sittononthebeach.com

What do they all have in common?  I guess if I’d put Selena in the title too – more people may be able to guess what the group of names have in common, but I felt like that would make it too easy.  All the people in the title sprang from my present work location… Corpus Christi Texas. 

What a diverse group of folks huh?  I’ll go ahead and tell you right now…. I haven’t seen too may Farrah’s “on the hoof” down here….  I’ll just leave it at that.  Well, I will chance it and add this one thing then stop right there;  The women walking the aisles of the local Wal Mart would more quickly be mistaken for Don William than one of  “Charlie’s Angels”……

Before people start tossing tomatoes at me… Corpus is nice!  Lots of water, a nice city marina, great sailing in CC Bay, good food, there are plenty of reasons to like Corpus and I do….  Really the only thing I have against CC is that it’s 7 hours home, so 2 day weekends aren’t worth the drive very often.  The water is much nicer than Kemah, the bay is a great place to sail, in 2 or 3 hours I can sail to several beaches nice enough for Linda to bob around under the boat.

I can’t believe it’s the middle of the year already….  Lots to catch you up on so I’ll be brief.  It looks like I’ll be working the current job until March of next year.  It’s a long one because we actually have two jobs back to back.  I’m only working 50 hours, the OT will start in September.  Then October thru February 2014 its back to regular hours, then another month of OT to round out the first quarter of 2014.  I like the folks I’m working with so things are going well.

Other big changes:  SYL is here and we sail her often, but we are not liveaboards at the moment.  Linda needed to be off the boat a while so we found her a land yacht. 

I’m no political activist or an aristocrat who has nothing better to do than hunt a cause to champion… I keep fairly busy in life.  I work hard, then play hard with little time in between to worry about politics, but as an American I feel the need to speak up (and step up as well).

If you still think America is the best country in the world, look at this:  I don’t condone his language (be prepared for a few bad words) but hang in there…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw

I see a fledgeling movement starting to bloom that I believe has a chance of restoring America to the country she used to be.  I’d like to say Amen to this speech. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFb6NU1giRA

The key element in the speech for me is that America now believes that “perception” of what is right is all that counts.  Why is that?  It’s because congress and the political system is infected, yes I said infected with lawyer mentality.  Lawyers are taught to win by “hook or crook” as the speaker said.

We need men of honor and integrity leading our country that can speak freely with conviction and not get sued or run out of office on a rail by the liberal media for exercising their right to “free” speech.  We have gotten “blinkie” over political correctness.  PC forms the curbs that the liberal media uses to guide our country and sell more newspapers.  To heck with that, say what you mean and mean what you say!

Currently our country is ruled by people that can best persuade you to vote for them.  I say lets look at the honor of a man.  I think we missed a great opportunity last election to re-install integrity in the whte house.

Is America starting to realize that?… and swing toward sanity rather than aligning ourselves with the cutest of the two dogs in congress galloping along biting at each other.. paying no attention to where they are going, or the people they serve?… or more pointedly ”. off a fiscal CLIFF?  They give our money away to business giants that screwed up, then sue the government for not helping them more….  Political parties are totally self involved, they speak crafty words to convince us to keep them and only them in power.. nothing else.

I advocate electing “re-founders” of our country like the man in the speech, not lawyers that live only to convince you that they have it right at any cost to reality.  Professionals that live their life in order to bask in the high glory of self induced power… on OUR money.   A group of self governing individuals that live high above the laws and rules they make for you and me.  What a gig… the ultimate lawyer win….. right?       We need heroes and men of honor that defend everyone, yes even Christians and white people who believe in God and fair play.

The liberals have convinced America (and I find my self even buying into it) that minority causes are more important than my integrity.  I suddenly realized why… beause it “sells” in the media.  The “underdog story” is easy to take up and defend and it sells newspapers.  What fun is it to say Mr. So and So did something right today.. look at how smart this man is and how it helped America…..no way!   The media lives on controversy and has slowly bled the integrity out of America.  The colors of the flag are now pink… they pale in comparison to what the red blooded founding fathers dreamed of, fought and died for.  Are you going to let the lawyers and spin doctors win again next election?

My only forum is this blog.  I’m not hijacking an otherwise quasi-fun history of our journey through life to go activist on you…. but today I feel like an American, I see the bright red color in the flag, not pink ribbons and subcultures that I need to buy into in order to be politically correct.  I stand for biblical principles and will re-focus my life to re-gain my integrity.  I think all us Americans have been cheated by our “leaders”.

Remeber this? “what does is really mean”?  Smoke and mirrors politics, lawyer mentalities disgust me.  I’m not a Clinton hater by any means and don’t you be either, I just use that phrase as proof of the “lawyer mentality” that drives our country, and it’s driving us right off the cliff… to be comfortable as a third rate country with money trouble.  Is that the way you want to run your business?

Put up a wall of integrity in your life, defend honor and justice.  Be proud to say you care about people and say something good every chance you get to uplift your neighbor.  Lets go out and be America again, our kids need us to step up and defend them.

The most oppressed group of Americans are white men of integrity and fair play.  Why have we given power to those that would subvert us to do things we really know are wrong.  Lets all get along, reach down and call a problem a problem and help the guy, don’t try to make his lifestyle mainstream so he’ll feel better about his problem.

Don’t disrespect the black man, but don’t prop him up on a crutch that will cripple him and his children either.  Equal rights has helped America become strong and get square on it’s feet, but at some point the black man needs to throw down that crutch and tear up his “black card”.  Be the man he wants to be on his own.  I have many friends that have done just that.

What America needs is a strong dose of reality and a leader capable of surviving special interest groups and minority pressure.  Does speaking my mind make me a “angry white man” bent on surpressing those less fortunate?  I’m not going to buy that anymore, or worry about “political correctness”, PC is not fair and not part of any solution… except to promote the special interest “causers” that wave that flag in an attempt to quiet the masses.

I think I’ll defend my beliefs and respectfully disagree with those that want to make it OK for Gays to lead boy scouts.  I think I’ll defend my right to say music that disrespects my beliefs and trains our kids to kill and act like punks to be popular is just wrong.  I think I’ll respectfully change sides of the road when I come across a group of black boys hanging out on the sidewalk with their pants strategically placed on their butt to offend me as much as possible.  I think it’s OK to be a Christian and defend my beliefs rather than blend in with the “New America”.

I am in the process of un-evolving……. drawing clearer lines rather than singing “cumbaya” with the liberals that would smear the lines to a flat sheet of paper with no lines, all encompassing, all stupidly unquestioning blob of failure in order to not offend a subculture that’s fun to champion in order to make myself “feel better”.  There is not only room for honest, loving, caring Christians….  there is a huge void that needs to be re-filled by them, by US…..   Honest Americans… We need to step up and read the rule Book caringly and comfortably, but certainly out loud, that’s what America was founded on.

I hereby pledge my alegience…..

One Nation Under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All.

Have you ever wondered where the term “short rows” came from?  For those that haven’t heard the term it means getting to the end of something.  In years gone by mom, dad and the kids planted and cultivated their own food in the garden…  Seldom is there a perfectly square or rectangular plot to place the garden, so quite often the garden had a narrow end or a angled side that made some rows shorter than most.

When you get to the “short rows” it means your almost done hoeing or picking in the garden.  When you get to the short rows.. your’e almost done.  Here at the job we are definitely in the short rows with about a week to go.  The majority of the work has been completed.

In my world, it’s almost time to pack up my office in leftover letter size paper boxes and go to the next one.  There is a refinery in Corpus that wants us to come clean the plugs and tune up the carburetor.

I’ll be there pulling things together for 6 months before the overhaul begins.  It looks like the job will be a bit bigger than this one but not too much.  Soon I’ll be off the 100 hour weeks and back down to 50.  I really like the capital improvements a turnaround gives me, but it will be nice to have weekends off again, especially spending the summer in the warm blue waters of South Texas.  I have had one day off in the past 4 1/2 weeks, and that because they made me…..  There is a rule about how many days in a row you can work.  I may take next Sunday off if things are looking as good as I expect.

Sea Yawl Later !!   Rusty

Good morning world…  Right now it’s all about the job…..  I’m putting in the hours, mining for gold.  Like anything of great advantage the “gold” isn’t jumping out of the ground with the greatest of ease.  Like I tell my people, if it was easy they would have our kids out here doing it… that’s whay they call it “work”.

This morning I tasked everyone to make that knock out punch.  The 300 folks on my job have been working every day 12 to 14 hours a day (and night) for weeks on end, so it’s easy to become tired or complacent.  Now is not the time to rest, it’s the time for that final push to get this refinery back up and running.

For those that don’t know, I work for a company that overhauls refineries.  To better understand what I do let me draw a comparison between a refinery and your family car.  As the driver of your car you’re adept at understanding the controls and how to drive that car, but how many people know what the pistons in the engine look like or even the best way to change the oil?  I don’t drive the refinery, we change the oil.. and whatever else is broken.

Every 3 to 5 years a refinery has to stop operating and fix whats broken that can’t be fixed while it’s running.. and clean out the gunk that’s built up inside of stuff.  I’m the mechanic you call if you own a refinery or chemical plant that needs a motor job.  On this one… we have all the parts cleaned and welded back together …. the “knock out punch” is to tighten all the bolts and give the keys back to the owner so he can fire it up and resume making that $1M per unit per day again.  Currently we have 3 units down so as you can imagine, the customer is really anxious to drive his car again.

Next week we will be wiping the grease off the fenders, and filling it back up with fresh oil.  The effort has not been without skinned knuckles and a few cuss words… but think about it this way.  How much do you thank your mechanic for taking all your money just so you can drive your car again?  It’s a neccessary evil that you just have to do right?  Same thing for me, I’m a hard core mechanic that makes good money but I can’t expect a red carpet reception when it comes time to pay up.

Mining for gold in a harsh environment…… It’s not the “deadliest catch” but somebody ought to make a movie.

The job is over half way complete… lots of hours, 5AM to 7P…  Overall we are doing well, no job in a dangerous environment is without it’s problems, but we have managed them well so far.   I have a sailing trip coming up at the end of the month.  I’m bringing my sailboat from the Galveston area to Corpus Christi for the next job.

The sail will follow the Harvest Moon Regatta’s path, so I forsee 30 to 36 hour passage if we go harbor to harbor.  This summer we will bask in the glory of the deep South Texas sun.  SYL is looking forward to prettier water and abundant winds just above the Mexican border.

During our time on the Southern border I want to drift the Laguna Madre and beach hop to South Padre.  We will have 6 months of weekends free, so I’m exited to explore the sandbars and hypersalinated inland waters that finish the last 275 miles of Texas.

Ohhh… I got a new sailboat!  She’s a 57 monohull, all carbon fiber, mylar / kevlar sails, titanium fittings, the works.  She’s a copy of the America’s Cup winner of 1992.  I’m not joking, I really did.  My only misleading statement is that 57 relates to how long she is in inches (not feet).  Santa Clause gave me the finest RC sailboat I have ever seen.  On the stand she’s 10′-1″ tall and a work of art mechancially.  google “A3 challenger model yachts”

Cool huh?  I want to put her off and let her sail beside us on the trip to Corpus!

It’s beginning to FEEL a lot like Christmas

Yes, cold is a relative term, but bbbrrrrr it’s cold this morning.  SE Texas was still shorts weather until yesterday.  This morning I had to chop my tires loose from the parking lot with an axe to leave for work…… well…. not quite but it was 40 friggin’ degrees.

Living in the great white north (above interstate 10) is risky business but I know people do it…. Iv’e been told there is even life above the Red River, but I think it’s a government plot to see if people can really survive up there.  Can you tell I’m a weenie…. I like warm weather…..?

Yeah I know… I’m grumpy and way off the deep end on this, I tip my hat to Chicagoans that have to shovel 3′ of night snow to make it out the door.

OK, I can tell I’m not doing myself any good here.. I should shut up and drink my coffee… lol.  Just kidding… sorta.  I feel like “Curly” from the three stooges this morning… “I tried to think and nothing happened”

I had no idea the Harvest Moon Regatta involved nearly 200 boats, and was such a big event.  We sailed en-masse’ with more sails than commonly seen together which was picturesque in itself, now add the fact the race involved a night sail under the full “harvest” moon… and the experience went from unexpected to unforgettable.  Night sailing just before Halloween was really fun!  You almost expected to see witches ride their broom in front of the moon across the glistening night sea.  “The Harvest Moon Regatta” is an annual event that courses 150 miles South from Galveston to Port Aransas Texas. 

The dark 2 foot seas found the fleet constantly adjusting lines to eek out the best performance from the excited skippers of the more than 100 different boat designs.  I thoroughly enjoyed the passage on the awesome luxury Yacht owned by a fellow Bahamas cruiser.  Alternate Latitude was the envy of the fleet. 

As the race began, we all looked for that last knot of speed from the moderately tight sails easing along the gentle start provided by prevailing 8 to 10 knots winds.  Looking at the map, you’ll see the Texas coastline from Galveston South on SE prevailing winds can be a pinch…. We were ready to tack to sea after the committee boat, but held our point to see what luck would bring us.

I was invited to tweak the sails and help drive the Voyage 440 catamaran owned and operated as a charter boat by Captain Steve Schlosser.  I have tens of thousands of  catamaran miles under my keels having sailed the Bahamas on bareboats for 10 years, then on our own Seawind cat “Sea Yawl Later !!” after buying her a few years ago.  “Alternate Latitude” is now stationed in Galveston Bay but leaves this month for the British Virgin Islands.  The boat is 25’ wide 44’ long, weighs 10 tons with 4 queen sized beds, 4 bathrooms and just about every amenity imaginable. 

Needless to say, our sailing adventure was not as “adventurous” as some of the fellahs sailing open cockpit 30’ go fast boats in full foul weather gear… they got splashed every 4 minutes sitting on hard fiberglass with a tiller in one hand and a flashlight in the other grabbing energy bars as they could to survive the ordeal.  We…. On the other hand….. each had queen bed accommodations, our own bathroom and dined on Fillet Mignon with a loaded baked potato at the races end.  Seven sailors shared the duties…. so fatigue was never a factor.  Our “race conditions” were never more luxurious.

It normally takes 27 to 30 hours for a cruising boat to make the trip.  This year we had decent winds at the start, but sat through a 5 hour period where our only progress was the speed of the current, then found our wind and finished in style. 

The night helmsman Matt saw winds drop from 8 knots to zero about 1AM.  Matt kept glancing North looking for that much anticipated cold front due to slide off the Texas coast into the Gulf of Mexico.….. In my many years and thousands of miles of sea experience I know that just before a major weather change you always go calm….  The fleet sat near motionless from 1am to 6am Friday morning.  For five hours the racers excitement slacked to a semi-alert scan… as we made 1 to 1.5 knots forward progress due only to the Gulf of Mexico currents. 

Nearly two hundred sails rocked in place along a 40 mile string of boats in the night, we slatted and rattled waiting on the wind to give us back our speed.  Each boat watched the others mast light…. wondering when the wind might restore the ancient power that propelled Columbus to the new world.  

Then just before daylight… we got our wish; the wind suddenly blew like God threw a switch and we sped off toward the finish.  Finally (while I was asleep) there were rooster tails behind both hulls.  I heard it happen from my queen sized bed, a little motion…. then the whirring of the prop shafts told the tale of speed.  My sleepy ears became vaguely aware that our ship had regained its motion…. the calm was over.  Our heavy “big wind” boat was suddenly and decidedly back in its element!

We left the Galveston Pleasure Pier along side more than a dozen boats in our class, half a hundred multihulls in the fleet…. behind a hundred and a half monohulls.  Generally a race starts the multihulls last….. supposedly because they are faster, but many of the go fast monohulls were much quicker than our big starship.  

The PHRF rating system considers boat design, sails, and possible sail combinations then assigns a handicap…. if all boats are perfectly sailed they would theoretically arrive at the same time.  Anybody that has ever handled a jib sheet knows no boat is never “perfectly” sailed due to differing personalities, sailing choices and human dynamics.  Every captain decides on a different track and sail settings.. so the race is won or lost by the skipper’s choice and helsmanship.  The fun of it is… you’re always considering the fluidity of the racing surface, changing winds and your own wit to be the best boat home. 

The first fleet of monohulls left at 2PM… our fleet was the last to be set loose.  We left Galveston at 2:50PM in 8 to 10 knots of wind in a fairly tight pinch. That means the winds were prevailing from the SE and we were heading into them at about 45 degrees….. the minimum you want on your nose in a sailboat race.  The go fast multis and 99% of the monohulls stayed along the beach pinching into the wind on the most direct path to the next mark.  Some of the catamarans and slower monohulls turned left soon after the start and headed out to sea to get a bigger bite of wind in their sails….. those guys made the wrong decision.

Our strategy was to set the sails to pull their best while skipping along in shallow water along the beach as close to the wind as possible and hope for a “lift”.  It’s risky, because you could run out of water depth while sailing the boat at less than optimum speed.  Even though it’s the most direct route to the finish line you could lose to the guy screaming along at top speed even if he had to go out of his way to achieve it.  However, if the wind changes and you can veer off the beach into the building winds without having to set your course off by tacking away offshore…. It’s a huge plus.  The guys that spent 45 minutes heading 90 degrees off shore from the finish line to make sure they had “the wind” lost big time this year… The conservative “smart” sailors squandered their advantage to us more risky rascals that counted on our own luck.

We knew 34 miles down the track AL would have to reach offshore to round a mid-race mark.  It looked impossible to make with the winds we started on….. but with good luck and weather, the risk takers won and the conservatives lost this time!!!!!! lol.  Those willing to risk his pocketbook to make the big bucks WON!  There are those that always play the game safely, then… there are those that normally win.  We opted for the second category.  I’m willing to bet on my own knowledge and skill more often than not…. or at least more than the average racer.  I put myself in a position to be blessed by the wind and thankfully I was. 

The heaviest current that carried us toward the finish line was along the shallow coast, so we stayed there….. then when we needed to go offshore to round the mark, I found the heavy outflowing current of San Luis Pass.  It spewed us out to the Rhumbline quite comfortably to round the Freeport mark.  (The rhumbline is the most direct route from finish to end of a sailboat race)

We reached away from the shore far enough to be comfortable, driven by the outbound current, then an hour after midnight we lost our moderate wind……. The current alone now moved us ever so slowly toward the finish line.  But thankfully we were all in the “same boat” at that point going nowhere.  Design or sail set didn’t matter anymore…. We all bounced along in the slow current for what seemed like an eternity in a “boat race”. 

Alternate Latitude’s crew was fully aware that after the doldrums a strong North wind would fill in from across the beach so we stayed close, others went offshore to try and find a bit of wind to sail on.  Generally the further offshore you go the higher the winds are, so there is value in the move…. but our captain made the right decision, the heavy North wind would hit us quicker if we stayed close to the beach, again time proved that we made a good choice….  We found 20 knots of wind to fill our sails 30 to 45 minutes sooner than the offshore group.  Thirty minutes of cruising at 8 knots put us 4 nautical miles further down course than the boats flopping around offshore going with “safe bet” that usually always works.  That’s a net gain of 30 to 45 minutes of “time to finish”.  We ended up winning the division by less than 30 minutes, so it was all about choices!

The 20 to 25 knot wind over our starboard hull now drove the boat like a railroad spike…. hard and fast to the finish.  While the offshore crowd stayed in place we screamed for the finish line along the rhumbline….. Our chosen route proved a double good thing….. early speed and the most direct route to Port Aransas, Texas.

Late in the race the waves built to 5 foot.  The building waves offered another advantage available for those willing to take it.  We showed the class that if you drive 10 tons of fiberglass… sitting on a fluid surface…. into a hole behind a breaking wave on a 20 degree down slope……. you can go really fast!  That’s probably the biggest oversimplification I’ve made so far… so I’ll do some explaining; Surfing waves is a delicate art. 

Initially you have to have enough waves to play on coming from the right direction and enough wind to drive the boat once you get it surfing…… couple those conditions with a zen-like understanding of how waves form and fall and you can begin to learn how to successfully surf a 4 bathroom boat at 18 knots.  It’s not in any text book… It comes from years of sitting at the helm of a boat in every condition imaginable while paying close attention to what works and what doesn’t.  I guess we can call the knowledge….. a BS from Blue Water U.

My surfing BS thesis reads like this:

• Big waves always come in sets of three; usually the first one gets you going, but the second or third is the “money wave”.
• Whenever a wave breaks at its peak… it then forms a big hole you can drive off into.
• To make a boat accelerate hard into a hole you need a loose jib.
• To make a boat stay surfing you need a tight main to hold speed once it’s achieved…. But be careful because a tight main gives you heavy weather helm so don’t let the boat round up much if the wind is high… keep her surfing down wind.
• To accelerate to surfing speed you need to scoot over behind the first breaking wave (no matter the sail angle to the wind) to set up the second and third wave.
• Once you’re positioned behind the first breaking wave, open your sails to run 10 degrees fat…. downwind off your optimal sail set by cranking the helm hard downwind as the second wave lifts you.  What that does is turn the rudders 50 degrees off the boat centerline…. the  effect provides two (on a cat) rudder surfaces semi perpendicular to the flow of the wave… so the underwater resistance lifts the stern of the boat and at the same time, allows the wave to drive the boat faster as it “pushes” you at wave speed (much faster than your own)
• Just after the wave pushes hard on your rudders…. There comes is a moment just as the wave passes your rudders when you need to crank hard upwind and here’s why…..
• Every sailor knows that if you crank the helm into a puff while setting deep.. the jib grabs at the wind and gives you a temporary lift in speed.  So……………
• There is no way to surf a wave without cranking hard on the helm.  If a wave sees a straight rudder…. You won’t surf it, it will flow under you with the greatest of ease.  Under water resistance at the right moment is paramount to climbing up on top of a wave and racing down it.
• Wave dynamics provide a trough to sail into if you can see it happening…. then crossing up the rudders provide water resistance to lift the stern and accelerate to surfing speed…. as you ascend the wave, crank in some acceleration by grabbing air in the jib… then after your surfing carefully watch your wind angle so your tight main stays the right angle to drive you at top speed for as long as the wave lasts……  oops, one caveat……
• If the wind is high… and driving you well……… drive the boat down the wave at the optimum angle to the wind (of the sail set) so the main will keep you truckin’  but if the wind isn’t there fall off downwind so the wave will carry you as far as possible before washing under you.
• Now you know everything I do about wave surfing…… !

We went from 9 knots with a cruiser steering to a max of 18.1 knots surfing the waves.  50,000 miles of steering boats on the open ocean have taught me a few things.  The cruiser often finds his best steerage “to stay comfortable” and maximize passenger comfort by avoiding conflict with the air and water when it pipes up… on the other end of the spectrum…. surfing a 4 bathroom 10 ton boat to race boat speeds requires using every wave and puff you can to propel the boat forward. 

Who said a 4 queen, 4 bath boat can’t go fast.  It’s simple physics; 10 tons on a 20 degree slope WILL speed up.  I don’t care who you are.. gravity is king.  The sail set and helm dynamics to make that happen only come with experience.  And thankfully my wife Linda has been with me for a bunch of those hours without complaint.

I often recall a time when Linda awoke after a long passage of the Gulfstream to see the water on a 40 degree angle out the side window of our little Seawind cat.  She came up from the bed holding on to the walls saying “is everything OK!!!!!!!!????  I pretended to need her help to reduce sail… but secretly I had been playing on the following 12 footers for hours in 20 knots of wind behind the boat to see how fast I could go.  I achieved my boat record on my SW 1000…. !!  When Linda showed up with big eyes…. we took the main down and finished the passage comfortably under jib alone.  I felt like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar…. Lol.  She’s a great wife that lets me get by with stupid stuff like that.

Anyway… during the Harvest Moon Regatta we won our class and finished fastest in the multihull division on corrected time earning the Commodores trophy for Alternate Latitude.  It was fun surfing by 45 foot boats nearing the finish line at 16 knots in a 4 bathroom condo!

My suggestion for attaining the knowledge to do what we did…… go sailing.  Sail as often and far as your budget or wife will allow.  I am blessed to have enough of both to know how to surf a 4 bathroom boat 18.1 knots…… Thanks Baby, I love you.

I just read an article by one of our favorite people, Patrick from Bumfuzzle.  The article was on “How to Write a Sailing Blog”.  I just love Patrick’s candor, wit and sometimes bluntness.  Rusty and I started this blog mainly because our families thought we had lost our mind to leave land life and go cruising.  They were convinced that either pirates or sharks would “get us”.  We purchased our Spot and started blogging.  We found we loved to blog i.e. journal.  It was fun to share our adventure and it was really fun to hear from folks back home while we were gone.  Since we have been back I have felt ambivalent about blogging.  We are in contact with our families and I keep in touch with our friends through Facebook.

I realized after reading Patrick’s article that I really miss my daily journal and it is okay for me to write just for me.  I love to hear from others and it would be awesome for others to “comment” but I do enjoy going back and looking at previous post just for my own enjoyment.

So hear goes.  This past year has been a very hard year.  We had left Sea Yawl Later!! in our home port of Brunswick, Georgia last year and rented a condo in Kemah while Rusty replenished our “cruising kitty”.  That decision turned out to be a bad financial decision for us.  Our life is too fluid to obligate ourselves to any kind of lease.  We ended up paying 7 months of rent when we actually needed the condo for about 3 1/2 months.  Then several things happened.  One good, several bad.  Our daughter, Erin, got engaged at Christmas and set a wedding date for August 2012.  She and Michael decided on a destination wedding in Destin, Florida.  Initially, I thought we could still go cruising in 2012, do most of the planning online and fly back home when necessary.  Then my step dad’s health deteriorated and it became clear we needed to be home.  In January of this year we started bringing “Sea Yawl Later!! back to Texas.  In March Daddy Joe died and six weeks later my brother, Wayne, died unexpectedly.  Daddy Joe and Wayne were in charge of my mother’s care.  Mom has Parkinson and senile dementia and requires round the clock care.  It has been a mess because both Daddy Joe and Wayne had Power of Attorney for mom but they are now both gone.  Wayne was also the executor of both mom and Daddy Joe’s will.  I was finally made Administrator of Daddy Joe’s will but still found myself hamstrung because all of their accounts are joint.  Check your wills folks and keep your Power of Attorney’s current and several people deep.

Mom was admitted to the hospital a couple of days ago with a nasty lesion that developed from deep inside the muscle.  She will need wound care for many months.  We are very fortunate in having a lady who has been her primary caregiver for several years and she is amazing.  Marie will continue taking care of Mom, what a blessing.  Mom will probably stay in the hospital getting IV antibiotics until Monday.  I have been at the hospital for the last two days but she is doing well so Rusty and I will go to Buna for his High School Reunion.

So today I will go to Mom’s house to do a few things and then come back to the SYL to pack.  Tonight we will go to Beaumont then Saturday we will go to Buna, Texas.  SYL is in desperate need of organizing.  I still haven’t figured out how to keep things organized with our current fluid land life.  Usually we are cruising or preparing to cruise.  We currently don’t know what we are going to do past February.  Rusty will be working in Texas City through February.  After that…..who knows.

Although the job I’m on isn’t ending yet, I’m moving to another.  We knew when I came to Motiva Port Arthur that I was committed to a job in Texas City that would begin in October.  I’ll take a week in between jobs to rest at the lake.

I’m training a replacement for my seat at Motiva.  The program and efforts I’m handling here are multi faceted, so handing it off to someone else is complicated.  Most schedules are built and not changed after they start, but this one is a live document that has to be managed by hand every week.  Material supply has driven every step of the project so as material dates change, we move the schedule to fit the new situation.

Linda had a nice respit at the lake, she came to Beaumont for her birthday so she’s here right now.  Saturday we will both head up to the lake again.  Not much else happening… I’m looking forward to sleeping past 5:40AM.  I haven’t had many of those mornings lately so the quiet and solitude of the lake… watching the wind on the water when I get up around 9 will be wonderful.  The weather is cool…. I’m happy about the slow upcoming week.

Anybody that has ever read our blog knows how fluid our life is.  One day we are heading South, by lunch West looks interesting then by that evening we are headed North because work sent me that direction.

If you want to, you could pick a day where we admitted a “plan” in our blog, then read what we really did and there’s a good chance it changed.  I guess my construction worker background made me pretty comfortable with change.  I do have a question for the audience though.

If I have more than one house and sail the Bahamas several months out of the year where do I live?  Good question…. Lets look at where I have been recently maybe that will help us “decide”.  The last two nights I spent at my step-daughters in Beaumont, one night this week I was on the boat, I spent several nights at my mom & dad’s in Buna, last weekend we slept on the boat because we changed marinas, this weekend we are taking the kids sailing so I’ll sleep on the boat again then it’s back to work in Port Arthur (for a while) so I’ll either be at mom’s, Erin’s or where we spent several nights in August.. at a friends house in Beaumont.  The weekend before we moved the boat we were at the lake house…. I have clothes and basic necessities in several places so do you judge where you live by where you have toothbrushes?  Where you get your mail?  I don’t know.  Last year the boat stayed in her home port of Brunswick Georgia for 6 months with nobody on it and we rented a condo to work out of.  The past 3 years I would contend I don’t “Live” any particular place…. certainly not one place.

If I didn’t have a house.. my only bed was on my boat, you could make a case that I live on that boat, but that’s not right because I have more than one other house.  A “liveaboard” is someone that sold everything and uses his boat as his primary residence right?  That’s not me.  What about the guy that buys a boat and uses it for an apartment when he wants to get away for a while… is he a live aboard?….. I don’t think so.  There are hundreds of boats in Kemah that never move.. but the owner uses it for a second home yet they aren’t liveaboards.  Because I actually use my boat.. does that mean I live on it?  If I spend more time than the average guy in the car does that mean I live in my car?  I have to move around a lot for my job.  Some guys buy a travel trailer so they don’t have to rent a place to stay on the road….  do those guys “live” in their trailer even though they have a nice house?  NO….. the fact is.. there is no ONE place you could possibly say I live… if you wanted to pin that crime on me….. “living in one place” I think the overwhelming evidence clearly shows otherwise. 

My mail comes to one of several places, our lake our or our Beaumont house.  None of those are my boat.  Personally I don’t care where somebody says I “live” but recently some jerk came on my boat and stole two major items… this same night another boat down the way was vandalized as well.  I pay for insurance for my boat, things were taken (that are covered), the police came and made a report, I made a claim… no brainer right?

I’m not going in depth at this point about what is going on or who my agent and carrier are.. we’ll see how that unfolds.  Apparently if they decide I “live aboard” (where my stuff would be much safer) they might not pay for the stolen items.   I guess it’s better if you buy a buggy load of groceries and leave them in the Wal-Mart parking lot unattended.   If you take those groceries home boy….. where you can take care of them or use them… somebody might steal them huh?  What a crock.  It’s a no brainer, I had the stuff, it was stolen I ordered replacements and showed the adjuster the reciept, it’s covered… but they are acting like I”M THE CRIMINAL.  We’ll see how this shakes out.  With all that’s going on in our life right now…… If we have to add fighting with the insurance company to the mix… just suffice it to say “it ain’t gonna be pretty”.

Linda here:  I would like to add that when I got this insurance with Progressive (I don’t mind saying who we are dealing with) I told the insurance company EXACTLY what the situation was.  I told them that we might sail the east coast next year or we might decide to go back to the Bahamas.  If we decided to go back to the Exumas we would then have to go with another insurance company because Progressive does not cover the Exumas they only cover some of the Bahamas close to the US.  Last year we didn’t think we would bring SYL back to Texas DUH…….that’s why we left her in Brunswick.  I HATE insurance companies……..I am ready to self-insure…..it simply is not worth the hassle.  Thanks for letting me vent!!  I do feel better!!

Sea Yawl Later!!