A Winter Break In Cuba

2013 was a very very long winter. It is now mid-April and the ice from a major storm is still melting in some places while others are awaiting their power to be fixed. The combination of high winds and heavy ice downed many power lines and poles inthe area. Taking this into consideration I was looking at some of our winter vacation pictures and thought I would share.
This winter we took a trip to Santiago de Cuba. We love Cuba for its beautiful beaches and freindly people. We have journeyed to Varadero, Havana, Cayo Largo, Cayo Coco and Santiago. The diving in Cuba varies greatly from place to place. Santiago definitely tops the list due mainly to its location. It is on the very Southern tip on the Carribean Sea side.

The diving here provides many of the same sea life you would see all over the Carribean. In fact across the water from here in a staright line South is Jamaica.
Dive operators are government run of course. We brought all our own equipment but their rental stuff looked fine. The inital dives are $30 per person per tank but decrease as you dive more. Thus it is not cheap but hey there is no competition.

Beaches in Cuba tend to have the softest white sand. My favorite beach location anywhere is Cayo Largo, Cuba. Walking in the sand there feels like walking in powder(icing) sugar. It is super soft, super white and goes on for miles. No one really lives on this Cayo. They fly staff in and out of the resorts for 20 day "tours of duty". The only exception are a couple scientists who live in the turtle reserve. We helped them release the baby turtles at sunset for their best chance of survival.

Come on Spring !!

The calender says it is Spring..the weather man ..not so much. We are trying to arrange with the trucking company and crane to move the boat back near the water in about 10 days. At this moment the cradle is frozen solid to the ground..urg...the forecast says the daytime temperatures should go above freezing all week so we will have to put some salt down and try to get it thawed out a bit.
Once we get it back near the water we will need a couple days with temps above 60 F to get the last coat of bottom paint on before getting it in the water. Until that happens we will put all the topsides back together...lifelines, pulpits, new arch, wind power, solar panels...etc. If the weather cooperates with us we could be floating in just a few weeks !!
In the meantime I have been busy buying myself some "toys". I have always wanted a little kayak to explore the areas around where we anchor. Kyle's argument has been no space for said kayak. So last week when we walked into the marine store and saw an inflatable one on clearance for a mere $100 ( originally $349) I became the proud owner of it :)

For the past couple years as I have looked at my Walker Bay dingy in the basement of my house I have dreamed of getting a sail kit for it. The price has always been prohibitive $850. But I figure it is better to sail around little bays then use all that gas all the time. Plus the main engine and generator are both diesel so I do not want to carry a lot of gas around just for the dingy outboard. Our boat has a 7 ft draft so in many places we need to anchor further out than we would like. Well I guess after thinking about it for 2 yrs my husband decided it was not such a bad idea. So we bought it !!

What else did we do ?

Besides new decks,

*the boat was given all new electrical panels and wiring

*new plumbing and heads

*new ports and windows

*new matresses

*new headliners (ceiling)

*new shower

*dive compressor and dive shop room

*new kitchen, with back splash, new stove, new double sink

*new bottom barrier coat and paint

*new logos, new curtains, new freezer, new washing machine

I am sure there is more on this list which the many bruises and scars on my husbands body can attest too. www.benger.blogspot.com

Refit Highlights

What did we do ? No, no, no ...what didn't we do is more to the point.

The first and largest task was replacing the decks. The previous owner had removed some of the damaged teak decks but not all. The rest had to be removed.

A new core was installed and then much new apoxy/fiberglass was laid.

With new cores, paint and kiwi grip they should last us a long time !

Refitting the Boat

Sorry it has been a while since a post on this page. However my husband has been very busy posting on his blog www.benger.blogspot.com . An account of the complete process of refitting a 30 yr old boat for ocean living is available on that blog.

We pulled our boat out of the water with the plan for a 2 year refit. Fortunately for us a friend allowed us to use his farm to store and work on the boat. Unfortunately that farm is a great distance away for the water. Thus the boat has to be trucked then craned into its new temporary home.

Sailing Home from South Carolina to Canada

We drove to South Carolina to see what we hoped would become our new boat. We also had made arrangements to stop and see many boats in States along the way from Ontario Canada to South Carolina. One we entered in the rain and got more wet inside than out. Some were obviously much older and worse for wear than the internet pictures posted of them were.  There really are all kinds of vessels out there for sale and all kinds of people selling them.  After meeting with the Broker and owner of the boat we had come to see, we were hooked. Stepping onto this vessel just felt like coming home. It would take a little elbow grease and a few bucks to get it into the shape we needed for a liveaboard but the bones were there. The hull was the most stable we had been on. It is a 45 ft pilothouse ketch built by Micheal Dufour (prior to Dufour being bought out). It was made in order to get the Lords of London Seal of Approval, in the style my husband would artfully call "built like a brick s***house". Solid as a rock.  She had brand new unused sails, a watermaker, solar panels, wind generator, new transmission, new prop, and that blessed second helm in the pilot house. So we negotiated a price that we could live with knowing how much we would need to still spend on her. And she was ours !
We headed back home to Canada to call the broker who helped us import our Catalina a few years earlier. He said it would be $200 to him and tax on the sale price to the Government and we would be all set to sail her home. Checking flight prices we decided it would be cheaper for the 3 of us to drive to SC plus we could then bring our own boating equipment which we would feel safer having. But we needed a vehicle to do so. Internet to the rescue again. We bought an old van for $400, loaded it with our our boat stuff, told our daughter to jump in and off we went to Georgetown South Carolina. It was a 1550 km drive and cost us $200 for gas. We later sold the van for $200 before we left so that gave our gas money back :)
We did a detailed daily blog of this entire trip home  www.kyleandshelley.blogspot.com  but the basics I will include here.
We took 3 days to clean up the boat and make it ours. Then we spent from July 16 thru to August 10 bringing her home to Canada.  We travelled 1297 nm. Our route started in Georgetown SC and continued thru Mrytle Beach SC, Wrightsville Beach, Beaufort NC, Norfolk VA, Atlantic City NJ, NY NY, up the Hudson River thru the Catskills were we demasted to enter the Erie Canal, Erie Canal, Oswego NY and then down Lake Ontario to Home.

 Photos Below -Entering NY City, Demasted and traveling in the fog up the Erie Canal, The Lengendary $400 van, passing Lady Liberty to enter NY Habour, motoring up the Hudson River, New York City

Time for a Larger Vessel

After spending a few years on our Catalina 36 we decided that in order to live full time aboard we needed to upgrade. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Catalina. If our intentions were to stay in the Great Lakes and use it every summer, we would have kept it forever. But these are not our intentions. As of the writing of this blog input we have 698 days til "retirement". For us that means we plan to sail south and then eventually east...who knows where or for how long ?? Since we cannot actually afford "retirement" and are way too young for pensions we need to have any boat upgrades paid for now while we are still gainfully employed.
So we made the obligatory lists...his and hers....he wants electonic "gadgets" of all sorts and more sail options ..I want a new stove, a second head and a shower...you see how this goes :) Then we compared, altered (by this I mean choose what we could not afford to live without montarily) and finalized our plan to boat shop.
Most importantly was how big of a boat could we handle with just the two of us and also afford to keep buy and float ?
As Canadians, we soon realised that anyone with a boat in our area believed because their boat was "not used" part of the year and "lived only in fresh water" that it was worth a great deal more than a similar boat south of the border. NONSENSE ! We had purchased our Catalina south of the border, in Massachusetts, had a very easy transaction and loved the boat. We could and certainly would explore that option again.
At first we thought we might like a Catamaran. We searched and scoured the internet. Again looking for something we could afford that fit our list of needs/wants. We found a model we really liked and discovered there were two for sale. One in Florida and one in Texas. Florida is a quick cheap flight from our home near Toronto Canada so we set off to see it. We arranged ahead of time for both a sea trail and a haul-out with a surveyor. Sea trail went well. Off to a good start we got quite excited. The next day the surveyor gave us the bad news....delamination in more than a dozen places in the hull. We asked for a reduced rate in the price realising it was going to cost thousands to repair. Owner said no, we walked or rather flew away back to Canada.
Really liking this particular boat we decided to try the one in Texas. We could have just paid someone to just look at it for us but after the first one my husband wanted to see for himself. Off he went to Texas. Guess what ?? Same problem !!! So on that note we scrapped the Catamaran idea and went back to searching for a monohull.

 After much debate, time and money we found her ! A 45 ft Dufour Ketch with a pilot house. It was living in Georgetown, South Carolina.