December 2008: Prepared...well for almost everything.

Well here we are now in December 2008.

The beginning of the month started out well with MY trip away from the boat for a boys weekend at my friends Skips new boat "Prodigal", a Morgan 46 located for now in Kemah, Texas. Since Angela got to go to the Bahamas for a "girl trip" in October I got to go to Kemah with Skip for a "boys trip" in December. Well I think she fared better than me spending her trip at Atlantis in the Bahamas while I helped Skip repair leaks and toilets in cold Kemah!! It was fun and my dad joined to help in the fun. I would post some pictures but I was busy working! For more fun on this trip you can check out Skip's blog at: http://skipsphotos.blogspot.com/

After the trip we were busy with final preparations as the plan was to go back to Dallas for Christmas, December 19-27 with family and then leave on December 30th to spend New Years in the Bahamas and start our freshman year as true cruisers.

The last week before we left for Christmas we were busy filling fuel tanks, checking off items on the to-do list and were VERY excited about our pending departure. During the week I noticed some swelling in a very tender part of my body and we decided to have it checked out. Got news the day before we left for Christmas that I have testicular cancer (same thing that Lance Armstrong had). To say we were disappointed would be an understatement at this point but we both agreed that this was just a delay in the plan and once we can we will still get underway.

As of today, December 30th we went back to the doctor today and had some good news about the tumor and have surgery scheduled for this Friday to have the "part" removed. Not sure what we will have to do from here but we hope to continue with our plans just as soon as possible.

For all that have e-mailed and called with prayer support and best wishes I sincerely Thank you! To put it in Texas terms all we can do at this point is "get er done" and continue with the important things in life like cruising the islands.

In true holiday spirit Angela has made a poem to sum up or put in a nutshell (ha, ha) our Christmas tale:

Twas the week before Christmas
and all through the boat,
the stores are all full,
and we're still afloat.

The course was all plotted,
with due caution and care
for an open water passage,
We soon would be there!

When what to our wondering eyes should appear,
testicular swelling!
The equipment most dear!

So off to the doctor
we ran in a flash,
with hopes of simplicity
and plenty of cash.

The exam was complete,
then he ordered a scan.
Just to be safe,
but it could change our plan.

Oh, horror of horrors,
it just might be cancer.
So now we will operate
to determine the answer.

After holiday in Texas,
days chilly and cold,
We're now back in Marathon
with travel on hold.

The research is done
and in the surgeon we're pleased.
It will take steady hands
to fix one of these.

Recovery is likely,
so we hope and we pray,
and we'll go on our trip,
just not today.

Thanksgiving 2008 with family

For Thanksgiving this year Angela and I were invited to my cousins David Shrader's house in Co-Co Beach Florida to spend the holiday with the Shrader clan. David is the son of my moms brother, and is actually only one of 5 sons! They all live in Nebraska aside from David and his wife Sherry who live in Co Co Beach with their kids William and Lucretia. All five Shrader sons, most of their families and my Aunt Merlyn and Uncle Duane were in attendance. It was a nice time on the beach for Thanksgiving.

On our drive up to Co Co Beach we stopped off in Miami to sell Angela's car at the Infinity dealer. Parting with her sporty "G" was harder than I thought it would be for her....but she gave it up like a trooper!!

Angela at the Infinity dealer.....it was so hard to let her baby go!!!

Once in Co Co beach we caught up with family and promptly headed to the beach.

To the left is a shot of two of my cousins Mike and Mark Shrader and I at the beach. To the right is only a PART of the group with sand in their toes!

The Thanksgiving turkey appropriately named a "gurkey" in honor of our Florida celebration!

After turkey dinner some of us went swimming at the condos pool.

Craig, Molly and Jenny (my cousin Mike's daughters). For Florida it was actually chilly and in the 60s. Luckily the pool was heated but the walk (run) back up to the condo was downright cold once we were finished!

Dan, Mike, Mark and David 4 of my Shrader cousins. Can you see the resemblance to the Captain???

It was a great time spent with family for Thanksgiving.....Thank you David and Sherri and all of the Shrader clan for inviting us up for a great time!!

November 2008: More equipment before departure

I spent the second half of November installing a few more items before our departure. The first item was a single sideband radio that will allow us to have long range communication with other vessels at sea, get weather reports, and also chat with other cruisers on "nets". These "nets" are a great way to gain knowledge about cruising grounds, ports of entry and other basic information about the cruising life from other people that are out there cruising.

There was a radio to install, antenna that will be mounted to the back stay (the wire that supports the mast from falling forward), a antenna tuner that needed to be near the antenna at the back of the boat as well as a ground plate that would have to be mounted on the bottom of the hull. After lots of research and reading I decided to try and install the unit myself........

This is me trying to figure out what I have gotten myself into as well as the final installation of the antenna tuner underneath the aft cabin bed.

This is the radio installed at the navigation station. After a week of running wires throughout the boat, the radio was finally installed and we talked to people here in Marathon as far away as New York, North Carolina and a couple of people already in the Caribbean!

The second project I worked on was to make our hatches more secure. Since we will not have the luxury of AC all the time in the islands, as we do now in our slip in Marathon, our hatches will be open most of the time. To prevent the unlikely intruder from just slipping down a hatch in our boat I designed some bars to go in the openings. Each bar has locks on it that are keyed the same and the keys are hung in each cabin, just in case someone from inside needed to escape in a emergency.

The image to the left is the new hatch bars in the salon hatches. The right photo is the bars in the v-berth......Skip you will now be safe when you come to visit!

November 2008: Angela's parents visit Hakuna Matata

The first weekend of November brought a much anticipated visit from the Admiral's parents, who drove down from Tallahassee to spend a weekend with us.

Image to the left is Daddy with the Captain at the helm for a sail through Hawk's Channel.

Image to the right is Mom enjoying being out in the Gulf Stream.

No trip is complete without an evening in the cockpit, enjoying the view and a few "sundowners".

Image to the left is the sunset view from our cockpit, looking out into the Atlantic.

Image to the right is Mom and Daddy, getting right with the boating lifestyle.

The next day, we spent the afternoon and evening enjoying Key West. Mom and I went to the Butterfly Conservatory while the boys went to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, most notable for its display of treasure from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1715.

A few specimens in the conservatory.

The captain models a hat from a local shop on Mallory Square.

The daily sunset party at Mallory Square is another must do. Local vendors, artisans and performers sell their wares and perform for the gathering. The CatMan and his "trained" performing cats are widely popular.

Image to the left is one of the star performers.

Image to the right is star performers jumping through the hoop of fire.

"I'm done". Even the performers stop to watch.

Sunset in Key West.....

Family dinner time on S/V Hakuna Matata. Yellowtail snapper crusted in macadamia nuts, topped with coconut pepper sauce. When the executive chef of the local high-town resort stops by for a chat and gets queried on his latest creation, who needs restaurants??

Thanks Mom and Daddy for all you do and spending time with us!

Love you!!

October 2008: Angela goes to the Bahamas

I met my good friend Deborah in the Bahamas October 18th. She was attending an anesthesia conference and invited me along. D2 being no slouch when it comes to beach accommodations and medical conferences, selected Atlantis. We have spent much time together working in emergency departments and going on girl trips until careers and kids intervened. This was our first "no boys allowed" trip in a good while. Deborah attended class in the AM while I slept and/or studied my own education credits. Afternoons and evening were spent exploring and relaxing.

Image to the left is our arrival with new best friend, the limo driver. He kindly escorted us to the hotel room supply store before dropping us off.

Image to the right is a view of the complex from our room.

No expense spared on the interior decor....

Image to the left is one of the restaurants with aquarium walls.

Image to the right is one of the interior fountains.

Nor the exterior....

Image to the right is one of my favorites, the flying fish fountain.

Image to the left is the roof of the casino and one of the three hotels.

The stingray lagoon was immediately below our balcony. They lazily swim around all day long, right up until feeding time....

And then there was the marina....40 foot boat length minimum!!

Image to the left are private boats at the docks.

Image to the right is also a private boat...with its private helicopter parked on its top deck.

The water park is equally spectacular, with outdoor and indoor slides, as well as a river raft ride that meanders around the property.

Image to the right is the Mayan Temple. The answer to your question is no.

Image to the right is the Tower of Power, with 4 slides that spin full-height, through the dark. The answer to your question is yes.

This is a peaceful part of the river ride.

All in all, an adventurous trip and much fun had by all. Casino and shopping stories have been withheld to protect the guilty.

October 2008: Dad bookcase project

Another project in October was to find more space to store books aboard the boat. In fact, in our preparation for leaving finding more storage space and getting rid of things that we are not using has become a regular task aboard the boat.

My dad helped with the book storage by taking two areas above cabinets on the boat and building rails so we could use this space to store books.

I took pictures of the areas, gave him the dimensions, he built the rails back in his workshop in Texas and then mailed them to Marathon. Luckily he is great with wood working unlike his son....

To the left is the port cabinet before that the top was pretty useless for storing anything at sea. To the right is the finished port cabinet with the rails installed and books in place.

To the left is the starboard shelf before and to the right after with storage for more books.

October 2008 Watermaker Install

October 2008 has been a busy month with boat preparations. We went to Ft Lauderdale and had a new mainsail made for the boat, had our compass re-built and made the big purchase of a water maker. This device takes sea water and turns it into drinkable water for our tanks. In the islands you have to pay for water and the water you get is sometimes questionable so this was one item we wanted make sure we had before we left. The unit makes 8 gallons of water each hour it is run.

The following are pictures from the install:

This is the first day with tools everywhere....the project would end up taking a whole week! During the install I had to cut a few holes with the hole saw.......and you will never guess what happened........

So I lined up the hole saw and started in drilling a hole for the hoses to go into the engine room but when I saw light it was not the engine room but the shower....I said some words of disappointment and all Angela said was "is it above the waterline or below"! I said "it is above unless your taking a shower"!

Picture to the left is the hole in the bottom of the shower being repaired. Picture to the right is the new hole with hoses run and the "patch job" in the walkway of the first hole. The fixing of the two holes took a whole day away from the project at hand.....but the fix does not leak!!!

These are some of the valves I had to install, left is in the engine room and to the right is the valves and unit in the walk through.

This is the water maker all finished up. It fired right up on the first test and started making water! Pretty amazing machines even though the install was a bear.....but doing it myself we really saved $$ and I sure know how it is all put together!

2008: Trying to reason with Hurricane season

2008 was also a busy with 2 named storms that decided to visit us.

Jimmy Klinke (my friend from AVHQ) had decided to come down for a visit and some fishing....he landed the day we were preparing for the first Hurricane named "Faye". His week of relaxation became two days of boat preparation and three of "riding the storm out"!!

Craig and Jimmy take down everything and lash it down in preparation at the slip for Hurricane Faye.

Driving to the mooring field where Craig, Angela and Jimmy would ride out Hurricane Faye on board the boat. Second picture is the boat tied up at the mooring ball with 4 lines attached. We had to check these during the storm for chafe.

This is the "calm before the storm" sitting on the boat and Jimmy waiting for his first hurricane. The night before the storm we took time and did do a little fishing. Caught a few small ones but at least got a little fishing in.

Hurricane Faye packed lots of rain and winds in the 50 knot range as we saw in the Harbour while riding out the storm. We were stuck for three days on the mooring ball mostly watching movies and sleeping but the storm passed without any damage to the boat or the three fearless crew members. Jimmy is now a true sailor riding out his first hurricane aboard a sailboat!

The second storm that decided to visit the Keys came only one week later and was named "Ike". In watching Ike move through the islands it looked as if it was going to hit Marathon head on as a Cat 4 hurricane. Luckily it made some big moves and passed to the west of Key West sparing Marathon and most of the Keys of lots of damage.

Angela had to fly out for work so I was left to ride out the storm on my own. Instead of moving the boat to a mooring ball where I could get stuck and have no escape if the storm got bad, we moved the boat to a large slip at the end of our dock and setup 25 lines from every angle to deal with the winds and storm surge.

Angela prepares for Ike and helps tied the boat to every extra piling we could find before she heads off to California.

This was the boat the day before Ike. I tied the boat in the middle of the big slip and had one line attached to a winch so I could winch myself back to the one side if I needed to make an escape.

Ike ended up being "less of a storm" than Faye but still packed lots of rain and I recorded gusts at the slip up to 45 knots. It was a long three days again aboard the boat, this time alone, but we were all glad to make it through yet another storm. Hopefully next year we will be riding out the hurricane season below the hurricane belt.