Stay tuned. Next time Lisa and I go home for a quick last trip, and then we pick up some good friends for crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.
Check out www.distinguishedmarineservices.com for my surveyor/USCG Captain website.
After a few weeks of working on Unwritten Timeline and getting her ready to start sailing around the world it was time for me to go back to school. I started back at Chapman’s for the Yacht and Small Craft Surveyor Course. Their program prepares students to enter the field of marine surveying. Students will be able to develop vessel appraisals and present condition and value of vessels. They cover many aspects of surveying in areas of hull design, construction methods, electronics, and systems aboard most vessels today. They train you for the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) Standards test and entry into the Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors (SAMS). After 6 weeks I was ABYC certified and completed the paperwork for entry into SAMS. I am currently not a SAMS member since my plan is to sail around the world and I don’t really have a “surveying business” per se. I am available for surveys while sailing if you do happen to be in the same anchorage as Unwritten Timeline. Who knows, maybe it’s something I’ll start for my second career in a few years time. I do already have a website, so that’s 90% of a business in today’s world.
Stay tuned. Next time Lisa and I go home for a quick last trip, and then we pick up some good friends for crossing the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Check out www.distinguishedmarineservices.com for my surveyor/USCG Captain website. After graduating the Professional Mariner Training course Lisa and I had a few weeks before I started the Yacht and Small Craft Surveyors course at Chapmans. We took this time to get a few last minute projects completed like getting our water maker serviced, replacing a hot water heater, and servicing the engines so we could be ready to leave for our circumnavigation. There never seems to be any downtime when you’re getting ready to sail around the world. That’s also why these blog posts are so terribly late.
Lisa was able to become an apprentice to Janelle from Atlantic Canvas Company. Janelle was kind enough to bring Lisa under her tutelage and teach her the ropes for making canvas enclosures and outdoor cushions. Since Lisa finished school she was busy making wench covers, a grill cover, seat cushions, and seat backs. Lisa had been using her Sailrite LSZ-1 sewing machine to teach herself to sew while making several projects for Starjewel. She was able to learn so much more from someone who had been doing this for years. To learn from an expert craftsman was a dream come true for Lisa. It’s always the seemingly small things like how to hold multiple layers of heavy fabric together to make stitching easier or what thread to use that you just don’t always get from reading a book or watching a YouTube video. Janelle was able to impart a great deal of knowledge in a short amount of time so Lisa could learn how to sew things more efficiently and make quality items that will last a long while. We also made time to hang out with our friends Brad and Brittney. They have been living in Stuart for a few years, so they know the town and all the great places to eat. Brad even recommended we get a hold of Janelle to learn about canvass work. It has been so helpful not to mention entertaining to end up living near long time friends like the Bost family. They have been kind enough to let us send them all of our mail, which turned out to be more than a few boxes from Amazon. We have borrowed their car and had them show us around town so we know where all the cool kids go. Not that we actually went there since we’re no longer cool. But we did see them hanging out as we drove past on our way home for bed before 9pm. We tried to make the most of our time before school started again, and my days were taken up with learning even more about how boats work and how to survey them. I think we did just fine. The big reason Lisa and I came to Stuart instead of heading straight for the Bahamas is to attend the Professional Mariner Training at Chapman’s School of Seamanship. While you don’t need to be a credentialed captain to sail your own recreational vessel, we thought the training would be worth our time. Chapman’s also accepts the GI Bill so it was a win, win.
From the beginning we were impressed with the school. The registrar, Bruce, is very knowledgeable and always goes out of his way to make sure you have the right information. The registration process was simple for us, due to his efforts. The school was 11 weeks long and covered all areas of seamanship from sailing theory, customs and courtesies, marlinspike, basic vessel maintenance, STCW training, and USCG exam preparation. They also provide a hands on portion which is a great advantage of taking this course in lieu of a 100% classroom option. We had the opportunity to sail on 3 different sailboats around 25-30’. We operated around 12 different power vessels as large as 52’. All in all we operated around 15 different vessels ranging from 20-52’. All the instructors were fantastic, but I have to give a special thanks to Jim and Tom who helped run the program and still found time to provide excellent and engaging instruction. All instructors have a wealth of knowledge and most have decades of experience in the Navy or USCG, so they kind of know what they’re talking about when it comes to USCG regulations or operating vessels. They use the Chapman Book of Seamanship for their textbook. So, if you want to get ahead and be prepared you should read Chapman’s. They will issue you one when you attend so you don’t necessarily need to purchase one. The classroom facilities, textbooks, and training aids were all top notch as expected from a school bearing the name of Chapman’s. Overall the course is designed to provide the classroom instruction, training, and testing for up to 100 GRT USCG Masters credential and supporting training to operate a vessel in the US and internationally. What credential you receive is based upon your experience. They not only train you for the USCG standards which most institutions do, but give you the training on STCW, CPR, First Aid, and Firefighting that can allow you to work on a vessel internationally. The course isn’t really designed for someone like us, since we are only recreational sailors. It’s geared more for someone that wants to run an offshore fishing boat, ferry, dinner cruise, or a myriad of other positions in the marine industry. The great thing about having attended the PMT course is that we are now credentialed to run vessels with more than 6 paying customers. We don’t foresee a lot of work in this arena since we are retired, but it’s always good to have the option if we need to make a few dollars. And if anyone is buying a new vessel to sail around the world like us, and you are looking for a fully qualified captain that is living aboard and circumnavigating drop us a line. We can do a delivery from factory to you or sail with you for a short time while you learn your vessel. We’d love to help if we have the time. Be sure to check out our YouTube video on the course. The next morning Will met us at 9am to sign our Charter paperwork given that we were going to take the boat out for an extra day of sailing the Charleston Bay. Will remained on board while we moved the boat from its slip to the outside face dock. This way it would be easier for us two novices to dodge the array of boats within the labyrinth of slips. Will jumped off and Lisa and I were large and in charge of a 44' catamaran for the first time. Since sailing is sailing, we decided to get in some more docking practice. We took about 10 turns at the dock, trying to perfect pulling a large boat to the dock close enough to step off, but far enough to not destroy the transom. Needless to say some approaches were better than others. Lisa gave the phrase "coming in hot" a run for its money. But in the end we both had several successful docking attempts.
Once we mastered our docking skills we set off for a little sailing. We departed against the current with a 15kt wind off our port side moving us over the ground at around 6 kts. Before long we started running out of water and needed to tack. Since a catamaran takes a little wider angle to tack, we transitioned through about 110 degrees and were racing with the current. The winds didn't really change, but our ground speed jumped to 10 kts and higher. The motion of the catamaran is different than a monohull and some people don't care for it. However, Lisa and I sure do appreciate the ability to make lunch without losing all the cookware at 10 kts. Not being heeled over 20 degrees has its advantages. We returned to the marina, practiced docking a couple more times then Will met us to take the boat back to her slip. After we secured "Dream Cat" we jumped in the car and headed to downtown Charleston to celebrate my birthday. Future cat plans may have been the "big" topic of discussion. I received the contract for a brand new FP 40 Lucia and was negotiating the add-ons while I was on my last trip to Slovakia. I wanted to wait to sign until I returned from the ASA 114 course. Well the best laid plans never survive first contact and buying a boat is no exception. Will offered up a nice FP Lavezzi that happened to be priced really well and was in a marina right in Charleston. The three of us drove over to take a look. It was a nice boat and the price was such that Lisa and I could almost pay cash for it. That is a very good selling point for a boat. However, we also found a Broadblue 435ST for sale in Oriental that same weekend. We have liked the Broadblue cruising catamarans ever since we started looking. When the company moved away from cruising cats to their performance models we gave up purchasing one. The used Broadblues are rare, like Antares, and they stopped making new ones in the 40+ range. But here was one for sale, literally 5 miles from where we keep Starjewel. We had to check it out. Early Sunday we jumped in the car and drove to Oriental. We drove past our apartment in Fayetteville to go to Oriental. All together Sunday was 9 hours in the car to look at a boat for 1 hour. Ahhhh, boat buying. You have to love it, if you don't you will drive yourself crazy looking. But wait there's more.... We consider Antares to be the gold standard for 40' liveaboard catamarans. If we had a million dollars lying around we would have the factory build us one, no questions asked. So as I'm doing my check of Facebook what do I find? An Antares for sale a mere 4 hours away from our Apartment. Well, it's kind of an Antares. It's a PDQ 42'. PDQ was Antares before they were Antares. It's almost the same boat, just 2' shorter at the transom. It is a 2003 model so it's quite a bit older, as boats go, but it's also listed for $410,000 (within the boat budget, of course). Every other Anatares I've ever seen for sale is $750k or higher. For boats 5 years old. These things hold their value. So as of this writing Lisa and I are in a conundrum. Do we get the; 2007 FP Lavezzi that we can almost buy outright, the 2010 BB 435 that is a great find, or the 2003 Antares that is the oldest, but best original quality? The new FP Lucia is off the table right now with these 3 boats on our mind. We've started getting insurance quotes and trying to secure financing. Our Washington house has sold and we have an accepted offer on the Colorado house so we should have plenty for a down payment and make our mortgage reasonable. Decisions, decisions. I can't wait to see what we end up with. It was a great weekend. I had just returned from a trip to Slovakia, took a little nap, and then drove down to Charleston, SC with Lisa to take our ASA 114 Catamaran class. We signed up with Charleston Sailing School to dive into learning how to sail a catamaran. Charleston Sailing School teaches most ASA courses from 101 up to 114. They have a fleet of 12 boats, so there is something suitable for any skill level. Their instructors are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to sailing and boats of all sorts.
We arrived at 0930 and met with Will Miller the Owner/Operator and currently the only ASA 114 certified instructor at Charleston Sailing School. After introductions along with some paperwork we were walking the docks to the Voyage 440. She was the beautiful boat we would be sailing and staying aboard for the weekend. The course is only two days of training, but Lisa and I paid for a bareboat charter for a third day. This way, we could get more practice in while it was still fresh in our minds. Will showed us around the boat and we talked about the different systems on a catamaran. Most things are the same for monos and cats, just doubled. The difference is the way they drive. Since the catamaran has two widely separated engines, you can steer without the rudder at low speeds quite effectively. The shallower draft and high freeboard also means you are more affected by the wind. That afternoon we practiced maneuvering under power. We pulled away from the slip, motored around the marina, docked a few times and that was about it on the boat. A thunderstorm was rolling through Charleston that afternoon so Will suggested we make it an early day on the boat and get the written testing out of the way. The ASA 114 exam is a 50 question test that covers the material in Cruising Catamarans Made Easy. Lisa and I passed the exam and were on our way to being ASA 114 certified. After our testing was complete we drove to Harris Teeter to provision for the weekend. It was our first time in a Harris Teeter, and it is quite the grocery store. We were going to grab some drive through on the way back to the boat, but decided to just get something there. They make sandwiches, like subway, they have a full salad bar, pizza, and other stuff ready to eat. We ended up getting a couple bags of groceries and some sushi, and a sub sandwich for dinner. After stuffing our bellies full of chow we readily stowed our weekend travel bags and started getting ready for bed. The next morning was going to be an entire day of sailing, exactly what we were hoping for. There were just a few small rain showers, nothing that would even begin to stop die hard sailors like us. We departed the dock; practiced maneuvering the catamaran under power for a few minutes, and then it was time to hoist the sails. We tacked and jibed several times on our way over to Mount Pleasant. We tied up at the dock near Vickery's Bar and Grill for lunch. Will, Lisa, and I had some good grub consisting of a tuna melt and special made blackened fish sandwich and yes it was tasty too. We discussed sailing, our long term plans, and what we would be doing for the rest of the afternoon. After a filling meal we cast off the dock and motored over to an anchorage to practice setting the anchor and bridle. Since the hulls are far apart a bridle is used to keep the boat from "sailing" at anchor and to relieve the strain from the windlass. After a successful anchor drop we retrieved the "large fish hook", hoisted sails and started our way back to Charleston City Marina to dock for the night. The winds picked up to a brisk 15 kts. While en route we practiced man overboard drills. Honestly Lisa and I could have done better. It's been awhile since we've practiced and it showed. Eventually we were able to get the PFD back on board and navigate our way back to the marina. We tied up, and got our completion briefing from Will. We are officially ASA 114 certified sailors! Woohoo!! To celebrate we decided to visit a little bit of downtown Charleston. We had a dinner at TBonz steakhouse and walked around the Charleston City Market, Customs House, and watched the sunset from Waterfront Park. It was a great ending to a beautiful day of sailing a catamaran around Charleston Harbor. Check back next week for Part 2. |
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