Life vest testing

This is the first used boat that I've bought that did not come with life vests. Before we left Florida we purchased the minimum find the body West Marine orange life vests to ensure we meet the minimum safty requirements before crossing over to the Bahamas. Knowing that the World ARC folks have some specific requirements for life vests I planned to figure out what they were and order them when I got home, then bring them back before bringing the boat back to the US. This was all well and good except for the fact that one cannot fly with self inflating life vests :(. Luckily we met a boat that was for sale and attempting to sell off all their stuff. Rummaging through their various items we found three very basic self inflating vests that looked like new and snagged them so we would at least have something more comfortable to wear on deck if needed. Fortunately I didn't need it but I did have it on while out on deck during the small storm we went through. Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself...

Life vests we purchased

When we came home from the Bahamas I spent a couple nights reading and watching YouTube videos about the various merits of different life vest systems. There is a lot of information out there but the one that came up as number one or two over and over again was the SpinLock vest here. There are a few versions one can get but I decided when it came to safety and having the best chance of being found at night having the additional lights and releasable harness system was the way to go. According to the marketing the vests had two lights in them. One is inside of the part that inflates and the other is on a stick that pops up to blink adding additional visibility. While I could imagine how this might work unfortunately I have not seen any videos showing the lights in action. I also purchased a set of three point safety lines (also an ARC requirement) ensuring we can be well attached to the boat should we need to go forward on deck in bad weather. Additionally we will eventually add personal locater devices to each of our vests. Hopefully we will find them on sale at the boat show this year. Either way it was easier to spread the costs out a bit as these vests were not cheap.

Personal locator

As I started to mention earlier I had purchased these thinking we would take them back to the Bahamas with us only to find out we could not fly with them due to the CO2 cartridges. I supposed we could have pulled them out and simply planned to manually inflate the vests if needed but that would not due much good if one of us were knocked out or otherwise hurt. Luckily we stumbled across the other vests so we hopefully had something better than the basic orange vests for the return trip home.

While we were out there during my night shifts it really hit me how hard it would be to find someone that went overboard. In the past doing overnight trips on the Great Lakes we could generally see shore even if it was five miles off there was still a certain amount of ambient light. This was not the case in the ocean and with the much larger swells one would be lucky to just keep an eye on someone if they watched them go over but I'm guessing after the first or second swell they would be quickly out of sight. Once the crew could get folks on deck to get the sails down and the boat turned around it might be 5-20 minutes. I would guess the person would be out of sight then they would have to locate the person in the dark probably during bad conditions. I can't imagine the changes are great they would be found easily. With all that said I think I want to be well lighted and as easy to find as possible. Additionally I think the personal locator beacon may help as supposedly as soon as it hits the water it sends out a radio signal that will create an alert on any nearby chart plotters that someone is in the water and needs help. Additionally it will show roughly where they are. While not cheap it seems well worth the money if ever needed and I have seen videos of several folks trying them out showing how effective they are with the chart plotter alarms and integration.

After experiencing dark nights at sea I wanted to see if I had purchased what I hoped I had. Spinlock has what appears to be a number of part numbers and options one can get for their vests. I thought I got the one with all the lights but was not sure. I also wanted to see what it felt like when the vest inflated and how visible the lights would be while also having an idea what I might be looking for if one of us happened to fall overboard. Fortunately my sister in law has a pool and was up for letting me test it out one evening. I also got to test out our new dog's swimming abilities but that's the subject of a different post. The video here shows me testing what the vest looks like in the water and the neat thing is there is a dongle that hangs down so the vest knows when it's in the water. When I got out of the pool it immediately turned the lights out. Pretty impressive as I even jumped back in again to ensure they would turn back on and once again everything worked as it should. This quick video shows the vest in use with the spray hood up. The hood seemed to do what it should. I'm sure it will fog up with heavy breathing but it would defiantly help keep the waves and water out of your mouth making it easier to breathe should one fall off in bad weather.

Three point safety lines

Over all the vest felt like one of the orange vests above and easily kept me afloat in fresh water. It should work even better in salt water. When deployed it was snug around my neck. The strap between my legs was not uncomfortable and the lights appeared to do their job. Hopefully the harness system works as they say it does should I or another crew member not be able to get in the boat the crew could attach a line to the vest using a halliard and electric wench to pull the person out of the water. The only item I was not really impressed with was the included whistle. It took a bit to blow the water out of it and did not seem very loud while in the water but my wife and her sister claimed they could hear it clearly.

Next step learning to repack the vest, replacing the CO2 cartridge, and water deployment sensor. While not an inexpensive test to do I'm glad I tried it out. I now have trust in these fancy new life vests and just hope that it will still deploy correctly after I replace the spent items and get everything zipped back together. After trying it I'm guessing with the addition of a whistle and a light the basic orange vest would work just as well but time will tell if this one is more comfortable to wear during life at sea.

Home for a month

Max rock climbing

As I mentioned a few posts back buying a boat was not in our plans for this summer. Like most parents we have a seventeen year old kid with a full schedule which means we have a full schedule to support those plans. Once we landed it was time to shift gears and start getting ready for a week of Scout Camp. Fortunately we had got home on Friday which gave us Saturday to rest and prep to leave the next day on Sunday with several other leaders also transporting car loads of teenagers and a Troop trailer in tow. 

Max & I kayaking at Summit

Max has been a Scout since first grade when he joined as a Tiger and I've been a leader since second grade doing most of the various scouting positions along the way including running various STEM programs and Shooting Sports in our area. For us Scouts has allowed both of us to learn a lot and have a number of experiences I'm sure we would not have had following our everyday path. Last year he earned his Eagle Scout award and with moving to a new school at the same time which offered a much larger number of athletic programs and clubs he has found more interest in those activities (and girls) then Scouts. So I've begun to back out as well. Having been a leader for 11 years now, it's probably best to make room for new blood ensuring other parents get to have the same fun I did with their kids. With all of that said this would be our last summer camp before he ages out of scouts and we hoped to make it a good one. Our Troop decided to head to West Virginia this year to visit one of the bigger camps called Summit Bechtel Reserve.  The nice thing about this camp was they have a lot of high adventure activities most the other camps don't have. With no required merit badges to earn Max made the most of his time white water rafting, doing ropes courses, playing on zip-lines, rock climbing, mountain biking, and swimming.

Trap Team at Nationals

After a hot and exhausting week at summer camp it was time to switch gears once again. I am also the head coach for his high school trap team. Our team had qualified for Nationals. Fortunately Nationals is only about 3.5hrs away in Columbus, OH. We got back from camp on Sunday and had to be in Columbus on Monday morning for the teams first event. Luckily I have some good assistant coaches that were taking RV's up and did all of the meal planning and shopping for the team ensuring everyone would be well feed, rested, and hopefully hydrated for a weeks worth of shooting with the best kids in the country. Overall our team did pretty well. In Trap we placed 57th out of over 250 teams. In the other events the kids stayed in the top third of the pack. I was proud of their performance overall. We got lucky and had good weather for the days we were there. Some of the teams that were shooting later in the week were not so lucky getting held up by delays due to thunder storms.

Max and his cousin at Trine

We now had a week before or next planned summer activity which allowed for some time for a couple college visits. Max got to tour Trine and Central that week. I tried to fit in MSU but for some reason he wanted to be home and spend some time with his girl friend instead. So we both enjoyed some downtime at home. He still wants to visit a few more before making a decision and at this point really has no clue what he wants to do. For the moment he is thinking about being a Dr. or an engineer of some sort. Someone suggested biomedical engineering which has currently peeked his interest. Anyway we still hope to tour a few more schools he has not been to yet like Ferris, Western, Eastern and State.

Heading to Sandusky on the Tug

As if this month has not been packed enough we still had two more weeks in the month with more activities packed in. I don't think I've mentioned that I have the role of Cruising Fleet Captain for our local sailing club. Basically this means I'm responsible for setting up and organizing a number of events over the summer for our club to do by boat. Unfortunately I had already missed our clubs first two events while we moved the new boat to the Bahamas and then again while we were moving the boat to the Chesapeake. We had a week long cruise planned which was supposed to include a night on anchor (a rare event for our club) and visiting a few of the Lake Erie islands.

Dinner with the club on Middle Bass Island

The event went well and we enjoyed some time with friends we had not seen much this summer. Traditionally these events involve a little bit of sailing and a lot of eating, exploring and just hanging out. This summers was no different and we had a good turn out with 11 boats joining the group. Unfortunately our planned night on anchor got canceled due to weather so we headed to Put-in-Bay for a mooring ball one night, then headed over to Middle Bass for two nights. From there we visited downtown Sandusky where we got to see Annabelle (she is working at Cedar Point this summer as a lifeguard). Then went on to the city of Huron where the club stayed for two nights but we had to leave early to get back for our county fair. The club moved on without us to Kelly's Island and then everyone went their own ways with most heading back home. Everything with the boat was working well other then a exhaust leak I found right before we left. Luckily its easy to get to for a fix but is a pain in the rear to actually take everything apart to put a new gasket in as the leak is between the exhaust elbow and the turbo unit on the engine. We decided to ignore it for the week and deal with the mess later.

Max doing the Pack Goat competition at fair

We had to leave the summer cruise early to head back for barn setup and animal check in at our county fair. My wife and I have been 4H leaders for a number of years now and she was once again on the roster as the Goat Barn Leader for our 4H club. 4H is big in our area and was one of the bigger clubs at our kids previous school. Even though our kids don't go to the school anymore they both stayed active with the club and have shown goats for the last 8 years. If you have not experienced fair as a 4H member you will have an entirely different view of your county fairs. For the 4H kids fair is an opportunity to turn in the various projects they may have worked on during the year to have judged where prizes are given out and show/sell their animals. This is all a big commitment though the entire year with fair week being the peak. If kids are showing animals they are required to be there all week to take care of them ensuring the pens are clean every morning, during the day, and at night when the fair shuts down. Max is a Jr Superintendent which also means as one of the older kids he is responsible for the overall barn and ensuring the other kids are doing their chores and other fun things like early morning hay and straw pick ups, grand stand cleanups, turns working the cafeteria, and more. Fair is usually the first week of August and generally around the hottest time of the summer which always makes for a long exhausting but generally fun week. This year was no different. It was a long hot fun week hanging out with our 4H friends. Max is saying this may be his last year showing Shadow (his goat). I'm not sure if its because we packed to much stuff in this summer or if he is really ready to move on to something else but is a reminder that the kid is growing up and things are changing around our house.

One year of retirement

A couple days ago I hit a big milestone. At the moment I wondered why I was not celebrating it like a birthday or other major life event. Unfortunately celebrating something like that feels odd as most of folks I meet cock their heads and look at me weird when they hear I don't have a job or a business anymore. On August 1 of 2024 I officially left my job with a company I had been with for 28 years. 

When I left it was a scary moment. I had all of our expenses tracked down to how much toothpaste cost us per year and decided I had to trust the math. It all added up saying we should be able to do this thing. I had even taken a year's leave of absence when we did the Great Loop a couple years prior partly to test our spending plans ensuring they actually worked as we thought they should. To say it was scary would be an understatement.

I'm happy to report I've really enjoyed this year and have no regrets leaving when I did. Even though I had been reading and watching YouTube videos on the subject for the last few years on what to expect and how to be "successful" in retirement. I almost found myself falling into the working one more year category but thankfully got a buyout offer at the right time. 

I will say there were a few surprises. I really thought I would have more time to do things I wanted to do. I had a list of items to address around the house, I thought I would work on our landscaping, I thought I would get into a workout routine, I thought I would play more video games. At this point looking back I can safely say that I have not got many projects done around the house. Much to my wife's concern the fan in the sunroom still does not work, the old water pump from the Tug still has not been rebuilt, and a long list of other items are still being neglected. The landscaping around our home looks worse then ever, I did start walking about an hour every day with the dogs but would not call that a workout. Unfortunately I have also played less video games this year.

What I did learn is that I now have the time to say yes anytime my kids want to do something with me. While I did spend a lot of time with my kids while they were growing up it didn't really hit home until my daughter moved out two years ago for college that I would not be getting that same kind of time with them again. So I have really been trying to make the most of my limited time left with our son at home. I have learned to slow down and appreciate the little things more. When we go places I like to think I'm walking a little slower taking everything in rather than being focused on rushing to the next thing. I've also started talking with people more. Historically I was not good at making time to get to know new people. As I'm starting to slow down and creating new routines I'm also taking the time to make more then just passing acquaintance type relationships with a number of new people.

It's been a fun year and it's gone by fast. With that said I'm really looking forward to what's next. This year will be my son's senior year. After that he will be off to college and hopefully soon after that we will get to start our sailing adventure around the world.

We found a home for the boat

Our boats new home for the next year

Being fairly late in the season and not knowing much about the Chesapeake Bay Area (turns out its about the size of Lake Erie but probably a bit bigger shorline wise due to all the various rivers and fingers in the area) we pretty much took the first marina that sounded good not paying much attention to location or details.

When we called the owner had told us he had just put in new docks designed for big catamarans and was planning to start focusing his business on catamarans. Turns out we were his fifth one. Three were on the hard for the remainder of the season while the owners went home and one was for sale as the owners wife was done with it. There was one other in the water but the owners were not around. The docks were nice. He was still working on getting power out to the docks and lighting was coming soon as well. Soon in this case might be November(note we came in towards the end of June). It did not appear to be the busiest place but one could see it had been an active but smaller boat yard at one time. The marina was in a quiet and seemingly well protected area from wind/storms towards the end of a creek.

The owner a fellow probably in his late 70's was on the dock to greet us and help with lines as we came in. He provided suggestions for timing up and offered to give us a tour of town and ensure we got a rental car.. neither of which we had been planning for. Our first stop was his main office in Oxford at a different marina he owned. When we first talked to him he suggested we stay at that marina but after finding it on google maps it appeared that he only had one dock at would fit our boat while allowing his other dock holders to actually get out of their docks and it sounded like maybe he already had some transient boats planning to come in during the month of July. So we opted for his working boat yard with the new docks. One of the downsides as we would find out later was that the yard in Trappe did not really have working bathrooms/showers for dock holders. They are in the process of being remodeled. If I had to guess this may not happen anytime soon? Anyway the Oxford location did have showers which we promptly took advantage of. While waiting for my turn at a shower I had a chance to get to know our new friend. Turns out he bought the marina we were staying in to build boats back in the 80's and he did so until the last recession when the boat market crashed and it was not viable to create them anymore. He had also been a Grand Banks dealer and service center at one point before they went bankrupt. He was still actively servicing a number of his customers but as those boats got older and changed hands that business was shrinking so he recently decided to pivot his business into one focused on catamarans. His goal was to establish a service center first then become a dealer for a brand of power cats I had not heard of. The display model he had looked nice. He's an engineer at heart with an entrepreneur's spirt that loves sailing and overall a very sharp and interesting fellow.

Once we were all showered he drove us down through his home town of Oxford (think a one stop light town) which is quite cute. It has a restaurant or two, a yacht club, bowling ally, his marina, and a hotel. From there he took us to the next town over in hopes of getting us a rental car so we might get to an airport to fly home. This process took us about 3hrs as the first location did not have any cars available and of course we did not know we were even doing this so had not made reservations ahead of time. Eventually we were successful at getting a car at a very small regional airport, found some lunch, and headed back to the yard.

Once back at the yard we signed a contract and paid to keep our boat at his facility until November with plans to store the boat there for winter. Turns out he just purchased a travel lift that can pull out boats up to 33ft wide. Seems this is a unique thing in the bay area so it appears he may keep our business for more than just the one season. Being a true entrepreneur he tried to drum up some service work from us but I felt I could manage the current list of items and had a fair amount done a couple weeks ago while at Xquisite. The only thing left on my list was the generator which he could not tackle but knew someone that could so it seems I have a good contact to start with. 

Now that all the business was settled, we were feed, we had a loose exit plan, we could all feel the exhaustion settling in so back to the air conditioned boat we went for naps. 

By this point we had worked our available timeline to within one day. It was time to find some flights home as I was due back to take our Scout Troop to West Virginia in two days. While Max and I rinsed the boat down Amy found some flights home and we were off to celebrate our first two successful overnight trips on a new boat with some ice cream. The next day we packed up, put stuff away, and headed out. Time will tell if we picked a good spot or not.

The adventure continues

 After recharging in Southport for a couple of nights it seemed that we had a decent weather window to make it all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. Based on the weather forecast we would have some wind the first day then get stuck motoring for a day then the wind would return on our third day out.

Unfortunately we ended up motor sailing the entire way. We did not get much wind at all and the trip ended up taking us 4 days to get to Trappe, MD. The waters were calm and it was hot... Turned out it was the hottest 4 days of the year. It was so hot we really didn't want to do much so we each took our turns on watch and enjoyed the water. 

We did get a little visitor that decided to hang out with us most of the first day. He was a cute tiny little bird with a yellow breast. You can see Max walking him out of the boat on the top of the VHF antenna. We had to do this a few times as he was determined to check out our salon & cabins. We got some other visitors the next day in the form of dolphins. Dalphins happen to be one of Amy's favorite critters to see in the water and she is determined that if she calls them and waves her hands just so they will come to visit. I just happened to be reminding her that she had not seen any that day when she decided to call some over. Seems like they were just waiting for her call. As soon as she held her hands up and called, one popped its head up and started swimming towards our boat bringing its friends with him. They entertained us hanging out for about 5 minutes and then moved on presumably to entertain another crew somewhere or find some lunch.

Our new friend perched on top of the anntenna

As we worked our way up the coast I was surprised how many big cargo ships we passed. Some were anchored others were just drifting waiting for their pilot boats to come get them and bring them into port. Usually once we got within about 5-10 miles of them they would make contact providing their status and which side they wanted us to pass them on or which side they planned to pass us occasionally. This proved to be our primary entertainment for this passage.

As we worked our way up the coast we were also running closer to shore still trying to keep the boat in the Gulf Stream. Off shore Starlink had been working great. Before leaving the Bahamas I signed up for the offshore plan that provided 50GB of data. The first day we somehow managed to use 20GB after that we limited the Instagram & Facebook scrolling. I'm guessing the video bits that go with that really chew up the data. Now we were limiting our data to download mainly audio books, weather updates, post trip updates to family and some other basic stuff. Once we came in closer to the Outer Banks of NC our cell phone data plans started working again and we could all start getting our social media fixes once again.

Hatteras Lighthouse

Once we made it to the mouth of the Chesapeake we checked in with the owner of the marina we were heading to ensuring he knew we were really coming and when to expect us. We realized that it was going to take us about 12hrs to get there from the mouth of the bay mostly working against the tide so we made the decision to slow the boat down to ensure a early morning arrival vs getting in at 2 or 3am in a place we were unfamiliar with.  We were all a bit disappointed that we would be out one more night without ice cream and AC but the weather was good and it's always nice to just be out on the water even it meant motor sailing though another hot & humid night.

Southport, NC

What we thought would be a three and a half day trip turned into a four nights at sea with one minor storm. Overall it was a pretty good start to our sailing adventure on the new boat. Southport provided a nice marina with a long easy fuel dock for us to tie up to. We shared the dock with a couple other large cats and a 90 & 120ft power boats. We were tied up by 4:50pm. This is when I remembered that we need to check back into the US. Unfortunately it seems that customs now only works business hours and we were too late to get cleared in for the night leaving us stuck on the boat until about 8:15am when someone somewhere would come into work to approve our entry to the US via the app.

This was the night that we discovered that one of our water tank gauges was off. It had been reading 75% but never went down. I had thought the water maker was in an automatic mode and keeping it topped off. Turns out our water maker was not running correctly and the crew had just been clicking ok on the error code it displayed each time it attempted to run. Luckily before we left the Bahamas I had insisted we fill up our water tanks before we left. Otherwise we might have been a bit thirsty and no one would have been getting showers underway. Turns out our pre filters were clogged up and needed replacement. Once we got those swapped out the water maker worked like a champ for rest of our journey. Luckily we had a second set of tanks that were full and we were all able to still take showers on the boat that night. Just maybe not as long as we had hoped for :).

After being cleared in that morning we headed out to explore town a bit. We had passed by Southport when doing our Great Loop trip unfortunately missing one of the more active AGLCA members houses that have a standing invite for all loopers to come visit their font porch. I was a bit sad the first time we came through to miss it and really wanted to ensure we could stop by to say hi this time. As luck would have it they stopped by the marina to find us. We chatted for a bit, learned that their front porch had been made even more famous by a recent Netflix series called The Waterfront. Seems the show had even gone as far as renting their house to film there making their front porch truly famous. We stopped by for a visit getting some good suggestions on what to see & eat while in town for a couple nights.

After some good guidance we headed to the recommend open air bar ordering some really good cheeseburgers. Turns out this sign was needed as a few of the birds were pretty aggressive about their desire to share my french fries. The guy beside me actually punched one of the birds which seemed to intimidate the rest of them from trying for the remaining time it took to consume our meals. Afterwards we found the nearby ice cream shop and thoroughly enjoyed our Sundays nearly putting us all into food commas.

Coming into Southport we really had no plans for a next stop. We had talked about parking the boat somewhere in the outer banks for a month where it would be much cheaper then Charleston until we could get back to moving it to the Chesapeake Bay Area. We thought the bay might be a good place to leave it for the season. Making for a 7-8hr drive to use the boat vs 12+hr drive to North Carolina. But not knowing what the weather would do we did not want to make marina reservations we might have to cancel later possibly losing at least a deposit or more. The Southport area might have accommodated us for a month but we still had a full week of time available before we needed to get back home so we needed to make some plans to keep moving.

Looking at the weather it appeared we would have several good weather days. Unfortunately good in this case meant good traveling days but not good sailing days. After our most recent minor storm experience we were ok with little to no wind and some motor sailing. Looking at the chart it seemed like in about 3 days we could be in the Chesapeake. We started calling marinas looking for a long term home. Turns out this is not a great thing to be doing on a Sunday. Monday rolled around and we got confirmations from several of the bigger well known locations that they did not want to keep a boat our size for the rest of the season as it would block their ability to take in better paying transient boats. Luckily the same marinas that turned us away were also familiar with other marinas that were in the rebuilding stages thus less popular and able to accommodate us. It seemed we had two choices. One looked really empty as the dock manager took us out to the dock he was proposing via FaceTime and a bit challenging for us to get on and off our boat at. The next one sounded promising but they didn't have any pictures to share. However they offered to let us stay a couple nights to see if it was a fit. We now had a goal.

We went back to visit our friends & their famous porch again and they offered up a car allowing us to go shopping for provisions. At this point we were pretty low and frankly were hungry. By the time we left Walmart we were reminded that it's truly a bad idea to shop hungry. I think we filled an entire cart with food that only needed to feed us for the next 5-6 days. So after two nights in Southport we now had a new destination, a boat well stocked with food, and a good weather window to continue on. We truly enjoyed our time in Southport. We found some great food, it was nice to connect with folks that we meet a couple of times at the Great Loop conferences and we were now ready for the next leg of the trip.

Adventure time

 Our weather window was now and it was time to leave. Which is always when that one more thing comes up. I had just fired up the various electronics and noticed that our depth sounder was not working. Sometimes this would happen on our Tug I would turn everything off and try again and it usually came back on. Unfortunately that trick did not work this time. The question then became how big of a deal is a depth sounder for where we wanted to take the boat. We were at a facility that had knowledgeable folks and a haul out if we needed it. After looking at our charts one more time and scratching my head a bit we decided to go. Unfortunately the channel into the Xquisite center was in the process of being dredged so we only had a two hour window to get out on this tide so if we messed with the problem to long we would miss our window to leave and maybe our weather window. We decided that after we got out of the channel we would not have to worry much about water depth until we came in to the next port or wanted to anchor. On the chart it appeared we would have 20 feet or more under the boat coming into Southport the biggest problem might be if we changed our route and needed to spend a night on anchor somewhere and maybe I might find the problem while underway and get it going again. We untied the boat and headed out for what would be our longest passage to date.

Max up the mast untangling things

It was a fine day to be leaving we had wind pushing us in the right direction at about 15mph. Perfect champagne sailing conditions.  Better yet this was predicted for the next 5 days which should make for a great trip north. Our sailing instructor was leaving the in the channel just ahead of us in another boat training yet another set of new owners. We hoped to make him proud showing off our basic skills as we headed off on this adventure! This is where humility sets in. I let the head sail out first then decided I would attempt to raise the main. Yes that's the wrong order and it's dumb to have a big head sail out while one is pointing into the wind and wave trying to raise the main sail. This was then compounded by some additional frustration as the dumb thing did not want to go up. Yes unfortunately my fragile male ego was endanger and after a few attempts we were not making much progress so in an attempt to save face we put the boat back into the wind and sailed until we were out of sight with just the head sail. 

As we came around the island I found some calmer waters out of sight of our friendly instructor, and attempted the big main sail again this time pulling in the Genoa. Turned out we had forgotten about opening two of the 5 clutches used for reefing. We have 3 clutches in the cockpit and two more on the boom (one on each side). Additionally it also seemed that we had the main halliard crossing into our Lazy Jack system which was also limiting our ability to raise the sail past a certain point. Unfortunately we managed to tangle this up sufficiently enough that someone needed to go halfway up the mast to do some untangling. Have I mentioned how nice it is to have an eager teenager that actually wanted to go up the mast while we were rolling around out in the open ocean. Max volunteered to go up and sort out our problems. Once these issues were sorted we had much better luck getting the darn sail up and then turned to boat back into the wind.

So now we were officially underway! Rest of the evening went pretty well. We decided to put a reef in the main and a reef in the Genoa even though the weather forecast predicted 15mph winds with the occasional gust to 20 during the night. Speeds our sails should be able to easily handle without the reef but it was a new boat and we were erroring on the side of safety. I won't lie the first night was a bit ery. It was full of new sounds and not really knowing what to expect from a "new" boat but we managed it ok.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it yet or not but before we left we also found out that our generator was not working. It seemed the engine was running fine and it produced power but that power was not being sent to the batteries for some reason? This ment we would be fully reliant on our solar and wind generators to produce all the power we would need along the way... Again it's a new boat and we had no idea how much power anything used. So we turned off extras where we could and experimented with running stuff we prioritized like the icemaker, Starlink, charging cell phones, iPads, and microwave use. Turns out running these systems along with our other power hungry stuff like radar, electric winches, auto pilots and what not would use about 40% of our battery bank most nights. During the day our solar would get the two banks back up to about 80%. When this happened turned out to be interesting as half of our solar is on the starboard side of the boat and half is on the stern. Turns out the stern gets a lot of sunlight all of the time vs the starboard side that was in the shade much of the time when were had the sails out on that side of the boat. So depending on our wind angle our batteries might be recharged by 2pm or 9pm. Turned out we had 4 mostly sun filled days heading to Southport and we were generally back up to 80% of power or more by 9pm when the sun started to go away. During the day our panels were pretty good about generating 60-70 amps of power along the way and the battery system/inverter kept up with all of our needs even supporting the hot water heater occasionally.

By the third day we had all mostly settled into a routine. During the day we took turns when awake at watch. I would take the 9pm - 2am shift. Max would take 2am-7am and Amy would take the 6/7am to whenever I showed up again shift. Most nights we reefed the main sail to the first reef but we were now leaving the headsail out and pretty comfortably sailing 6-10 knots in the jet stream. On our last night we had seen some small storm predictions and I was hoping that if we slowed the boat down a bit we might avoid it. Unfortunately we still found the storm. Luckily we were able to sail through the smallest part but we still saw winds up to 35kts and the waves creeped up to the occasional 15ft range. As we sailed into it we had put our 2nd reef in the main sail and pulled in the Genoa replacing that with our storm jib. As the wind continued to build I got nervous and dropped the main completely and we sailed for about an hour under just the storm jib making 8kts. Unfortunately after the rain and high winds passed it was still dark we were still in pretty large seas and while we could easily pull out the head sail I was less inclined to turn the boat into the wind to raise the main again leaving us traveling at about 4kts. This slowed us down quite a bit. Eventually the sun came up and the adrenaline from the past night went away and by about noon the sea had calmed back down allowing us to sail into the Cape Fear inlet and into Southport. We had survived our first minor storm at sea and were all looking forward to some time on land.

Back to the boat

While we were away the Xquisite Service Manager did a great job keeping us up to date on the progress of the various items we had left for him to address. I think he was able to get to all but one thing addressed that was sort of a wish list item anyway... The boat needed new bottom paint and I was hoping that that they might be able to strip the old stuff off and apply Copper Coat. Unfortunately they did not have time to take that item on... Oh well maybe we can find a yard to do it this winter when we haul the boat. Unfortunately he also identified another item he did not have time to fix as the item would need to be sent over to Fort Lauderdale for repairs. It seemed our generator was not passing power to our batteries and would not provide AC to the boat. This would mean we would have to rely on our wind and solar to power everything we needed while underway. What this meant we really didn't know as we did not get a hand off from the previous owner so really had no clue if the wind and solar could keep up with all the systems on the boat? Guess we will learn soon enough :)

So now that our engines had all new fluids in them, the sail drives had got new seals, our dive compressor was working as well as a bunch of other little items we were hopefully ready to bring the boat back to the US. Our insurance company told us we needed to have the boat north of Cumberland Island, SC before July 1. So that was our mission. I had been watching the weather and it seems like we should have a good weather window for 3-5 days of sailing North West. We were originally thinking of challenging ourselves a bit with our first long passage and going straight to Charleston, SC. This would take us about three days and would be the longest continuous trip we have ever done. It seemed like a big inlet with several large marinas that could accommodate our boat. Unfortunately there were three things we were not very excited about 1. The large tide swings of about 6ft they have while being on a fixed dock. 2. The traffic 3. Turns out it's expensive to stay there and it seemed availability might be an issue if we got stuck there over the 4th of July due to weather or something else. Note we needed to leave the boat somewhere for the month of July most of which we needed to be back home for. So we decided to get even more ambitious and take the boat into the Cape Fear inlet to visit Southport, NC. This trip would take us 4 days and the marina was about 1/3 of the cost. We consulted with Travis our training captain. He confirmed it was a good plan and we had a good weather window.

Next step.. Provisioning... Buying anything in the Bahamas is expensive. We had not purchased much to bring the boat over and much of the food we had was given away before we left the boat for three weeks. The question became what do we really need, what can we cook in our one skillet, and what can we fit in our backpacks to get from the closest store. Luckily Xquisite has some bikes we could borrow which extended our range a bit. We picked up some basics like lunch meat, bread, pasta, some fruit, and even attempted some ice cream bars figuring we only needed to have enough for a week or so should something go wrong or take longer then expected. After a couple of bike rides to the store we were all stocked up and ready. I was even able to get a couple of packs of Goombay Punch and some local rum :)

Before we left I really wanted to get our dinghy working. When we did the survey it was noted the steering was frozen up. When we purchased the boat I had tried playing with the steering cable a bit to lubricate it and validate it was really the problem. The captain that we had in Fort Lauderdale attempted to play with it a bit and ended up breaking the cable so I spent half a day driving around Fort Lauderdale trying to get my hands on what appeared to be the only one in stock in the area. Prior to leaving the boat at the Xquisite center I had started the process of replacing it but didn't have a wire brush or anything to really clean out the channel it goes in within the outboard. So now that we were back I had brought the wire brush I use to clean my shotguns. It worked pretty well now the trick seemed to be how to run the cable under the floor of the dinghy and up to the console. After a full day of all three of us attempting various methods we finally figured it out and got the dumb thing working. Long story short as nice as this dinghy is and as clean as it looks.. it is a PIA to work on. I don't think I would buy the sport version given my experience so far. Not to mention it's really too heavy for the boat. But I'm sure it will be fun to run around with! It was almost dark but Max and I felt like we needed to take it out for a test run. Everything ran great, the lights work, the boat is fast, and seems to have a lot of torque which should allow us to pull a tube or maybe even a wake boarder. I am looking forward to using this boat quite a bit one day but for now we had a working dingy should we not find a dock and need to anchor which would allow us to get into shore somewhere.

When arriving in the Bahamas we only had a window of 12 days to get the boat to a place we could leave it for the month of July and that place needed to be north of Cumberland Island. We really had no idea what kind of weather window we might get or where we might end up or if we would have the confidence to be at sea for multiple nights. One possibility was to simply sail back to Florida and do day sails up the coast hoping we would make it out of the hurricane zone. After spending two days at the Xquisite center it seemed we had our weather window, we had a plan to go straight to Southport, and planned to leave at high tide the next day.

Home for 3 weeks

Max wanted to get home to be at a friend's HS graduation so he flew home a day earlier than us. We followed the day after allowing for some time to prep the boat to be left and ensure the service team had a clear understanding of our list of items to get addressed. The Xquisite team was kind enough to drop us off airport and we made it home without any issues. We had enjoyed our brief stay but had to get back to real life. Amy still had skating stuff going on, my Scout Troop was getting ready for summer camp, and the HS Trap team that I coach had regionals coming up. Not to mention Max still had 3 weeks left in his Junior year of HS and we had a family wedding to attend before we could head back to the Bahamas to start using our new toy.

As usual we made the most of those three weeks. One weekend we took the Tug over to Put-in-Bay as they were doing tours of the Benson Ford house. Neat story this was a cargo ship that Henry Ford used to use from time to time and had fitted out rather nicely. Eventually it got sold and someone bought it cut it up keeping the bridge decks and sleep quarters then dropped it on their lot at Put-in-Bay turning it into a second home. When you go by the island it's hard to miss from the water and we never knew much about it. Turns out they open it up a few times a year for tours so we made the trek over to check it out. It's about what one would expect an old well appointed ship to look like. They have kept it remarkably the same as I'm sure it was back in the day. Frankly I'm not really sure about the practicality of living on it and having to haul all ones groceries up 2-3 flights of stairs or even just working on it to keep things running but its neat to see that someone enjoys it and still actively uses it. Another cool thing while we were there one of the locals that was volunteering as a tour guide of the home had just got back from space. Turns out he signed up for the Blue Origin

space flight program and had just completed his flight the week prior. It was pretty neat to hear about his experience.

The next week I took our Trap team to states. The kids shot really well earning the team 3rd place in the state and a couple of the kids even placed in the top 3 in other areas like skeet and sporting clays. Max got a personal best hitting 195/200 targets. We had a couple more Scout meetings. Max completed his Junior year and was now home calling himself a Senior (I'm just not ready for that), and then it was time for the family wedding. The wedding was a lot of fun. It was the smallest I've been to in a long time but after attending I'm not sure I would recommend it any other way. The couple did not have to spend all night saying hi to their guests, most the guests knew each other, and it seems like the couple got to actually enjoy their party! 

The next day we planned to fly back to Freeport to bring the boat back to the US. We really were doing it without much of a plan of where we might end up and unfortunately we were once again on a schedule to get it somewhere before we needed to be back for the next event which happened to be a wedding shower (another family wedding), States for our Trap team, and then a week of summer camp. What were we thinking buying a boat this year? Oh well I'm still looking forward to the adventure!

Look we can clean up reasonably well :)

Training day's

When one purchases a brand new Xquisite the price includes two weeks of training. When one buys a used Xquisite from them it includes a warrantee and one week of training. As we are odd balls we purchased our boat on the used market instead of buying it directly from them. Four reasons we choose this path. 

1. We are lazy and would have had to book a flight to the Bahamas to look at the other four boats they had for sale at the time. 
2. I was not sure how to quantify the value of the warrantee and training that would come with a boat purchased from them. I'm sure if I would have reached out they would have been happy to give me a dollar figure but but we have owned boats before so I did not feel like we needed a full week of training thus we settled on three days to go over systems, get all the sails up, and get some practice docking. The Warrantee part I was not sure how we would use as I felt to truly get the value out of that we should be living on the boat and using it every day to truly figure out what might not be working and frankly that kind of time commitment right now was not in the cards. 
3. This boat was one of the newer boats for sale at the time. Endurance (formerly X-Factor, formally Xquiste) is a 2019 we purchased in spring of 2025 and spec'ed the best of what is currently on the market. The boat came with a large lithium house bank of 1500aH, the extended solar array for 2400W of glass panels, 2 wind generators that are supposed to be good for 700W, 100lb Ultra anchor (I have admired these but am to cheap to ever buy one), and a 2023 Highfeild 390 Sport with 60hp outboard are what really made up the differentiating factors for us. The layout, sail plans, and colors of the others were all the same.
4. I think I got it cheaper on the open market. Frankly I was not really looking for a boat the day we went looking, we saw this one, I made a lowball offer then somehow got it.

Now comes the truly impressive part. Even though we did not buy the boat directly from Xquisite they still welcomed us into their family with open arms. I e-mailed their base in the Bahamas to see if we could pay directly for some training. The response was no problem come on over! I asked about getting a few service items addressed while we were there again no worries we got you, is that all you need fixed. The cherry on top was they had availability for us to dock and leave the boat there for a month and they provide a discounted rate for Xquisite owners making the dock about the cheapest we have found in the Bahamas at a marina I would consider one of the top 5 of any we visited. I'm not sure how many different ones we have visited over the years or even just during our Great Loop but I feel like it's a lot :).

I can confirm that after spending three full days with Travis (our training captain who also runs the Xquisite charter business) we got what we expected and more.. and were almost mentally worn out. I'm not sure I could have absorbed a full week of training. I would hope if one was getting two weeks of training it would be spaced out and broken up a bit. We could have hired a well rated Captain in Fort Lauderdale and frankly it might have saved us some money. But the time spent with Travis was well worth the cost. He knows the boat and its systems, he runs these boats in charter thus knows what breaks, where it is, and what's involved in fixing it. There were not many questions I asked that would stump him but when I did he knew who to call to get the answer. One of the nice things was going over all the areas of the boat that would require regular attention or maintenance and to have that maintenance demonstrated for me. I'll be lucky if I can remember half of the information he went over with us but it certainly was three days well spent! All three of us took turns raising, lowering, and tacking sails followed by a few hours of docking practice. I think all three of us can dock the boat with equal skill for now. While Max did check out for most of the maintaince discussions Amy & I both got a lot out of the systems overviews and how and when to switch to using the various secondary systems. This boat has a lot of redundancy. If the electric shifters fail there is a secondary system and even a third way of working around the issues, same if the hydraulics fail, or if a bilge pump or float switch give up. The thinking that went into the design of this boat and its systems is truly impressive!

If anyone is reading this and thinking about an Xquisite the quality of their team regardless if it's at the restaurant, the service team, training team, or facility is amazing. I can confirm the marketing and what they tell you at the boat show is all real. At this point we have only owned the boat for a little over a week and have spent 5 of those days at the Xquisite Center in Freeport Bahamas. We enjoyed it all and were sad to leave the boat. Unfortunately Max still has 3 weeks of school left of his Junior year then we will be back to bring the boat back to the US and start working it up the East Coast. For now we are leaving it in the service teams capable hands to get some maintenance items addressed.

Time for a shake down cruise

One of the biggest reasons we decided to purchase an Xquisite was for the advertised customer service. When we were at the boat show last year we had a chance to meet the CEO and he gave us a tour of the boat. Based on the looks initially I frankly was not very interested but after talking to him and seeing the thought put into the design and systems we walked away truly impressed. One of the big things he talked about was the fact they would train new owners on the boat, its systems, and even would provide techs to fix the boat regardless of where you were in the world even if the boat was not under warranty they still wanted to be the first person you called when an issue came up. They also had a certified used boat program where the boat came with a 90 day warranty ensuring everything worked and the new owners got a weeks worth of training. So we decided to put this to the test. No we had not purchased a boat from them but it was still an Xquisite would they still service us and provide training?

We exchanged a few e-mails and found out the answer was a resounding YES. Of course we had to pay for it but they were still happy to give us a training captain that knows these boats and would explain all the systems, how to sail it, and teach us to dock it. I enquired about getting a few of the items addressed from our survey and the head of the service department quickly got back with me to prioritize the items and assured me he could get many of them fixed over the 2-3 weeks we wanted to leave the boat there while we went back home with plans to return once Max completed his Junior year on June 13th. 

It seemed a plan was coming together. We had found a cheaper dock, we could get the boat serviced and get a few days of training in all at the Xquisite hub. Now we just needed a few of the basic safety items to use a boat, some food, things to cook it with, and we could be off to the Bahamas for a few days.

We hired the captain that took us out the day before to give us some quick docking training and asked him to come with us to the fuel dock ensuring we didn't get into to much trouble the first day we owned the boat and could get it out of that dock and back in if necessary. He was skilled and a nice guy but I don't think teaching was his thing. Anyway we were successful in getting fuel and now had the confidence to get the boat in and out of the dock. Rest of our time those two days was spent shopping for some basic tools, locating a new steering cable for the dinghy, getting some food, towels, the required basic safety equipment, refilling the propane tanks, etc. Of course we also had to return the rental car and pick Max up from the airport. It was a busy couple of days running around a town we were unfamiliar with.

Saturday morning we got up about 3am and were off the dock by 330 heading to Freeport. Our plan was to motor down the ICW going though 3 bridges to the inlet the cruise ships come in. There was a inlet only a mile away from our dock that only required one bridge but I had read it was at one point considered the most dangerous inlet on the East Coast of the country and Navionics did not seem to have much information on it. On our way out I decided to give it a try as it should save us at least 45 minutes in getting to the Atlantic. What really convinced me was that there was a set of bread crumbs on the chart plotter showing the boat had come this way once before. I figured if I followed those we should be safe right? We called the bridge held the boat in place with no problem until they opened started heading out and attempted to follow the path in the chart plotter. Luckily Max was standing beside me on the side of the boat away from the glow of the electronics as he noticed the sea wall directly infront of us that I surly would have beached boat on following our path (I was probably only 75ft from it). While I had figured out how to dim the 17 inch chart plotter at the helm I had not figured out how to dim the other 4 smaller displays and it turns out this was really limiting my night vision. Not to mention I now did not have much faith in the accuracy of the chart plotter.

Once we got past the inlet it was easy going across the Atlantic. I have never seen an ocean so calm. Unfortunately there would not be much sailing that day but that was ok as the boat was all new to us and it gave us some time to play with the systems, try pulling out the sails, and figure out how to play with some of the gadgets we had not yet tested. We had been making good time along the way and were told not to approach the inlet to the Xquisite center until about 2 hrs before high tide. I stopped the boat and Max & I swam in that beautiful blue water that is usually only associated with post cards. The chart said it was over 2000ft deep but it was incredibly clear. After killing a little time we got back on our way.

On the way in I e-mailed our Xquisite contacts asking where to dock and reminding them this was a new to us boat and that we had little to no experience docking it. Luckily even though it was his day off our soon to be training captain was around and helped guide us into the dock and ensured we were well tied up. Our shake down cruise had been successful. Everything on the boat worked as expected and we had made it in safely.

We bought a boat

After all the frustration and back and forth we were exhausted and tired of negotiations. We booked a flight down to see the boat again, assess the gelcoat repair and check out the new prop ourselves. The brokers sent over a receipt to show one had been purchased as I was not excited about diving on the boat while it was in a canal in front of someones home we agreed to take it out of the dock and try running it to see how it really performed. Seems there was enough contention in this that we again had both brokers, their manager (The president of sales), a captain and a surveyor on board for this little show. It felt like everyone was there to ensure a sale as they all seemed to understand we were done and willing to walk away. The good news is the prop worked.. The bad news is they were not running the same RPM's on the two engines. One engine was 75 to 100 RPM off regardless of how many times we attempted to shift the blades from standard to overdrive and back again. The gelcoat looked ok but needed another coat and maybe a bit of wet sanding to be finished. We agreed to close, we would figure out the prop issue and asked the owners to concede $500 to get the gelcoat guy back out to finish the job. The owners broker agreed I signed the form electronically while we were on our return trip and we now officially owned a really big catamaran.

The next question is now what? We had talked with the fellow (Bill) that owned the house it was in front of. He was willing to let us continue to use the dock for a somewhat reasonable cost (for the area) as long as we wanted. Our insurance company told us we needed to get it out of Florida before July 1st and north of Cumberland Island somewhere. We would like to get it back to Lake Erie but really don't have the time to do a 4000 mile trip with it this summer.

Picture after our purchase with our broker Darla

We decided to do a shake down cruise with it and head over to the Xquisite Center in Freeport Bahamas. We closed on the boat Wednesday night. Booked a flight for Max to come join us Friday and planned to do the 90 mile crossing Saturday if the weather window held out. Luckily we bought the boat as we had not booked a hotel room and Bill was ok if we stayed on the boat for a couple days while we got it ready to leave. Unfortunately living on a boat while docked at a personal residence is frowned upon in the area but Bill understood our situation told us to not make it obvious and do what we needed to do to get ready. He was really friendly and turns out just liked meeting all the boaters that used his dock and hearing about their adventures. He is a pretty interesting guy and I would have liked to get to know him more but unfortunately time was against us and we had arranged for 3 days of training on the boat over in Freeport. So all day Thursday and Friday was spent buying basics like life vests, flares, extra lines, coast guard stickers (to ensure we will pass a safety check), pans, toaster, towels and some basic food. While our purchase contract had stated anything on the boat as of the sea trial would stay with the boat, it seemed the previous owners had ignored that and pulled a bunch of stuff off the boat that we now had to reinventory and replace. I figure they probably took about 1-2k worth of stuff. During our survey we had taken pictures of everything on board as we had been been surprised by how much the previous owners of our tug took off the boat (including the furniture, manuals, and pictures of the boat being built) but at this point I was just done and because we only brought an overnight bag with us we got to buy all this stuff new that we also already have on our Tug back at home :(. I don't feel like we are contentious buyers but this is the second boat we have purchased that was just a pain in the rear to get to the finish line even with two full time experienced professional boat brokers moderating the tone. Maybe it is us.. guess if it happens a 3rd time we are probably the problem :)

No good deed goes unpunished

Per our last post I noted that the boat had acquired some new dock rash. After pointing it out the owner did get it addressed (as seen in the picture I was sent here). With some research from their broker they confirmed my thought that the prop might be in overdrive configuration. The owner confirmed this and supposedly dove under the boat and manually switched the prop out of this mode. The workers addressing the gelcoat were done on Thursday evening and the owner wanted to close on Friday. This would have been ok as our surveyor was available and willing to stop by per our conversation that Tuesday except for the fact that the owners were convinced he did the damage to the gelcoat and now were treating to sue him with no evidence he had done anything wrong. Note: This is the second time they had baselessly called him incompetent and treating legal action as they did not like some of his findings from the survey. Thus by this point in the week he was not very excited about heading back to the boat. Of course they are hot to close ensuring they get their money and are done with this sale.. which I get. Anyway some drama ensued and I feed into it. Luckily our broker was wise enough to give us some space. We decided we would fly down look at the work ourselves and ask their broker/rep to show us the engines are both turning the same RPM with the prop now flipped out of overdrive mode. Unfortunately as the owners have now threatened legal action against the brokerage their and our broker are both afraid to get on or touch the boat so ours helped us find another surveyor that was available on Wednesday to start the boat and put it in gear at the dock. Yep this is silly but seems to be the point we are at. Probably best to not ask yourself what all this silliness cost eather. So I'm now told to expect their broker, our broker, the president of the sales department, us, and our surveyor to all be at this event Wednesday. I'm pretty sure at this point everyone has been offended at some point in this process and are just looking to finish the deal. Oh yea and one more poke in the side. When we put the boat under contract we listed in the terms that whatever was on the boat as of the survey day would be conveyed with the boat as well as anything included in the listing. So today our broker calls to check in with us and informs us that the sellers have now removed one of the dive tanks on the boat that apparently did not belong to them. I was kind and let it go but I really wanted to say that was ok as long as they were replacing it with a new one.

Purchasing this boat has been quite an emotional ride and I now have a new appreciation for a brokers job. I realize marketing is just a small part of their job with the bigger part managing all the people and emotions involved. In the case of this boat I think we had a seller that seems to automatically blow up anytime bad news comes their way. Fortunately after they blow up it seems they can process it and seem to do the right thing then move on but that initial reaction does not make them pleasant to work with (even between two brokers trying to soften their blows). I'm sure it also does not help that I'm cheap, they accepted a low ball offer and then I pushed for the three most expensive items identified in the survey to be addressed (Note: there was a 4 page list of items). If I had lost as much money as they were on this boat after only owning it for a year and a half I'd be miffed to. Hopefully this will be a good lesson learned and will help us in selecting the right broker when it comes time to sell our tug. In the mean time I'll have a few years to come to terms with the massive depreciation we will most likely incur on this boat when we sell it (hopefully) after ten years of adventures.

One way or another this deal will come to an end Wednesday. Hopefully it ends with us owning a spiffy new to us catamaran.