……get a survey. Sure they’ll miss things, might over react to some others but unless you’ve gone down the old boat route before and know the types of things to look for….get a survey, lest you end up in a boatyard in January and February during one of the coldest winters in recent memory.

Now that that rant is out of the way….Happy Birthday Dad!

Despite the picture, my dad is neither a giant nor in the business of towing miniature barges around Lilliput.  He did however help take care of a friend’s replica mini tugboat last summer.  The scale model tug had a small Yanmar that needed starting every few weeks (hmmm…..), small tires on the side and most importantly an air whistle.  I went down to Hilton Head one day last summer and we took “Little Toot” on an all day voyage exploring the creeks and marshes around the island.  She did a smooth 4 knots and put putted deep up the rivers around the island — it’s amazing how quickly you can get away from it all on a boat, even a slow one……In between the mouths of two creeks was some shoaling that at low tide made a little beach, we came upon a pack of 6 or so young dolphins strand feeding in the mud.  It’s something I’ve only seen a few times, it’s a learned behavior for dolphins on the SC/Georgia coastline.  They work as a group and round up a school of fish then beach them on the shore, much like Orcas with seal. Nothing beats a day on the water and out in nature.

My dad has been extremely helpful with Illusion in terms of advice and encouragement. Recently, he came up to the boatyard to help me out for the day with his friend Will. They re-terminated the ends on the VHF antenna up the mast — a huge help to me since I’ve been tied up with structural stuff. I tested the VHF the other day and she’s clear as could be.

Over the last few years, he’s been sailing more offshore with friends — including one passage from the Beaufort/Oriental area this year to Hilton Head non-stop offshore in 30+ knot winds. I’m not sure if he’s crazier than I am or just worse at reading the weather, but either way that’s a tough sail regardless of the boat. There were just two of them sailing 24 hours a day in high seas and difficult conditions — I was impressed.

So here’s to a good ol’ sailor, good friend and all around great guy — Morris Young! Happy Birthday Dad — may the winds always be off the beam (sailors would rather reach….. it’s faster). Thanks for all the help, we’ll be down there soon!

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A lot of my friends think I’m brain damaged, actually sometimes I think I’m brain damaged.  I’ve spent most of my free time and all of my money over the past two years trying to get Illusion up to cruising specs.  Wednesday night movie?  Nope….sanding.  Disc golf?  Nope….sanding. Why do I put myself through all this?

Yesterday I was searching through my email for some old pictures of Illusion, hoping to find some good “before” pictures and I put in “Illusion” into my Gmail search bar. I found a poem I sent Lara while I was doing the Indian Ocean crossing aboard Sea Fever.  I got a little nostalgic and started looking through my pictures from Rodrigues.

The Indian Ocean crossing is pretty long, approximately 7000 miles give or take based on your route.  We did the southern route through Chrismas Island, Cocos Keeling (I’ll post pictures from there one day…..wow), then around 2000 miles to Rodrigues.  Look at that map of Rodrigues at the top of the post, zoom out…..then keep on zooming out…..and then zoom out some more until you find some more land.  That is a seriously remote place, but after 2000+ miles from Cocos seeing those green hillsides was a welcome site.

We arrived the night before the big weekly market and around 3am the screaming started; blood curdling, hair on the back of your neck screaming.  I’m from an island where the main industry is tourism, people aren’t even allowed to control the color of their houses much less have livestock.  Seriously, when I was a kid you’d have to get your friends to call you in a pass to get into their “plantation.”  Read into plantation however you like, it’s the term on Hilton Head and through a lot of the Low Country for neighborhood…..with a gate.  Anyway, that screaming came from the pigs getting slaughtered for market that morning….mmmm…fresh bacon.

Rodrigues was settled mostly as an after thought. It was a stopping point in the Indian Ocean, a place to rest and pick up stores. The island had thousands of giant tortoises that made for easy storage on the high seas. They don’t move around as much as pigs, cows or chickens and are quite nutritious — a cure for scurvy no less. The tortoise of Rodrigues also must have been delicious because they’ve been extinct since 1802 and the island was only discovered in the 17th century.

Even though it was controlled by the English for the better part of 200 years, Rodrigues still has more in common with it’s first settlers — the french. They make a pretty decent baguette, speak Creole and smell like garlic. Ok, I made that last one up….The people of Rodrigue still live pretty close to the land, mostly fishing and subsitance farming. The food we had on the island was excellent, nothing flashy but very fresh. The people were laid back and welcoming without being too in your face. They get some tourists, but they don’t have any big ocean side hotels or major developments. There are just a few guest houses, the restaurants were pretty minimal and internet was hard to come by.

An older man whose name escapes me, comes out to meet the sailboats when they arrive and gives you a tour of the island basically in exchange for the cost of gas and your signature in a book he’s kept for decades with the names of all the boats that have come through the island. This isn’t your tourist trap island, but a place where people are happy to see foreigners and welcome them to their island. Life is tough there, there’s a reason why many islands weren’t permanently settled for thousands of years — but the people are happy and relaxed.

We spent about a week on Rodrigues waiting for a weather window to make the crossing to Mauritius. I didn’t do much but relax and take it in. I took some pictures with my hot (at the time) 4 megapixel camera. I think you’ll see a little bit of why I’m so desperate to get back to sailing.

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Lara submitted a modified version of her Sea Turtle wood panel to infectious.com for a contest they’re running.  If she gets enough votes they’ll make it into a skin for laptops and other electronics and maybe into some other fun things.  So go vote for her

click here

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I realized today that I had an unfinished draft up on the Boat page.  I added a little to it, including some links to the original brochures and some literature about my good old boat.

So for those of you wondering why the paragraph ended in mid sentence, you can  now check out the rest.

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After about a year of back and forth with the US government, Illusion is Coast Guard documented.  Documentation is like a passport for your boat, it’s required to clear in just about anywhere (trust me, no one knows who or what South Carolina is unless they watch the Daily Show).  It’s a first,  big step to getting out of the country.  Now we just need to get out of the boat yard……

It took a long time for me to get my documentation, but not because it’s a complicated process.  Just go to Coast Guard’s Documentation Center Website. Download the handy PDF forms which you can email back to them once you’ve completed them.  All you need is some basic info about your boat (year made, weight, etc. etc.), Bill of Sale and your state registration.  I kept emailing my stuff in without my registration for some reason.  For once, I found dealing with the federal bureaucracy relatively easy.  I always got a live, human being when I called the the Documentation Center and they were plenty helpful and easy to deal with.  I’m not sure why there are so many services out there to help you document your boat?  Maybe I need to go into business charging people $500 to fill out a few forms and email them in

Once you’re issued a number, you have to permanently mount that number somewhere in the boat, I’m thinking we’ll carve ours in at some point using a wood burner or something along those lines.

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On Friday I finished drilling through the new steel mast step, in the process learned some valuable lessons about steel as the subject of drilling. When you’re putting in a 3/4″ hole through 1/4″ steel from underneath (or another thick, hard material….) it pays to:

• buy a good drill bit
• keep it sharp (use a bench grinder and roll the bit along it’s natural curvature and sharpen each outside edge)
• drill pilot holes, if it’s a big hole drill multiple

How did I learn these things?  I needed to drill four holes in the new mast step and elected to use the old holes in the lead keel.  Drilling up through the countersunk holes allowed me to keep my angle right.  I did not have a drill bit the right size, nor did the boatyard.  I wanted the hole to be slightly smaller than the bolts so I could tap the hole so the bolt would be threaded into the step itself and a nut.

We made a run out to the local True Value, about 15 miles away and bought a bit.  I came back and assumed the position.  I crouched under the boat and held drill above my head at about a 70 degree angle and well….drilled.  A lot.  By the second hole the woman who works their store offered me a stool, I of course declined until I looked up what felt like 15 minutes later and had only gone through half of it…….that seat suddenly seemed like a good idea.

The seat didn’t make the drill any faster, when I finished the hole I checked out the bit and it was totally rounded off on the sides.  If I’d sharpened it, that second hole wouldn’t have taken anywhere near as long.

When I finished the first hole, the drill stuck in the hole and kicked.  I dropped the drill, if I’d had a bad grip or wasn’t paying attention I could definitely have been popped in the head….After the second hole I learned how to sharpen the bit.  The third hole went quickly and easily.  The last hole was going quickly like the third until the bit split enough.  That’s where the pilot holes come in.  Right…..

Drill bits are designed to cut around the outside.  I was putting a lot of weight on the point and the steel was pushing back, all that pressure and motion eventually cracked the bit in half.

Anyway….holes drilled and tapped, I cleaned out the holes with my Dremel.  Then threaded in the bolts and tightened them about 90% of my strength (only a slight grunt, not battle cry tight) with a whole lot  of 5200 in the hole and around the head of the bolt.  5200 holds….I don’t like using it because getting it off is like battling a 20 minute mayonnaise jar lid with a jigsaw and pry bar.  I let that sit over the weekend to form a gasket.

Then I went and got two Tyvex suits, breathing masks and heavy duty gloves to sand the bottom with 6″ sanders attached to giant shop vacs.  Lara was shockingly not too enthused about spending the afternoon dressed like she was doing a crime scene clean up, sanding off paint designed to poison shellfish and other would be colonizers.  So I was stuck by myself to finish off my Friday afternoon shoulder work out.

While sanding I discovered more work….or created some.  The bottom had several blisters, I followed these instructions by Don Casey, who incidentally knows what he’s doing.  Though he skipped the “flatter your artistic girlfriend and convince her to fill the blisters because you make a giant mess with any available medium and you don’t want to end up having to sand off stalagmites of epoxy” step.

Pictures below

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And so the push begins, or continues or…..well….we’re still at it.  We got the sturdy new mast step back, I spent the better part of two hours yesterday drilling two holes in it.  Apparently drilling through thick steel is tough, who knew?  Lara and I are hustling to get all the out of the water projects finished this weekend so the boat can go back in the water early next week and I can start the rebuild.  I got the engine block and head back from the machine shop last week, it’s just been riding around in my car taking in the scenery for going on 7 days now.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and my first boatyard experience has been a blast. Here are some pics from the work over the last week:

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Boats, plans and budgets have been coming apart faster than a jenga tower in a Parkinson’s support group.

We have the boat hauled out to take care of some unpleasantness while the engine is at the machine shop.  We’re replacing sea cocks, painting the bilge, tidying up the engine bay and all sorts little projects that are easier with the engine out of the boat.  You can see pic’s here on Lara’s page.

Good news is, the boat is going to be a lot more seaworthy.  I’ll be able to sleep better on long passages and won’t be afraid to push Illusion from time to time (with her fin keel, she likes to really move!)

Bad news is more MAJOR issues…Illusion sat in the previous owners backyard for 20 or so years (in the water) and didn’t get a lot in the way of TLC or even basic upkeep.  The mast step (and most of the structural metal of the boat) is made of mild steel.  Here’s an equation for you budding chemists out there.

Steel + water + years of neglect = Lots of Corrosion

We knew there was corrosion, and after crewing on a steel boat I know the steps to remedy it: bang rust with a hard implement like a chisel, treat with Ospho, then paint with a rust inhibiting paint.  We attacked the keel bolts and their backing plates this week, had them checked out by the yard and then moved onto the mast step.  The keel bolts got a passable bill of health (they look like crap but the keel isn’t coming off).  The mast step on the other hand, looked like swiss cheese…..well if swiss cheese was covered in rust.

The mast step is where the mast is joined to the keel, in a keel stepped mast configuration it’s the basic structural component for a system that uses thousands of pounds of pressure to move the boat forward through the water.  After rust removal and treatment, here’s a picture of a load bearing portion of the mast step:

So……I’ve got more work on my hands.  I’ll put a technical post up soon.

But misery lovers company, last weekend I was looking for some other websites/blogs of people working on some of the same stuff we are and I found Syzygy.  Matt is the captain/mechanic/boat maintenance guru over there and they’re going through some similar problems (albeit on a sweet Valiant 40…give me some of those problems please!) as they try to hit the open sea.  His last few posts are interesting and show some of the frustrations of old boat ownership and trying to leaving the f’ing dock in general.

Check it out.

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Go check out Lara’s blog Forest and Fin to get a fuller picture of life on the boat…..she posts pretty often and takes great pics.  There are some pictures of the boat painted over there and some posts about living on the boat etc.

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