A Sad Tale If True

Marathon
No LL

Nowadays, as one enters the channel to the Marathon City Marina, one sees a startling sight, as shown in the picture below.



I haven't met the owner of this vessel yet, but I did ask around about the story behind the dismasting. The first story I heard was that the vessel was struck by a rogue wave and knocked down. As she righted herself, the weight of the water in the sails broke the mast. Well, that story is hard to refute. Satellite imagery has proven conclusively that rogue waves exist and are more common than once thought.

I heard a second version of the story that is more detailed and more believable. According to this version, the owner packed everything his owns on board and was headed for the Dominican Republic to live. (Look at the picture below. One sees motorcycles, batteries, lawn furniture and all sorts of things lying on deck in a most unseaworthy manner, plus a deflated rubber dinghy hanging limply from the stern.)

The story continues that the owner tried to leave the harbor but ran aground right in front of the City Marina. Then, the marina employees offered assistance to re-float the vessel. It didn't pull off easily, so they grabbed ahold of a halyard from the top of the mast and heeled her over. That worked, and the vessel sailed away. However, it was soon back with a broken mast and it reported that the mast broke only 30 miles away from Marathon. I'm sure that there have not been any rogue waves within 30 miles of Marathon this year. The suspicion is that pulling sideways on the mast somehow damaged it, causing the failure.

Now, there must be fear that the owner of the vessel may try to sue the marina. Oh what a mess. The marina employees never should have volunteered to help. That is a job for professional towing services. The reason is the liability, as this anecdote clearly illustrates.

I emphasize that both versions of this story are local gossip. I have no verification of their truth.

The real reason that this story moves me so much is that it touches on my most secret inner fear. I never met the skipper of this sad vessel but all appearances are that it must be owned by someone who became so old and infirm that he or she was unable to keep up with the actual demands of a cruising life. It is an inglorious end. Heaven help us that Libby and I should avoid that fate.

Yikes! Hackers After My Blog

Marathon
No LL

When I tried to log in to this blog today, I got rejected by Google. The error message said that the request looked like it had been hacked by spyware. Rather than try to circumvent the error, I stopped to think about it for a while. It is true that I've been complaining about my slow computer for a while. It is also true that my computer is protected by firewalls and by anti-virus software, but not anti-spyware software. Hmmm; I wonder if it is time to boost the protection. I would surly hate to have my blog password hacked.

I checked the recommendations of Kim Komando (a source of PC lore that I respect and highly trust). She recommended Ad Aware. There is a free version that I used in the past, but this time I went for the paid Pro version. It let me download a free scanner. The scanner turned up hundreds (actually more than 200) spyware, malware and keyboard loggers on my PC. Yikes! I was cowed, and I paid the $39.95 for the Pro version and let it clean out the bad guys. It worked. Google now accepts my login and my computer is running noticeably faster even without a reboot.

My friend John likes his Mac and he loves to point out that he needs no such protections. Still, I use lots of software that is not available on Macs or on Linux. It's like Esperanto. I acknowledge that Esperanto may be superior to English, but English is the lingua franca.

Stirring Mud

Marathon
No LL

Yesterday, we played Balderdash on board Reflections. Our hosts, Ray and Pat, told a very interesting story that I'd like to pass along.

Pat and Ray say that they like to take their dinghy out past Sombrero Beach to a shoal area south of Vaca Key. There, they can swim in 5 feet of fine clear water. Recently, as they swam there, they came upon two manatees. The manatees were engaged in making little manatees (if you know what I mean.) They said that the activity was vigorous and that they stirred up quite a bit of mud from the bottom. What a shame that they didn't have a camera with them.

p.s. I find it hard to visualize a manatee doing anything vigorously.

Grounding Data Base

Marathon
No LL

The other day, I posted a list of 175 anchorages. It wasn't my most inspired writing, and as I look at it, it seems rather boring. Today, we'll have more fun than that. Below is my list of 14 places where we ran aground.

I can't say for sure that we haven't missed some places, but I can say for sure that we've run aground more than once in the same place, so the actual number of groundings is higher than 14.

12 of these 14 groundings, we got off ourselves by kedging. For the non-boaters among you, that means putting the anchor and lots of chain in the dinghy, then rowing it as far away as the chain will reach and dropping the anchor in the water. Then, one uses the windlass to pull the anchor in. In almost all cases, we can make enough force with the windlass to pull the boat away and re-float it. In fact, we had done this drill so many times, that we can launch the dinghy, kedge off, pull the dinghy back on deck and be on our way in less than 15 minutes.

The other two times, once in North Miami and the other in Beaufort, NC, we had got towed off by Tow Boat US or by Sea Tow. That makes it worth our while to pay $150/year for towing insurance since the list price for each of those tows was around $700.

The only time we ever grounded on a hard rock bottom was up in Vergennes Vermont, right below the dam. We were very lucky to get off of that without trouble.

You may have heard that a boat running aground is terribly dangerous and that the survival of the boat and the lives of the occupants are in peril. That is very true if one runs aground where there are significant waves. The waves lift and drop the boat repeatedly, eventually bashing in the sides. Thankfully, we've never been close to that kind of grounding.

What was the funniest story of the 14 groundings? I like the one about "Aground Breedlove" We were out early one morning on the Indian River in Florida, near the Cape Canaveral canal. I was astonished to see a very unusual boat passing right next to us. It was the vessel "The Spirit of America" and it was being driven by Craig Breedlove. Mr. Breedlove is the is a five-time world land speed record holder and all his cars have been names "The Spirit of America" I don't know if his boat of the same name holds any records, but it looks like it could.

To make a long story short, I turned around to gawk and called to Libby, "Come see Craig Breedlove." and bang we were aground. To add insult to injury, according to the red and green markers we were 30 feet inside the channel where it was supposed to be deep. I was still not paying attention though because Mr. Breedlove, after getting well clear of us put the hammer down and roared on up the river at several hundred miles per hour. Wow!

At The Turtle Hospital

Marathon
No LL

There are two other Westsails in the harbor. We met Martin, the skipper of one of those W32s. Martin told us about meeting the owner of the Turtle Hospital eating dinner at Porky's Restaurant. Martin said he asked how the hopital was funded. Ritchie, the owner, replied "I fund it. I put about two million dollars per year in to it." Wow! I thought it was just a tourist trap, and we avoided it the previous two years we were in Marathon.

Today we remedied that and we paid for a guided tour of the Turtle Hospital. It was delightful. Those turtles are wonderful creatures. They have been mistreated by man to the point where they are endangered. We learned also about the history of the hospital.

The Turtle Hospital in Marathon started out as a motel with a salt water pool. Ritchie Moretti, the owner bought the motel and intende to retire there. He built a new fresh water pool, and allowed fish in to the salt water pool to entertain the guests. One day, a little boy said, "Why don't you have turtles?" Ritchie looked into it and learned that he coudn't keep turtles without doing something positive to help them. So started the turtle hospital idea. Since then, the motel functions have faded to nothing while the hospital has flourished and grown; all without government money. I think it is a fascinating story.

They have about 60 turtles at the hospital right now. They suffer from various maladies. Some have lost flippers to fishing line entanglement. Others tangled with fishing hooks. Others have a mysterious growth of cancer-like tumors that remain unexplained.

Still others have bubble back, a singularly turtle specific ailment. Those turtles were struck by boats as the broached the surface after a long dive. They were poised to expel a lung full of air, but the boat strike forced that air in to a bubble between the turtle's body and it's shell. The shell gets a swelling, like a hunchback's hump, over the bubble. The bubble ruins the turtle's bouyancy so they can't dive. So far, all the king's horses and all the king's men and all the vets at the Turtle Hospital have not figured out how to solve the problem and return those bubble back turtles to the wild. Fascinating.

We recommend a visit to the Turtle Hospital in Marathon when you visit the Florida Keys.