May 19/2020: How to extract my boat from its winter quarters in Georgia without getting infected or quarantined somewhere? This is one question that was percolating through my mind as I monitored the unfolding of the global Covid-19 pandemic while sheltering at home this spring. Problem one, it seemed, was simply getting to the boat...
Feb. 20/2020: I mentioned earlier this problem I’ve been having with the Refleks drip-pot diesel heater on Lunacy. Having left the boat here in Brunswick, Georgia, last fall with the heater still non-operational I returned back in December for a few days to have another crack at fixing it. You’ll recall I replaced the regulator,...
Nov. 9/2019: During the early summer, you’ll recall, we dealt with two big maintenance items: Lunacy’s wobbly rudder and her “ovalized” autopilot/steering quadrant connection. Another adventure, not previously mentioned, was replacing the turbocharger on my 55hp Nanni diesel, as it had seized up solid through lack of proper exercise. There were two lessons learned in...
Sept. 24/2019: I haven’t kept you all up to date re my doings aboard Lunacy since the end of the Deth Cruz so I thought I’d share some glimpses of what’s been going on. A lot of it has been Maintenance and Modifications, which we’ll discuss later. Right now we’ll focus on more fun stuff....
First some deep background: the term “death cruise” was coined during the 1980s to describe a series of outings under sail enjoyed by the editorial staff of Offshore, a now defunct New England boating magazine. Said staff at the time consisted of three people: myself (managing editor), Michael Csenger (assistant editor), and Marc Thibodeau (proofreader)....
We sailed over to Popham Beach for the holiday, as has been our habit the last several years, to visit friends and family, but first there was the rudder to attend to. Or rather the steering system, as there were other problems the crew at Maine Yacht Center discovered when they took everything apart and...
The subject was cruise ships. In the harbor at St. Georges, no less. I promised to tell you a story. This dates back to 1992, when I arrived at St. Georges as crew aboard the old Alden schooner Constellation, having completed the first leg of what would become my first transatlantic voyage (please refer to...
This year’s seasonal repatriation began with a quick cruise down Puerto Rico’s south coast in company with my old compatriot Phil (P.T. Cav, formerly Snake Wake) Cavanaugh. Our departure from the marina at Fajardo, shortly after 0800 on Tuesday, May 7, was most serendipitous. We had very calm conditions extracting ourselves from our berth, and...
On flying into St. Thomas on the third Sunday of last month Clare and I were pleased to find Lunacy resting peacefully in her slip at the Crown Bay Marina in Charlotte Amalie. We were not so pleased however to discover that she was covered in a thick layer of grimy soot. This had come...
We descended en famille into SXM two days after Christmas to find a) the airport was no longer running out of tents and the regular terminal had (sort of) reopened; and b) the Christmas winds, as Don Street likes to call them, were in full effect. Blowing out of the east, as always, these were...
