Stuart to Cape Canaveral

We had a very easy first day, leaving the dock, passing through the narrow bridges and anchoring just a couple miles down the St. Lucie River.  It was a mellow evening. After anchoring and going over a few check lists that we were working on, we grilled steaks and went to bed.

Martin navigating the river

The first night was a long one for me. We ran the air conditioning on our 9K generator but had to use house batteries for the rest of the boat. Martin knew it wouldn’t be a problem but I had to wake up every two hours to check the status of the batteries, because that’s how I roll.

Yesterday we weighed anchor and headed out the inlet. We had one brief “pucker moment” (thanks Sean, a very apt, descriptive term J when we briefly brushed the bottom at the cross roads. Thankfully it was a sand bottom!

Then we cruised up the outside from Stuart to Cape Canaveral.  

It was so calm, at one point it was like rolling glass.  It provided for some amazing photo ops while under way :)

(Don't try this at home)

We were happy that it was such a calm day as Martin and Jeff were fighting a few gremlins that turned up and it ended up being a bit of a stressful journey.

A few things we had to deal with:

  

*  The Simrad autopilot wasn’t communicating with our Furuno system up in the fly bridge so we ran from the pilot house. Martin fixed that issue.

* We had an oil leak in our #1 auto pilot pump and were losing pressure from our steering reservoir. Martin and Jeff had to find the leak and isolate the pump.  We'll get the pump fixed in Norfolk or Baltimore.

* The engine room is running very hot, despite our Delta T exhaust fans.  The hand rail was exceedingly hot so we have to remedy this as it would be dangerous in rough seas.

* We broke a toilet! After emptying the holding tank when we were more than 3 miles off shore, a bottle cap was accidentally dropped in the master toilet when filling it with the bacterial treatment. Martin & Jeff thought to suck it out with a wet vac which retrieved the cap but collapsed the flushing mechanism. Hopefully it’s just the valves that need tweaking and we can get the toilet back working, asap.

While the day was fairly stressful, we also had some lovely moments.  We saw dozens of huge turtles and flying fish.  I tried to get a picture of a bird taking a rest and a ride on the back of a turtle but it was too far away.  We had dolphins come play at the bow twice. One pod had a mom and small baby. 

Dolphins are always a highlight of a boat trip.

Mart resting while I was at the helm.

My view from the helm (prior to losing auto pilot :)

Martin did a great job at his first try docking the boat. We entered bow first to remove a snubber shackle that was banging on the bow eye and then he pulled her around stern in. Great job Mart!!

Driving from the docking station in the cockpit.

Shackle removal

  

Aren't those fenders tied up perfectly?

Over all, it was a stressful, beautiful and exciting day! Martin did a fantastic job. He was captain, engineer and mechanic.  He and Jeff were able to trouble shoot our problems without getting anxious, taking it all in stride. That's not my forte, however, I did hand steer the boat for an hour with no drama and I'm very proud of that :)

Today we head out for Charleston on our first overnight passage. We'll each take 3 hour watches. This will be our longest time ever running a boat at sea - exciting!!

See you in Charleston...

Moving Aboard

Moving Aboard

The past week has been incredibly exciting, busy and exhausting as after months of anticipation, we’re finally moving aboard!  We've been living in an apartment, just a few miles away from the commissioning office for 7 months. In that time, everything we put in the apartment was intended for the boat with the exception of a few items that we rented.  I knew we had a lot of things but wow, every time I think “that has to be the last car load”, somehow there’s more, much more.  (The bulk of it seems to be quilting supplies and wine, I think I may be in need of an intervention or two…)

As of today, Sunday, we have a good grip on it and Blossom is looking amazing. A testament to the boat, all that stuff is finding a home and we still have some empty cupboards, albeit they’re the small ones J  With all our things in the boat she’s so comfortable and she feels like home.  Here are a few pictures of what she’s looking like so far:

The Salon and Galley

Our wall cupboard wine storage system. It’s a great use of a strange, narrow space that couldn't be used for much else.

The Master Stateroom

The Guest Stateroom/Quilt room

The Pilot House

The next few days we’ll be continuing to stow things away, work on small projects, provision and get ready to leave. Martin has been very busy tying down various things in the lazarette and in the space under the helm of the fly bridge. He converted a car bike rack to be used in the laz to store the bikes, has put up our boat poles and is making fender boards for the boat. 

We still have a couple issues with the boat.  The latest is a bad harness on chiller #2. This means we only have 1 chiller and if this goes kaput, we have no air con.  I’ll leave Martin to discuss all things mechanical. I understand what’s going on but I don’t have the language to explain it in a respectable manner. The upshot is that it’s not the main unit (as thought for a day or two – this would be a horrible thing, requiring a few days to fix with no air conditioning).  The tech thinks that it's a harness which only requires a couple of hours to fix.  There is no tech available next week in Stuart so the part is being shipped to Virginia. We’ll have it installed when we reach Norfolk.

So what’s next?  We leave Stuart, learn to operate our boat, and set out on route to rendezvous with our friends, Sean & Louise, who are currently anchored out in NY.

Part 1: Destination Norfolk, VA.  Our salesman, Jeff Merrill, is coming to Stuart tomorrow. We plan to head out on Wednesday or Thursday. We’ll probably stop in Cocoa Beach overnight and then head to Charleston, SC. We’ll stay there a night or two and then go on to Norfolk. We’ll be training in close quarter maneuvering, docking, etc. along the way. To begin with, Martin will be learning to captain, I will learn to stand watch and handle the lines.  This is the minimum required for the two of us to operate the boat without help. We are so excited about our time with Jeff. Jeff not only sold us the boat and is a great captain, but we consider him a good friend and he’s a pleasure to be with. We can’t wait!

Part 2: Destination Baltimore, MD. Jeff will leave us on the 27^th from Norfolk and we’ll be joined by our second training captain, Jim Mobley on August 29th.  We’ll head north to Chesapeake with Jim, destination Baltimore. 

Part 3:  Cruising with friends. Once we've made it to Baltimore we may drop Jim off or he may stay with us a while, that's tbd based on other commitments he may have.  At that point, we’ll see where our friends are and rendezvous.  They should be a bit north at that point. We'll then return south to Baltimore by the 20^th to meet with our designer, Scott Cole, who will be photographing the boat, and to attend Trawler Fest, the 25-28^th.

We have lots of ideas and even one “plan” for the fall. All in good time in another blog post...

Successful Sea Trial!

I’m typing the beginning of this post from the Little Bahama Bank. We’re flying along at 9.3 knots after slowing down to dodge a thunder storm that stood between us and Stuart. We have John, our commissioning manager and Chris, one of our commissioning techs with us. This is our final sea trial, a two day trip to test all systems and assuage our concerns over a difficult 6 month commissioning process.

Heading Out

We left Stuart, FL around 7:30am yesterday and cruised about 11 hours to the Bahama Bank. It was a gorgeous, hot day. We had calm seas across the gulf stream and bathwater on the bank. There were hardly any boats out on the bank other than some lobster fisherman. We anchored on the bank, put out the flopper stoppers, retrieved the flopper stoppers, grilled dinner, stared at fish in the underwater lights off the transom and spent our first night at anchor. It was great!

Crossing the gulf stream

We learned a lot from the trial and were able to test several systems. Blossom ran like a dream and our temporary four blade prop performed well. (I’m sure Martin will post in the near future on some of the technical issues that we’ve encountered). John ran the boat from the fly bridge and it confirmed that we made the right decision for us in getting the hard top flybridge with a side seat. It was very comfortable underway with all of us up top. We could have easily had a couple more people along for the ride. It was also the perfect space to enjoy a cocktail and watch the sun go down.

Anchored on the Bank

 We learned that we’re going to need to practice the heck out of deploying the flopper stoppers! For friends who don’t know what flopper stoppers are, they’re wing-like poles that stick out at a 90 degree angle from each side of the boat. You hang large metal “fish” from them that are hinged. The system is designed to reduce rocking and rolling at anchor. This involved several ropes and a very coordinated effort.

Deploying port flopper stopper

Skip Jack Tuna

We also had a beginner lesson fishing. We bought 2 fishing poles and some lures and Chris set out to show us how to do it. We caught a 12 inch Bonita on the way out and a 10 lb skip jack tuna on the way back. Not great eating, both were released and we enjoyed hamburgers for dinner. We used one of the two water makers for a few hours and added to our 600 gallon tank. No military showers aboard Blossom! We practiced anchoring, which is a bit different from our former boat, Lucky, with automatic (as well as manual) chain counters and releases, and a blasting salt water wash down. Our Ultra anchor set like a dream. On our way back over the gulf, we emptied our gray and black tanks, another system check.

It’s windy today as we head back with some thunderheads forming and reforming along the horizon. We’re all a little tired, having spent a very hot night on the boat. In hindsight, we should have run the gen and turned on the AC. Martin and I have some left over hang-ups from Lucky that we need to get past. Like running the gen at night was unthinkable because it was so loud. That’s not true on Blossom and we all would have had a much better night sleep had we just run the AC. Lesson learned.

I also used this trip to test the transdermal patch. I’m very prone to sea sickness, especially if I haven’t been aboard a boat in a while. I was useless on the last sea trial as all I could do was stare intently at the horizon and hope not to have to make an emergency run to the cockpit. Miserable. This trip I've had no problem at all. Granted, the seas have been very calm but I spent 3 hours below, comfortably, in mildly lumpy conditions that would normally send me into a cold sweat. And it didn't make me tired. Definitely an example of better living through chemistry!

I've been noting things down for the past two days and have quite a list compiled. We’ll spend the weekend organizing, arranging, moving and completing some of the dozens of tasks that we've identified need to be done. We have a few things to work on before we head out, most serious is that our Simrad autopilot is not functioning on the fly bridge, (but it’s fine in the pilot house). Our electrician is coming Monday to sort that out. We’ll have put approximately 22 hours on the engine during this trip.

The boat has performed fabulously. John says that he can’t believe how fast she is, he thinks she runs about a half knot faster than the norm for an N60. Maybe it’s because of the bustle we had added under her swim platform to prevent it from slapping - that extended her length at the water line by a bit. The longer a boat is, the faster her hull speed.  We’re not sure, but it’s a good thing and nice to see 9+ knots.

We plan to take ownership of the boat next week and then we can formally move aboard and begin more intensive training. We still have lots of details to finalize but our general plan (such that it is – boat plans being written in sand and all that…) is to head north the week of the 18th with the ultimate goal of meeting up with our friends Sean & Louise - check out their blog - with whom we’ll be cruising. We can’t wait!!!

As I close this entry, we’re hanging out off the coast of Stuart. We made such good time that we have time to chill out wait for high tide. Conveniently, we are also trying to wait out a big thunderstorm that’s hovering over Stuart. Chips, salsa, breeze on the fly bridge and calm water. Life is good and Blossom is amazing :)

One last picture, this was our welcome home sunset in Stuart.

Commissioning Continues

I’ve heard from several people lately wondering where we are and how things are going with Blossom.  The short answer is that we’re still in Stuart, commissioning the boat.

Our original impression was that it would be a two to three month process.  We find ourselves wrapping up week 19 now, with altered expectations and nebulous plans. 

At some point, in July we hope, we'll take ownership, move aboard and I'll pick up the blog once again.  For gear-heads and techies, Martin may have some future entries on some of the systems on Blossom (like our very cool Maretron system.)

For now, we are enjoying living in Stuart, have begun doing some scuba diving in the area and we visit Blossom almost daily.  We’re also taking advantage of this time to do some traveling and visit with family.  

Happy Easter!

Last week was another productive week.  Installation of the Maretron system is almost complete. Martin worked with them to start the last stage of verifying that all the sensors are working correctly.  Yachtsign came and installed our boat name on the port & starboard side of the fly bridge and on her stern. The signs on the fly bridge are lit, more than plenty of “bling” J  We were very excited to see her name up in lights!  The name on the stern shows off the complete logo (thank you Cecilia!)

It's really satisfying to see her with her name, we're so close to calling her "home".

Martin has plenty to keep him occupied on the boat while the electrics and maretron systems continue to be installed. I'm working on other miscellaneous tasks, many of which involve organizing. This weekend I started tackling the manuals.  Borrowing a system from Bernie, I began putting everything into binders. It's a weekend project since the guys need them during the week. I'm off to a good start with the semi-complete binders (about 11 of them so far) back on the boat first thing this morning. 

I’ve also been putting together a binder of recipes for the boat. I'm thinking that it will be easier to experiment now when I have easy access to a grocery store and Asian market.  I’ve been experimenting with Thai recipes for the past couple of months and am starting to get the hang of it. All the necessary ingredients have been added to our provisioning list and am looking forward to our expanded menu aboard Blossom.

All the cooking inspired me to plant a few herbs last week. We have cilantro, sweet basil, Thai basil and mint. I'm amazed at how quickly things grow in Florida. I already have enough to harvest!

On the social front, we bid a sad farewell to our friends, Sean & Louise who left Stuart on Friday, heading south for Fort Lauderdale. I accompanied them down to West Palm Beach where Martin met up with us and we had a “see you in a few weeks” good-bye dinner.  It will feel strange to be in Stuart without them! 

We also had a lovely Easter brunch with new friends that we met in Stuart. We enjoyed watching a spirited Easter egg hunt, a tasty brunch and talking with lovely fellow boaters and their friends.  Life in Stuart has been very good to us!

Getting things done

Work on Blossom is coming right along with the end in sight for several installations.  Brian and Troy from Celtic Marine Electronics should have our electronics finished within a couple of weeks and Maz Ocean will be finished installing the maretron monitoring system in about a week.  These are the biggest installs we are doing and require the most man hours, the majority of which are running hundreds of wires through the boat. Here’s what Blossom has looked like for that past 6 weeks or so:

Tasks completed:

V-Kool has been installed on our salon and pilot house windows. This is a film that purports to cut UV by 98% and heat by 55%.  We’ve heard some mixed reviews about window films but decided to give it a try. 

We’ve been working with Buck from Safety First to set up our scuba gear. He and Joe came out to get compressor and fill station sorted (we can fill 4 tanks at a time) and install our scuba tank holders.

Marquip has also installed the hardware for our “step across” and cockpit stairs:

Commissioning has now begun in earnest as well.  Yesterday, Steelhead was here fixing the davit (it wasn’t working and needed a new part), ABT was here fixing the stabilizers (also requires a replacement part), and Rob & Chris were commissioning the chilled water system.  Martin got into the game, successfully transferring fuel between fuel tanks. 

It feels great to see so much getting done.  The company line is that it takes “6-8 weeks to commission an N60” (as a salesman told some prospective buyers that were visiting Blossom last week). We’re 10 weeks into commissioning now but work really only started a couple weeks ago once the boat next to ours started wrapping up.  We’re hoping to take possession of the boat about 5 weeks from now.

In the meantime we're also enjoying the local wildlife!

And last but far from least, Happy Birthday Mom!!!

How do you spend your days?

We’ve had several friends ask us a variation on this question and I usually respond something to the effect:  “I’m not really sure but we’re extremely busy doing whatever we’re doing!” So putting some thought in to it, I realized that it’s a question worth thinking about and might be informative for others who may go through this, or a similar commissioning process, themselves.

We were very fortunate to be in a position to move to Stuart and be here for the full commissioning. As we progress through it, I couldn’t imagine not being here.

While PAE is commissioning Blossom (a separate blog post that Martin will address!) we have our own commissioning tasks to do. There’s a lot of work that can be done now, even if some of the actual installation takes place post PAE commissioning. So far, most of our time has been spent finding, contacting and vetting various vendors. Then we set up a meeting, explain what we need and get an estimate for the job. In most cases we go ahead and work with them. A few times, we’ve continued to look and repeated the process until we found a vendor we’re comfortable with. I was surprised how much is involved with some of these decisions, requiring several visits and much deliberation. (Not at all helped by the fact that I tend to over-think most everything…) The work that we’re contracting out to be done includes:

·       Electronics installation (we chose to have this done state-side)

·       Maretron system installation (monitoring system)

·       Window treatments (shades & curtains)

·       Window coating (UV protection)

·       Canvas work (outside window shades, table and kayak covers)

·       Carpentry (systems to secure dishes & glasses, changing hinges, adding hanging bars)

·       Steel work (to mount kayaks and flopper stopper fish to the boat deck)

·       Scuba set-up and installation

·       Custom beds

·       Steps for getting on and off the boat

The other major activity is shopping!  Equipping Blossom is the same as furnishing a new home from scratch. Luckily we have a storage unit to house it all!  A short list of what we’ve been researching and buying includes:

·       Kitchenware (dishes, glasses, pots & pans)

·       Kitchen appliances

·       Bedding

·       Office supplies

·       Lamps

·       Tender

·       Fenders and lines

·       Life raft

·       Ditch bag and contents

·       Tools

·       Boat cleaning and maintenance supplies

·       Kayaks

·       SUPs

·       Bikes

·       Various containers to organize the refrigerator, drawers, closets and lockers

And lastly, there are some miscellaneous tasks that need to be done like filling out the warranty cards from all the equipment on the boat, verifying the “as built” boat against our order, organizing boat manuals, making a snubber, making a cover for our electric grill, figuring out how to mount our bikes to the boat deck, etc.  We’ll be going on another shopping spree next week after we meet again with Bernie Francis, our training captain and consultant, who is helping us to equip and outfit the boat.

So that’s a summary of the “work” that we’ve been up to.  We’ve also been hard at play. We’ve attended the Miami boat show, Trawler Fest (aboard our friends boat!), and the Palm Beach boat show. We’ve been having a wonderful time with our friends Sean & Louise who are here with us until mid-April and with whom we’ll be cruising once we’ve finished in Stuart. Together, we’ve been exploring the area and cooking for each other, building up our go-to recipes for our upcoming cruising days together. We’ve had a great time meeting some other Nordhavn owners who have come by the Nordhavn dock including the folks from Silver Spray, Summer Star and SimBil. We’ve been visiting with friends who live down in Delray and my Dad and step-Mom who are snow birding in Cocoa Beach. We’ve had several visitors including Martin’s Mom and her partner, Michael, my Aunt and Uncle from up north and family friends from England. And the list goes on!

So our day to day lives have been very full and we’ve been surprised at how relatively little down time we have. When we do have free time, we have lots of options for filling it - the weather has been gorgeous for walking and biking, there's a weekend farmers market in town with live music, and there's much more to explore in the area.  And of course, we always have the blog we should be keeping up to date J