Virginia Beach (6/9/2015)

What a difference a decade makes.  I was at this location more than a decade ago to do an environmental inventory, and it was a contaminated site that needed some serious work.  Development was encroaching and there was a tremendous pressure to do something with the site.  I'm so happy to be here now and see what the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has done with it.

A view of the Lynnhaven river from the Education Center.  Interestingly, when I got my sailboat five and a half years ago it came out of the inlet in the back.  The boat could not get out at low tide and we had to pull her over a sand bar.  The problem was it could not go under the bridge any other time; the mast was too tall. 

The site now has the Brock Environmental Center and we are giving a stormwater class in their class room.  The building is LEED certified (platinum), they used good environmental site design, recycled materials,  do not use city water, generate the majority of their own electricity and have composting toilets.   Yes, that in the middle of Virginia Beach!

One of the two windmills that are estimated to produce 40% of the electricity for the Center.  Solar cells on the roof generate the rest.

It is pretty impressive,  the building has been designed to take advantage of the environment while still being protective against the elements, in particular global warming, sea level rise, and just increased flooding events.

Looking outside, you can see that the site is surrounded by tidal wetlands and what looks like a salt marsh community.   I can remember that one would not eat oysters coming from the Lynnhaven; the water they grew in was too polluted.  Currently,  Lynnhaven oysters are a delicacy, prized for it's salty, but delicate taste.  So great to see we are making progress in cleaning up the Bay; albeit very slowly and very localized.

Working on my boat; the "famous" Catalina smile (6/3/2015)

We pulled our boat this week and were tremendously pleased that my repair of the Catalina Smile on my boat had not returned.  I had fixed it 5 years ago and this was the first time we had pulled the boat out after the repair.

Hauled out after four and a half years in the water 

But let me start at the beginning.  Approximately 5 years ago (May), I motored my little boat over to the York River Yacht Haven to be hauled out.  After some title issues, I was able to take possession of my sailboat a few months earlier, and a friend an I motored her from a slip in the Lynnhaven river over to the slip I had rented in the Poquoson River (it took us 8 hours or so).  So that faithful day in May I motored her over with my daughter and father-in-law on board.  Honestly, not knowing what I had except knowing that she was an abandoned boat that had sunk at least once, I was reluctant to raise the sail and try sailing her.  We stopped in Yorktown to have lunch with the wives.  It was a good trip and even more fun to have lunch on board with five persons eating sandwiches in the cockpit under the watchful eyes of a lot of onlookers.

I was not present when the marina hauled the boat, but when I asked them they told me the keel wobbled a bit.  On further inspection there was a crack in the keel approximately a quarter of the way down.  I learned from the Catalina 25, 250 & Capri International Association that this was the "famous" Catalina Smile.  It seems that the bottom of the boat has a wooden stub and the keel (in my case cast iron) was bolted and glued on to the stub.  I quickly learned that if the keel falls off the boat would immediately fall over, and would likely capsize.  Below is a photograph of what I found that day.

The smile from both sides

From the association members I also learned that this was not fatal and that it could be fixed.  Being on a budget and fairly handy I decided to do this myself.  I bought a repair kit form Catalina Direct and spent a lot of time on the Association's website researching what everyone had done.  In the mean time I cleaned the hull and got it ready for painting.  I very quickly learned I needed better tools than I had and that's where Sears and Harbor Freight came in.  I eventually bought a heavy duty 7" angle grinder and a big industrial drill.  I had to buy cutting oil, to drill into the cast iron keel.  Talking with friends etc I first needed to do some preparatory work: I needed to make sure that the wood stub that the keel was attached to was dry and not rotted.  So I set out to drill five holes in the wood stub at the location I would put the new keel bolts.  The first holes I drilled were slightly undersized and I stopped when I hit metal.  For the next two weeks I treated the holes by alternately flooding them with acetone or alcohol in the hope to drive out any water that was in the stub, or at least near the areas where the new keel bolts were going in.

In the mean time I took the angle grinder and started to cut out the white glue/rubber type substance that sits between the keel and the wood stub.  From everything I read, this is most likely 3M's 5200, a marine glue which is absolutely amazing.  I cut the glue out for the entire length of the smile and tried to go as deep as I could with my 7" disks.

This is what the smile looked like after grinding it out

Back inside in the bilge, I flooded the holes with penetrating epoxy after the two weeks treatment with acetone and alcohol and let it dry for a week.  I made sure that the penetrating epoxy coated the entire bilge, hopefully penetrating the entire stub.  Back to the drill, I subsequently re-drilled the holes but now to the right size and I again flooded the holes with penetrating epoxy.  In writing this, I wonder why I did it this way, but I wanted to make sure that the area was water tight.  I also covered the entire bilge with a layer of glass, in order to get as much strength, stability and water tightness as I could get.  I then re-drilled the holes and I was finally ready for the next step, drilling cast iron and tapping thread in the holes, and this is where I hit a wall.

Drilling in a confined space like the bilge, laying on your stomach was a pain.  Various posts on the Association website talk about drill presses or having professional drillers come in for this part of the job.  My drill bits dulled almost instantly and it took me an entire day to get a half inch deep; and then to think I needed five holes at least 6 inches deep.  Back on line I learned that is was best to drill a pilot hole, so I looked around and ordered  new set of drills, including a number of thinner drill bits to make pilot holes.  Being able to drill one hole per weekend, it took my five weeks to get all the holes done.  In the mean time we had a huge storm that flooded my bilge, and you can understand I was pretty darn happy that I had flooded the holes with penetration epoxy.

Once the holes were drilled it was time to tap the holes, cut the threaded rods to length and screw the rods into the cast iron keel.  With the rods in place it was time to loosely screw on the nuts and then finally do some work outside.  I filled the cleaned out crack with the 5200 compound  and subsequently I went inside to tighten the nuts with a torque wrench.  Again the Association website was of great help because they gave me the correct measures on how much torque I needed to apply.  Finally after the 5200 had dried it was time to re-glass the crack, paint the entire hull with three layers of a barrier coat and three coats the ablating bottom paint.

The keel bolts are in

She was finally hauled out four and a half years after she was put in.  I had barnacles, sponges and algae growing on the hull, but no smile; all looks well!  One word of caution, Catalina Direct tells us that these bolts are less strong as the original bolts which had a J-shape and were pored into the cast iron keel.  Thank goodness my keel bolts did not look too bad, but I wanted additional assurance of safety in particular since I had a smile.

The latest picture of the keel.
She had been in the water for 5 years now and yes she should have come out for cleaning years ago.
But I'm a happy camper/sailor! 

Chesapeake Bay (5/31/2015)

Boy it was a sailing Sunday.  First a friend of mine and I took my boat over the Wormley Creek Marina to get hauled for a bottom job (the subject of my next post).  We expected some wind and that proved to be somewhat wrong.  It started out good, but around the end things were slow.  We were bucking the tide, and although it looked like we were making some headway based on the wake and current around the boat, our GPS showed we made 0.0 knots over the ground.  In fact we were actually drifting somewhat.  Frustrating but it was fun anyway.  The two pictures below show the approach to the creek and us getting ready to dock the Beagle.

I'm really impressed by Wormley Creek Marina; if I was not a member of the club, I can see having my boat there.  

I was tired and overheated when I got home; jumped in the shower and we ran out to meet friends for what we thought was a moonlight sail on their boat.  Well, the weather had turned and we had a steady 20 knot wind and 3 to 4 foot waves on our part of the Bay.  Thank goodness we were on a 40 foot boat with a reefed main, but we were still flying 8 knots at times.  When we got back, it showed that the highest wind gust we had was 29 knots.  It was an exhilarating sail.

When we got home and downloaded the pictures we were struck how small our Catalina 25 was compared to the Pearson 40 we sailed that evening. 

Nothing really deep to write about today, except maybe that being out on the water is exhilarating at times; without time to think about all the things around you.  You are just in the zone, concentrating on sailing.

Random ramblings about the Hampton Roads (5/24/2015)

The Australian kayaker Steve Posselt visited the area this past week.  He is trying to convince the world about the gravity of global warming by kayaking in 3 continents.  He eventually plans to end up in Paris for the next climate conference.   There are many ways people try to focus our attention to a (their) cause: be it dead soldiers with Memorial Day, multiple sclerosis with an MS 180 bike ride (I rode one from Houston to Austin 8 years ago), a breast cancer walk for life, circumnavigate the Americas for disabled sailors, or even kayaking the world to focus attention on global warning.

I have been interested in the issue of how to convince people that environmental responsibility is a must.  It seems that there is a group that is concerned about the environment and a whole group of people who do not seem to give a damn.  Crazy enough they seem to fall out along political or ideological lines, or even religious lines.  That's what's fascinating me.  As I mentioned in my bio, it was Stanford University's psychologist Leon Festinger who wrote the following in the 1950s:  "A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."  Call me crazy, but it still applies 60 years later.   I really wonder how to get that paradigm shift, but I'm afraid that they'll only see the point when it is way too late.

The way I see it, it was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who reminded us that we humans had dominion over " the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Gen.1:28).  In the Novum Organon, Bacon writes: "Let the human race recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest."  It is scary to see that in those days we already felt that we owned the earth and that we could do with it what we wanted, with the excuse that God gave us permission (dominion).  Still now do I see Facebook posts by religious friends that tell me to trust God, and to relax because God is in control.  I find this outright scary, but it illustrates the divide that I was writing about; although as I am often reminded by Donna (my wife), dominion over nature does not mean that you do not need to take care of it.  Dominion means you have a responsibility to take care of the eartg.  I honestly do not think that any God would have a plan to let her/his creation go to hell.

Anyway Steve Posselt called our area "This is a staggering part of the world," or as I may paraphrase one of the crown jewels in God's creation.  Below are a set of pictures that I have taken over the years of this crown jewel.  Hopefully we can preserve this beautiful landscape.

View of the James River from Surry towards Jamestown

York River from York River State Park

Sunset over the York River from the National Colonial Parkway

About the cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel with my sailboat 

York Spit Lighthouse (5/16/2015)

There are a couple of things in life that are really my passion.   They include sailing, photography and teaching; although I have not biked much lately, I would almost want to count that as well as one of my passions in life.   I think what they have in common is that they make me live in the moment.   Doing these things I get in a zone and cannot think of much else.  You just need to concentrate on it, and do the best job at it; stay on course with a goal in mind: get (back) to the harbor; maybe where you started from, or maybe to your next goal (harbor).  Your mind is not allowed to wander much when you do these things; in particular in a boat with a tiller. I notice that I invariably go off course during those few times that I look at my GPS; it is amazing what that brief lack of concentration will do.  Just scanning the water, the horizon or just talking with the crew does not result in drastic course changes, but looking at a screen and concentrating on something else will do that.  Crazy maybe, but when driving a car my mind is often busy with something else, or as Dr. Amit Sood says in his "Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living", working on my open files.  During sailing or teaching my file cabinet is closed shut.  Living in the moment is so important!

In the moment (photo taken by the admiral Donna Briedé)

It was a wonderful day of sailing on Saturday.  Winds were 10 to 15 knots out of the Southwest; just perfect to achieve one of my goals: sail out to York Spit light and back.  From the opening of our creek the course was set to 90 degrees (due east) and after about two hours of sailing in the open water of the Bay we approached the spit.  Near the spit, the waves were between one and two feet in height with a great frequency in between that made it a great rolling ride.

Word has it that York Spit used to be an octagonal light house, but ot was abandoned by the coast guard and dynamited.  Below is a picture I stole from Wikipedia:

Now it is just some remnants of the steel base, a light and a few radar reflectors that guard the opening of the channel into the York River.  It is a pity that they could find someone to take care of this historic lighthouse and that they felt the need to destroy it.

Remnants of York Spit Light

After rounding the spit we held the course as close to 270 as we could and zoomed back to the creek we came out of.  We had to lay in one small tack to make it.  The admiral was on the tiller and I had some time to experiment taking photos.  So much for being in the zone (maybe in a different zone).  We had some great encounters with dolphins on the way; it was an absolute great sail.  Very unlike most of the sails that sailors tell you about; they tell you mostly about all those bad experiences they had.

It was an absolutely great Saturday without many worries, except staying in the zone.  One of the worst ways of going off course is by looking back; come to think of it, that is a crazy metaphor for life isn't it?