Karen Nyberg's Quilt Block Challenge

Non quilters need not read this post J

Last year, astronaut Karen Nyberg sewed a quilt block in space. She then challenged quilters to create their own blocks and submit them so they could all be made into a quilt and showcased at the 40^th Houston International Quilt Show. This is the largest annual quilt show in the world (and yes, I WILL be attending, hopefully next year!) The project was a great success.

The challenge was to create a star block that was 9.5 inches square. So me, my Mom and Louise all took up the challenge and all of our blocks were incorporated into a quilt that was showcased – how cool is that? All the blocks that were submitted and adhered to the guidelines were used. Over 2,000 blocks from around the world were submitted and they created 28 quilt panels.

My block is row 9, block 6

Close up of my applique block "Shikishi", from Susan Briscoe's Japanese Taupe Blocks. 

Mom’s block is row 6, block 6

Louise’s block is row 2, block 3

I thought this was a very neat idea and I'm so happy that we participated in it!

Happy Holidays!

We’ve been having a great time in Key West!  We spent the first couple of days settling in, housekeeping and provisioning.  It felt great to walk and bike around the island.  

My Mom arrived on Saturday and so began the holiday season!  We started off her visit with a bang and went on a dolphin watch boat ride. We don’t have our dinghy down and even if we did, we don’t know where the local dolphins live and play. We went through a small operation so there were only 6 of us along with two guides. The day was perfect, sunny and gorgeous. In no time at all we found about 8 dolphins having a great time playing. There was a baby among them and he/she was leaping out of the water and then the adults would follow. Mom has never seen them up close and I was so happy that we went out.  I got very lucky and managed to get a decent photo. I think this was the baby!

Dolphin jumping

Saturday evening we went out for dinner at a great Cuban restaurant and ended up dining in an old cistern next to the old cigar factory. The ambience was great, like a big party, and we had a ball.

The boys

On Monday we went on a walking tour of Key West and in the evening we went on a Holly Trolly, a trolly tour of Christmas lights around the island. Tuesday we went to the Butterfly House which Martin and I had visited back in 09’.  It didn’t disappoint. Mom and I enjoyed the birds as much as we did the butterflies!

Christmas Eve my Mom and I walked around town in the morning. I made stuffing in the afternoon and we all went to Vector for dinner. Sean & Louise grilled an awesome dinner and we enjoyed the holiday evening together. Martin celebrated in true Key West style, with as many drinks as hands J

On Christmas day, Martin put together a traditional Christmas dinner including a turkey and brussels for the five of us.  After dinner we spent hours playing Cards Against Humanity. That made for a rather, um, untraditional holiday ;)  It was a day for feeling gratitude - spent with family and friends, sharing presents, eating, drinking and celebrating.

Feeling the holiday spirit J

Martin enjoying the day

My Mom is very talented, she made us this turtle wall hanging. We Love it!

The next few days were filled with walks around town, a ghost tour, visiting the Hemingway House, Nancy Forrester’s parrot sanctuary, the Little White House (where Truman often stayed), sunset drinks and a house tour organized by the Old Island Restoration Foundation. The house tour was amazing and one of the participating homes was the one that won the holiday lights show. I wish we could have taken pictures (not allowed as they are private residences). Here’s what the weekend looked like:

Ghosts and Ghouls

Blissed out at sunset

Another gorgeous Key West sunset

I swear he’s smiling for the camera!

My Mom left on Monday morning and I was missing her as soon I as I got back to the boat.  We had such a great visit and a wonderful holiday, it just went by way too fast.

We plan to be in Key West for about another week to experience a raucous New Year’s Eve (we’re really just hoping to stay awake until 12:05am)!  Then we’d like to visit the Dry Tortugas.  These are a group of islands about 70 miles west of Key West. There’s a national park there and we hear that it’s very beautiful. If I get the courage up, I may even jump in (72 is very cold for me!) and go for a snorkel J

Boat Business: We’ve been mostly relaxing though we have taken care of a few things, including...

Hydraulic Leak. Just before Christmas, a tech from Abt came out to take a look at our hydraulic leak.  He found that the fitting was leaking at the crimp and needs to be redone. This falls under warranty work so we’ll get that done the next time we’re in Old Port Cove. In the meantime, he said that we should be fine (no catastrophic failure seems imminent) and explained to Martin how to operate the hydraulics so that the least amount of pressure is being places on the hoses.

Gray tank smell.  I think we have this one figured out. Since Steve and Martin spent the day checking everything out and correcting the valve, we’ve had little to no smell. The other day we caught a whiff, just as the wind shifted back from the north. I think we’ve addressed all of the problems. Now we just need to relocate the exhaust so it doesn’t get blown back down into the boat. That should be easy to do.

Miami To Key West

This is a fairly long post but we've been on the move for the past few days and have arrived in Key West so there's a bit to tell and lots of photos!  

Last Thursday, our friends lent us their car so we got a few errands done. That evening, we had them over for dinner and had a great time hanging out. We left Delray on Friday morning after having coffee and catching up with Capt. George. So we’re off now on our Key West adventure!

The trip down the ICW to Hollywood, FL was fairly uneventful. It was slow going as we had several bridges to open. For those unfamiliar with how it works… We’re about 34’ high. So any bridge that is 35 feet or less, we have to have open. Some bridges open on request, those are the easy ones. The others have standard openings like on the hour and half hour. They may open once, twice or three times per hour and they may close for rush hour. If you arrive at a bridge far ahead of its scheduled opening, you have to “station keep” which is essentially treading water in place. But you can’t really stay in place on a boat, so you sit and wander and play around. It can be a bit stressful if there’s current and/or wind playing with the boat.  (Now that we're buddy boating, we're getting a lot of fun pictures of Blossom. Thank you Sean & Louise!)

Passing under a bridge

Unfortunately, I get a bit nervous on the ICW. It’s like driving in city traffic, I hate it. This leaves Martin to drive and I feel guilty. So I get a lot of cleaning done and I do the engine room checks. The highlight of the day cruise was seeing a pod of manatee swimming by a bridge. All you really see is a huge brown oval blob. But it’s cool just the same!

Vector in the South Lake anchorage

We met up with Sean & Louise in a pretty little anchorage called South Lake in Hollywood. They dropped their tender and we went to the boardwalk for dinner. We found a rather strange German brew house. The décor was odd but the food was good and we all considered it a celebration. It’s just the four of us, buddy boating and cruising to Key West. Very cool!

We left the next morning for Miami. It was an 18 mile trip with only about half a dozen bridges to open. Vector cranked it up a bit for us so we could get through a bridge or two that they can pass under. We had perfect timing and made it to Miami in the early afternoon. We had a couple hairy moments. One was a “pucker” moment passing under a bridge that was only half open. This bridge failed a few weeks ago and one half fell onto a huge boat. It’s not a big bridge so it felt a bit like squeezing through but Martin did great and it was no problem.

Thank you Louise for the pic!

The next bit of excitement was in the engine room. I went down to do an engine room check and peek at the hydraulic leak we have on the port side stabilizer area. I had just closed the cabinet door and was about to put my ear defenders on when I heard a really weird noise coming from the engine room. We have a window on our door and I looked in to see our alternator belt shredding and flying all over the place. Had I been a couple minutes earlier I would been covered in belt dust and probably more than a bit wigged out!  As it was I ran up to the pilot house and sent Martin down. About a minute later it totally evaporated.  More under “boat business” below.

Miami anchorage

We anchored just south of Fischer Island. I was surprised that no one was in the anchorage on a Saturday afternoon. Then a huge motor yacht (over 150 feet) came in an anchored 64 yards from us. Why do people do that?  It wasn’t the view we wanted from our cockpit!  Martin called the ship to ask what and why. The captain was polite enough and said there were only staying a few hours. Never did figure out way they wanted to be on top of us when they the whole anchorage to hang out in. Hurumph.

Let's anchor on top of that beautiful Nordy!

The weather was looking good for the next few days so we decided that we’d take off first thing Sunday morning.

Vector riding in the sunrise

It was a nice ride out through Government Cut and down into Hawk Channel. This driving is easy (like highway driving). We just followed our nav points (thank you Sean!) and the chart. There’s little traffic to deal with. Early in the day I started on a Christmas table topper that I’m hoping to finish by the weekend. I drove in the afternoon and drafted this blog entry while looking for crab pots and dolphin.  At one point we had 5 dolphins on the bow and one was a young juvenile!

We arrived at Rodriguez Key around 2:30 and anchored. It was pretty windy from the NE so we went to the southwest side of the key.  We stayed in 11 feet of water to be safe and it did offer some protection but we could ave been snugged up a bit closer.

On Monday we headed out to Marathon. The crab pots doubled so it wasn't as relaxing. Had to do a fair amount of dodging to miss them. The crab pots are little round buoys (often blue, I have no idea why anyone thinks that's a good idea) that are connected to the trap that sits on the bottom by a rope. If you run over it and the line gets tangled in your prop - you've lost the use of your prop til you can get the line off. Since we only have one main engine (our "get-home" would get us home but very, very slowly. We have a cutter on the prop that is supposed to slice the lines and deflectors on our stabilizer wings to prevent them from wrapping around the wing. We just don't really want to test these things!

We anchored outside the channel, on the west side of Boot Key, just south of the channel into Marathon.  It was a bit more calm in this anchorage. We dropped the dinghy and explored the area a little. Marathon is very well known as a popular place for cruisers to spend the winter. There are several marinas and lots of restaurants. We all went out to the Sunset Grille for dinner and had a great time.

Blossom at anchor

 Vector and Blossom at anchor off Boot Key

What a nice ride to the restaurant!

Tuesday morning we headed out to Key West. We were well ahead off schedule but the weather was nice, we decided to arrive early.  The Galleon could take us early so we went right in. Sean & Louise had to wait a day so they anchored out in the anchorage just outside the Marinas.

Vector at anchor in Key West 

And so, here we are! I love Key West. It's quirky and after living in Berkeley for 10 years, I have an affinity for quirky!  I loved our visit here in 09' aboard Lucky and it feels great to be back.

One of the many resident roosters 

What happens in Key West, stays in Key West!

The first thing we managed to do was find a way to extend our stay. Our slip is only available until the 1st. We really weren't looking forward to having to leave early on New Year's day to squeeze into a crowded anchorage or worse yet, take off on an overnight to the west coast of Florida. Sean asked at their marina and they have a side tie available the 1st and 2nd. I'm very relieved. We can enjoy New Years and even if we're not feeling 100% the next day, we can just slide over 500 yards and tie up behind Vector. Life is good!

Quilt Business:

Though I tend to be slow and not finish many pieces, I thought I’d add a new section to the blog posts called “Quilt Business”. Maybe it will push me to finish more “ufo’s” (UnFinished Objects). This is my Holiday Red Bird Quilt, begun in September 2013, finished this week. It's machine appliqued and quilted. I needed the year to learn how to free motion quilt adequately enough to wrap it up. And it's done in time for the holidays, yay! The pattern is Des Oiseaux de Noel from Metropolitan Quilts.

Holiday Red Bird

Boat Business:

• Hydraulic leak at fitting on port side. We have a slow drip coming from the hydraulic monoblock. It’s very small but seems to be steady. We’ll try to get someone from Abt to come look at it as soon as possible.
• Alternator Belt. We’ve had issues with this belt from the get go. We have two oversized alternators, 190amp. The boat arrived with an undersized belt that was destroyed right away. We replaced the belt but had excessive dust coming off of it. Rob found a burr on one of the pulleys and filed it out. This belt had been dropping a lot of dust. Then we had coolant pump fixed and some coolant leaked onto the belt. This made it slip a bit. So Martin was prepared to have it shred. I wasn’t, it was quite dramatic!  We had a spare belt (we had two but one was the wrong size as it turned out). Martin put a new belt on it and it seems to be working great with much less dust than we’ve ever had. We’ll get additional spares in Key West.

What remained of our alternator belt

• ER temp. With blowers on full we maintained about 31-32 degrees above ambient temperature. If the alternators are cranking, it’s a bit higher, at about 33 degrees above. We’d really like to get that down to well below 25. I forgot to post a pic of our conduit last time so here it is:

DeltaT conduit installed on port side.

“Nordhavn Central”: Old Port Cove

Last Wednesday morning we pulled into Old Port Cove Marina in North Palm Beach. A Sportfisher had its time in the yard extended so we were able to use its slip. What a social week!  We’ve heard a lot about this marina over the last few years and have looked forward to visiting one day aboard Blossom.  (We came by during commissioning to check out fenders and lines that were being used by the Nordy’s). There’s so much happening here. For one, there’s a super operation, Yacht Tech, that deals exclusively with Nordhavns. Their reputation is great and so people flock here to get work done and have the owner, James, look at their boats. We met James several years ago. He’s a nice guy and wow, does he know these boats!  It was also recently announced that the Nordhavn SE sales and commissioning office are moving here so it’s really going to be the “one stop shopping” area for our boats. The marina is part of a gated community so it’s very well kept, has a lovely high-end restaurant, gym, you get a bottle of wine in your welcome bag and there’s a free shuttle to take you to the local publix, Trader Joe’s and mall. Nice!

During the week we took advantage of the free shuttle to get some errands done and DeltaT came out to continue working with us on our engine room temp issue (more below).  But mostly, the week was filled with social activities.

We had a couple of friends visit including Peter who just commissioned and took ownership of his N60, Tanglewood, on the west coast. We enjoyed spending the evening with him and sharing info on our boats.  We also had a wonderful visit with our friend Steve who came by to stay with us for a couple evenings.  He and Martin did a lot of boat work on Sunday (details below) and we got to see some of his photographs from recent trips. He’s a great photographer and just looking at pics makes me want to get out my camera and go exploring.

We also met several couples while we were at Old Port Cove and were reminded, yet again, of what a wonderful community we’ve joined and what a small world it is!  We met a couple living aboard their N50, and we quickly realized that we’d been aboard their boat back in ’09 when she was in Highbourne Cay, Bahamas with her first owner.  We also met a couple who have been cruising down the coast aboard their N76 this fall. We’d seen their boat a few times as we travelled up and back down and it was great to finally meet them!  The six of us even took a ride on the big boat when they moved to another marina right next door. We really enjoyed the stroll! Talk about a fantastic day!  We’re all planning on going to the Bahamas this winter so we hope we’ll be seeing them again soon. Later in the week we met another couple with an N60 on the west coast of Florida. They gave us a lot of great tips for the boat.  We may be cruising in their neighborhood in January and hope to stop by and say hello if we do.  (I’m hesitant to use people’s names/boat names because of privacy reasons. Unless I’ve remembered to ask if it’s okay, I figure it’s more polite to be discrete. If folks have regular blogs of their own, then I’m guessing it’s okay to mention them by name…)

Going for a ride (I pulled a Wilson with the pilot house stairs!)

Wandering through the anchorage

And Monday afternoon our friends Sean & Louise arrived – woo hoo! They had a long journey southward from Deltaville, making it here in about 2 weeks.  Monday evening we had dinner with them and discussed our plans for the next 10 days as we head to Key West. We ironed out a plan that leaves us a bit of time to wait if necessary for weather. 

On Saturday evening we had a cocktail party aboard Blossom. I really enjoyed the evening, with old friends and new. We get asked pretty often if cruising is lonely. You might think that it could be, but really, it’s a very social lifestyle. We seem to meet the nicest, most generous folks wherever we go.  People invite you aboard, offer rides if they have a car, share wisdom, advice and laughs. And since favorite cruising grounds are shared by many, the odds of meeting up with people over and over again are pretty good!

On Wednesday we headed out for Delray to visit our friends CJ and Margie (who we met while cruising in ’09!) There are few marinas/anchorages near there and we were happy to get the fuel dock just down the road from their house. As we were docking I heard a familiar friendly voice and there was Capt George!  We met him in Stuart at the commissioning docks last spring. I hope we’ll be able to catch up with him before we head out on Friday.

We had a great visit with our friends last night and are looking forward to having them aboard this evening for dinner. They have the cutest house ever and looks even more wonderful all decked out for the holidays!

House and yard all lit up

Gorgeous statues and snowflakes

On Friday we’ll leave early and meet up with Sean & Louise in Hollywood, just south of Ft. Lauderdale. From there we’ll go to Miami and find an anchorage to hang out in and watch for a good three day weather window to head down to Key West. 

Update on critter living under the boat while at anchor:  Sean & Louise heard the noise as well and we all think it’s some kind of fish. But maybe it’s not…according to Wikipedia we may have experienced the Muck Monster! ;)

"Muck monster"[edit]

An unexplained wake in the lagoon on August 24, 2009 was caught on tape by a local group known as the LagoonKeepers, who named it "muck monster".^[7][8] The identity and existence of the creature remains unconfirmed, as it did not break the surface during the time observed. It displayed a wide wake, but then appeared to descend deeper when observers approached within 10 feet.

Wiki entry

Boat Business:  Martin was able to get a few tasks done while we were at the marina including:

DeltaT conduit. A DeltaT rep came out to help us with our ventilation system on Wednesday and the following Tuesday. They’ve designed an air conduit to move air through the engine room. Now we have 2 intake fans (one with a conduit to push air towards the stern) and an outtake up the stack. We’re aiming for no more than 25 degrees over ambient. We’ll test this out on our trip south!

Maretron. Martin created new screens for Maretron for when we’re underway, at a dock and at anchor.  Martin was able to add a new page showing our swing circle. There’s a glitch in the system so this can’t be viewed remotely from our ipad but Martin called and found that it’s due to be fixed in the next software update. It’ll be great to be able to see a graphic from bed at night when the wind is blowing just to make sure we aren’t dragging!

Fresh water tank. This was calibrated so we’ll know exactly how much water we have.

A/C. Martin used the pump he built last week to put antifreeze in water loop for the air conditioning.

Wing engine shaft seal. Martin fixed a drip in the wing engine shaft seal (by rotating the prop – we need to do this regularly, once a month or so.)

Gray tank odor. Martin and Steve tore up the master and guest staterooms looking for the source of our gray tank smell. We found that the one way valves for the anti-siphon loops had been put in backwards. Martin had moved them but put them back as he’d found them originally.  We have our fingers crossed that this was the source of smell! We also bought a couple of products from James to help keep this fresh including a new enzyme treatment for black and gray tanks and tabs to keep air handler trays from going stinky.

On the hook on Lake Worth

We’re currently anchored out just outside the Old Port Cove Marina on Lake Worth in North Palm Beach, FL.  We left the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, running down the outside. It was a rough trip with bumpy head seas, bigger than predicted. And because I’d messed up my eyes with the patch (last post) I ended up getting pretty sea sick. (I was preoccupied with my eyes and didn’t take any other meds.) So Martin had to drive the boat the whole time while I laid down and concentrated on not throwing up.  The only “uh ho” moment was when we were almost to our anchorage, taking a turn within the channel markers, thank you(!),and ran hard aground. We knew what to do but it still took us almost 10 minutes to get ourselves free.  We’re so thankful for that time we were with Jim when Blossom decided to run herself aground (silver lining in everything!) It was a great lesson in both how not to get panicked and how to get off a sand bank.  And so we arrived just as the sun was setting and we’re still here, enjoying the anchorage, a week later!

We love where we’re anchored and though there are many boats across the way in the anchorage, we’re alone nestled between two marinas.  We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner aboard and though cool (for Florida) we were able to enjoy our dinner on the cockpit.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Maybe it’s the cooler weather, or the fact that I’ve not been eating home cooked food much for the past month or more, but I’ve gotten very into cooking. Martin normally does most of the dinner cooking but I’ve taken over for the past week. (Though Mart did 90% of the holiday meal, I just made my favorite, the stuffing). I chose several recipes and provisioned for them before we left. Here’s a poached pear spice cake I made, I think it looks pretty cool, and Martin looks fairly inebriated :)

Poached Pear Spice Cake

We’ve spent our days aboard, not going to shore at all. There are few places to get ashore by tender so we’ve been home bodies, relaxing, cooking and doing chores.  I figured out how to arrange the salon so I can do my work out videos and pulled out my “stepper” – trying to keep moving! I also organized my quilt room cupboards, set up my machines and am finally back to quilting.  I hope to finish a holiday quilt that I started last year in time to show it off in the boat.

I also decked Blossom out for the holidays. We have a small hook in the cockpit where I can hang a small something. Here was our fall and now, holiday decorations:

Fall

Christmas

And our Christmas Tree!

Our friends Sean & Louise finished their first 3 day passage and arrived in Jacksonville, FL today. We’re so happy that they had a weather window to get them to Florida. It’s blowing like crazy along the coast of Florida for at least another week but now that they’re here, they can continue south down the inside and stop and visit friends along the way. 

We plan to stay at anchor for another couple days and then go to Old Port Cove Marina if they can fit us in. Seems several boats in the marina are stuck because of the bad (windy) weather. If they can’t take us, we’ll start heading south. We’d like to stop for a couple nights in Del Ray if we can find a marina there to visit friends and then will head to Ft. Lauderdale.

We seem to have some kind of a guest aboard Blossom as well. Ever since our first night here we've been hearing strange noises coming from the hull at dusk. It lasts about an hour or two. Every night it moves, sometimes forward and sometimes aft. Port and starboard sides. Sometimes one, and sometimes more. It sounds like a large bull frog, under water. If anyone has any idea what this could be, I would love to know!  My best guess is that it's a fish, nestled in a through hull for the night that sings itself to sleep. I'm open to other suggestions.

Boat Business:

We’ve used our time at anchor to hone in our power management. We’ve come to find that we need to run the generator about 5-6 hours a day. We turn it on in the morning for a few hours and then again in the evening while cooking dinner.  This maintains hot water in the tank and keeps our batteries topped up. While the generator is running we can use the clothes dryer, cooktop and vacuum.  We can use everything else during the day without worry. We use the 20k more often because of the draw our batteries take to recharge and the random/spiking use by the water heater. We need to turn off the battery charger or the water heater if we want to cook with the 9k generator running.

Here are some of the small things we’ve attended to…

• Programmed the tv remote in the master stateroom so only takes one (and not 3) to operate!
• Polished the porthole rims inside the boat and the cockpit table legs. They get rusty looking from salt water and a good polishing spiffs them up as well as protects the metal.
• Fixed the slide on the cockpit table.
• Martin built a pump to charge up our AC loop.

Last Minute Update: I went down to the engine room to try to record our "frog" and heard the bilge pump go off.  Looks like we have a salt water leak! We were able to trace it to wing engine shaft seal. It’s a slow dripping leak but disconcerting just the same (to me anyway, I’m the worry wart.)  That’ll be top of the list for tomorrow!

In the excitement of finding water in the bilge I forgot to make a recording. I'll try again tomorrow.