Searching for Salt

Over the past few months, I’ve flown to Cleveland just about every way Southwest Airlines can get there from Houston.  I’ve connected in St. Louis, New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago, Baltimore and Atlanta. Add flights to Ft. Lauderdale in May and Detroit last week, and you’ll see that I’ve flown over about 80% of the Loop route these past three months.

I’m a window seat guy who rarely draws the shade. Maybe that’s because I’ve always been a map guy, which I got from my dad. I love looking out the window, trying to track where we are by the topography, roads, and waterways. I’m awed by the landscape, the sprawl of cities, the expanse of forests and farmland, the beauty and remoteness of rural America. As our Great Loop Adventure draws nearer, now just two months away, I’m especially amazed at the distance we will cover.

The flights have taken me over many of the waters we will cruise, from our first day out the Houston ship channel before turning east into the Intercoastal Waterway towards Louisiana, to our final leg south down the Tom Bigbee Waterway before closing our Loop, or “crossing our wake”, near Mobile.  The stretch between Houston and New Orleans is laden with industrial traffic; barge-spotting is about the only way to track the Intercoastal meandering through the channels and swamps of the Atchafalaya basin.

Flying into New Orleans, I made mental notes of the Harvey and Industrial Canal locks, and the short jump across the Mississipi that flows between them. My imagination had spawned fear of this stretch – of crowded, dangerous locks, rampant commercial traffic fighting the tortuous current of the lower Mississippi, boats going in all directions like carnival bumper cars. From above, it looked far less intimidating and less crowded than the picture painted by my imagination.

Its easy to get excited about boating when flying over the west coast of Florida. The Intercoastal between Clearwater and Marco Island to the south is easy to see from above – azure waters and white sand beaches surrounded by million dollar homes, high rise condos, and golf courses. While that might not sound too scenic, we rented a small boat while vacationing in Indian Rocks Beach a couple years ago – it was great. I look forward to that part of the loop in our own mobile vacation home, able to dock or drop anchor wherever we wish to explore.

I like flying into Baltimore because it offers beautiful views of that part of our Loop. We plan to spend much of the summer of 2020 in the Chesapeake Bay, exploring and visiting Washington for cherry blossoms, and Solomon’s Island where our crazy boat dream hatched at Trawler Fest a decade ago. That flight offered a nice view of Annapolis and of Baltimore’s inner harbor, both on our itinerary.

Flying into Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago all offer great views of the Lake Erie and Lake Michigan, even though only the latter is on our Loop 1 itinerary. That’s because our planned route ventures across Lake Ontario and north through Ontario into Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay, skipping Lake Erie entirely. On flights into Detroit, I enjoy picking out Lake St Clair, Toledo, and Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, hoping we visit on a second Loop. On one clear flight between Chicago and Cleveland, I could see southern Lake Huron, many miles north at Port Huron/Sarnia.  And of course, climbing in and out of Chicago is always a thrill, both for its beautiful skyline and the blue waters of Lake Michigan – I can’t wait to see it from our boat!

Traveling through St. Louis, I’ve seen nearby Peoria from the air; I’ve also seen it from a steel mill’s vantage point – neither thrilled me (Sorry Peoria). In May, spring floodwaters on the Mississippi were just beginning to recede, and I was awestruck to see how many places the floodwaters extended miles from the river, only rooftops visible.  Seeing the St. Louis arch from above is awesome, and yes, it will be cool to visit, but I’m not so eager for this whole stretch down the Mississippi.  Perhaps while cruising in the Great Lakes, before taking on this stretch, I should read some Mark Twain to get in the proper mood.

It’s always fun to see the Ohio River.  I marvel at the chemical industry and power plants lining its banks, places I visited often early in my career, before I saw them as carbon villains. I always look for it, but our flight plans don’t take us over Paducah, Ky, where we’ll peal off southbound up the Tennessee River.

The landscape going in and out of Nashville is beautiful, with both Kentucky’s and Tennessee’s lake systems clear to see, and which should be even more beautiful from the water and during peak fall colors. There are so many lakes in view that it’s tough to pick out the ones which interconnect to make up the loop route – my theory is that they’re the ones with the biggest boats.  Between Nashville and New Orleans, it was fun spotting the locks we’ll traverse on the Tom Bigbee.  They’re much smaller than those near New Orleans since they needn’t accomodate the barge tows common on the gulf coast and I’m surprised by how close together many of them are.  I’m sure that’ll be the dominant story  on the Erie Canal and Trent Severn Waterway, but those are about the only two stretches of Loop I haven’t flown over recently.

As I wrote this we were actually flying over the Ohio River, just east of Louisville, on our way south to Nashville.  Out the window at 35,000 feet, I’m amazed at the diversity and expanse of country we’ll see from the vantage point of it’s waterways.  From high above, interstate traffic is crawling and boat traffic is practically still. How do you cover 6000 miles in a year when you’re barely moving?

With shades open and two months to go……

The most significant fault identified during our marine survey prior to our purchase of “Anastasia III” (that was our KK42’s name when we bought her) was water penetration of the foredeck. This made the foredeck soft and spongey in several places, particularly around the foot switches used to control the windless. We negotiated a significant price reduction because of this, but also had to commit to fixing it when we arranged financing of the boat through our credit union.

During her build, hull #99 was ordered with the pricy teak foredeck option. It looks really nice when taken care of for a couple decades, but there comes a point when it is just plain worn out. Ours was well past that point.

Teak is attached to the standard fiberglass deck using adhesive. Back in 1986 they didn’t trust glue, so screws were also used to hold the teak down to the fiberglass underneath. Epoxy or silicone seals the screw holes, and rubber caulk seals between planks. When these seals are breached, water gets under the teak, and into the fiberglass. On Cirila, water also crept into the fiberglass laminations at the hause pipes (holes), where anchor chain goes through the deck into its storage locker.

In June of 2016, we embarked on the “fix the foredeck” project. Pepe’s Yacht Service on Clear Lake won our business with their sound reputation and competitive price. After a Memorial cruise to Galveston, we motored Cirila up the ship channel, back into Clear Lake, and directly to Pepe’s. We parked her in a tight slip at the boat yard, where work began a couple days later.

We continued to live aboard while the teak stripping got underway. This ugly, noisy, demolition process is hard to watch, but when your office overlooks the foredeck, is impossible to ignore. The long slender teak planks don’t give up easily – they crack off in splinters. No, we would not be repurposing the wood. Nor was it easy to remove the bowsprit – the teak platform on the bow that houses all the ground tackle (anchors and associated hardware).

These preparations lasted over a week, but living in Pepe’s shipyard seemed to last much longer. It’s not a pretty marina. Some nearby boats were there to die, others were already dead and decaying. Mosquitos were rampant and hungry, their population still thriving from the wet Spring still remembered for its “Tax Day” floods.

Salvation came when it was time to begin the fiberglass work. This meant Cirila needed to be hauled out of the water and we needed to find land based accommodations. The haul-out process is stressful because a 20 ton boat is a terrible thing to drop. This would be Cilia’s first time out of the water since our purchase survey the year before.

Cirila’s hull is an impressive sight out of the water. She looks more like a small ship than a “boat”. We were pleased to see that her hull remained in good condition – no surprises forcing us to dig deeper into the savings account. Pepe and his crew got Cirila on cribbing and supports, where she would remain for another month.

We spent much of the duration of the project booking Priceline deals in dog friendly hotels near Dawn’s office in the Galleria. Deals at the Sheraton were best, since Dawn could actually walk to work. The first stint was a fun adventure. On the second, hotel staff greeted Lola by name when we went for walks. By the third, the maid knew our names and by the fourth I was ready to scream. While the lack of commute was great for Dawn, the mayhem of living in the Galleria took its toll. Dining was expensive and with our window about 100 feet from constant traffic noise of the 610 Loop, I grew impatient with the pace of boat progress and anxious for new living options.

Back on board and once out of the water, Pepe’s crew began cutting the upper fiberglass skin off the foredeck in the softest, spongiest place – up by the hause pipe. The wooden core beneath was definitely rotted, so much in fact that it could have been used for mulch.

We progressed to panels downhill from the highest one at the bow, inspecting and evaluating how much core needed to be replaced. The bottom line – we decided to replace all of it – from the bow all the way back to aft of the pilothouse doors. This required a game plan since it couldn’t all be done concurrently, or just like the ice fisherman with too many fishing holes around his shanty, the guys would just fall through the weakened deck.

The crew worked a process involving a couple sections at a time on opposite points on the foredeck. For each section, the guys trimmed off the outer fiberglass skin, removed the old wooden core, cleaned and prepped the core cavity, cut, dry-fit and labelled a matrix of marine plywood squares coated in epoxy, then pressed the labelled squares into an epoxy putty bedding spread into the core cavity. Once set, they filled the remaining cavity with the putty, cleaned and sanded the outer skin then epoxied it back in place over the new core. The joints were then glued and faired with the surrounding material.

This continued section by section, day by day, in a process that seemed to take forever. To break our tiresome routine, we exchanged the hotels of the Houston Galleria for a quaint old motel outside Biloxi on a 4th of July road trip. Then, after a costly stint at the Westin Galleria, and badly missing our Marina clan, we stayed a few weekends with Ray and Tina aboard Tina Marie Too. To lower cost and keep an eye on progress, we shifted our stay to the La Quinta on Clear Lake, and used points to stay at the Nasa Hilton for a week. I can’t remember how we packed or where we did laundry – presumably brain blocking parts of the experience.

Thank God, with July waining, the project was nearing the finish line. Between a few weather delays, the foredeck was faired, gel-coated, and painted. Since Cirila was out of the water so long, her bottom and rudder needed a fresh coat of antifouling paint, adding another couple thousand to our budget overage. After over seven weeks, six of them on the hard, we were back on the water and in our home slip at Watergate Marina. It took another 3 days there before Matt of Mockingbird Marine was able to get the Bowsprit and ground tackle reinstalled.

The end result made this long and painful process well worth it.

One spectacular thing about a Krogen 42 is the view from the pilothouse. For those uninitiated, the pilothouse is the inside place where you drive the boat. It’s out of the wind and weather, and all the best instruments and controls are there. Simply, it’s why you sell your sailboat. If your boat was a plane, the pilothouse would be its cockpit. Note: Cockpits on boats are altogether different than planes: if you’re lucky to have one (not all boats do) it’s on the aft (ass) end, above the rudder, where you fish, handle dock lines, visit with neighbors, grill, smoke, and at 3:30am, pee.

So back to the pilothouse Windows. In a Krogen 42, there are 11 windows, giving the “pilot” a comprehensive view of the sea beyond. If you’re at the dock, the view is mostly of neighboring boats, but when you’re hanging with the 40-60 footer crowd, it’s a nice view. There’s 3 facing forward, 3 on each side, and 2 facing aft. When we bought Cirila, all but the aft facing windows were in bad shape. The prior owner, seeking refuge from the Texas heat, put reflective panels, like some folks put on the dashboard of their Nissan Sentra, behind the windows.

The problem was he fit them much more closely than the car versions are, and he cooked the windows like a 12 year old cooks grasshoppers with a magnifying glass. Two had a mesmarizing pattern of cracks, four others were delaminating, with brownish bubbles of goo separating the layers of safety glass in the corners and around the edges. At best it distracted from the spectacular view, and at worst, it could prevent you from spotting your best friend’s eight year old, who fell out of the cockpit trying to pee like the grown-ups.

So last week, we replaced all but the aft facing windows. Do you remember when you got your first pair of glasses, or installed new lighting in your kitchen, or had cataracts surgery, or had a miraculous recovery from near blindness? Yes, it’s kind of like that.

We got our first quote to fix the windows during the boat buying process, when we negotiated the final price based on survey findings. We got our second quote after we owned Cirila for a month, and our 3rd a couple months after my very brief stab at the do-it-yourself route. Afraid I would do irreparable harm, I got that third quote.

Number three was from Admiral Glass in League City. For the lean sum of $200 per window, Admiral Glass, and more specifically Paul and his sidekick John, turned our night into day. Paul did the first 4 on his own; speed increased 25% when John helped with the last 7. Paul is a master glass cutter and caulktician. John is a good dude, just not inspired by cleaning decades old caulk from the removed frames. Not sure I blame him – the thought of it inspired me to get that third quote.

All went well except for that first center forward window install. This window is different than the rest. It opens, wide, hinging upward, like an aligator’s jaw. A stainless steel frame holds the glass in a small recess of the FRP wrapped wooden frame. The entire assembly is the aligator’s upper jaw. Master Paul stopped using his impact driver after cracking the first two windows. With an old fashioned screw driver, the third time was the charm.

While said construction was ongoing, this author was working his day job, from his home office on the port side of the pilothouse. Understand that Cirila’s navigation computer is to starboard, home office to port. The pilothouse is also home to all the major electronics, half the DC power breaker panels, both air conditioning units, the communications center, tool crib, chart room, and is open to rain and 95 degree heat during this entire process. In the 30-45 minutes each window was out, I sanded the inside teak frame, since it’s so much easier when the window is out, and rain is coming in. We did have two weather delays, which while frustrating, smoothed out paying for it all.

Paul caulked on the third day, and yes, the biblical reference is real – his caulking is that good. He did the exterior. In the interest of economy and seeking my own place in caulking lore, I applied three coats of spar urathane (which I do have the skills for), and caulked the inside myself(which I don’t) If I bolted my severed arm to a robot slolen from the welding line of a Mercedes Benz factory, my caulk bead would wander like a snail track, and have swells, like those bulging rings on a pregnant earthworm. After the caulk set, I spent many hours on conference calls, dreaming of casting off, trimming those fat spots off with an Exacto knife.

The varnish looks nice and THE WINDOWS ARE MAGNIFICENT. Wait, that’s the view, I don’t notice the windows anymore.