A Huge Mistake

Vero Beach

Last week I went out shopping for new cell phones. I wanted a second phone for Libby (she never had her own phone before), and I wanted a more modern phone for me. I had visions of being able to compose blog posts on the phone and sending them to blogger.com without having to start the laptop.

I carefully checked out the offerings of the three major suppliers, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Sprint offered the best deal. Part of the appeal was a special deal on the latest greatest PDA/phone. For only $100 I got a new Palm Centro PDA with phone, plus a free case, a 12v adapter, and a bluetooth ear piece. It sounded great.

It had the features I wanted.

• Basic phone,
• speaker phone,
  
• email,
  
• Google Maps.
  

It also had a lot of stuff that I have no interest in.

• IM,
  
• business card beaming,
  
• calendar,
  
• still camera,
  
• video camera,
  
• MS Word,
  
• Excel,
• Power Point,
  
• Outlook,
  
• web browser,
• MP3 player with Itunes,
  
• live streaming TV.
  

It even supports the very new and trendy real time blogs like Twitter. With the phone I could post a real time blog of my life including text, voice and video.

Amazing. All this in a tiny little package less than half the size of my old phone. Technology really is amazing. The monthly charge for use of these digital things was $15/month.

Now, after a few days, I hate this phone. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. The problem is fat thumbs.

My friends and family often point out how remarkable is the strong resemblence between me and my father (now deceased R.I.P.). My father's hobby was watch making. He had a great talent for manipulating those small gears and screws almost too small to see. I inherited none of that talent. I can't make my fingers work with small delicate tasks. If I focus all my attention trying to fine control my hands and fingers, the result is trembling. Now, couple that with a phone with a tiny keyboard, a tiny touch screen, a stylus, and worse of all a 5-way joy disk allowing one to move up/down/left/right or to select, and you see that this phone is just wrong for me.

I'm simply unable to work those tiny controls without constant errors. After three days, I looked in to the call log and found dozens of outgoing phone calls I never intended to make. The calls occur as I try to scroll down through the list of contacts in my address book using that dang 5-way thing. My thumbs are so clumsy that I wind up calling every name I try to scroll past.

I also tried writing a blog using the email thing. Oh my god, how painful and unproductive that is with my fat thumbs. It's not for me

Tomorrow, I'm going to grovel, go back to Sprint, and trade in that fancy PDA phone for a simple basic phone with big buttons and large print. Maybe they have a model for seniors.

Bahamas Photo Album

Vero Beach Public Library
No LL

I just posted an album of photos from our trip to the Bahamas.

Or see all our photo albums.

Work Work, Play Play

Vero Beach Public Library
No LL

In the past couple of days we've had time for work and for play.

We held a Balderdash tournament at a picnic area on shore Wednesday afternoon. We had 8 players, and we all had fun. Balderdash is a really fun game. So far, we haven't seen anybody who didn't have fun playing it.

Wednesday evening we were invited over to Blue Topaz to share birthday cake with Reg and Teri. It was Reg's 61st birthday. They told us that every year for the past 11 years, that Teri makes a birthday cake for Reg from her special recipe. Everything was made from scratch. It was delicious. After the cake, the four of us watched movie at the Blue Topaz drive in. The drive in is actually the cockpit of Blue Topaz. Reg sets up the laptop and the speakers on top of the hatch, and the audience sits around the cockpit. The weather was perfect for sitting outside at night. Cool and clear, with a new moon.

Yesterday, I went to the mall shopping for new cell phones. Our contract was up on the old one, so I wanted to see what we could find. I'll write more about that later.

Also yesterday, with the help of Libby and our friend Stephan, I went up the mast in the Boatswain's chair to do some repairs. I wasn't very successful. I installed the part in the radar that I though was causing it to not work. It didn't help. I tried to replace the bulb in the steaming light, but I didn't have the right size replacement bulb. I replaced the bulb and tried to rewire the anchor light at the top of the mast, but it still wouldn't work. I think we need a new light fixture for that. So, my score was zero for three on that trip.

This morning, I used paint stripper to remove the blue paint from the top decks. The blue paint we had there wasn't holding well, and keeps flaking off. We must have done a bad job in preparing the surface before the last repaint job. Therefore, there is no choice but to strip it off and start from scratch.

Our daughter in law, Cheryl is starting a business making decorative scented soaps. She just placed her first batch in a store on consignment. Congratulations Cheryl!

We just got a package in the mail from Jenny. Now we have no further excuse for staying in Vero, so I think we'll leave here next Tuesday and start heading north.

Treasure!

Vero Beach

N 27 39.60 W 080 22.24

This morning we got up, re-varnished the cabin floor of the boat and rowed ashore. We had to stay away from the boat for at least six hours to let it dry. Therefore, we hopped on a bus and rode to Sebastian, a small community to the north of Vero Beach.

Sebastian is a cute little place with nice restaurants and shops along the water front facing the Indian River Lagoon. The real attraction however is Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum.

In case you never heard about him, Mel Fisher is the man who actually fulfilled the dream of millions of people all over the world. After many years of trying, he actually found treasure. Lots of it. He found hundreds of millions of dollars of silver, gold, emeralds, and the most fantastic and exquisite ancient jewelry. The government tried to take it away from him, but Mel fought them and won. It's the kind of story we all love to hear and to dream about.












The samples of the actual treasure in this museum are fantastic. They are so beautiful, and so big, and have such wonderful workmanship and artistry that they enchant all who gaze upon them. I especially loved the gold cross embedded with emeralds, and a little door about the size of an open hand made of gold filigree with little wires impossibly small. Pictures of these things, and a picture of Mel are in the collage below.

After the museum, we went to Vic's Italian Restaurant in Sebastian for lunch. We ate pizza and stuffed manacotti and garlic bread. It was really delicious. I recommend Vic's as one of the best Italian restaurants I know of.

All in all, it made for a great day.

Fresh Water Usage and Tankage Issues

Vero Beach Public Library
No LL

Checking our records from our recent 1 month voyage to the Bahamas, I see that we consumed only 0.75 gallons of fresh water per day per person. That's an important number because fresh water costs 20 to 40 cents per gallon in the Bahamas.

0.75 gallons per day per person is about half of what all the books and articles on cruising recommend as the minimum water consumption. Still, we didn't skimp, and we had plenty of water for drinking and cooking. Why so little? I have a few ideas.

1. We have no pressurized water system on Tarwathie. We use foot pumps in the galley and head sinks. I'm convinced that no matter how hard one tries to conserve, that merely having pressurized water increased consumption by 100 to 200%. The extra water goes down the drain unused.
   
   
2. We have no hot water system. If one uses hot water, then one needs to spill water several times per day to expel all the cold water in the pipes between the tank and the faucets.
   
   
3. We have a salt water pump in the galley sink. Whenever we are not in a harbor, we use salt water for washing dishes. In the Bahamas, it was about 50-50, in harbors and not. Dish washing is a major source of water consumption.
   
   
4. We use a sun shower. The sun shower (a plastic bag that allows water to effectively absorb heat from sunlight) is a marvelously effective device. We bought the one we have in a camping store in Fairbanks. It works well in arctic as well as tropical zones.
   
   In the Bahamas, we used rain water to fill the sun shower. We collected the rain water from the dinghy. After a rain storm, instead of bailing the dink overboard, we would bail it in to a jerry jug. That water was not clean enough for drinking, but it worked well for showers. Even though it only rained a little in the month we were there, we still managed to collect twice as much rain water as we needed for showers.
   (You can skip the snide comments on our hygiene.)
   
   
5. We do all our laundry on shore. To tell the truth, we have never even once attempted to wash and rinse laundry on board. If we did, the final rinse needs fresh water. However, rain water would work fine for that.
   

Tarwathie carries 45 gallons of water below decks and another 20 in jerry jugs on deck, for a total of 65 gallons. That's too little according to many sources. Still, we finished our month with about 20 gallons yet unused in the tanks. I'm also reminded of Tarwathie's previous owner, Al Hatch. He lived on board with 2 adults and 2 kids for more 11 years without serious water problems.

There are no pump out stations in the Bahamas, so holding tank capacity is not an issue. Black water must go overboard. A few boats though have no provision to pump overboard. They must be modified before cruising offshore or in many countries in the world.

Our friends on Eagles Wings had a Catalina 32. Catalina makes fine boats, but they learned that the 32 carries only 20 gallons of fuel and 20 gallons of water. That's too little for cruising. They (and many other boaters) carry as many plastic jerry jugs as they can fit on deck for extra fuel and water. The point is that water, fuel and holding, tank capacities are important issues when choosing a cruising boat.