My Office This Week: Getting High at the Brunswick Landing Marina
Posted on July 25th, 2010 by Jay
I caught this photo with my iPhone the other day as Jay was up the mast of S/V September Song installing a new wind transducer. I get this view pretty often.
Of the two of us, he is the fearless one. Never have I been up a mast, and I don’t plan on starting anytime soon. Every time a mast job comes around, Jay jokes and says “I’ll let Brooke go up this time”. Oh no, not happening!
Fortunately this job didn’t require him to hang up there too long – only about an hour. I think the longest he’s ever dangled in the air has been between three and four hours at a time. He always comes down and has to sit down for a while to let his legs gain feeling again!
The record for tallest mast climbed so far is about 63 feet above the boat’s deck. I think we’d have to work someplace that has much larger vessels to ever beat that height!
I’ll leave you with a few more views:
View from the top of S/V Surprise
Radar work on S/V Angel of London
Jay and I just returned from a week of “workcationing” (verb: the act of cramming a job and a vacation into the same trip). Our customers and new friends, Mickey and Dana, invited us down to Tampa to complete a laundry list of jobs that we started when their boat was up in Brunswick. So, for the last week we’ve been living on a 42′ Golden Star Trawler. This is a departure from the norm for us, as we live on land in a house that’s much larger than we actually need. With such a drastic change of location, we quickly learned the differences – good and bad – that living on a boat has to offer.
For the ladies (and a few of you metrosexual gentleman), the first con I ran across was the shower! It’s small, you have to hold the shower head, and the hot water runs out long before you are ready to exit the shower while you’re still conditioning your hair. Ughhh. This I could definitely do without. Give me a garden tub with jets and a huge shower head any day.
Continuing on the female front is the galley. The stove and the sink are much too small to do much more than a one pot at a time meal. Any pot larger than a small saucepan is far too large for the coaster sized burner and you have to constantly stir/rotate the pot as to cook the entire contents of the pot. Then when you’re done cooking and eating the dishes must be immediately washed in a sink that’s about as big as a shoebox. At home, most of the time anyway, I’m far too lazy to wash the dishes right after I’ve cooked, but there’s plenty of counter and sink space to let them wait on me. Not so in the mini-kitchen. See examples:
I’m not so sure that there’s much to complain about for the men in the room. I’m not sure I heard one word of complaint about the situation from Jay, you’ll have to ask him!
On the other hand, the experience of life on a boat does have a few incredible perks not available to those on land. My favorite is the view afforded to us on the boat compared to the bedroom windows at home that we never peek out of. I mean look at this:
Yes, the top photo is the view directly out of the port at the head of our bed. Don’t be too jealous. I don’t know about you, but we can’t afford the house that would give us this view. If you can, count yourself blessed.
Of course, there’s always the fact that if you get tired of the view, you can just move (we didn’t, but we could’ve!). No packing boxes or moving heavy furniture – just untie the lines and you’re on your way.
Also, there’s just something about going to bed to the gentle rocking of the boat. At first I thought that this would for sure send me into nausea that never ends, but it’s been surprisingly peaceful with no nausea to be seen. I’ll be honest though, for the first night or two I suffered from the irrational fear that the lines would break loose from the dock somehow and we’d float out somewhere into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico while we were sleeping! Although I found out later that in some situations something like this may sometimes happen. The day we were leaving an unattended boat in the mooring field lost it’s mooring line and was adrift right towards the marina docks. Thankfully I noticed and called the office in time to allow the marina staff to rescue the poor thing before it crashed into someone else’s boat.
Overall, the experience was an enjoyable one. I would definitely consider boat living full time one day when we can afford the boat we really want. Until then we’ll continue drooling over all the boats we work on while we dream of our future.
~Brooke
If you find yourself installing the Lewmar Chain Counter Model 68000600 using the included manual, count on breaking out the wood working tools!
My customer had purchased this item new from Defender and called me to install it for his Lewmar Concept 1 anchor windlass Monday morning. The wiring from the windlass to the display was straight forward and typical. Getting the counter to actually count was more of a challenge. The manual, which I believe was presented in a 2007 edition, was very thorough in diagramming the wiring connection…up to the point where the sensor was mounted.
Defender acknowledged that they have received calls about this item before and recommended calling Lewmar. Now, certainly Lewmar has fielded some tech support calls on this lack of a very important detail. I called on January 18th myself and have yet to receive a response. No bother. The owner and I jumped to some conclusions and got it working with little fuss. The image below shows decent detail, having been captured by my wife’s iPhone in a pinch, of a plywood bracket used to suspend the sensor about 1/4″ below the windlass gearbox, while a small magnet was placed in the revolving keyway.
Installed a Raymarine X30 with a connection to integrate with Coastal Explorer navigation suite. All is well.
We’re taking off the radar & antennas so Mr. Oswald can replace his top.
