Friday, April 23, 2010

Making Money On Speedboat

Speedboat went for a light air day sail today. Sails 15 knots in 10 knots of wind,,,that's fast. Her builder was flown in from New Zealand for the sail, some guests. The day sail cost the owner $40,000 for the afternoon. The navigator was brought in at $7000 for the day, and the cheapest, youngest, dumbest deckhand makes $750 a day. I missed my calling.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Cracker Boy





We've Been hauled at Cracker Boy Boat Yard in Palm Beach. It has a lift that can fit us, allows us to do our own work, and has available many talented professionals available when I screw up.

While here, "Speedboat" is being put back together and launched. Amazing, She is 100 feet long, her keel is 15' and mast 130+. They needed to bring in two construction cranes to put her together. That entails lifting the hull, placing it on the keel which is bolted in place, then the mast goes in, then the whole massive thing is lifted and carried to the pit where is is very carefully lowered into the water. Then she heads to Newport for the Bermuda race.

This by the way is the boat Bronson chartered to break the TransAtlantic record and is considered the fastest monohull in the world. She is utterly amazing.

Waiting For Whatever

As so often happens our "plans" have been modified. We actually did spend a very nice time in NoName Harbor, then Miami, then NoName waiting for weather. Our window arrived. We and our companions, Jocilyn and Simone, headed out in our respective yachts at 4 in the morning. By 7 it was apparent that it would not be pleasant. We were making about 3 knts over the ground under power in six foot seas...a long long day ahead and we were just on the edge of the Gulf Stream. The kicker was the horizon...the West Wall of the stream was about 5 miles to the East and appeared as a herd of elephants, indicating the stream would be running 8-10 feet, and our speed cut to almost nothing. Screw it.

Another few days and some fabulous dinners aboard "Dance" passed. I now refer to Josh's/Simone's boat as "Mother Ship." She is a large motor yacht, has a real kitchen, dishwasher, laundry room, water makers, huge well stocked freezers, all the comforts. Combined with Josh's talents with meat, and Simone's French arrogance about food, dinners aboard Mother Ship are wonderfully elegant.

But goods things are fleeting. Mother Ship's generator went down, so she had to go to Ft Lauderdale for repairs. Then Josh and Simone had to return to Toronto for a couple of weeks to tend to their lawsuit against the manufacturer of their last yacht. So Susan and I decided to get hauled in Palm Beach, which would be easier than getting work done in the Bahamas or Mexico.

That's why were not in the Bahamas right now.