Five days and nights of straight running, split between Joan and I (with Kimberly helping where she can) equals two tired adults.   The passage was straight forward, seas for the most part about 6 feet with winds in the 5 - 10  knot range.   I did manage to listen to two book tapes, and lots of music on the Ipod.  I really don’t mind the night watches as I’m a bit of a night owl, and it gives plenty of time for leisure activites.  During the day we are fairly busy.  I’m in the engine room pretty much every hour inspecting the engines, transmissions, cooling and exhaust systems, hydraulics and steering gear.  For engine room inspections we have an infrared temperture gun that I use to measure specific locations on the various equipment to ensure all is running in the normal operation range.  If the temperature starts to change, usually an increase, I immediately start to investigate potential causes.  This usually prevents an unscheduled catastrophic failure, which is most unwelecomed when puttering about a big ocean in a small boat. 

Joan handles meals, home schooling and her watches.   Kimberly has school (weather dependent), helps with the watches and is the chief gopher, not her favorite role, she also has become a pretty good chef of KD.  Then there is the stuff like tending the fishing gear we usually have out, which can be a job in itself.  Everyone lends a hand as necessary during the day, and we keep ourselves quite occupied.  There is usually still time for card games (Kimberly is a Skip-Bo queen), family conversation and leisure time on the flybridge looking for sea birds, fish, dolphins and whales.  But at night there is plenty of ”down time”.  Yes, there are still the hourly engine room checks, and a sharp eye is kept on the radar and instruments, but it’s different.  You have time to kick back, to listen to book tapes and music.  My night watch runs from midnight to 6 am.  On calm, clear nights I usually head outside to the portuguese bridge.  It’s a well protected spot just forward of the pilothouse.  No chance of falling overboard at night with everyone else asleep, every sailors nightmare.  Out here the boat engines are silent, the dim note of the exhaust blanketed by the soft swish of the ocean gliding by.   It appears the stars overhead have doubled or tripled in number.  And they have!  With no light pollution from “civilization”, stars normally blotted out by light reappear.  Millions of them, and all are much brighter.  On a moonless night the stars blend seamlessly into an ink black ocean with no disternable horizion.  It appears you are sailing off into the dim reaches of space.  I now understand why ancient sailors thought they could sail off the end of the world.  That belief may seem quaint today with our satilite navigation, space shuttles and internet.  But far from land, alone on a clear dark night, looking out past the brightest stars into the dim reaches of space, it almost seems plausible.    That alone makes the night passages worth the price of admission.

Cheers,

Roger

Posted: August 24th, 2008 under Roger's Reflections.
Comments: 1

Jan 1st, 2008,

Happy New Year!  We are back in Orange County living on New Paige and the Harbor Patrol are still on holidays.  Not really, but they apparently have forgiven us as they still return our wave when motoring by.  I guess they moved on to bigger things, apparently one of our fellow Nordhavn boat owners accidently pumped a really large volume of diesel fuel overboard last week when tranfering fuel between his tanks.  We hear that it was the largest spill within the harbor in the past 10 years, a couple of hundred gallons or so.  Makes our 3 oz. spill seem puny.   Usually I’d get competitive about being outdone, but this time I’ll pass.  

After living in condos and hotels for the past four months, we moved aboard Thursday night when we returned from Puerto Vallarta.   It feels good to be aboard, but our gear is in complete disarray.  We had emptied the entire contents of the condo, and half of the garage into the boat before leaving.  It mostly ended up on the beds, settees and any other suface away from the walls so the woodworkers could finish repairing the nicks and dings that come with the commissioning process.  Yes, we had to rent a garage to store the STUFF we (OK, mostly me) are buying.  For the past few days we have been cleaning and trying to determine the final resting places for this stuff.  The reason we are cleaning, for the third time, is that the interior is coated in a light layer of very fine sanding dust.  The results, I’d hazard a guess, from our Chinese woodworkers repair efforts, even though they had reportedly covered everything with plastic sheeting.  Not much fun.  However, to add insult to injury, they left for the homeland before completing all the repairs.   Must be Chinese New Years or something.  Soooo, we now have to have local woodworkers come this week and finish the job.  This will of course, involve re-covering the interior of the boat with plastic sheeting, and will proably leave another layer of very fine dust on everything.  Then we (OK, Joan will as I will find some excuse to be in the engine room) will start the cleaning process once again.  Sort of like have 3 workers varnishing and sanding in your kitchen while you eat breakfast under an umbrella.  You just have to chuckle.

Yesterday we returned from buying boat stuff and found a business card stuffed in the cockpit door.  It was from the mom of a family that we had met while sailling down the Mexican coast a couple of years ago.  Their boat is moored in this marina and they reconized our boat name when sailing by.  I should explain that cruisers never ever forget a boat name.  Once cruising, you do not use your surname anymore with other cruisers.  When people meet you on the docks or beach its “Hi New Paige”, or its ” I’m Roger from New Paige”.   We’ve met scores of cruisers that we shared many hours with, and can always remember the boats’ name, but don’t have a clue what their surname is.  So, when this family noticed a Nordhavn named New Paige, they knew exactly who the owners were.  Never one to miss a potential free meal and drink, I quickly gave them a call and they graciously invited us to spend New Years eve with them.   Joni and Frank have four girls, and Kimberly had hung out with the youngest, 11 year old Kira, in Mexico.  They were very excited to see each other and had a great evening.   One of the older girls taught Kimberly how to play Texas holdem poker.  When I finally noticed, Kimberly and Kira had teamed up, and pretty much had cleaned house.   They were playing against 5 or 6 adults, including a couple of guys on military leave (the older sisters husbands, one was on leave from Korea and the other, Iraq – yikes!).   Kimberly does get a rounded education  (this reminds me that she overheard an ex-green beret who stopped by a couple of days ago explaining to me that primarly they were teachers, of a different sort-but thats another story).  She has learned to be very adaptable, and be as happy as possible in all the situations we throw at her.  A very good skill we could all learn from.  This girl definitely views life as a glass more than half full.   We are very proud of her.  

Joan and I are having a great time and we just shake our heads at the good fortunes we seem to have bestowed upon us every day, the harbor patrol and woodworkers and ex-green berets (he turned out to be a very interesting and nice guy) we run into just add extra color. 

So as the first day of 2008 winds down, Roger, Joan and Kimberly of New Paige wish all our family, friends of old and new a very, very Happy New Year!  May life and this new year bring you all “Fair winds and gentle seas”.

Roger

Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under Roger's Reflections.
Comments: 2

Dec 25th

I am finally finding some time to write a post on the wonderful new blogsite that Dave Blair has set up for us. Thank you very much Dave! We are in Puerto Vallarta enjoying the holiday season with lots of friends, and hiding out from the California Orange County Police department. Sort of. It seems last week while scheduled touch up work was being done on New Paige in our absence, a wood worker accidentally spilled about 3 ounces of varnish overboard. Nordhavn, our boat’s builder, appropriately enacted their spill response plan and contained all 3 ounces of the “deadly” material (slightly less toxic than gasoline) with a small float boom. At about this time the Orange County Police Department harbor patrol boat wander by. Apparently, then all hell broke loose. Three emergency response vehicles with teams were summoned with lights and sirens blazing. The emergency response teams carrying their equipment made their way to the end of the dock, to find the situation under control. I would imagine that during ensuing confusion (several dozen emergency responders tripping over each other and their equipment on the narrow docks) one of wood workers casually reached down, dabbed the water with a paper napkin and sopped up the 3 ounces of varnish. End of crises, maybe the end of global warming. However, the Orange County Police Department probably doesn’t see it that way, so we have been notified to contact them ASAP. I don’t even want to think of what the fines and jail terms are for environmental polluters in California. The muddled life of a boat owner. Another “cerveza” (spanish for “beer”) PLEASE. My spanish is coming along just fine.

New Paige is slowly becoming ship shape, as they say. Upon her arrival in early September, I declared her to be 95% complete, with 95% left to do. That is the way big complex projects are. The last 5% takes almost as much effort and time as the prior 95%. New Paige was designed by Jeff Leishman of Pacific Asian Enterprises, which is owned by Jeff, his brother Jim, and Dan Steetch. The three are southern California natives, and have spent their whole life designing, building and marketing boats. The boats are sold under the Nordhavn brand, and are considered by many to be the premiere ocean going semi-custom cruising boats. New Paige was built at the South Coast Shipyard in Xiamen, China under Nordhavn’s supervision. I made two trips to the yard while construction was underway, one with my brother Bob (how many times has he heard “and this is my brother Bob”), and one with Joan and Kimberly. This gave us ample opportunity to make many, many changes as the boat was being constructed, and that just about drove the project manager, Dave Harlow, crazy. Most of my conversations would start with “You know Dave, that looks great, BUT, I’ve been thinking….. “. I usually got my way by just wearing him down. He had the opportunity to even things out when producing the invoices! So much for the retirement fund. Overall we made hundreds of choices and decisions, scores of changes, and then spent many sleepless nights agonizing over our choices, decisions and changes. When you make that many changes, you are never quite sure of what you’ve done until you see the final, finished product. We are happy to say the end result is very, very beautiful, and it is going to be a wonderful home to us on our “Great Adventure”. Most days we still pinch ourselves.

Since the boat arrived, Nordhavn have had commissioning (final inspection, adjustment and repair) personnel on the boat on and off quite regularly. Some weeks/months more off than on, but thats the nature of the beast. Its hard to convey how difficult, frustrating and tiring this process is. Its sort of like dealing with government planners in that at some point you just throw up you hands and reconize that it happens at its own pace. No matter how hard to try and influence the process, the results are not certain. Not they don’t get it finished, or are trying to cut corners, they are just understaffed and in my opinion, un-organized. The company has been really successful in selling and building boats, but lags behind in the commissioning department big time. They say they are working on it, we’ll see. Did I mention the owners are from southern California, home of the surfer dudes no stress lifestyle. Very smart guys, but work their own way on their schedule. The good news is that the end product is great, and they support it 100%. And life goes on.

So, the Mexican vacation came at the right time, we needed a break from the boat project. Its a project until we move aboard, then its home. When we go back on Dec 27th we will finally be living aboard. Yes! In the meanwhile, we are hanging out with the McDonald family, and have seen lots of other friends including Rande, Mitchell and Marganne. Everyone is doing fine, Jim, Heather and Katherine are loving Mexico. Jim is learning spanish also, “cerveza” rolls right of his lips on a regular basis, usually accompanied by a snap of the fingers. I’ll sign off now as Joan and Kimberly have headed to the pool, and I believe I hear a cold cerveza calling my name, poolside.

Note: These pictures are:

1. Kimberly’s Goth Halloween costume

2. New Paige at dock

3. Signing the papers offshore to take ownership of New Paige

(Just click on the thumbnails for a larger view)

Adios,

Roger

Posted: December 25th, 2007 under Roger's Reflections.
Comments: 4