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Viking

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Viking

  1. That looks nice. How often do you polish the stainless? I think we do it about twice a year and pretty quick at that.. there's just so fucking much of it.
  2. That sucks. Will you be able to sail back with the 2nd reef in?
  3. I saw the news that Catalina was open for bidness and thought of you instantly hauling ass tothe marina and prepping the boat to go.
  4. Manheim shares some high level car sales data at https://publish.manheim.com/en/services/consulting/used-vehicle-value-index.html. "Wholesale used vehicle prices (on a mix-, mileage-, and seasonally adjusted basis) decreased 11.41% month-over-month in April."
  5. I let the wife pick the boat to improve my cruising odds. She went to Florida to meet a broker and got on a handful of cats in our price & size range and she eliminated most of them pretty quickly. It's a Manta 42 with Volvo Penta MD2030Ds. The dinghy stays on the davits during passages. There are four lines that hold it into place: 2 on 6:1 blocks hold it up and 2 on 2:1 blocks that hold it tight to the back. This is one of the things that we love about our boat (and cats in general) is that it's super easy to get the dinghy up so we do so every night at anchor. It takes just a couple of minutes to hoist it.
  6. Nice boat. When we're done with cruising I'd love something this size just to be able to get out on the water somewhat easily. After we got back to Florida we cleaned the boat (unlimited freshwater... a luxury!), mostly hurricane prepped it, and are now back in Texas for a few months. After a week away my wife and I are both jonesing to get back out on the water. She even had a dream last night about dropping the mainsail and it flaking perfectly. 🤣
  7. How do you shut in an oil well? I know nothing about o&g and my searches for an answer turn up a bunch of stuff about royalty payments and shutting down while drilling.
  8. We dropped the hook west of Boot Key where a dozen other boats were anchored. Funny you mention hoving to because the next night we tried to figure out how to do just that. We were heading directly into a 12kt wind in Florida Bay. Night came and we could no longer motor since there's a god damn fucking ass ton of crab pots in SW Florida. We'd tried a few things to stop our motion without success and finaly just deployed the jib and slowly sailed perpendicular to the wind until it shifted. I need to figure out how to hove to in a cat.
  9. We left Samana, DR to head back to Florida on Monday. The Bahamas is closed to transiting boats so legally our route had to be around the Bahamas on the north or south side. I was tempted to cut through the middle and take my chances (its huge with limited naval resources, so 99% chance I'd go undetected) but eventually decided on the south route. Trip was 6 days, 900 miles from DR to Marathon where we rested 1 night and then another 150 up to Charlotte Harbor FL. No idea what are options are for next year. I worry that even if countries are open what the reception will be like. Our current thoughts are that if the Bahamas is open by November that we'll head there for next season and spend 6 months there and then maybe 6 months in the US and Canada northeast (Nova Scotia, Maine, Chesapeake, etc)
  10. I just fueled up in Marathon and heard that other marinas along the keys are open. The dockhands are being cautious: they spray the fuel handle with disinfectant and tell you to stay on your boat.
  11. Yup. Just about everywhere is closed to foreign boaters. We've heard some nightmares: eg people crossing the Pacific being denied entry. You can't blame the Islanders: if they don't have Corona then why take the risk? Even islands that you should have rights to enter are finding ways to deny entry. We have friends, US citizens, that are harassed in Puerto Rico. They were allowed entry (since that is controlled by US Border Patrol) but the governor of PR closed all marinas and the cops harass you when you anchor. They finally had to move to the USVIs. One of the few places that is still open and accommodating to cruisers that have no other options. We're personally looking to get off the boat until the Bahamas opens up... Hopefully in November.
  12. if you're wanting stimulus then there's no better group to give money to than a boat owner. Give me 100k and I'll put riggers, electricians, mechanics, fiberglassers, painters, etc, etc to work instantly. I'm still in Samana planning how to get back to mainland US by boat in the next month or two. 5 or 6 boats left here a day ago heading to PR with plans on Grenada. That was our plan but it just seems too hopeful and risky. I don't see ports opening up to outsiders for awhile. Hope I'm wrong and shit gets better.
  13. That's all been priced in. Now it's a growth stock.
  14. Ayup. My wife is from rural Kansas and her family has suffered from the really shitty doctors there. She's learned that the best doctor in town is the vet and if you want good care you need to go to Dallas.
  15. God damn I hate you. That looks so fucking good. <-- 1000 miles from the nearest whataburger
  16. Coup is a quick and fun game. Arboretum is also good. Pick up some board games too. Ticket to Ride. Reef. Catan.
  17. How many hours did the trip take you? When you wrote 200 miles I started thinking like a cruiser and figuring out how many days that'd take. But you're in a Ferrari vs my VW bus. Badass boat by the way... I need to figure a way to cross paths so I can bum a ride. Are you keeping it in S FL for awhile or taking it up to the lakes?
  18. I've been meaning to post some pics of the boat but I got my phone wet and dead shortly after we got to Staniel Cay and it took 6 weeks until I could get a replacement in George Town. We left GT the day after my phone finally cleared customs (which was a total clusterfuck) and then took off to the DR on half a weather window. The first half from GT to Turks and Caicos was glorious down hill sailing.. 15 knots at 120deg and 3ft waves. The second half was shit. The wind increased to 25 gusting 30 and the waves and swell grew to 6-10ft and it was on our beam for 36 hours. The boat is a 2004 Manta 42, built in St Petesburg FL. This is at Water Cay in the Raggeds. After 2 weeks in George Town my wife and I needed a break and found it here. There were no other cruising boats for the 5 days we were there. Here's where we are currently in Samana, DR. The boat looks small but that's a 70' monohull on the right that belongs to a boarding school in RI and a 65' Bertram on the left.
  19. That sounds miserable. Does your route take you between Nassau and the Berrys? The waves look particularly shitty there.
  20. Not yet. I've got a bunch of pics taken while on the boat but very few of the boat. I'll try to get some at anchor. Maybe we'll do some MOB drills and I'll get some of the boat under sail. 😁 Our plans are *breathes deep* to get to Grenada by June which is the start of huricane season. It's going to be a bitch though since we're going against the trades until we get to the Virgin Islands. Might need a new thread to document your travels. There's a thread for boat retirement/sabbatical but I'd be the only one posting to it. I dunno if my ego is big enough to have my own surly thread. We'll prob hit staniel cay on the way down to Georgetown. Been there? Any recs? We know little about the exumas except what is in the explorer charts.
  21. I finally got the boat "ready", quit my job, and pushed off the dock for good a week before Christmas. We were trapped in the Fort Myers area for a week while a system spun around but Christmas day brought us a N wind that we used to get to the keys. We've been moving fast ever since trying to get to the exumas. We generally sail a day for 6-10 hours and then take the next day off. We're currently anchored off Highbourne Cay where the Christmas trades are in full force. Winds E at 25 gusting 33 all day and night for 3-5 days straight.
  22. My wife is from Kansas and her family has a huge gathering every three years at her cousin's house in Wichita. The place is fucking huge and badass. No cookie cutter mcmansion bullshit. There's at least 6 entrances to the place. Marble throughout. The master stairway (there's 3 sets of stairs) is 6+ feet wide. I was in awe of the place. Put that house in Highland Park and it's 5-10 mil easy. In Wichita? They bought it for 450k. My mass built home in the Dallas suburbs was just a tad cheaper.
  23. My marina neighbor has a Lagoon 450 flybridge like the one pictured. I used to think that the flybridge would be fucking badass but then I saw that the riggers needed a 5 step ladder to reach the gooseneck and the end of the boom. Fuck that.
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