As of today, I have had my first bottom cleaning on my own boat. It’s a proud, proud moment. My boat will skim through the seas, free of barnacles, for weeks to come. I had the bottom pressure-washed and a coat of bottom paint slopped on back in November, and a new propeller shaft zinc installed. After having a talk with the bottom cleaner, Brad, he said I’d be good to wait until just about now until he had to come clean it for the first time. He sounds like a really trusty guy, rather than starting right away just to charge me for more cleanings.

On Sunday morning I was stopping into a mini-mart for a couple refreshing Gatorades or Vitamin Waters. The day began with a plan to take a few people out sailing, which fell through as it often happens. It was really windy with a choppy on-shore gusty element to it, so it was likely a good thing, even though I really wanted to take A Cenoura out. The revised idea was to get re-hydrated, go home and clean up from the prior night’s impromptu 3am dance party ,and take a nap. All of that changed when I parked at the mini-mart, though. Three nice ladies standing by their convertible in the parking lot were trying to flag down help to get the most out of their not-yet finished keg of beer from their own party the night before, before returning it to the mini-mart. Well, we became immediate friends, seeing as we could already establish common interests, and about an hour later that keg was in the galley of my boat, and we were anchored out in the harbor passing time on a sunny day. I learned how to anchor my sailboat just in time right? I of course, kept my cool as the responsible person, but these new friends really enjoyed themselves…

…that is until they needed to use the head (toilet), and I was disgustingly alerted that my holding tank was at capacity. The deal is that there’s a little vent-hole in the stanchion nearest the head, for the waste holding tank to vent outside rather than contain any odor inside the boat. And, unfortunately, when the tank is full and someone pumps their #1’s, it works some up and out of that vent hole and down the side of my boat. I’ve been diligent about emptying the tank, flushing with fresh water a couple times and putting a specific cleaner in there, but obviously there will always be a smell. So I filled up a water bottle with fresh water and rinsed it away off from the vent hole, but the real solution was to get to the pump-out dock, right away. What better way to impress three girls with my “livin’-on-a-boat lifestyle” then to show them how I empty the waste holding tank? Nope, I couldn’t think of a better way either. I think they really loved the clear see-through section of the pump-out hose, too. That’s a huge hit during the process.

It turned out to be a randomly spontaneous and fun afternoon with guests aboard, despite the necessary doodoo dock visit. But at least I got one boat chore done that day.

Is it just me or is this the windiest winter in all of history?  Probably not…Maybe I’m now noticing because my home is floating and fastened to solidness by 4 ropes. Or “lines” - pardon me.

Anyways last night a short storm rolled through, pelted loud sideways rain and gusty winds that sent the entire marina into an all-evening earth quake. No problem, though, because this morning I stepped out at 5:45 to a calm, chilly, dawn. Back to sunny perfectly-weathered days, phew. Stepping out of a boat in the ocean and seeing fresh snow covered mountains in the distance is pretty unique.

Also, got a $125 brand new shore-power cord for $71 because it was on sale and I used up the last bit of my Christmas West Marine gift card. One step closer to a safer and better boat!

I didn’t know it, but there are several natural oil seepage areas in the Santa Monica bay. One occurs regularly slightly outside of my harbor. We sailed through it on Sunday and it looks just like oil spills do on the news. Just a layer of thick oil on top of the water, causing it to look very calm there, and the smell is difficult to bare.

A Cenoura doesn’t seem to care, but I’ll remember to avoid heading in that area when I take out people who have never been sailing before. It makes for an unpleasant few minutes while sailing through it or downwind of it.

I requested Friday, Feb 15 off of work so that I could catch up on some cleaning before my mom came to visit for the weekend. I thought I was being smart to measure how much my engine water pump was dripping but putting a large sponge underneath it last weekend - that turned out to be a bad idea because the sponge soaked water and then it saturated under the engine-compartment door and onto the carpet. I love surprises like this. 

So with the carpet out in the sun to dry, along with the bilge cover, I decided to completely clean the bilge. History: when I bought the boat the bilge was pretty mucky and about 2/3 full of bilge water. I sponged it all up, including goops of motor oil but realized that with the cutlass bearing steadily leaking (past problem, fixed in October) the bilge was quick to refill anyways.

Nowadays the only drip is from the old engine water pump, and it’s very slight. However there is still left-over mud, sand, and even pebbles at the bottom of the bilge, and it had about a 1" of water. I started by dropping soak-rags and sponge in there:

After soaking up all the water and wiping up all the mud and pebbles, I poured some “boat soap” in there to clean the bottom and freshen it.

I figure this is about as good as I need to get it, nothing is there to clog the bilge pump anymore and I can evaluate how much the water pump is dripping from now on.

My mom arrived around 430pm after driving down from Northern California. Then on Saturday, I invited a few friends over and we set out to sail around 100pm. It was warm, about 77 degrees, and the light wind eventually went away altogether once we made it about a mile out. I dropped the sails and we floated out there in flat seas in the sun for a few hours, had lunch and drinks, saw dolphins and sea lions, then motored back at sunset.

On Sunday my mom and I left the dock with fair wind, but I felt like garbage from eating too much stuffed-french-toast for breakfast and was not having the best time. After about a 3-hour sail we came back and washed the boat. On the way into the harbor we were cut off by a 70’+ cruising-powerboat heading in, apparently sightseeing the area with a boat too large to fit inside the smaller marinas within the harbor - which is exactly where he ended up - and blocked my access while realizing his mistake yet unable to properly spin the boat around. He skirted a liveaboard family’s boat on an end-tie and the revving of powerful smoke-spattering diesels caught everyone’s attention. I never thought people who had enough intelligence to get an occupation that afforded them such an expensive boat could lack the common sense it takes to decide, “I’m not going in there because I don’t know how to drive my boat and it cannot fit” - Unfortunately I was too busy with my own emergency turn-around maneuver (caused by this bozo) and motoring back to less congested waters while he sorted out his poor judgment to snap a photo.

It was a great vacation-style weekend. On Monday morning my mom departed and I noticed a couple of gigantic ‘tanks’ on the horizon in the harbor. They are “coke drums” made for the Chevron refinery in El Segundo, about 5 miles away. Redondo Beach harbor was chosen as the best place for them to get delivered on barge up from Long Beach. They were picked up by a crane and loaded onto the back of several heavy-duty trailers and towed through the beach towns in the middle of the night. They weigh 500,000 lbs each and are about 100’ long. 

My neighbors Mike & Joanne are incredibly friendly and generous. Mike has let me borrow his kayak before, and Jo left me some breakfast after they took family out whale-watching on Monday morning. Needless to say, I came home from working out and felt justified to eat all of these at once. I’ll think of it as a final birthday present treat.

This is the result of us trying to take the existing name off the boat last weekend. Between Sunday and Monday I called no less than 5 marine companies who claim things from “boat naming” to “fiberglass repair” and beyond. Today is Thursday, and one person called back this morning - finally.Unfortunately he told me “I don’t really do that stuff because you never know if it’s going to take 1 hour or 2 days.” He was nice, and honest about it. It continues to confuse me how so many small business companies remark about the economy downturn resulting in slow or no business, yet here I am ready and willing to hand anybody whatever amount of money they want for a seemingly simple task to be done, and nobody is even calling me back. Throughout various things recently, it’s actually been difficult to get skilled, employed people to do what they want to get paid to do. That’s all I’ll say about that.

So, with limited internet search results to the matter, I walked into the office of my marina and grabbed a business card off of the counter. Made a call, left a message, received a call back within 1 hour and although there was a slight language barrier, I think somebody is coming by later today or tomorrow at 9am to look at the situation. I have high hopes that this hard-working, phone-call-returning person can help me out, otherwise I’m giving up and spray-painting over entire back end and  taping the new name to it. Kidding.

Since I was already at my boat during my lunch break, making that phone call, I decided to chill out for a few minutes. Time to drink an ice cold beer and respond to facebook comments - which have been awesome and hugely reaffirming that even people I haven’t seen or spoken to in so many years care enough to still go out of their way to wish me a happy birthday. I am sincerely grateful for each comment from family and friends of all kinds, they actually all mean something to me.

Just as quickly as my beer was drank, a random thick fog rolled in so I went back to work. I took tomorrow off of work to make a four-day weekend (thanks to the holiday Monday) that I’m very much looking forward to. My mom is visiting, the weather should be pretty good, and we’re definitely going sailing… even with my transom looking like it does right now.

Had another great weekend getting some small chores done on A Cenoura. Saturday I was touching up the teak with a little more oil in some places, just as I’m admiring the nice look of my teak and deck, and giving myself credit for maintaining my boat, I knocked over a full cup of coffee which poured dark-staining-coffee down from the very top-center of the deck, onto some teak, under some more teak, down over a window, and splashing down the sides. After that mess was cleaned up I did some more cleaning and sat back to admire everything once more. The 2nd photo is exactly where coffee was flowing a moment earlier.

We set out on Sunday to remove the existing name, “kona Kai - Balboa, CA” and replace it with the new name, “A Cenoura - Cambria, California” and it was clear after a couple minutes that it was not going to be easy, or possible, without a professional tool.

With a heat -gun and sharp object, you can usually peel off vinyl lettering. Unfortunately this stuff really wants to stay on, because the sharp tool to lift the letter immediately grazed into the gel-coat, so we stopped. We tried some other harsher liquids - like a surfboard wax/sticker remover that I own - but to no avail, we had to give up. There is apparently a special tool that very non-abrasively scrapes off letters, so I’m working on contacting someone to come out and use that. 

Luckily my dad and I were in high spirits anyways, it was early on a sunday and I asked him to help me with anchoring (something I have never actually done). I know, I know, it seems easy, “Just kick the anchor off the bow and you’re done.” But I know that there are techniques and things to do and not to do. I’m thankful to have a resource like my dad to show me ‘the ropes’ so that I don’t have to make common errors and learn from those mistakes myself. Anyway, so we walked through Redondo King Harbor and chowed down some chowder in breadbowls, walked to a nearby mini mart and picked up a few brewskis and then set out to practice anchoring. 

It went well the first try so we kicked back to wait it out and reward ourselves with a beer, and get a feel for the way my sailboat bobs around. Unlike a relatively-flat-bottom power boat -which just float there and let the wind sway it back and forth- a sailboat’s keel never stops making the boat want to sail forward. So as the gently breeze pushes on one side of the hull more than the other, the keel fights back on the push by sailing the boat forward. It means sailboats constantly skip forward then drift backward all the time when they’re “on the hook”. Always learning.

Met with some locals at the pump-out dock. Check out that mustache/mohawk combo.

Then it was time to clean a little. There was a build up of black dirt and gunk in the wells of the cockpit storage lockers, for probably 27 years, but they are now clean. Then I cleaned the dodger windows so they will be sparkling next weekend.

Woke up at 7:30 on Saturday morning and started taping up A Cenoura and preparing for the teak oiling. It was pretty fun and simple to do. Tape around everything, apply the cleaner/restorer, scrub it, hose it, let it dry, wipe on the teak oil, wipe off excess a little bit later, and do another coat tomorrow. 

Here is a look at the cockpit throughout the process. The contrast of the new color against white boat and blue covers looks exactly how I wanted it to. Teak is an interesting wood, so I’m curious to see how the oil gets absorbed and changes over the next few months.

I could not get the engine water pump off. Corrosion has really taken over the nuts/bolts. So for the time being I inspected the impeller, which looks very good, and now my mind is at rest about it. I was imagining a broken impeller with bits of rubber getting spun around and clogging hoses, so this was nice to see.

And A Cenoura’s name arrived. I plan on enlisting the help of my dad to remove the old name and apply this one next weekend. Looking forward to the boat finally having it’s name!

Oh, Cambria? What the ….

Well I only drove through Cambria once, but it’s essentially picture-perfect California. There are rolling hills and ranches, a beautiful central California coastline, a small town, and even a castle. Symbolically I can think of a reason, too. I couldn’t decide if I wanted a Southern California city or a Northern California city. And coincidentally, Cambria is the exact middle-point between San Francisco and Los Angeles if you were to drive along the coast between the two. So, the combination of that, how the word actually looks beneath “A Cenoura”, and how it brings thoughts of picture-perfect California to my mind are all why I chose the place. 

Finally, a shot my friend took on that warm day a couple weekends ago when I saw hundreds of dolphins and a whale.