Category: East Coast, United States

2 Years Living Aboard our Boat, What a Dream Come True….#48

This month, June is the 2 year mark for us being underway from our home at Columbia River Yacht Club in Portland Oregon. cropped-img_2364-2.jpgWhen we started this adventure, we thought that this 2 year mark we would be close to being done….but that isn’t the case. Our plans have adjusted multiple times, as they should when things happen. But we are so happy they did because we would not have experienced some places that we were not planning on going.

This first disruption of our plans was the overhaul in the Puerto Vallarta, Mexico  Shipyard at Opequimar. It took many more weeks than we anticipated. They did a great job but the length of time made us change our plans. We decided to head north up to the Sea of Cortez  for the summer. And what a great time we had! We would go back for sure and maybe someday we will do that. It was one of the best times we had.

img_6046One of the other best times/places, that was unexpected, was when we hit the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean Sea side of Panama. This was definitely in our plans but we were totally surprised by the level of friendliness from the native Guna Indians. We were blessed to have them share parts of their lives with us and we will never forget this memory. Also the beauty of the land and the hardship these people live every day to just survive is amazing. We were blessed to be able to experience it.

Now we had many small change in plans and we really only plan out the next stop just before leaving the current one. But the Sea of Cortez was a major change to our plans. One of the other major changes to the plan was just recently when the Covid 19 hit the world. We were in Jamaica  and we planned on going to Turks and Caicos and had family coming to join us. Well, of course that didn’t happen and we decided to undertake the longest run we had ever done, 4 days, alone with no crew. We made it safely to Florida and were glad to be in the US during these trying times.

We are frequently asked by people we meet about the roughest weather or worst storms. Of course you will all remember our cruise from Costa Rica to Panama, Our most TERRORIZING Cruise ever. We tell this story often to people we meet along the way, with wide eyes watching us as we point to the top of the fly bridge where the sea water attacked me in the middle of the night. This was a life changing event for me as a sailor and I truly respect the sea as it has its own agenda.

Of course, we are always doing repairs on the boat, well, I guess I should say Dan is always doing repairs. At least the repairs are being done in exotic locations, right?  Because repairs are so much of our energy, to keep moving and be safe I asked Dan what his most concerning repair was and why. This repair issue was the overheating of our main generator. It actually had two issues, but we did not know that at the time.

Being that the overheating was in our main generator and it was old, we had a bit of concern and needed it fixed quickly. We were in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico at the time, which adds to the complexity if parts are needed. The first issue was a clogged and leaking heat exchanger. It was very troublesome because it was difficult to disassemble, being old & rusty and was hard to get it unfastened in a very tight location. Eventually he was successful, but the part had to be ordered from Cook Engines in the US and then have it shipped. Because it was heavy and expensive part, we paid bucks! Customs in foreign countries can hit you hard. The second issue was found a couple days later after the heat exchanger was replaced. We had a worn out and clogged exhaust mixing elbow. The sea water passage had become clogged, limiting the flow which causes more overheating. We had lost our main generator again. But this time we had friends coming down and they brought the part with them in their luggage and helped Dan fix the elbow. All of this was a major concern because this was our main generator wired to our inverter. We had to use our alternate generator which limited us to 50 amps max.

The winner of best pictures is a slam dunk on “Sunsets & Sunrises”. So many I may need to create a picture book with all these pictures to put on my coffee table, someday!

 

 

 

I was not sure how to put these two years into a overall blog when there was just so much to talk about, So I thought I would put the last 2 years into a list of data points.

  • 730 days/2 years living aboard Angelique
  • 8,386 nautical miles
  • 7 countries visited
  • Cruised past 6 countries without stopping
  • 12 Scuba/snorkels dives – not enough times, for sure!
  • 1 new dinghy
  • 1 haul out/overhaul
  • 5 times we used 2 anchors – bad holding & bad wind/wave direction
  • 3 times major direction change in plans
  • 2 marina power failures while gone off of the boat – not fun!
  • 18 airline tickets purchased, traveled away from boat
  • 1 pandemic
  • 2 intruders
  • 1 awesome supermoon
  • 100’s of amazing sunset/sunrise pictures
  • 40+ dolphin sightings
  • 1000+ hours fixing & maintaining stuff
  • 24 engine oil changes
  • 1 stolen phone
  • 3 Airbnb’s – during shipyard work
  • 50 different visits from our friends/family
  • 4 different visits from Ken and Cheryl – Our good friends
  • 6 different visits from our kids, Kylie, Chase & Mitch
  • 2 Hired hands – who were brothers
  • 2 Navy football games attended – different cities
  • 40+ motorcycle rides
  • 48 blog posts about our adventures
  • 75+ books read (hard, on-line & audio)
  • 100+ bicycle rides
  • 60+ Uber and taxi rides
  • 27 nights Angela spent on boat without Dan
  • So many new boating friends/acquaintances
  • 2 very grateful and blessed owners of Angelique

As we reflect back on the past 2 years living aboard our Motor Yacht, Angelique, we are amazed at how far we have traveled, IN OUR OWN BOAT! So many awesome memories we have and we are EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that I have been writing them all down in this blog. Also, incredibly grateful to our friends and family that have joined us and helped with moving the boat in those times we needed it. And of course, all the people we met along the way, which are now new friends with which we will hopefully keep in touch.

I hope that if this is something you are interested in doing, that you do it! Yes there are rough times, lots of maintenance and repairs. But what an adventure you will live and relive as you remember what you accomplished.

We hope you and your family are healthy and happy. Blessings to you from Dan and Angela on MV Angelique 

Power is Critical on Boats, How Did we Install an Inverter….45

In 2016 & 2017 we were hunting for a new boat, we had sold our Grand Banks and were looking for the perfect boat for our adventures.  We purchased a 1980 Hatteras named Sheer Luck, which we knew needed quite a bit of Remodeling & Upgrading  before our adventures began. We spent the next 16 months working on all of our listed improvements which included adding an inverter system. I asked Dan to help write a more detailed overview of the decisions and steps included in the complicated process.

Warning → PLEASE DO NOT attempt this effort yourself, unless you are a strongly skilled Electrical Engineer. Dan has the skills & took multiple precautions to not hurt himself. It can be deadly if you are not aware of what you are doing.

~~~~~~~ Here is Dan’s Story ~~~~~~~

When we bought our Hatteras, it had lived most of its life as an East Coast charter yacht. It was set up to run with 3 crew and 6 guests.  That is a heavy hotel load. She was being operated in the Florida and Bahamas area which included heavy use of the air conditioners. With that many persons on board, the water maker, galley, and hot water heater were in frequent use. Thus, when we bought the boat, it was equipped with 2 Northern Lights 32KW Generator sets for power. It had no inverter.

Why is an inverter important to us? An inverter converts battery power to AC line voltage silently.  IMG_1871When at anchor, which for us is frequently, we like the generator off as much as possible, but still want our conveniences to keep going. Key loads the inverter runs all the time are refrigerators and freezer, the freshwater system, toilets, and lighting, as well as battery chargers for the 12V systems around the boat. The inverter can only run for 8-12 hours before we must start the generator and recharge the house battery.

So getting to where we wanted to be, with a nice inverter system, was not easy. The boat was built in 1980 and not designed to include an inverter. You had shore power or the generators, period.  Also, this boat uses a lot of power. It has two main 50 Amp 240/120 Volt, split phase shore power cables, 12KW, and one more auxiliary cable for good measure. The generators can deliver 80 Amps of 240V/120V, at 20 KW. We had to decide how much inverter, and how large a battery, what would it power, and how would we integrate it. At this point I must mention that I am a USNA Graduate with a BSEE in Electrical Engineering, and a Rickover trained Navy Nuclear Submarine officer. I was the Electrical Officer for 2 years. I know a few things.

I did a lot of research. I had inverters in 2 prior boats. One of which, I had installed new. But it was tiny, and only made 120V. I tried to see if a simple small system could be used on this boat. It turned out some of the key loads were 240V loads, so that eliminated many choices.

About this same time my friend Ron Micjan was facing a similar problem on his big Zephyr, (an 86′ research vessel).

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Only he needed a 3-phase inverter.  I learned a lot during his installation, with my many conversations with him, along the way. It was to power all the panels but control the loads so as not to overload the inverters. Yes plural. He settled on using 3 Victron 5KW Quattro inverters, wired for 3 phase AC. It was at this point I learned I could wire 2 of them for 240/120V split phase AC, one for each phase.

These inverters have 2 AC inputs (shore power and generator) and 2 AC outputs (pass through or inverting from the battery). So, I could pick one of the shore cables as an input and one of the generators as an input.  I decided to make the output go through one of the shore power supply breakers. This would limit the current to 50A max and made the boat act like it was on one shore cable when we were on the inverter, which is a common practice. I also thought I would need solar or wind as an additional power source for the house battery, so I added a very flexible solar charge controller into the design.

I talked all of this over with Ron, and even stole his bus bar design for the Victron Telecom batteries. I designed the installation to go in the “doghouse” area behind the main deck helm, as it was low, dry, and not in the engine room or under a bed. Inverters have fans that make noise and batteries can smell sometimes.  With his help, I ordered up over $10,000 worth of stuff, which included a pair of 5KW inverters, solar controller, lots of heavy wire, batteries, special fuses, connectors and battery boxes.

Inverter diagram from Dan

In the cold winter in Portland, in a big boat house, the electrical surgery commenced. First was mounting the inverter boxes – had to do some woodwork for good mounting.  Then install the batteries in their boxes in a cramped doghouse. Wow!  img_1550_originalThat was tight heavy work, but Angela pitched in and we got them in and arranged and clamped down. Then I could make measurements for cutting and drilling the giant heavy custom copper bus bars to connect the 8 batteries into an evenly wired bank of 4 pairs for storing 800 Amp-Hours of energy at 24 Volts.  Now measure, make, and install all the battery cables and ground cables.  DC side is done. Inverters power up fine, then are secured.

It was time for the AC side. A careful review of the Hatteras drawings and physically inspecting the switchboards front, back, inside and out was first. I had to ID what wires to cut, where to connect new wires etc. I also had to make some new labels.  A lot of pulling, snaking, measuring, cutting, crimping and insulating occurred. Double checked every wire to the drawings and the inverter manuals.

Then it was time for some tech support. I had to program the inverters to know they were a split phase pair. The Victron rep sold me some computer to Victron adapters and taught me how to use them. Plugged that setup into USB on my laptop and boom, they were setup. That actually took quite a while to complete this.

img_6977I started it up and it worked great. Adjusted a few things and learned what to turn off and what not to do while running on inverters.  We do not run the water heater, dishwasher, 32V battery charger or the crane on the inverters. No big loads. We can run one burner on the stove, and it runs all those important background items mentioned earlier. And we have lights at night without running the generator. It can run a quiet boat for about a day if the shore power goes out. At anchor, the system usually discharges the battery to 65-70% level by morning when we get up and we start the generator to recharge it and run other heavy loads.

What about solar? The sun shines when we don’t need the extra power.  Never built a wind generator, but that is still an option. Extra Amps come best at 12-5 and 10pm to 7am. But I had that fancy controller which was looking for 32-48V DC.  Ah Ha! On my main engines I have huge 1600-Watt alternators that put out up to 37 Volts.  I had one extra 30 Amp circuit breaker on my main 32V(nominal) panel. I decided to wire from that breaker to the solar controller.  When the engines are running when we are cruising, I set up the system to pull 28 Amps off the alternator to charge the house bank and run the inverters. This turned out brilliantly.  We have over 800 Watts of power we can convert into running the light hotel loads while cruising and keep the house battery charged.  We no longer run the genset while underway. Only for charging, making water, heavy cooking or extra heavy loads etc…

So that project was KEY to enabling how we like to cruise, and to keeping the lights on and freezers cold all the time.

What is the moral of the story? The next boat we buy will already have the inverters installed!!

~~~~~~ Hope you enjoyed Dan’s Inverter story~~~~

We did do some cruising without an inverter, up into the San Juan Islands in 2017. It was a bit comical having guests aboard while anchored out & no inverter. When the generator was turned off for the night, we would make sure everyone was in their stateroom with flashlights because when it when off, so did all the non-essential power for the guests. No lights, charging your phone or even flushing the toilet, as the water pump was not working either. Needless to say, it was kind of a “good night John boy” event when the lights went out. We were certainly not feeling comfortable in this situation as hosts with our guests.

Dan and I are both much happier with the inverter running our boat 70% of the time while at anchor. It makes the days and nights perfect, quiet and enjoyable. And you  know the saying… Happy Wife, Happy Life!

I hope you are all staying safe!

Please let us know if you have questions or an ideas for a blog. I might be able to pin Dan down for another technical overview if a request is given!

Take Care! 

 

 

 

Florida ICW & Staying Happy in these Tough Times…#43

We are all quarantined in our homes, boats or where ever you are held up. I’m sure Dan and I are similar to you with our quarantine time. We are staying put as much as possible, doing some deep cleaning, repairs and boat projects that we have been putting off way too long and a bit of Netflix, Audible, podcast etc. Also we are trying to not forget to do things we enjoy doing too. Hopefully “YOU”are doing some hobbies or stuff you like doing too.

We have always wanted more time, now we got forced into it. What are you doing with it? 

I feel like we are all facing a mixed bag of happiness, sadness, confusion.  We are all feeling that we are forced into this containment. It is important that you stay happy? I’m happy most of the time, but also struggle with containment anxiety. Every day looks like the day before. I work on how to make “today” better. What project will I accomplish today?  Dan is way better at this than me.. It really does matters to your health if you are doing things that make you happy? Do you know what makes you happy? Try and find time to do what you enjoy and stay happy! Dan and I wish the best for everyone!

Going North up Florida Coast 

If you read our last blog, Leaving Jamaica #42 you know we made it back to the United States. We feel much safer here and don’t feel so shut out. Even if we can’t go anyplace. Many countries are not allowing boats to move around or leave. We are hearing stories about some friends and other boaters, just like us that are held up in Panama or Costa Rica. Not allowed to leave, move, fly out and they even feel at risk of backlash from some locals.  A group of boaters have banded together and put safety measures in place to help each other out if needed. There are even boaters at sea near countries that will not let them in and are still moving long distances. It is scary times. We count our blessings!

When we hit the florida Keys we landed at Stock Island Marina Village in Key West Florida for the 10 days. This marina is top notch. “IF” everything would have been open, it would have been a fun place to hang.  When we made reservations we were asked to only stay a short time, as Monroe county had closed it borders to all visitors, that is what we were, a visitors. Our plans were to go north anyway, so our planning began.

Stock Island Marina = Closed restaurants, evening sunset and Coconut Row…One of the last liveaboard communities in Key West. Boats sternin on both sides and have an area for cars and/or patio, plants and hangout zone.

….And the town chickens/roosters, They all run free along the walkways

We were watching the weather out a week or so to plan our departure. As the window started to form and we saw we had 4 good days. We had a projected target at a marina near Cape Canaveral off the ICW (Intracoastal Waterways) called Telemar Marina. This was a long jump to go the 275 nm up the coast. I really didn’t want to do any underway overnighters, we had just done so many nights on the way to Florida, I was hoping Dan could find a few anchorages that we could just tuck into so we could make the run during the day, without traveling at night. Well, Dan worked hard on looking for those spots.

Here is our list and a couple maps showing our path & stops.

  1. Key West, Stock Island Marina
  2. Long Key, Long Key Bight Bay
  3. Miami, Biscayne Bay
  4. Fort Pierce, Fort Pierce Inlet
  5. Indian Harbour Beach, Telemar Marina

We were planning on going into Fort Lauderdale area where we had some boating friends. But couldn’t get in and out within the weather window and didn’t want to wait longer, so made the hard decision at the last minute to not go into Fort Lauderdale. Sorry #undaunted we missed you guys!

First Leg = Key West to Long Key Bight, 55 nm – Very rarely do we get such calm seas where the ocean looks like glass. We had a beautiful day and enjoyed it as much as possible. We felt very lucky to be traveling on such a perfect weather day.

We often see dolphins and were able to see 3 dolphins at our bow that day. They didn’t stay long, just a couple minutes and then off they went. I noticed that they sure held their breath longer then I normally see. They must have been practicing for an event or something… haha

We arrived at Long Key bight around 3:30 pm, dropped the anchor and enjoyed dinner and the most beautiful super moon. The color was amazing and it was so big, bright and so very close. We had a great view. The next morning we were up before dawn and got another moon shot in the dark.

Second leg = Long Key to Miami Biscayne bay 80 nm – The sea wasn’t as smooth as the day before but it certainly wasn’t rough. We had a long day and we were going to run as hard as we could to make it to Miami before sunset. As we arrived around 6:00 pm to the entrance to Government Cut which would lead us to our anchor spot in Biscayne Bay. We hit the Government Cut entrance at maximum ebbtide with 4 knots of current coming at us. It was a pretty turbulent and hard to steer going in, but as soon as we got through, it settled down and we cruised on in and found a place to anchor. Miami is a Hot spot for the Covid 19, so we stayed far away from land and just enjoyed the view. 

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As we left Miami we had another great morning moon shot. I think there is a song called “Moon over Miami”. We also got a closer look at the cruise ships that are anchored out East of Miami. These ships were empty with the exception of crew. I’m sure it isn’t easy being stuck on the ship…. but guess someone has to do it and they did sign up for long periods of time on a ship.

Third leg = Miami to Fort Pierce 108 nm – We had long run and another nice weather day. Still not as calm as the first day and we reminisced about it as we moved closer to Fort Pierce. img_6810For months and months I have tried to get a photos of the flying fish as they scurry away from the boat. They are kinda hard to see but at least I was successful. The fish swim in groups and as we motor along they will jump/fly out of the way. The bigger the fish, the further and longer they fly. I have talked about the flying fish in a couple other blogs about the birds chasing them and about them landing on the deck of our boat when the water is rough. First photo of them.

When we arrived at the opening of the ICW where Fort Pierce is located we were faced with another entrance channel to go through. There were a couple sailboats ahead of us that we followed into the bay. We also noticed that the breakwater had lots of fisherman that were not quite so socially distant as I would have thought. As we worked to try and find a place to set anchor we realized that the water was pretty shallow everywhere except close to the ICW channel.

We had to put our anchor down in 4-5 feet depth of water and hoped we didn’t move too much. We have 3 different navigations systems and they all showed us in a slightly different spot. What we “DID” know, we were just on the edge of the ICW channel. We were hoping we wouldn’t be awakened in the middle of the night by officials to move. We had put our anchor down late and we were leaving early, we felt we didn’t have much choice.  We set anchor alarms and watched the wind closely. No one bothered us, luckily.

“The IntraCoastal Waterways (ICW) has a channel marked to be able to navigate safely from Florida to Boston MA which is approx 10-12 feet deep, however, silting & shoaling have reduced the controlled depths in some spots to as low as 5 feet”

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Fourth Leg = Fort Pierce to Indian Harbor Beach, Telemar Marina 45 nm – This leg was the most challenging. We weren’t in the ocean where we could set a course autopilot, monitor the progress and adjusting once in a while. This was active, slower moving, all focused type cruising. We have done a bit of this in some places in the Columbia River that runs between Oregon/Washington, nothing to this magnitude. We traveled 43 nm through the ICW which took us most of the day. The majority of this trip we were in a channel approximately 200 foot wide and mostly 9 feet deep, with rocks, mud, or trees right to the edge. The charts did not match the aids to navigation markers very accurately. We were also battling a sustained wind of 20 mph with gusts to 40 mph. All this meant that Dan didn’t let “ME” drive very much… I’m sure all you boating wife’s have experienced this before, frustrating!

Some of the things we passed and saw along the way…..

We went under 6 bridges, only one had to be opened for us. Lots of expensive houses/neighborhoods. We saw a family fishing on a low sandbar with their boat just parked/anchored while they fished and their kids ran around. We passed a couple research institutes, a luxury community named “Windsor” that is customized to British style entertainment & sports such as Polo and Tennis courts like Wimbledon for the millionaires. We saw Ospreys nesting on top of navigation markers & a tug and barge business at Fort Pierce close to where we anchored.

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As we were pulling into the the Telemar marina it was pouring rain & thunderstorm, I was soaked to the skin doing lines/fenders and tossing our lines to the dock handler, who by the way, was holding an umbrella.. it was too funny.

img_6804Once we got tied to the dock, we always do a bit of adjusting of lines and fenders, connect our shore power and just get overall settled. One of the reasons we picked this marina is we have friends here. Gina and Chris welcomed us with 6 foot away hugs! They are so kind as they let us borrow one of their vehicles. As we were taking the keys and chatting it up…. we saw 2 dolphins in 4 feet of water near the seawall. They were chasing fish in the in the marina right beside us….. which we could see both the fish and the dolphins chasing them.

We are snug in our spot in the marina and will try and enjoy our time as much as we can, even being cooped up so much.

Thanks for all your support and happy you are one of my readers!

Keep well and safe!

Dan and Angela on Angelique ♥