Time out

We are back at the boatyard in Deltaville, Virginia.  I had hoped to blog one more time from the road before we returned, but circumstances conspired against that (more on that in a moment).  Now that we are back, I am up to my eyeballs in projects and interacting with the yard -- we barely have time to eat, and I am exhausted at the end of each day.  Finding time to post has been an impossibility, and so this afternoon I've called "time out."  I'm going to do my best to get a post in while relaxing with a beer before dinner.

We had a lovely time at dinner Friday evening and the wedding ceremony and reception afterward on Saturday were equally nice.  It was great to catch up with a plethora of family whom we rarely see; at least one person remarked they had last seen us at our own wedding, ten years ago.  The reception was over and breaking up by six, so we actually headed out and ended up spending Saturday night at the Walmart in Kannapolis, North Carolina, to get a head start on our lengthy return trip Sunday.

The reason that was important goes back to those conspiratory circumstances.  We had obtained permission in advance to park Odyssey at the church where both Friday's rehearsal dinner and Saturday's reception were to be held.  The only two driveways were uphill ramps off a heavily crowned road, and even though we chose the less inflected of the two and pumped the air suspension up as high as it could go, we still ended up low-centering on the entry.

Long ago we learned to just power through these rather than pussy-foot, because the latter can literally get us stuck, with each end of the bus on high ground and the drive wheels spinning uselessly in the gutter.  But that opens the possibility that as we power through, the drive axle will drop so rapidly that one of the suspension airbags will come off its seat.  When this happens, there is perhaps a 60% chance that it will immediately re-seat on its own, but if it doesn't, it's a bear to get back on.

Of course, that's what happened as we pulled in to the lot.  We just dumped all the air out of the suspension and went to our dinner gathering, leaving the dirty work to Saturday morning, when we called our roadside assistance plan (for the second time in a month) and had them send help.  It turns out they came from Kannapolis, a good 30 miles from Charlotte, which took them an hour in traffic.

They actually sent two guys, but not all the right equipment (no air jacks, for example), and it took the three of us over two hours, using a combination of their manual jacks and mine, to get the air bag off the bus, re-seated, back on, and inflated.  It's been a very long time since this last happened, but the process was the same, and the two mechanics were very happy I had been through it before and could give them step-by-step instructions, as they had never seen an airbag setup like ours (and one of the guys was in his late 70s and had been doing this for nearly a half century).

Between the travel delay, the lengthy repair, and paying the bill, it was all I could do to get showered and into wedding-appropriate clothes in time for the ceremony, a mile away at a different church.  We had pulled the scooters out while we were waiting for the mechanics to show up.  And there went all of the time in which we were going to do our big-box shopping and perhaps some more family socializing.  At one point I was even concerned that Louise would have to go to the ceremony without me.

All's well that ends well, and we were able to get back under way after the reception without incident.  The deacon of the church, who had been very accommodating in allowing us to spend Friday night (and Saturday had we needed it), showed us an alternate route out of the lot that involved cutting across a field to access a gravel drive which did not have the inflection issue, and we were able to make our exit with nary a scrape.

Since we were able to get a head start Saturday evening, we managed to stop at Home Depot Sunday.  We spent two full hours in the store, and I still did not fill the whole shopping list.  On top of all the stuff we picked up there and at Walmart on Thursday evening, we received over a dozen boxes of mail-order items over the last two days, including a giant inverter, 10' long blinds, a step-up transformer, and two huge rolls of PEX tubing.  The boat is complete chaos, and we are having to step over things to go from stem to stern.


Engine room floor removed.

Lots of these items are destined for the engine room, but that's inaccessible at the moment.  All the sole plates (floorboards) are removed and all the walls and other equipment are covered in polyurethane sheeting as they prepare to paint the bilges.  They'll be spraying tomorrow, so we'll probably spend most of the day back on the bus.


Looking down into the freshly painted lazarette.

We did find a nice surprise when we checked in on the boat Sunday night when we got back.  Both the anchor locker and the lazarette had already been painted, and they were sparkling clean and fresh.  Since then the anchor locker has suffered somewhat, as they have started drilling into the front of the boat to install a massive steel bow-eye near the water line.  This will be the attachment point for our anchor snubber, and can also serve as a towing eye should that ever be necessary.


Anchor locker empty and freshly painted.


Starting to work on the bow eye.

It is all I can do to keep pace with the yard.  To save money, I'm doing whatever part of the work I can, and some of it must happen on a precise schedule to synchronize with the yard.  In the anchor locker I removed most of the wiring for the windlass, to relocate it to the other, dryer side of the collision bulkhead.  The yard is sealing up the old holes, down near the waterline, and drilling new ones at the upper level of the compartment.  I will have to run new wires when they are finished.  As long as we are in there, we're adding more holes for a raw-water anchor washdown system, and I'll be installing, wiring, and plumbing the new 6-gph, 70-psi washdown pump, which arrived today.

The less-pleasant surprise upon our return was no fresh-water pressure in the boat.  After the gang finished for the day Monday, I tracked down the problem to a blown fuse, and I had to slice through some of the polyurethane sheeting to access and replace it.  When I got the pressure pump going, though, it still would not build pressure, and a quick look at the gauge revealed our tank was empty.

We started filling the tank and after ten minutes or so, I turned the pump back on.  Again it would not build to full pressure and shut off.  Then I realized that the sound of water filling the fresh tank was louder than normal.  I peeked in the bilge to discover that a hose fitting had come off, and the pump was pumping all the fresh water right into the bilge.  Probably that's how the fuse blew in the first place (though I had originally guessed it was a result of men working near the pump in the ER), when the hose let go while we were away and the pump merrily emptied the entire contents of our fresh water tank into the bilge before running dry.

Lest I sound like an incessant whiner, it helps to put our "problems" in perspective.  These are all "first-world problems" to begin with, but even in that realm, ours are minor.  I promised you on Friday that I had a story to share when I could find the time, and as long as I am in "time out" here, now is as good a time as any.

This story actually dates back a full week, to the Friday before Memorial Day.  The weather was rather unfavorable for boating, with overcast skies and winds blowing 15-20 knots with gusts to 30 or so.  We monitor the VHF aboard Vector full-time, even here on the hard, and we heard the usual number of minor boating mishaps around the area, including a handful of boats running aground.  This happens nearly every weekend here, as the marinas on both sides of the peninsula are accessible only by navigating narrow and twisty channels with rather nasty shoals on either side.

We are mostly rather bemused by all this -- the incidents are seldom safety issues, and most boats manage to get themselves unstuck after a while, possibly with some help from another boat.  A week or two ago we heard a boat that ran aground who then bent a prop shaft or some such and had to be hauled out, but that's usually the extent of it.  Even these incidents have put our own series of minor groundings into perspective.

Radio distress pro-words are exceedingly rare, and so even with the usual bad-weather melee out on the bay, we both immediately came to full attention when we heard the Mayday.  We grabbed pen and paper and copied the position coordinates as they were read off -- just three miles from us, in the Piankatank River.  A sailboat had gone aground on the shoal north of Gwynn Island, which in itself was not out of the ordinary and generally would not result in a Mayday call -- perhaps a Pan-Pan at the most.  And yet the sailors were on the radio with a genuine emergency -- the TowBoatUS boat that had come to help them had flipped over and capsized, and the operator was in the water.

I was ready to jump in the tender and head the three miles across the river, but calmer heads prevailed and Louise rightly persuaded me that conditions were too much for a little 10' RIB to be effecting a rescue that far out.  Soon after the initial call, calls came in from other boaters who had eyes on the situation, and the Coast Guard was already en route.  Within minutes, the sailboat originally in distress was off the air, and one of the other boats reported that it was because their mast was fully in the water.  The whole mess was so far on the shoal at this point that neither of the other boats could get close enough to help, but that also meant the persons involved could simply stand up and be out of the water.

All involved were uninjured and the Coasties picked them up in a fast-boat, but the capsized sailboat and towboat remained on the shoal for the whole weekend.  Lots of other boaters, who failed to listen to the numerous Sécurité calls the USCG issued for the wreckage, called in on the VHF to report the capsize all weekend long.  On Monday TowBoatUS finally sent two more boats out there to right their overturned vessel and float the capsized sailboat, which was then towed in to the very yard we are at, with the yard owner having to come down on the holiday to pull it out with the lift.


Capsized sailboat in the slings.  Those are foam cushions sticking out the side amidships, crammed in there by a diver to help refloat the wreck for towing.

The keel was missing entirely and the starboard side of the boat was split in two vertically.  A longitudinal gash ran a third the length of the boat, and the hull-to-deck joint had separated along most of the starboard side.  The boat was a total loss, and the owners were lucky to walk away.  Seeing the wreck in the slings made us thankful for our sturdy steel ship made from quarter-inch plate, and put our own grounding troubles, including our panic-stricken one in Tom Point Creek, in perspective.


There was foam in this gash, too, since removed.


I snapped this shot of the interior through the gash shown in the photo above.

The pace of work here is blistering, and I expect my ability to post will continue to be limited.  In addition to the occasional photo that I've been snapping, the yard has also taken numerous photos, and we will try to sort through and pick out some before-and-after shots as things progress.  And now, if you will excuse me, time-out is over, my beer is finished, and I need to get back to work.

Back on the road

We are at the Walmart in South Hill, Virginia.  We moved back aboard Odyssey Wednesday evening, and left Deltaville yesterday afternoon after the yard was done for the day.  We'll be "living" on the bus now until the yard is done with most of the heavy lifting.  I put that in quotes because I expect we'll spend most of our daylight hours aboard Vector, going back to Odyssey periodically to check in on the cats, and ending the day there.  Meals will probably mostly be on the boat.

We are on the road this weekend to attend our cousin's wedding in Charlotte, North Carolina.  There is a rehearsal dinner tonight, and the ceremony and reception will be tomorrow.  We are looking forward to helping them celebrate, and catching up with family.  Since Deltaville is so far from civilization, we are also taking advantage of this road trip to hit several big-box stores (we've been building a shopping list), and to get George to the vet at Banfield (inside Petsmart) as she needs a checkup and a renewal of her special diet prescription.

All of that will make for a very busy weekend.  We did not get off the road until 7:15 last night, and it was all we could do to stumble over to Applebees for dinner and a beer.  We still have a four-hour drive ahead of us today, ending at the vet, and then we need to be presentable for this evening.  The return trip to Deltaville will take all day Sunday, which means we will need to squeeze our big-box trips in wherever we can today and tomorrow.

Since I last blogged here, over a week ago, I have spent nearly every waking minute working on the boat.  Between my own projects, meeting with the yard guys, prepping areas for yard work, and researching and ordering dozens and dozens of parts for both my own projects and the yard work, we've barely had time to keep up with email.  In fact, I have several unanswered items in my inbox that I have yet to get to.  Blogging has just not been on the priority list.

I do have quite a bit to report, along with photos, but it will have to wait until we return to Deltaville next week.  For example, there is the sailboat that grounded, capsized, and sank in the river a week ago today, with the towboat that was trying to help it also capsizing.  And the progress in our engine room and anchor locker.  With any luck I will be able to carve out an hour or so to blog shortly after we return.

A journey of a thousand miles ...

... begins with a surprise at the truck rental office.  It has been a long couple of days, and I still haven't come up for air.  I wouldn't really have time to post here right now, either, if not for the fact that I am on the side of I-95 waiting for a tire service truck, and dispatch tells me it will be 90 minutes.

We'll get to that story in just a moment.  But first, let's catch up from where we left off Sunday.  I am pleased to report (well, as pleased as can be expected) that I did, in fact, make it to Fort Lauderdale on the flight that landed there at 10pm.  My friend Steve,  who also has a Neoplan Spaceliner (recently featured on the Travel Channel), picked me up at the airport and I spent the night at their house, which was very generous of them especially considering how late it was.

Steve and I were out the door by 7:30 yesterday, stopping for coffee and then heading up to the Budget truck rental on Powerline Road, nearly to Pompano Beach.  I was a bit early, but they fixed that by having only a single agent at the counter, so I had a ten minute wait while she handled the customer ahead of me.  Then we spent another five minutes or so writing the contact and taking my money before going out to inspect the truck.

That's when the trouble started.  I am a veteran of Budget truck rentals, as we use quite a number of them on disaster relief operations, and so I expected that all the trucks would have a hitch ball or at least a hole for one.  Apparently, the ten footers do not, which makes sense, because they can't really tow something as large and heavy as the average car, which is what people renting moving trucks want to tow.  I don't see ten footers often; in the Red Cross we use mostly 16' and 24' models.

When I said I needed the hitch ball, they told me I would need at least a 16' truck.  When I made the reservation, I could have had a 16' truck for the same price at the ten footer, but I thought I'd save a little fuel and make it easier to drive by getting the smaller truck.  My mistake.  At this point though, they did not have any 16 footers available for one-way rental.  In an instant, my plans to get an early start on the road were shattered.

Steve went to his office for a while, leaving me at Budget to sort things out.  I called Louise and asked her to research some other local places to see what other options I might have.  Ultimately I found a one-way pickup truck available at Enterprise Commercial Truck, which would be more convenient, cheaper, and use less fuel.  Of course, they were on the other end of town.  Steve came back for me, arriving just as Budget told me they had found a 16' truck at another location.  I told them I'd get back to them and we headed to Enterprise.

I had the pickup truck by 10:30, only two hours behind my original schedule, but now we had to hustle back up to near where Budget was to pick up a 12R22.5 tire that Steve offered to sell me, before heading back to near where Enterprise was to pick up the tender and various parts for it.  By the time we had the boat hitched up and ready to roll, it was close to noon, a very late start to the day, indeed.

In addition to actually saving some money, the other redeeming facet of having switched teams over to Enterprise is that I was able go faster in the pickup truck than I could in a box van.  In part that's because the vans have governors, and in part it's because they burn lots more fuel at higher speeds, but the biggest reason is that I could see the boat in my mirror the whole time, whereas I would be blind in any kind of box van.  Not knowing what's happening with the trailer would have me running at lower speeds as well as making more frequent stops to check on things.

So after the first hour or so keeping well under the speed limit and checking tire and hub temperatures, straps, and hitch frequently, I got comfortable with the rig and came up closer to the speed limit.  That burned more fuel but bought back some of my lost time, and I made it to Richmond Hill just at sunset.  There I met up with the lovely Laura Lee, the feminine half of the couple who owned Vector (then called Steel Magnolia) before us.

We met at their storage locker, where her husband John had pre-staged some boat items for me, knowing he would be out of town when I passed through.  John very generously gave us a storm anchor and rode (still brand new in the box), a spare power cord, and some miscellaneous lines that he had left over from Steel Magnolia.  Not much use for those on his airplane, which is what he bought after he sold the boat (and you can read his very well-written adventures thereon here).  Still it was a very nice gesture on his part to just give those to us, and I owe them a very nice dinner with some very nice wine, a debt which I am hoping they will collect in person.

It only took a few minutes to load those things into the back of the truck; Enterprise very sensibly equips all their pickups with heavy-duty bedliners.  But now it was dark, and in my rush to get on the road, I had not connected any lights on the trailer.  I did, however, have the foresight to stop and buy some quick-connects, pliers, and a roll of wire for just that purpose, nevertheless hoping (perhaps nonsensically) that I might make it all the way to Hilton Head in the daylight.

Of course, I neglected to buy wire cutters or strippers or even any kind of knife -- I am seldom without my Leatherman, and I simply spaced.  The Leatherman had to be left behind aboard Vector, as I did not want to check any luggage on my flight.  I managed to get the whole mess over to a gas station so I had some overhead light by which to work, but their convenience store had none of those items, either, so there I was, connecting trailer wiring using a nail clipper, or as Spock might say, stone knives and bear skins.  BTW, one of the things we teach our technology volunteers is to always have a pair of nail clippers in their carry-on, as it can be used in a pinch to cut the zip ties off the Pelican cases that contain, among other things, the wire cutters.

That cost me another dozen minutes or so, and it was well past 10pm when I rolled onto Hilton Head Island.  My plan had been to drop the trailer at the bus and then head off in the rental truck to a nice dinner someplace on the island, but nearly everything closes by 10.  Instead I pulled in to the Applebees, just a few minutes short of my destination, which serves dinner to 11.  I wolfed down a salad and allowed myself a single draft beer.  I also stopped at Walmart across the street and grabbed some coffee, milk, and a bottle of wine (you know, the essentials) as there was nothing of the sort left on the bus.

It was after 11 by the time I pulled in to the self-storage yard, and it took me another two hours to bring the bus out of hibernation enough to use all the facilities and get a good night's sleep.  I left all the stuff in the back of the truck for this morning's project.  In addition to the anchor and other boat items, you will recall that included a 12R22.5 tire, which Steve and I manhandled into the truck together, and now I had to move it onto the bus alone.

Fortunately I was able to drop it out of the truck onto its edge, and it was a pretty easy matter to then roll it into the scooter bay, so long as I did not drop it, which I did not.  I got everything loaded aboard Odyssey and the boat hitched up, which required another trip to Walmart and the auto parts store for tools and supplies.  I took all my tools onto Vector with us, so I don't even have a wrench on board the bus -- I had to buy a pair of locking pliers to tighten the hitch ball nut.  I got the truck back to the local Enterprise (car, not truck, rental) before the 10:30 deadline and they gave me a ride the 3/4 of a mile back to the storage yard.

Now, the reason why I bought a tire from Steve and went through the hassle of loading onto the bus is that our right-hand tag tire was done, with no tread left and in jeopardy of the belts coming through.  Long time readers will remember that we blew the other tag just a few months ago, on our way to Fort Lauderdale for Trawler Fest.  I don't like to put expensive new rubber on the tags, as I have explained in the past, and used 12R22.5 tires are often hard to come by.  So I bought this take-off from Steve planning to have it mounted up before heading north to Deltaville.

The only heavy-truck tire installer I could find anywhere along my route is in Florence, quite a bit north of here.  (Lots of truck stops advertise heavy tire installation, too, but we know from experience they will not work on Odyssey).  I dialed Snider Tire there into the GPS before I left Hilton Head, and I kept my speed down to under 60 (the limit here is 70), keeping an eye on the tire monitor the whole time.  But poor condition coupled with sitting in the sun, unmoving, for two months took its toll, and the tire blew just ten minutes or so after I got on I-95.



Update:  The tire guy showed up just as I finished the previous paragraph.  That was the end of my free time yesterday, and I am finishing up this post this morning over coffee, parked at the Walmart in Dillon, South Carolina.  It ended up being another very long day yesterday.

To finish the story, the tire guy was there for an hour and a half, so I ended up waylaid on the side of the road for three and a half hours, ironically just a mile and a half from a rest area.  He was clearly not properly equipped for the job, with only one working jack (it takes at least two to change out a tag that has blown), and he ignored all my instructions on how to lift the bus.  Eventually he got the tire changed, but then his jack was trapped.  I ultimately had to rescue him with my own jack.

When all this was done, he told me I owed him $212 for "overage."  So we spent another half hour there while I called Coach Net three times.  Our towing service is supposed to cover 100% of roadside tire changes if you have a mounted spare, and so the only thing I should cover is the mount/dismount and disposal fee.  That's irrespective of how far they have to travel or how much time it takes them to jack up the coach.  Eventually they were able to straighten the billing out and it cost me $35 for the mount/dismount and another $10 for disposal.  But what should have been a half-hour tire change took him an hour, and the billing snafu was the icing on the cake.

I broke down just ten miles or so from my planned lunch and fuel stop, but now it was almost five o'clock.  Somehow in the confusion I bumped the GPS and it lost track of the fuel stop in Walterboro, and I was miles past it when I realized it.  I ended up eating the rest of a bag of chips I had aboard for lunch while I was waiting for service.  After consulting the all-knowing Internet, with Louise's help, we found cheap fuel right here in Dillon, at $3.599 per gallon, and I made it off the road and into the fuel station just before sunset -- once again the trailer lights are not connected.

It was past 8pm when I finally got parked.  I walked over to a hole-in-the-wall Japanese joint for dinner, who unfortunately had no license to sell me an Asahi or Kirin with it.  I had a glass of Malbec at home while I caught up on the day's email and then crashed hard, having been up since 6:30 for an emotionally draining day.

I had hoped to be well into North Carolina for my overnight stop; now I still have 325 miles to go, a good six hours or so.  On top of that I need to dump the tanks.  Before I left, I had researched four free dump stations along the route.  I've already passed two of them -- dumping fell off the priority list after the 3.5-hour delay yesterday, as I absolutely needed fuel before stopping for the night.  There are still two ahead of me, so I have a half-hour stop today as well.  I hope to be back at the boatyard in Deltaville before sundown.

Moving day

We are back at the marina in Savannah, Georgia after our whirlwind trip to Fort Lauderdale.  Today is the big day, the day we officially "move" from Odyssey to Vector. Fittingly, today is also the day the sign company will arrive to remove the old name from the boat and apply the new one; we have a bottle of champagne all set to be sacrificed to Neptune in the official de-naming ceremony, which must be done in the short window while the transom is blank, and tomorrow we will use yet another bottle to christen the boat with her new name.

I actually had planned to post here yesterday morning, with our final Odyssey road-trip report before the big move.  However my laptop froze immediately after I booted it, first cup of coffee in hand.  Thereafter it would not boot at all, and it took me the rest of the day to repair it.  There were some bad spots on the hard drive, and a couple of them ended up in critical Windows files, including the paging file.  I've had two or three similar crashes in the last couple of months, which I had attributed to bad antivirus software, the removal of which had seemed to cure the problem.  I can probably put my preferred antivirus back now, but I will need to get myself a new hard drive -- generally once this kind of decay starts, you can count on it to continue until the drive is completely unusable.

In any case, what I would have said yesterday morning is that we were at a small truck stop in Darien, Georgia (map).  It had the advantage of being right across the street from a Ruby Tuesday, where we ate after a long driving day.  The restaurant turned out to share a parking lot with an outlet mall.  Although half the storefronts in the mall were vacant (not sure if the mall was dying, or brand new), after dinner we stopped in to browse and ended up buying a number of kitchen items for the boat at the kitchenware outlet, as well as two pair of boat shoes at the shoe outlet.  The truck stop adjoined a commercial tire shop and was a fine stop for the night, right where we needed it to be.  We arrived just before sunset.

Monday morning found us at the Walmart in Fort Pierce, Florida (map), a familiar stop. On our last visit there, I wrote that security asked us to park with the other RVs, which were all at the north end of the lot.  This time when we arrived, all the rigs were at the south end, and we simply parked among them rather than tempt fate with security.  Once again there were plenty of rigs, perhaps a dozen or so, and a sort of campground atmosphere had broken out in the lot, with people strolling around among rigs and chatting.  At least we did not see lawn chairs and other camping accoutrements on this visit, as I have noted there before.

After dinner at Cowboys' restaurant next door, where most patrons had crammed into the bar to watch the big game, we went into the store to continue filling our boat outfitting list, since getting bulkier items once we're parked at the marina is tricky.  I ended up buying another half dozen or so large plastic bins for storage in the outside lockers in the Portugese bridge and flybridge coaming, and we added to the growing collection of floor mats, linens, and other items needed in various spots around the boat.  I am certain there are "yachtsmen" who will be horrified to learn that we are outfitting the boat at Walmart.

We got a fairly early start Monday, but our first stop was just a quarter mile away, at the Home Depot.  There we bought two comfortable patio chairs for the aft deck, along with a pair of hardwood folding chairs and matching folding table which we can use on the aft deck and the flybridge.  We had scoped all these items out at our Home Depot visit in Jacksonville on the way south.  The one outdoor chair that came with the boat was just done, and we gave it away.  There had been a pair of them when we first saw her in July, but the other one apparently disintegrated before we arrived for the sea trial.  Between all the storage bins, patio furniture, and other items, the living room of the bus was chock-a-block with boat items by the time we rolled in to the marina.

We only made it as far as Fort Pierce Sunday because we got a late start from Dania Beach.  After my last post here we met up with local friends Steve and Harriett.  They have a Neoplan Spaceliner similar to Odyssey (theirs is longer, wider, and newer), which was recently featured on the Travel Channel in the Mega RV Countdown.  They also have a large boat, and over brunch at nearby Lester's Diner, we got to talking about tenders, and Steve mentioned he had a Novurania RIB he wasn't using and would be happy to sell us. So we ended up heading over to his storage unit after brunch to look at it, and, while we were there, we also looked at the golf cart he just finished modifying to fit in one of his luggage bays, replacing the single-seat ATV he's kept in there thus far.

It ended up being a longer day down south than we had planned, but it was productive, because we decided to buy the tender to replace the one we have now, which needs some work and is not the style we prefer.  It comes with a trailer, so we will end up swapping our existing tender onto the trailer so we can sell them together, which will make things easier for whoever buys it.  Unlike our current one, the "new" dinghy (they are the same age) sports running lights, a steering wheel and throttle lever instead of tiller steering with twist grip, real seats, a VHF radio, a GPS chartplotter, and integral fuel tank.  As we plan mostly to anchor out, all these features will be welcome.

We were pretty happy with the decision, but things got even better when Steve texted us on our way here to say he is interested in the Frigibar chest freezer we have on our aft deck.  It's a fantastic unit; my jaw dropped when I looked them up to see how much they cost new.  The previous owner had it installed on the boat when he fist bought it.  But, as nice as it is, and as handy as it would be when we finally start cruising offshore, it takes up valuable space on the aft deck that we would rather have for dining, cocktails, or just relaxing.  The area barely holds two chairs now, and with the freezer gone we can fit four chairs around the table I mentioned above.  So I had listed it on the Trawler mailing list as well as the local Craigslist.

If Steve ends up taking the freezer we can make the swap with the tender in one trip, and we'll only have a single cash transaction, easier all around.  If I can get a few bucks for the open-style Nautica tender and 25hp Honda that we have now, our out-of-pocket costs for the new tender will be quite reasonable.  That will leave more in the kitty to fix some of the other problems on the boat.

As we rolled into the Savannah area yesterday we stopped at Petsmart for a new automatic litter box and Home Goods for more linens to round out the great outfitting expedition.  The litter box was non-negotiable, as I need to have the cats' necessities handled before we move them aboard later today.  The cats sometimes seem to run our lives, and this will be no exception:  once they are aboard, we will officially be "moved in" and tonight will be our first night on the boat.  We want to get them settled and at least partly acclimated to the boat before our training captain arrives Friday and we shove off Saturday morning for a four day training cruise.

Once we are on the boat our access to the Internet will be much more constrained than it has been on the bus.  I expect my posting frequency to drop considerably.  I also do not plan to post our location in real time any longer, the consensus among cruisers being that it represents something of a security risk.  But stay tuned, because there is lots more to come.  Among other things, I plan to do an Odyssey wrap-up at some point, wherein I will share some of the statistics from eight and a half years on the road.

Great show, but we're exhausted

We are in the oversize vehicle parking at the Outdoor World store in Dania Beach, Florida (map), a familiar stop for us.  We had hoped to be heading north yesterday after leaving Trawler Fest just before the show ended, but the Saturday night scene along the beach, and along Las Olas through downtown made the five mile drive from the hotel to the freeway a 40-minute affair.  As it was then past dark, we abandoned our original plan to make it to the Elks lodge in Delray Beach, just 20 minutes north, especially since we'd ,be fighting our way through the Saturday night crowds in that trendy town, too.

Even though the Outdoor World was really the wrong direction, it's the only convenient alternative in the Fort Lauderdale area on short notice, ever since the Isle Pompano Casino stopped allowing RV parking.  We had a nice dinner in their attached Islamorada Fish Company restaurant, and spent a half hour browsing the marine accessories section of the store.  There is also a Diver's Direct store in this same complex, which is a fun place to browse if you scuba dive.

Our arrival in Fort Lauderdale got off to something of an inauspicious start.  We lingered in Cocoa Beach just long enough to enjoy the morning and take a quick swim, opting to enjoy our time there and take the freeway south, rather than get an early start to take the slower route.  We were on schedule to arrive at the Bahia Mar a bit before 5pm, so we could meet our friends for cocktails, maybe say hello to a few other folks, and then go to dinner together down the street.  As we approached the area on I-95, our fuel supply was getting to the quarter-tank mark, which is close to where the generator pickup tube stops, and we opted to stop for fuel before we arrived at the hotel.  Gas Buddy found us a Hess station with a decent price, and we put in enough to run the generator during our stay.  It was an automotive station, and so I needed to back away from the pumps to get back out when we were done.

Halfway into my backing turn, we heard a loud bang and what sounded like a scrape.  I slammed on the brakes, thinking I had backed right into a car, or maybe a gas pump, but a check of all the mirrors and the rear camera showed there was nothing around us at all.  That's when I noticed the tire monitor was screaming -- we had blown the left tag tire, quite spectacularly.  I think we nearly gave the guy fueling next to us a heart attack.

With the tire in shreds and only a thin strip of rubber between our expensive aluminum rim and the concrete, it was all I could do to roll forward back to the pump so we were not blocking the driveway.  We would be stuck right there until we could get a tire and someone to mount it.

This was really my own fault. The tire was done hundreds of miles ago, but, given that we are just about to lay the bus up for years, I was trying to nurse it along until we move onto the boat, just a few days from now.  It might well have made it, too, if not for the backing turn.  That tends to push the swiveling tag axle in exactly the opposite direction, and, like a grocery cart with a stuck caster, drags the tires sideways along the ground.

That dragging is why we never put good rubber on the tag, and, in this case, it is what ripped the tire open by the already frayed belts.  Of course, I also did not want to put a shiny new tire on it now, but, after talking to our roadside assistance and calling a half dozen places, ther was nary a used tire to be found in our size.
The best we could do was $375 for a Roadmaster, and by the time I paid for after hours mounting and disposal it was half a bill.

Fortunately it was all done in less than two hours, and we pulled into Bahia Mar by 7pm, in plenty of time for dinner at Coconuts a block away. The bottom line is that I gambled and I lost; if I had dealt with this sooner, I probably could have picked up a pair of used tires for the tag axle and replaced both sides at once for the same amount of money.  As it stands now, I still need to change the other side.

One reason we had hoped to arrive at Bahia Mar before 5, in addition to the reasons already mentioned, plus driving in the daylight, is that the hotel now flies the Hilton Doubletree flag, and we were concerned that the parking contractor or policies might have changed since our last visit.   So we approached the gate with some trepidation, especially since finding a backup plan in the dark might be a problem.  Also, we'd miss dinner with friends.

We were relieved, then, when the parking attendant at the gate simply opened it and waved us through.  We proceeded directly to the empty corner of the lot where we usually stay (map), an easy walk to the entire show, but out of everyone's way.  We were relieved, when we pulled out yesterday, to learn that the rate had not changed, and we paid $150 for our three nights.  High for parking, but cheap to be at the Bahia Mar.  That said, the hotel is a bit long in the tooth, and not really up to Doubletree standards, so they have some work ahead of them.

Trawler Fest itself was great, and we enjoyed catching up with many dear friends.  It was interesting being there for the first time as actual boat owners, and we started the conversation with several yards that can help with the work we need done.  We got lots of ideas for deck furniture and other items by looking at boats, and we learned a few things in the seminar program.

This morning we'll have brunch with local friends Steve and Harriet before heading north.  We'd like to be back in Savannah tomorrow night.  Our training captain arrives Friday, and we need to be mostly moved aboard by then.

Closing the loops

Tonight we are at our old familiar spot in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  As usual, no map link in consideration of our very generous host here.  Regular readers may remember that we were in exactly this spot near the end of September when we made a last-minute decision to drive to California, by way of South Dakota, to attend a wedding and then stick around to help my cousins get settled there.  It's good to be back, and it feels like closure for that trip, so that's one loop closed.

This morning found us at a familiar Walmart in Jacksonville, Florida (map), which is somewhat of another loop closed, considering we had to stop there on our way to Savannah to wire the funds for the boat.  We did not quite make it all the way back to the bank, but we passed the exit for it this morning.  This particular Walmart is across the street from a Home Depot, and after dinner last night we walked over and picked up a number of hardware items for the boat that, for whatever reason, we could not find in Savannah at either Home Depot or Lowe's.  We also dropped a few coins in the Walmart on extra dishware, mats, and other items that, again, we had trouble finding in Savannah.

While it's great to be back here, it's hard to stop for just a single night.  We really like it here, just a block from the beach, and walking distance to several stores and nice restaurants.  Louise took me across the street to one of our favorites to celebrate my closing, yet again, of that biggest loop of all, the one around the sun.  It will be difficult to leave here in the morning.  We might make it back for another single night on our trip north, but either way, this is likely either our last or second-to-last night in this spot in the bus, and that makes me a little sad.

The combination of yesterday's shift from unseasonably cold temperatures in the east to unseasonably warm ones (the result of an odd weather pattern) with moving south some 4° in latitude, has caused us to go from running the furnace to running the air conditioning literally overnight.  In Savannah we were running the heat in the evening and again in the morning, and had the electric blanket on.  By the time we woke up in Jacksonville we had the windows open, and on the way here I change to short sleeves and we cranked up the A/C.  By the time we hit Fort Lauderdale I'll be in sandals.

Yesterday we wrapped up whatever we could on the boat, left the keys with the marina staff, and headed out by mid-afternoon.  We met John at the Ford Plantation, where they have a cottage, to return the car they so generously loaned us, and he gave us a little tour.  The grounds, now a gated residential community, were once the winter estate of Henry Ford.  The property is well-manicured and some of it is in much the same state as Ford left it.  We got to walk through Ford's house, now used for guest quarters and dining facilities for club members.  It was very nice of John to give us a tour of the area.  Of course, we also used the opportunity to ask questions about the boat, which we've been writing down as we go along (what does that red switch do?)  I'm hoping we'll be able to have another dinner with John and Laura Lee when we return to Savannah after our training cruise.

Tomorrow we will leave here mid-day and head to Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale.  Our friends Martin and Stephanie, freshly returned from a visit to the factory in China where their new Nordhavn is under construction, also arrive tomorrow afternoon and we plan to have dinner with them.  We're looking forward to catching up with the rest of the Passagemaker/Trawler Fest gang as well, and we've also got about three notebook pages full of things to research while we are at the show.  It should be a very rewarding event, but I expect I will not have much, if any, time to blog until after it is over.

Adios, JP Morgan Chase

 

Over the last few days, it seems we have been doomed to get under way no sooner than mid-afternoon, as we've been spending our mornings on the phone and the computers dealing with boat paperwork.  Today being Saturday, I had hoped to be on the road a little earlier, even given the time zone change, but it was not to be.  We are sitting in the parking lot of a Walmart in Cairo, Georgia (map), and we're stuck here for at least another half hour while I wait for a return phone call.

Even though we had hoped to get them earlier in the week, the wire transfer details for the seller's account came through last night.  This morning, Louise got online to wire the funds, only to be declined.  It turns out that Chase has a dollar limit on online wire transfers that is less than one tenth the amount still owing.  No problem, we figured; we'll just handle it over the phone. She spent about a half hour on the phone with them trying to sort it out, with no luck.

Apparently, Chase stopped accepting wire transfer requests over the phone last month, though we had successfully used this option in the past.  We were lulled into a false complacency by the fact that our online wire transfer to the insurance company yesterday went through without a hitch.  I called Chase back after Louise hung up, and my phone tells me I was on that call for an hour and 17 minutes.

After going through two levels of customer service who both insisted my only option was to go to a branch (the nearest branch to Savannah, Georgia is 153 miles away, in Jacksonville, Florida), I finally got a manager who, while unable to fix the problem, allowed that our own branch might be able to do this for us.  The branch where we opened this account, lo those many years ago when it was Washington Mutual, is in San Jose, California, and will not open today until noon Eastern Time.

So here we are, waiting to see if the San Jose branch will accept our signatures by fax and our instructions by phone to wire the funds to our seller's account in Savannah.  That would allow us to continue in that direction from here, and meet with the seller on the boat Monday to start going over things, per his suggestion.  We had set the official closing for Tuesday, knowing that Monday would be a bank holiday.

If we can not persuade the branch to take care of this, we will have no choice but to divert to Jacksonville.  In addition to adding 110 unnecessary miles to our trip (around 80 bucks), it means we will arrive in Savannah no sooner than Tuesday afternoon, squeezing down the time we have to deal with moving the boat and learning the systems to less than a week before we have to leave for Trawler Fest in Fort Lauderdale.

One thing is for sure:  If we have to drive to Jacksonville to wire these funds, we will be withdrawing our entire balance and closing all our accounts while we are there.  Louise is working right now on alternative banks which can handle our business moving forward.  As painful as it is right now to drive out of our way to find a branch, once we are on the boat it will be well nigh impossible.

Yesterday was also a short travel day, as we spent the entire morning and into the afternoon filling out insurance paperwork.  Among other things, I needed an action plan and a timetable to repair each and every one of the 30-odd deficiencies listed on the final survey report.  We did not get rolling until 2pm, and even though we had hoped to reach Valdosta, this was as far as we got before sunset.  At least there was a great Mexican joint three quarters of a mile from here, and the weather was pleasant enough to walk it.

Thursday was also a short day.  In addition to paperwork in the morning, we lingered a bit to take advantage of the hookups, and stayed nearly to our 2pm checkout time.  We ended up at a Walmart in Enterprise, Alabama (map) Thursday night.  It was not listed as No Overnight Parking in our most recent Walmart directory, but there were new signs in the parking lot proclaiming that fact when we arrived.  It was already past dark, and we did not want to drive another half hour to the Elks lodge in Dothan, so I went into the store to see if we could get permission.  They sent us to a far corner of the lot and let us spend the night, and I rewarded them by buying a camcorder in the morning, so we can record the systems walk-through on the boat.

We've been really enjoying US-84, a mostly new road for us.  It is part of the "El Camino East-West Corridor" which stretches all the way to El Paso, and if we do not divert to Jacksonville, by the time we arrive in Savannah we will have done most of the corridor's 1,730-mile length on this trip.  If we do divert, we will turn off US-84 in Valdosta to head south.

Photo by striatic, used under a Creative Commons license.

An unpleasant job

 

We are at the Walmart in Brookhaven, Mississippi (map), the second Walmart in as many days.  Actually, the second in as many hours, as yesterday morning found us at the Walmart in Natchez, Mississippi (map), just over an hour west of here.  While we've been doing a planned four hours of driving each day, we are ahead of schedule, so yesterday's meager progress is not a problem, and there was a very good reason for it.

We are now undeniably in "the east," having crossed the Mississippi at the tail end of Monday's drive.  Along with the other differences between the east and the west, which I attempted to describe in Sunday's post, one of the things that happens as we move further east is that free, pleasant places to park become much more scarce.  While we've spent many of our nights thus far this trip in remote roadside picnic areas and turnouts, that sort of parking is impossible in the east, and we tend to spend most traveling nights in the parking lots of Walmarts, truck stops, and other businesses.

Immediately after crossing the river into Natchez there is a visitor center on the north side of the highway, and we stopped there to use their free dump station and fill our water tank.  We've spent the night there more than once in the past, but we wanted something flatter on this pass, as our air compressor works extra hard in freezing weather, so we tend to shut it off overnight.  Rather than overtax the levelers, we moved along to the Walmart on the other side of town.

It was there that we noticed some wetness on the floor around the toilet.  We had just completely cleaned it, as we always do, at the dump station, and the complicated air/water sequence system in the back of the unit sometimes "burps" some fresh water out of its anti-siphon valve, so this was not too unusual, but I had the disturbing feeling that this was sewage, not fresh water.  Since we were right there at Walmart, I ran into the store for a bottle of red food coloring, an invaluable diagnostic tool where such matters are concerned.

Within a half hour or so we had a result, which was that water was somehow leaking from the bowl.  At least it was not coming from the discharge line, downstream of the hopper.  Fortunately, Walmart's bathrooms were a short walk away, and as long as the bowl was clean, the very slow drip was mostly harmless.  Good thing, because I was not about to start such a major repair project at the very end of the day.  We disinfected everything and sacrificed a rag to the cause, since emptying the bowl of water is not an option with this model.

Now, we have many redundant systems on Odyssey, and so there are very few failures that require immediate attention, but the toilet is a single point of failure.  (The boat will have two of these, fortunately.)  I knew I'd be spending most of my Tuesday trying to fix this problem, and that, depending on what was wrong, it might take all day or even longer. We did not want to end up in the same Walmart lot two nights in a row, and I thought I might need to make a hardware store run for sealant or fasteners, so in the morning we moved along to this spot just an hour down the road.

It's a 24-hour store, so we knew that if anything went off the rails during the project, we'd still have bathrooms nearby.  And there is a Home Depot just the other side of the freeway, a long walk or a short scooter ride away.  We arrived here just after noon, after having spent the morning researching stopping options, repair strategies, and backup plans. Louise went into the store to buy me a box of disposable nitrile gloves while I organized the tools.

I will spare you all the gory details of this unpleasant job, other than to say that the problem was ultimately nothing more serious than that the two nuts holding the hopper to the bowl, via a pair of J-bolts, had worked loose over nearly nine years of travel and vibration.  I was able to remove them just with my fingers and a hex socket, and they are supposed to be torqued to 4-6 foot-pounds.  Having gone to all the effort to remove the toilet and flip it over for access, though, it made sense to finish the disassembly and make sure there was not also a problem with the seals.

As it turned out, the seals had calcium buildup, a problem we've dealt with constantly in the fresh water system over nearly nine years of taking on all manner of hard water around the country.  We ended up soaking the seals in vinegar and reconditioning them for re-use, as, oddly, the hopper seals are not included in the master rebuild kit I carry.  I also took the opportunity to open the hopper (yuck) and adjust the flapper seal that had come partly unseated a few weeks ago, as well as adjust and lubricate the air mechanism.

In the end, we put no new parts in the unit, other than reconditioning the seals.  Once I had it back together, with all exterior parts and surfaces cleaned and disinfected and bolts properly torqued, it is working as new with no leaks.  As complicated and expensive as these things are, they are pretty bullet-proof, and in nine years the only thing I've had to replace/rebuild was the anti-siphon valve.  I think that's better luck than most; lots of folks in the Wanderlodge community, where these toilets were factory equipment, seem to have had to rebuild them at about the seven-year mark.

Whoever buys Odyssey won't have to worry about this now for another few years, and the mostly-unused master rebuild kit stays with the unit.  And many thanks to Microphor for publishing all their repair and service information on line -- if we had had to go find a service center to do this, it would have cost us at least two days and probably a couple hundred miles.  In a few minutes, we will be back under way and headed for Alabama, with a stop in Laurel, MS to fill up with the cheapest diesel we will see from here to the east coast.

Photo by andy in nyc, used under a Creative Commons license.

Leaving Texas

We are at Rudy's Truck Stop in Tenaha, Texas (map), where US-84 crosses US-59/US-96.  We had hoped to stay at a lovely picnic area a few miles west of town, but trees to the south would have blocked our satellite shot, and there is no 3G coverage here. We are nothing if not Internet junkies.  Our map shows another picnic area closer to Joaquin, but it was past sundown and we were pretty much done when we arrived here, and there was no guarantee we would get on-line there, either.  I did go into the C-store last night for snacks, making us legitimate customers.

One consequence of taking this somewhat more northerly route is that it has been cold at night, and sometimes during the day.  We've had the heat on all morning, and we ran it most of the evening as well.  Fortunately, our heater is very efficient, and even in this near-freezing weather, we get about five hours of heat from a single gallon of diesel fuel.

Our route yesterday did take us along the route of the historic Texas State Railroad, now a tourist attraction running steam excursions.  We passed the terminus in Palestine without stopping, but my curiosity got the better of me and we pulled in to the eastern terminus at Rusk.  The trains do not start running until March, but the campgrounds are open.  It was too early to stop, neither did we want to spend $32 for power for the night.  But it was a nice campground, and it would be a great stop when the train is running.

Today we will cross the Sabine River into Louisiana, leaving Texas behind.  We should end the day somewhere near the Mississippi, though it's hard to tell right now on which side we'll be.

Out of The West

Friday I posted about wide open spaces and our beloved Texas picnic areas, but on this trip, that is now mostly behind us.  As Potter Stewart famously said about obscenity, "the west" is difficult to define, but we know it when we see it.  While folks who've never made the journey might think of the dividing line as being some well-defined geographic or cartographic feature, perhaps the Continental Divide, or the Mississippi River, or even the Mountain/Central time zone boundary, for us it is a fuzzy swath up the middle of the country.  To the west are mostly wide open spaces, mountains, and open range dotted with towns and cities at long intervals, and to the east is mostly agriculture, with towns coming at closer and closer intervals as one moves further east, until there is no space at all between them nearest the eastern seaboard.

Here in Texas that fuzzy swath occurs somewhere around US-281, which runs from the Oklahoma border at Wichita Falls to the Mexican border at McAllen.  Yesterday morning found us still in the west, at another picnic area just outside the little town of Robert Lee (map) near the Colorado River (the "other" one).  Friday's drive was lovely and relaxing, even though I fought crosswinds a good part of the day.  We "crossed our wake," as boaters would say, in Sterling City along US-87, but mostly we covered new ground.

Yesterday's drive was also lovely, under a sky full of spectacular clouds.  But as we crossed over that fuzzy boundary from west to east, the little towns started coming more and more quickly, and progress slowed.  The speed limit on these roads is still 75 between towns (we do them at 60 or so), but it drops to 35-45 in town.  This is the reason that routing software works so hard to put us onto those limited-access highways that we so often shun.  As we move now through the southern portion of the great plains, these little towns become part and parcel of our daily scenery, and many even offer overnight RV parking right in town.

Yesterday we had our sights set on one such town, Gatesville, which our little guide from the Texas DOT said had a city park with sewer, water, and electric hookups and offered two free nights' stay.  We found the park, which, had we stayed, we would have had all to ourselves, right along the Leon River.  But signs said RV camping was $20 per night, with no mention of two free, and told us to pay at the police station.  A quick phone call revealed that they had done away with the "two nights free" policy after local campground owners made a stink with the city council, and so we opted to move on.  Too bad for the steakhouse in town, where we had planned to eat.

Instead we came another 40 miles here to a Walmart in Waco, Texas (map).  We passed a pair of picnic areas on the way, but our in-house food supply was running low, and cell coverage was spotty, so we kept rolling.  Once here we walked over to Rosati's Pizza right next door for dinner; despite the name, they had plenty of entree options that were not pizza, as well as a full bar and table service.

As long as we are here at the store, we will run in shortly for more provisions before continuing east.  We are now ahead of schedule, so we can relax a bit in the slower-moving east.  I expect tonight we will still be in Texas, but rather near the state line at the Sabine River.  Apparently it will snow there overnight, so we'll be giving the Webasto a workout.

Wide open spaces

We are at a roadside picnic area on TX-302, adjacent to the town of Mentone, Texas (map).  There is nothing in town except for oilfield support, and nothing in any direction for miles except open range and oil wells.  There is very little oilfield traffic overnight, so it was dark and quiet here.  Monuments here erected in 1936 and 1968, respectively, tell us this spot was on both the Goodnight-Loving trail and the Butterfield Stage route.  We knew we would find a picnic area here, because they are marked on our older AAA map; we were dismayed to find the markings have been removed on the current edition that we picked up in NY this month, along with the symbols for county seats.  We'll be holding on to both editions.

Yesterday morning found us in El Paso, Texas, at a familiar Walmart (map), one of two that we frequent on our way through town.  We parked in the back, as we have in the past, and walked across the street to local icon Leo's of El Paso Mexican restaurant for dinner, an old favorite of ours.  Afterward, I walked over to the Cinemark theaters nearby to see Skyfall, while Louise stayed home.  As luck would have it, security came by while I was away and asked us to move around to the front parking lot, which I did when I got home and after Louise was already in bed.

That was our second Walmart of the day, as earlier we had stopped at the one in Deming, NM for provisions.  Had we realized we were going to stop in El Paso for the night we might have forgone that stop, but as it was, that put us on I-10 from Lordsburg to Deming, where we dropped south to our preferred route of NM-9 at Columbus.  At least NM-11 between the turnoff to Rock Hound and NM-9 was new ground for us. Between the provision stop and the two slower state routes, we were late enough into El Paso that we just decided to stop there for the night.  Well, the siren call of Leo's didn't help, either.

Just as well, because we were also having trouble deciding between a more northerly route due east out of town, or the southern route involving I-10 to Van Horn where we could bail off on US-90.  We knew for sure we did not want to just stay on I-10.  We've done the US-90 route several times now, and even though it would be warmer and a bit more comfortable down there, we ultimately decided on the more northerly route because it will take us across some new ground, and it's a bit shorter.

While there is cheaper fuel in both San Antonio and Houston, on this more northerly route, El Paso was as good as it gets, so we detoured to a Valero station on the southeast end of the city for 200 gallons of $3.589 diesel, about as much as we could fit.  Right now one of our credit cards is giving us 5% cash back at fuel stations, which eased the pain a bit.

From El Paso to the Guadalupe mountains we followed the now-familiar US-62; long-time readers may remember we got snowed on over night at a picnic area on this stretch.  Today's photo was taken at the next picnic area south of the snowy one. Just before the NM state line, we turned east on Ranch 652 to Orla, where a short bit of US-285 brought us to TX-302.  We crossed the Pecos just a few hundred feet west of here; the river is just a trickle this far north.

Today we will continue to zig-zag our way across west Texas on ranch and state highways, crossing I-20 in Midland.  Our goal is to join US-84 in Santa Anna, Texas, and US-84 will take us all the way to Savannah.

Time bandits

It seems I am perpetually apologizing for late posts on the blog, and today I missed posting this morning because I got wrapped up in some drama in the Phoenix environs, which I will share in a moment.  That said, this morning found us at the Lone Butte Casino in Chandler, Arizona (map), a familiar stop.  It was a bit off our route, involving about a ten mile detour to the south, but we wanted to connect with friends in Chandler.

I remembered this casino had a nice restaurant on site, but, unfortunately, they are closed Mondays.  So we ended up piling into their car and driving a few miles to Va Bene, a Chandler restaurant and wine bar that was actually quite nice.  We had a great dinner and a great time catching up.  The casino is very welcoming to RVers, perhaps to a fault, so we knew we would be comfortable there.

Speaking of "to a fault," we noticed quite a few rigs in the lot that look like they've settled in for the long haul, possibly the whole season.  Rigs were surrounded by mats, chairs, BBQs, generators, and what-not, tow vehicles detached, as if they were in a campground.  Long-time readers will remember I ranted about this at the tribe's other casino, the original Wild Horse Pass, in a post here in 2008.  Eventually, the tribe moved that casino to newer, fancier digs, and when they did, they clamped down hard on RV parking, as I wrote here in 2010.





Before the move of Wild Horse Pass, this casino at Lone Butte got little RV traffic, but with the current restrictions over there, apparently many of the offenders have discovered this place and are back to their old ways.  I predict that it is not long before RV parking here becomes just as restrictive as at the tribe's other properties.  Clearly they are tolerating it for now, as the lot is patrolled regularly by security officers, a pair of whom (on motorcycles, no less) circled Odyssey last night a few times, no doubt discussing how odd it is.



On our way into town we stopped at a gas station a few blocks (which, in Phoenix, means a few miles) south of the freeway for $3.589 diesel.  By the time we were done fueling, we decided we did not have enough time to swing north to see if the motorcycle shop where we consigned the scooter was even still there, a circumstance that proved fortuitous later as it would have been a 30-mile detour for naught.  Instead we proceeded directly to the casino, which gave us about an hour before our dinner date.

In the bit of time I had before dinner, and another two hours or so after we came home, I ruminated about the scooter and spent a good deal of effort on line tracking down the owner of the shop.  This morning, instead of blogging or getting anything else done, I spent another couple of hours on that project, including calling the shop's next door neighbor, a motorcycle training center, who confirmed that the shop had closed its doors sometime in 2011.

A call to the Washington Department of Licensing this morning determined that the scooter had been registered out of state in July of that year, so it was apparently sold.  I am giving the shop owner the benefit of the doubt, on the assumption that he tried to mail us a check at our now-defunct mail service in Washington, but I really need to speak to him.  He's now a salesman at a Phoenix-area car dealership, but he called in sick today.  I also left a message on his wife's cell phone.  I hope to reach him sometime this week to find out what happened to the scooter or our money.

In any case, that kept us in Chandler until well after noon.  If the scooter was still unsold and sitting someplace in the greater Phoenix area, we wanted to deal with it, up to and including possibly renting a trailer to haul it away, before we left town.  Now that it seems most likely that it was sold in 2011 and we simply did not receive the money, we got back on the road as we need to keep moving along.  I covered my bases with a voice message to the Phoenix PD auto theft task force, in case we have trouble getting our compensation.

Between all the scooter drama, dinner with friends, and dealing with insurance and documentation for the boat, I did not even have time to answer all my emails, let alone blog.  Tonight and tomorrow I will try to catch up on the backlog.

I am surprised no one has yet commented here on the Neoplan Spaceliner, similar to ours, that appeared on the Travel Channel Sunday night on a program called Mega RV Countdown.  That bus belongs to our long-time friend Steve in Fort Lauderdale, and I posted a photo of our two coaches together at a bus rally a little over a year ago.  Steve and the Travel Channel folks had called us back in July to see if we could bring Odyssey down to Fort Lauderdale too, to do a kind of two-for-one deal with them on Neoplan Spaceliners for the show, which I wrote about in this post.  Ironically, one of the key reasons we did not pursue that was a jaunt to Savannah that same day for our very first look at the boat we ultimately bought.

Nevertheless, it was great to see Steve and his coach on the program, and, in hindsight, I am glad he did it solo.  If the program comes around again, you should try to catch it. Steve also has a boat, and I'm sure we'll be seeing a good bit of him whenever we pass through Fort Lauderdale.

Tonight we are at a small turnoff just off US-70 in New Mexico, about a dozen miles northwest of Lordsburg (map).  Despite the late start, we made our full four hours today. We are actually parked on what looks to be a very, very old right-of-way for the highway, mostly reclaimed by nature except for short bursts at irregular intervals.  Wherever a ranch gate or DOT stockpile is located, they have added a small connector to the modern highway.  This stretch of 70 is pretty deserted at night, so we should have a quiet night. Today's drive over the Superstition Mountains along US-60 and through the mining communities of Miami and Globe was, as always, spectacular.  Tomorrow night, we should be in Texas.

When blogs converge

 

We are parked on Salome Road near where it converges with Interstate 10, in Arizona (map).  This is further than I had planned to get yesterday, having expected to stop along AZ-72 northwest of its intersection with US-60, but even with the time change, it was too early to stop in that section.  Just as well, because we have good 3G coverage here near the Interstate and I had a number of boat-related phone calls to make this morning.

That leaves us just an hour and a half to Chandler today, where we have friends and will stop for the night.  On the way, we will fuel up, and possible swing by the motorcycle shop where we left our Honda Metropolitan scooter on consignment nearly four years ago.  We have not been able to reach them, and fear the scooter (and our money) may be gone forever.

A number of our readers have, apparently, been surfing over to the blog of our new boat's current owner, John.  Not surprising, since you all are a resourceful lot, and when Louise attached a photo of the boat to my blog post a few days ago, she used the unedited version with the boat's name clearly visible on the transom.  She chose the very same photo that I used when I first blogged about this boat back in November, but back then, I carefully erased the name, not wanting to jeopardize negotiations or otherwise jinx the deal.  (That did not stop a number of people on the bus boards from finding it anyway.)   It's really the best overall shot of her we have at the moment.

At any rate, John noticed the spike in hits there and posted a warm welcome to our readers, so those of you who have not already been over there might go check it out.  I read every word of his web site, and many of the posts two or three times, before we decided to make an offer on the boat.  He writes well, with a fairly dry sense of humor, and was very frank about the boat's weaknesses as well as strengths.  It gave us great confidence that we were buying a boat with no intentionally hidden issues, and one where the major issues that had already come to light were addressed in a professional and robust manner.

I think John was somewhat surprised that I spent so much time there, right down to remembering the nicknames of his crew.  The story of his self-delivery from where he bought the boat in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin to Dog River Marina in Mobile, Alabama (where we once spent several days repairing Odyssey), in particular, is well worth the read.

And to any of John's readers who clicked through his link to this blog, I also extend a warm welcome.  We will continue to blog our adventures, both bus and boat, right here in these pages, so if you were following the boat you can do so here.  Does anyone want to buy a bus?

Photo by mrlerone, used under a Creative Commons license.

Final day in California

We are at the visitor center in Yucca Valley, California (map), a familiar stop for us.  The visitor center allows RVs to park for a single night in the rearmost portion of the lot; we had the place to ourselves last night.  We had an absolutely gorgeous drive yesterday afternoon over the Tehachapi Pass and through the high desert, with a dusting of snow visible on the mountaintops.

Yesterday morning found us at another familiar stop in Bakersfield, California, across from a row of hotels (map).  We've stayed there before, as well, and most recently, Louise stayed there without me on her cross-country jaunt to Mississippi to respond to flooding there, while I was dealing with tornadoes in Alabama.  On that trip she desperately needed the WiFi provided by some of the hotels, and on this trip we also took advantage of the same.  In the last year, though, most of them have restricted access to hotel guests.

As we were walking back from dinner at the nearby Black Angus steak house, we noticed a massage joint in the intervening strip mall, and we made appointments for a pair of massages yesterday morning.  My massage was just so-so, but the price was right, and Louise seems to have faired a bit better.  We'd been talking about getting massages the whole time we were in the bay area, and particularly after our whirlwind cross-country car trip, but we never managed to get around to it, so it was nice to have the convenience of a place in walking distance.

Speaking of the time we spent in the area, we arrived in California October 4, so yesterday marks a full three months that Odyssey has been in the state, which I am pretty sure is a record for us.  We ourselves clocked somewhat fewer days than that, owing to the dozen or so days we spent on the great dog-retrieval and boat inspection trip.  We will finally roll out of California this afternoon.  Good thing we like it here, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing -- California requires us to report the number of days we spend within the state each year, and if we go over the magic number, we owe them tax.

In all that time, we spent just $125 on parking and hookups (and an additional $24 for storage for the 12 days we were gone).  That covered seven days of the three months; the rest of the time my reckoning is that we spent an average of $8-$9 per day to be parked on the street or in various parking lots.  We went through about half a tank of diesel fuel, 150 gallons or so, in that three months.

Tonight we will be in Arizona, after crossing the Colorado in Parker.

New year, new boat

We are parked on the side of the road, where the trucks park, across from the Patterson Pass Business Park in Tracy, California (map).  There are no retail services here whatsoever, with the sole exception of a gas station with C-store and several diesel lanes at the corner of Mountain House Road.  The massive complex of buildings on both sides of the intersection here constitute the northern California distribution centers for many major retailers, including Costco, Jack-in-the-Box, and many more.

We're here because we wanted to have one last lunch with Louise's mom and dinner with my cousins on our way out of town.  We otherwise wrapped up in the bay area Wednesday with dinner in San Francisco, where Louise's cousins from North Carolina had just arrived for a conference.  Louise's dad and stepmom came up from Monterey for the occasion, as did another cousin from southern California, and so we got in five visits in one fell swoop.  New Year's Day was the regular Tuesday night dinner with the motorcycle crowd, and several turned out for our farewell dinner.

I had hoped to post here sooner than today, but we got incredibly busy once we landed back in the bay area.  We had a lovely Christmas dinner at my cousins' apartment in Oakley, and the delivery of Simon-the-dog turned out to be their best Christmas gift of all. He was so happy to see them -- we thought he was happy throughout the whole trip, but that was nothing compared to how excited he got when we walked through the door. Afterward we fell exhausted into bed in a nearby hotel room, and they ran us back to the bus, in the south bay, Wednesday morning.

Odyssey actually does fairly well parked by herself, and, near as I can tell, the generator did not even run in our absence other than the ten minute exercise period every other day. The solar panels kept the fridge cold and the air compressor running.  To be fair, we had spent the day before our departure at an Elks lodge, plugged in to 20 amps to top up the batteries.  It did take us a couple of hours to start everything up and extricate ourselves from our parking spot before heading out for a quick Boxing Day dinner with Louise's mom.  We spent the next couple of nights parked on the street.

Most of the week was spent cramming in farewell visits with a variety of folks, and dealing with the fallout of the various reports we had commissioned regarding the boat. By mid-week, however, the temperatures had dropped to the low 50s in the daytime, dipping into the 30s at night.  We were starting to spend more on fuel than it would cost for hookups, and we spent four nights at the Santa Clara Elks Lodge, a familiar stop for us, with 30-amp power to keep us warm.  We moved back to the street in Sunnyvale Wednesday morning so we could walk home from the train station after our visit in SF.

We also managed to fit in two whole days with my cousins, taking an excursion to Old Town Sacramento on the train, wherein we boarded in Santa Clara and they in Martinez, and a drive up the coast from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay.  They will be full-fledged Californians in no time.  They also had some good news on the house front, and they now have a fully signed deal with a closing later this month; the bank had to drop the price based on appraisal.

Which brings me to our own bit of news.  By the messages I have been getting, lots of people are wondering about the boat and where things stand.  We had a solid two days of inspections when we were in Savannah, including about a three-hour sea trial, and the last of the reports came in while we were en route to California.  Not surprisingly, there are lots of problems.  Some of those we anticipated, and were already factored in to the offer we made.  Many others were new findings for us, and they meant going back to the negotiating table to sort them out.  The list is too extensive to detail here, but I will likely be sharing much of it in due course.

The good news here is that the seller is a genuinely nice guy and was entirely reasonable through the whole process.  When we arrived he was already in the process of having some issues with the boat addressed, and some of the more obvious defects that arose during the sea trial he is already having fixed.

We all agreed that the reports would come back so close to the holiday that we should extend the acceptance date to after New Years and push the closing back a week, to January 22.  Louise and I used a lot of the time in the car to talk through the findings and where we stood, and after Christmas we started working on the terms of a conditional acceptance.  The one issue that remained to be addressed was determining the source of some fuel in the lube oil that was discovered during sample analysis.

The mechanics finally looked at the engine on Wednesday of this week, having been off between Christmas and New Years.  They found no issues and recommended re-sampling after the boat had been run another 50 hours.  We factored this in with the other issues we had already discussed, and made a conditional acceptance, based on an additional discount off the agreed price, yesterday afternoon.  The seller agreed to our revised terms and it looks like we just bought ourselves a boat.  Formal closing will be sometime between the 15th and the end of the month.

Our departure from the bay area yesterday was predicated on trying to be in Savannah for a closing and delivery around the 22nd or so, with enough time to drive down to Fort Lauderdale for Trawler Fest on the 30th.  Now that the deal is done, we are very glad we said our final goodbyes and got on the road, because the seller could easily ask for a 1/15 closing, and then we'd own a boat that we couldn't get to for another week or so.  But all is well that ends well and we now have a comfortable two and a half weeks to cross the country.

We need to get rolling to make our mileage for today, but I will fill in more details about the boat here as time permits in the next couple of weeks.  I've been reluctant to post too much information here before the deal was done -- we learned from our previous oh-so-close experience not to get people (ourselves included) too charged up about a deal that might not close.