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So it all started last Tuesday, January 19^th.  We had been scheduled to leave the following day for St. Augustine to get dry docked, but there was still work that HAD to be done before we left (can you believe the Southern Wind hasn’t moved in 7 years??).  The bilge pumps needed to be double checked and trouble shot, the starboard engine’s starting solenoid needed to be rewired, the battery bank needed to be prepped, which means a water refill (which takes a while), and recharge which on a huge battery bank such as ours (2x starting batteries and 10x 8D batteries!) also takes a while, wire up the inverter/charger, and set up our engine gauges (which is most important really, but we were getting them back that day).  We all got up and started at 9am and continued all the prep where we left off at around midnight or 1am.  The bilges weren’t that bad. I was able to get most of them up without a problem. 8 out of the 9 were fully functional, able to respond both automatically and manually to water intake.  And the 9^th was an additional backup we had just bought, but also had a 2500 GPH (gallons per hour) manual in its place so I wasn’t worried.  They only took me two or three hours.  The starboard starter took about 15 minutes, but before I can start on my next project the guys from Polaris Marine come by for a final check before we make our first journey aboard the Southern Wind. Now don’t get me wrong I love it when these guys show up.  I am now confident that I can wire a lot on a boat but having these guys around, guys who really know the ins and outs of everything, is reassuring.  They look over some of my work, answer A LOT of questions that I always come up with, go over the engine room set-up (which is the one frustrating part, when people who know what they are doing tell you that you need to redo something.  But the most frustrating part is that I know they are right, Damn!) and end up in the bridge with sky talking about our set-up, and what else can be doing.  These guys know pretty much everything there is about boats/sailing.  During this conversation we got our gauges back from Telcor, who originally made them 20 years ago but agreed to service them for us and supplied us with new sending units for the engines (the sensors that actually take the RPM, pressure and temperature readings).  And by the time they were done answering all of our questions it was almost 3pm.  I take full advantage of time they are here and really pick their brains!  So after they leave, I double check a few things around the boat and start cleaning the bilges, which is actually a continuation of the bilge pump preparations.  See, if the bilges are dirty as ours are when they try to pump water out, they will suck up all the dirt, sawdust, etc which will clog them and make them break.  So I spent a few hours cleaning the forward bilges.  This is quite possibly my least favorite job since to clean under Ben’s bedroom I have to climb down and fit in a space about 20in. high with a pressure washer, scraper, and shop vac to get it all our which is tedious and awkward.  Thank goodness a friend of ours came by to help me out as my runner. So that was done by 6pm. 

Then I began reading the directions for our gauges.  They are not all that complicated, but they take a long time and everything has to be very precise and exact.  The cables get run, which requires running new PVC pipes through our aft space since I am out of room in my other cabling areas (I have already run a couple thousand feet of cable between all the lights, pumps, navigations, etc.).  Luckily Bryan Adams and Lona Smith, the two main film crew members who will join us documenting the voyage, were out here for a few days.  They were such a huge help, I can’t hardly begin to describe.  Let me actually tell you about these two.  They have worked in TV for a few years on shows like Ice Road Truckers; both have a great sense of adventure and an even bigger sense of service.  Early last year they were in between projects and were trying to think of what they could do next.  It turns out there was an article about us in a small magazine, The Mariner, and while they were sitting down for pizza in LA Bryan opened it up and started reading and said, this would be great for a documentary show! So they got in touch with Ben and came out last May to film some stuff and ended up helping around the boat.  That was really the start of our filming process.  Lona has been busy the past few months, so hasn’t been able to make it back out until now, but Bryan has been here a few times.  Lona is our producer and Bryan is our camera man.  They are both going to be of such help as they both are incredibly gifted on the filming side, but also are people we can trust on board to help out around the boat when we need.  Not to mention that they both are people whose company I really enjoy. They are just good people. 

So Bryan was helping out with the electric and also lent a hand to Nick in the engine room prepping our engines.  He wired up the Inverter/Charger for me while I was starting on the gauges.  I don’t know where the time went but before I know it, it was midnight.  They were finishing up in the engine room, but I still had a lot to do.  Ben came back down and told us to call it a day, but I needed to keep working.  He advised that I should get to bed by 2 since we had such a long day ahead of us.  So that was fully my intention.  But unfortunately it didn’t go that way.  All the prep that goes into setting up the gauges required cutting and making over 200 cables that isn’t that hard but tedious.  So they everyone woke up at 7am to find me still working in the bridge.  I felt like a surgeon huddled over the body of patient for hours on end, not really moving except to cut and crimp cables as I need them.  It was a long night, but it needed to get done by the next day.  They were up and running, but like doing all things for the first time, there were a few glitches.  The oil pressure gauges weren’t functioning properly when we started the engines the next day, but I’m getting a head of myself. 

I think this is a good time to introduce our new captain so long as he can get a leave of absence from work, Ryan. Yes, that gives us two Ryan’s and a Bryan on board (and to think my parents named me Ryan because no one had that name!).  Ryan and Morgan (his wife) are quite the pair.  I met them one day in the canal when they were going by in their small skiff.  Both are in their late 20s and moved here from living on their boat in the Bahamas around the same time Ben and I got here.  They were interested to see what we were up to and the project so they came aboard and took a look around.  It was great to meet people around here that were our age.  It turns out that Ryan has his 100 ton captains license and has lived on boats all his life, and has served as a great knowledge base to draw from.  Morgan is also a nurse.  What a great pair to have along!  Now if only we can convince them to join us!!!  They came by for dinner and kept coming back now again to lend a hand.  They are the sweetest people I have met in a long time.  They laugh a lot, which tends to be infectious.  They have also brought their boat dog, Rutter, by a hand full of times, so Jiles has a friend.  Well, kind of, they are still getting to know one another.  But Ryan and Morgan have become new members of our little family.  And now we are trying to get Ryan to be our captain.  They are just a perfect fit for our crew.

So that morning I went up to the house got some coffee and some breakfast and went right back to it.  Ryan got to the house and we did more prep work.  And at 9 we fired up the engines. So then we began doing the trouble shooting for the engines and their gauges…which took a while.  Capt. Ryan helped me get the battery bank water refilled and charged. But by the time we got it kind of worked out it the tide was ebbing and we missed our window to get past the canals.  And we decide it is far better to wait anyways and make sure EVERYTHING is worked out.  It is now between 2 and 3pm, and I’ve been at it for almost 30 straight hours and am exhausted, so Ben and Ryan tell me to take the rest of the day off and go rest.

The next day Capt. Ryan has off work is Friday, and because he is piloting our boat, we wait until then to give it a shot.  So the next day we continue fixing everything, I got the gauges working…finally, and the engines are working great.  So Friday we are finally able to take off.  A bunch of our neighbors come out to send us off and we get the boat into the canals!  It hasn’t moved in years, and we are all on deck high fiving each other.  It is a long time coming, and we are all so excited.  We start making our way up the intercoastal making great time, but soon our Port engine won’t get in gear.  But we still have one functional engine and still making 5-6 knots.  Not bad considering the size of our vessel.  It starts out beautiful, not a cloud in the sky.  But in less than an hour we look ahead of us and see what we thought was smoke in the canal a couple hundred yards ahead, but didn’t smell any fire.  In minutes we are sacked in with fog and can hardly see 100 yards in front of us.  So some of us are on deck trying to spot the markers for Ryan and everyone does beautifully.  But then we hit the notorious Matanzas Straight.  This is the area known for having boats run around, where we ran aground a few months back on our friend Art’s boat.  Luckily we had two tow boats escorting us there just in case.  They pull us out, thanks to some great captaining by Capt. Ryan.  The tow boats then leave, and we are on our own from then on.  It takes a few hours to get up to St. Augustine, and it is a gnarly adventure with Morgan, Ben, and I at the bow spotting for Capt. Ryan but we make it up just as night falls.  We dock and are so relieved.  But the slip our boat yard said was available, wasn’t’ so we had to dock a couple hundred yards down where they were not set up for us and we had to go a night without shore power. So no lights really, just two extension cords.  Ryan and Morgan take off as they both have work the next day, but we stay put and start our nights on watch.

 The next day we the owner of the yard we are at says we have to move.  So once we fix the port engine (which turns out just needed a $.75 piece to be replaced!) Ben pilots the boat as the rest of us are his spotters.  But guess what?  We try to move 300 yards and run aground when trying to turn the boat around.  A tow boat happens to be right there and tries to get us off but with the tide he can’t.  So we have to wait until 11am the next day.  But the problem is that the tide keeps going out and by low tide that night we are leaning at a 45 degree angle.  That was a trip!  Everyone and Jiles trying to keep their balance on a severely angled floor in darkness.  Around 11pm, the tide came back up and we were free.  All of a sudden Ben yells down to me from the bridge, “We’re free, get everyone up now!”  So we try to maneuver around and dock but there are some very expensive yachts that we are trying not to hit.  We get within 10 feet of the dock, but we can’t make it any closer.  Luckily two guys from one of the docked boats come by and we toss them our lines.  Finally, we are docked, safe, have power, and get on land.  We hang out there the rest of the weekend and try to get hauled out yesterday, Monday.  But the winds and tides were too strong to try and fit our boat, which is 22ft wide into their lifting dock which is only 24 feet wide. We play it safe, no sense in risking everything right now, and decide to wait until today.  So it’s my shift again, Ben went and stayed back at home last night to finish up some work and Rachel is having trouble sleeping with all the noise on deck (we need to put more insulation in her ceiling). So it’s just Nick, Sky, Noah and I tonight.  And it’s my watch, which started at 5am.  I am getting more and more used to working strange hours, for long stretches at time.  But we are having a blast.  The boat is functional; we are that much closer and will be leaving in less than month.  Where has the last year gone, it has passed in what seems like a blink.  Well the sun is starting to rise and I need to get everyone up.  Then it’s time to head back to the house to get Ben and Rachel, and then at 1130 we are getting picked up and put on blocks for two weeks.  This is going to be a long two weeks, with many long hours, but again, we are having a blast.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

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