S/Y Kerpa

Finally, we are on the way to warmer climate, the first trip was from Georgetown down to Hampton, ca 160 nM. We have provisioned and only needed to fill our diesel tank, but it took longer than planned to leave our slip as the wind was fresh and pushed us towards some piling. However just after 10 o’clock we cast off with all our “tanks” filled to the rim. We motored out of the river and set sails.

Pat and Diane on Shenanigans were heading the same way, so we made company all the way down to Hampton. They too go with the Salty Dawg rally down to Antigua.

The wind was brisk most of the time and for the first 30 Nm just forward of the beam so speed was really good.

The good speed gave us the opportunity to test our new hydrogenator from Swi-Tec. We deployed it and at 9 knots it gave ca 10 A 24 volt, so not too bad. One might have expected more as it is rated 500 Watt, but our batteries where at 93 % so no major need for charging. The wind dropped, and we made between 5 and 7 knots and by morning our batteries showed 94%. We are pleased with that.

It was a cold day

So long johns and cap were necessary, and at night time it became very cold indeed.

Kerstin has all the cloth she could find aboard on hear, but still need to wrap herself into a blanket.

I was rather cold myself mainly of my feet? The cold then spread from my feet up in my body. I do recommend warm shoes aboard even if they seldom get used. A coup of chocolate with Rum is always welcome in such circumstances.

The night is very long about 12 h, so it was nice to see the dawn.

But even nicer to have a well-deserved cold beer in the sun after arriving Hampton, Virginia.

Hampton and Salty Dawg Rally

Hampton was busy with all boats preparing for the crossing, presentations, social events, provisioning and maintenance occupies most captains and crews. We could have a more relaxed approach as provisioning and maintenance were done. So, focus on social events and some presentations.

The free Pain killers was highly appreciated followed by the farewell dinner.

Charts are studied to find the best route across the Gulf stream, especially as the weather forecast does not look good at all.

The gust map for today Saturday the planned departure day. The grey indicates gusts well over 50 knots and that is over the Gulf Stream than runs north at a speed of 3-4 knots.

Locally it does not look much better. We are at the green dots.

Through the Salty Dawg rally we get free weather and routing service from Chris Parker, we have webinars with him, but unfortunately to much information and much to less conclusions, but still rather clear stay in the harbor for now. An experienced skipper on a 70 foot Hylas who has done this trip more than 15 times he said no way I will go on Saturday as planned. The Gulf stream will show confused sea at 12- 14 feet and for small vessels already confused sea at 6 feet is bad.

The Gulf Stream is about 50 nM wide, but as seen in the picture areas of up to several hundred nM are effected trough eddies and sometimes they can be very bad them too. We wait for a better window, maybe on Monday or Thursday, we will see. preparation continues, Kerstin preparing ready meals for the crossing.

Kerstin vacuum chili-con-carne and bolognaise for the trip. Also Swedish “Pan Biff” is on the menu.

I make sure the Dingy is securely fastened on the after deck. So now we wait and see….

We arrived back to Georgetown Yacht Basin and Kerpa ca 02:00 in the morning of the 20^th of October after a final 4-hour trip by rental car from JFK airport. It was a little of a shock to step out of the car as the weather was and are very cold here in Georgetown. We have no heater for the 220v 60 Hz, that the US Marinas offer if you configure the cords in the electrical plug the “right” way. We can run the charger and air conditioner with that set up, but our heater works very poor. We usually have ca 8-degree C or 46 F in the morning when we wake up, but I must admit that we have slept very well.

A jug of chocolate with a generous addition of Rum give some warmth so does the oil lamp. I had caught a cold and complained for my daughter about it, She suggested that I should drink ginger tea. I can strongly recommend it, make a cup of tea, add thin slices from ca 1 cm of fresh ginger, it taste almost as good as the Chocolate with Rum and my cold has become much better.

The 20th of October happens to be my birthday so we celebrated it in a very plain way by going to the local Marina bar and shared a plate of nachos and some chicken wings, no extravagance for us.

The Nacho plate was rather large, so we might treat our self coming Saturday by sharing a plate and a few beers.

Provisioning

On our priority list is to provision while we have the rental car and fill up the boat to make us as independent as possible.

First visit to the liquor shop, we made one more visit!

80+ liters of milk

It is a hard job to find space for everything, but Kerstin is becoming very skillful in packing the boat.

We use the marinas ice box to freeze our meat and chicken, we buy chicken legs of the bone, they cost a little bit more but taste much better. This is about 2/3 of all the meat we put in our freezer, now it is full to the rim. A freezer saves money and make you much more independent, we do praise our freezer a lot.

Our stock of Pasta, we have bought about 15 packages of morning cereal’s, 25 packages of yeast with the corresponding amount of flower. I think we do not need any major provisioning for a few months now.

New gadgets

We have ordered a “few” things for Kerpa to be delivered to the Marina, they have a small room to store things that the guests order, they where happy that we now started to empty the room as we took up more than 50% of the total space. Amazon is our major supplier, the strange thing is that they do ship in very large boxes, and when you open it, most of the space is filled with packaging material “protecting” a rather small box, not strange the roads are full of lorries if half of the boxes are empty.

One of the more fun things was our “Hookah” dive system from Gator Gill

It has a 0,75 hp electric motor that runs on 12 v, they claim it can supply air for two divers down to 18 meters. I have my doubts about that. I will be pleased if it can supply air for two divers at 2 meters depth cleaning the bottom from fouling and in worst case free up a fouled propeller, that is the main purpose of the equipment, but of course we can use it for recreational diving also if we find a good spot close to the boat, or put it in our dingy and go out to a nice reef and dive.

I’m testing it and at least it works in the cockpit!

Our boat work on 24 v, so I needed to install a converter from 24 to 12 v. This small converter from Victron is rated up to 70 A 12 v continuous load, should be more than enough as the hookah draws 35 A.

The teak ply that I use as a base for mounting I brought together with a hand saw from Sweden down to Kerpa when we bought her, I did not expect to get much use of any of them, but I was wrong, not very much ply left and the saw have come in handy many times.

I had to install a new bilge pump the old one needed to be replaced, unfortunately I had to replace all the hoses as well from 1,25 inch diameter to 1,5 inch as the socket of the pump was 1,5 inch. Hoses are not very cooperative at low temperature but a good heat gun certainly improve cooperation from a stubborn hose.

Our old compass had become incontinent and I was afraid it would not improve so we had to install a new compass.

Our printer went into holiday mood and become very slow, about 5 minutes to print one page in B&W, so we decided to retire it, the new young and eager one works much better and demand much less office space.

Kerpa on the hard

We had agreed with the yard to have a free lift to pressure wash the bottom, and it was definitely necessary.

Copper Coat does not work very well in fresh water they say, hope it will work better in salt water. The reason we bought the Hookah is to save cost not having to lift so often to clean the bottom, now we can do it frequently and maybe have some fun with is as well.

However it was less fun to discover that the yard had not made a proper job when applying the Copper Coat, I specifically asked for 5 coats, but it looks as they put on about two coats, of course I become very angry and had a big row with the foreman, he called the owner and most probably complained that he had a very abusive customer who needed immediate attention from him. The owner came to Kerpa inspected the inferior job then he politely asked me if I wanted them to put on the additional coats, but that is a no option as we must leave soon to take part in the Salty Dawg rally to Antigua. I said I want the money back so that I can have it done properly when hauling out next time, he “agreed?????” so now he will calculate what it can be worth, so I’m still waiting for being reimbursed.

The weather is as mentioned earlier very cold, we now expect strong wind and rain, so we will probably stay at the marina until Monday, hopefully the wind and weather will be cooperative enough for us to make the +/- 160 nM sail down to Hampton for the Rendezvous with the other participants in the Salty Dawg Rally to Antigua with departure 3/11 weather permitting.

The delay in departure due to weather have had at least one good thing with it, as several things that I have postponed since long, now have been done. Such as changing the transmission fluid in the gear box, have probably never been done. Smoke detector in the engine room, fixed some nonfunctional lights, etc. but rest assure there would be a long list if I decided to list all things that has been postponed.

This might been boring reading, but cruising and living on a boat is not only visiting beautiful places and partying, a lot of time goes to maintenance,  replacement and improvements of the boat. I’m not the only one having bad luck with yards doing an inferior job, we have meet many others who had experienced the same as us.

We invited a couple who also are in the marina on dinner yesterday. They have just bought their boat and making the “Final” preparation to go cruising and live aboard. We told them what we told each other when we just bought Kerpa, that from that date almost all surprises related to the boat will be negative. Very few if any will be positive, well you would not wake up one morning and find a bare of gold or a pile of bank notes in a drawer, but more likely wake up and find water where it should not be, fridge is not cool, batteries are flat, etc, etc, but despite disappointments the reward of cruising to different destinations meeting new friends seeing wonderful places outweighs eventual disappointments 100 folds.

Early September we left USA for a short trip to Stockholm, one has a different view of the place one was born and raised in, when not living there any longer. I must say Stockholm is a beautiful city. Below follow a few photos taken in Stockholm all of them in walking distance from downtown. I can recommend a visit if you have not been there.

The City Hall of Stockholm where the Nobel price dinner is served

Plenty of water around the city center

Old fasonen biking event

Below follow a few Photos of Djurgården a large green area with many museums, restaurants and nice areas to walk

Photos from the Island Långholmen, where there use to be a prison, now you can stay there it has become a conference center with hotel. But I prefer the shore side

Plenty of low-cost mooring places for small old boats

A quiet place just a few minutes walks from the busy city life

The main objective with our trip was not Stockholm but Samos in Greece, where our daughter Emelie was going to be married to her boyfriend Axel who’s fathers is a Greek, and yes she got a “Big Fat Greek Wedding”

Beautiful Samos

Just married

Non-Greek trying the Zorba dans, not very gallant but we enjoyed it after plenty of Retsina and a few ouzo.

Our two daughters

The wedding was very Greek including the dinner with a lot of dancing to traditional music, both old and young took part in the dancing. However the party after the dinner was more Swedish with a lot of shots and more than one person had a very soar head the day after, as it should be

Now we are home in Lagos for a short visit

Nice weather and beautiful views

The marks you see in the rock is dinosaur footsteps. in Salinas

We have been using the time to get in better shape going to the gym almost every day, definitely needed, I hope we have better discipline doing our workout now when going back to Kerpa

Of course, we have enjoyed the nice warm water

Very warm water.

Finally, we meet some OCC persons in the Lagos Marina with whom we had dinner. When “sailing” one meet so many interesting persons with all kinds of experience and adventures behind them self, but I assume Paul and Rachel Chandlers beet most stories one will ever hear

They were kidnaped by Somali pirates and was held hostages for 13 month, most stories one hear one gets a little bit envy and thinking, can I beat that with future experiences? Well I don’t think any persons would like to experience such an ordeal. The good thing they continued to cruise after being released. Amazing people

They wrote a book about it that I will read with great interest.

Well, the day after tomorrow we will fly back to USA and Kerpa. 3 November we plan to sail with the Saltydawg rally down to Antigua.

Last time you heard from us we where in Annapolis, we stayed there for over a week, combining lazy days with boat work.

It was rather busy days in Annapolis

Where we saw this replica of a Sandbagger, originally, they were built for oyster harvesting around New York, people were betting on which were the fastest and the Sanbagger become one of the first racing classes. The rule was no limits on sail and they had enormous sails up to 150 sqm that was counterweighted by people and sand bags. It started around 1850.

The weather was very “good” but way too hot and humid for us.

One day we got a lot of rain, and the captain took the opportunity to take a shower in the heavy rain to cool down.

We will go back to Europe for roughly 6 weeks mainly to attend our oldest daughter’s wedding, something we really look forward to, she is getting married on Samos Greece.

We will leave Kerpa in Georgetown Yacht Basin where we got a slip for free as they were so delayed when repairing Kerpa, Now the last days we have enjoyed AC and the AC units has been on 24/7 in 4 days we have used them more than the rest of the time we have had Kerpa, we might have been Americanized?

But it is a must, temperature well over 35 degree C and close to 100% humidity and a lot of work to do.

Regular service of all engines.

Running fresh water through the out board engine, Kerstin stands..

Right in the way of the cooling water out let, she got very wet but still a happy smile

A clean fuel tank

My home mad “fuel transfer pump”

A fuel hose in which I put an aluminium tube to make it stiff so that I could positioned at the lowest part of the tank and where I found the most debris. The pump it self is just an old out board fuel hose with a hand pump.

When tank was empty I just made a “broom” by attaching a rag with a cable tie and mocked around the tank. Worked well.

Installed a new fresh water pump from Marco, look how small it is compared with the old Jabsco pump. It does not need any accumulator tank as the pump has variable speed and gradually increase the pressure. So not only small, we saw space on accumulator tank as well, cost a little bit more but, my 1,5-year-old accumulator tank from Johnson pump was broken so in the end it will be cheaper.

More engine room work. I had notice that the water pump started now and then so obviously we had a leak somewhere, after some tracing I found it. It was the three way valve for flushing the water maker that I changed about 2 years ago that already have started to leak, so needed to put in a new valve and was forced to move the filters as well, it become a full day of work, on top of that I had to pickle the water maker again as the leaking water has flushed away all the pickling agent. Work, Work, work phu.

When we get back we will sail with the Salty dawg rally from Hampton to Antigua. In an information mail I got from them they offered a free rigging inspection from a rigger in Annapolis, very convenient for us as we were in Annapolis so why not take the offer. Of course, they want to sell us a new standing rig as ours is close to 20 years old, we have decided to change when we get to the Amel office in Martinique, but as the trip to Antigua is close to 1600 nm it is a must to make sure there are no visible flaws on the rig such as a broken strand. The rigger did not find any problem with the rig, but he said your radar will soon fall down!!!, as one of two bars holding the radar is broken. Well we had missed that one and we were both glad and sad, glad that he found the problem, but not happy when he said the cost to fix it is probably around 1000 $.

When we earlier went down the Delaware bay we were pounding heavily in the waves, we had the current with us but + 20 knots on the nose with very steep waves. It would not been fun at all having a +10 kg radar hanging in the cable banging violently into the mast threatening to falling down any minutes. Not fun at all! if falling down onto someones head it would easily been a fatal accident.

Our radar bracket

The aft bar holding the radar was brooken on both sides. Simple to fix, just weld it but first one has to loosen the radar from the bracket, hanging it to a halyard, dismantle the radar bracket, bring it to a weld shop and then mounting it again. If I had time I can do most of the job myself, but I do not fancy very much having the radar hanging in a halyard for more than a day or two.

Well I woke up one night and thought why not just tie it with a piece of Dyneema string?

My “Cooled welding” with Dyneema string, I tied down both bars even the one that was not broken, thrust it will last for a long time. And we can have bettter use for the 1000 $ there are always something new to mend, improve our just break down.

Well I’m not the only one working, Kerstin took care of the inside cleaning and treating with white vinegar to avoid mold. Cleaned out the anchor chain box etc. etc.

Now Kerpa is tied up with double mooring ropes and well fendered off. Remains from hurricanes can reach this area and then I know I have tied her up properly. Tomorrow we fly to Sweden