Hull is painted!

She is starting to look really nice.  Tomorrow if weather holds will see her with new black boot stripe and Sunset Red coach stripe.  Then the artist paints her name on the transom and she can splash!

Almost ready for paint

Her hull is mostly faired, sanded and taped, but we have had dense fog each morning for the past few days so the first coat has yet to go on.  

I stopped by her new slip and met one of our neighbors Matt.  Her slip is one dock away from our old Horizon (just visible above the davits of 'Terra Australis II' to the right.  She is also directly across from another quite nicely maintained and outfitted Morgan 41 'Braveheart'.

Hopefully it will not be more than another week or maybe two before we can get Horizon tucked away in her new slip.

Our new sailing vessel 'Horizon'

 

With everything else going on, we needed a diversion and eventually finalized the deal for the 41' Morgan Ketch.  Of course at the time we were inundated with too much to do with other problems and too little time to think about the boat, so we took the easy route and documented her as 'Horizon', the same name as the original 35' Rafiki that sold in November. 

Our new Horizon has just had some critical items fixed (prop shaft and bearings, exhaust, etc.) and is now at Maximo Marine for hull paint, stripes, and name.  She is going to have her dock rash faired then her hull will be painted Awlgrip white, her boot stripe will be black, and coach stripe Imron Sunset Red.  We hope to have her back and looking really pretty in 3-5 weeks!

We already have a pile of gear to start installing once we get her back: a Rutland 913 wind generator and Village Marine LWM watermaker that have been stored in a back bedroom for a couple years, a new automatic fire extinguisher (for the engine room), and a LinkLite battery monitor to name just a few.

Our maiden motor in the Intracoastal to get her to Maximo went great.  I had some slight trepidation that the extra 6' in length and 3' in beam would cause me handling issues after all those years with the Rafiki.  It turns out that the view from the center cockpit 41' Morgan is close enough to the one from the aft cockpit 35' Rafiki that everything felt very natural.  Well, natural so long as I forgot the extra 10 feet dangling aft that the Rafiki did not have :)

So now we take a break and dream about all the fun we will have once Horizon is out of the paint shop.

I had to throw this in - it is a sister ship looking pretty!

Gene Hopper 1927-2010

Gene Allen Hopper, 83 of Tampa died at 11:15 a.m. Saturday, December 18, 2010 at Arden Courts Assisted Living.  He was born December 5, 1927 in Windfall, Indiana of Guy and Bertha Hopper.

He is survived by his brother James Hopper, North Carolina; a sister Caroline Stevens, Kokomo, Indiana; and a son Michael Hopper, Tampa, Florida.

Norma Hopper 1930-2010

Norma June Hopper, 80 of Tipton died at 8:15 a.m. Friday, December 3, 2010 at Miller's Merry Manor.  She was born October 18, 1930 in Tipton to Edward & Nora (Smelser) Doversberger.  She had lived in Brookville, Indiana most of her adult life, returning to Tipton five years ago.

Norma worked as a legal secretary for attorney Roger Smith of Brookville. She was a 1947 graduate of Tipton High School and graduated with honors from Indiana University East with a Liberal Arts degree.  She was a member of Emanuel Lutheran Church in Tipton and formerly St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Brookville.

Norma had been active in all areas of Brookville community life and received the Sagamore of the Wabash from Governor Robert D. Orr.

She is survived by one son, Michael Hopper, Tampa, Florida; a half-sister, Hermine Bauchle, Southport; two sister-in-laws, Maxine Doversberger, Tipton and Helen Doversberger, Columbus, Ohio.  She was preceded in death by two brothers, Gene E. Doversberger and V. Charles Doversberger.

Norma's funeral will be at 11:00 a.m. Monday, December 6 at the Emanuel Lutheran Church, 1385 S. Main Street, Tipton, with Rev. Robb Roloff presiding.  Burial will be in Fairview Cemetery, Tipton. Visitation will be from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. Sunday at Young-Nichols Funeral Home, Tipton and from 10:00 - 11:00 a.m. Monday at the church.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Old St. John's Lutheran Church c/o Emanual Lutheran Church or to the charity of the donor's choice.

Transformation

Horizon is growing - from a 35' Rafiki sloop into a 41' Morgan 415 Out Island ketch!  A lot has happened the past few months but the bottom line is our previous Horizon has been sold and her new owner is excitedly restoring her to respectable liveaboard/cruiser status.  That sale was a good thing for Cate and I because Horizon carried quite a bit of emotional baggage from her 23 year history with me; with a new boat comes the promise of freshly new memories.

One basic criteria for a replacement boat was to have enough room to fit lots and lots of shoes and the search quickly narrowed to a ketch or yawl in the 40-45 foot range.  I wanted a ketch or yawl because the mainsail tends to be smaller and is less likely to be too unwieldy for a not-as-spry-as-we-once-were crew.  Shorter than 40' would not have the second stateroom we wanted, and longer than 45 feet the boat starts to be more difficult for 2 people to handle easily.

My first choice in that range was a 42' Westsail ketch but there appear to only be two of them on the US east coast and they had both just been sold by the time I started looking.  There was also a yawl, purported to be Walter Cronkite's Westsail, but that needed far more restorative work than we were prepared to do.  What endeared me to that specific style boat was the walk-in engine room with workbench!

Our search led through a series of lower priced used boats until we zeroed in on the Morgan OI ketch series.  Inside, they have two staterooms each with head, a roomy main salon, and a large though only crouch height engine room.  The exterior is fairly bland with center cockpit and large flat decks with only a toe rail - I sure will miss the 6" gunwales the Rafiki had.  Built here in Clearwater Florida for the charter trade, Morgan boats used simple construction and were designed for easy and low maintenance; there are no tricky special systems like V-drives or centerboards, and accessibility to most all components is excellent.  The OI 41's are shoal draft, drawing only 4'6", making it easier for island hopping.

The one we are buying (the deal is not yet closed) was built in 1979 and shows a general lack of upkeep.  We have quite a list of work to do once financing is in place but she is definitely curb appeal challenged.  The hull has a couple dock rashes and the shear and coach stripes are mere faded suggestions of their former selves so new hull paint is at the top of her required todo list.  Luckily I found an excellent painter through coworkers.  Now, will we have the stripe painted AwlGrip International Orange or Toreador Red?

At the survey haul we found the cutlass bearing, intermediate shaft bearing, and shaft log hose all needed to be replaced.  I will add a new prop shaft to replace the pitted and rusted one and we will have a whole new drive train.  Her Perkins M60 was installed in 1995 and runs like a top so that shouldn't need special care but we will have to replace the exhaust hose and do other plumbing and engine room sprucing up.  We are not going to worry yet about the inop genset or the forward stateroom A/C unit, at least the aft A/C unit works fine and can cool most all the living area.

To those immediate and major cost drivers, we will shortly be adding "niceties" including a Raritan PHEII head and Electro-san for push button convenience, and a mast head wind instrument. 

Okay, that is as much as I can type out now.  More later as the purchase progresses.

Two years, two months, two weeks

That is about how long it has been since my last cigarette.  It was the waning days of 2007, a cold rainy December afternoon in Northern Maryland.  A stressful moment, and a quick hunt in a coat I had not worn in a while yielded an old pack; it had been 2 weeks since the one before that and I remember coughing. 

The battle has been decades long, filled with false starts, false stops, and false hopes.  That specific time I had been over a year on Nicoderm patches . . . and still sneaking a few smokes most days.  Not the healthiest of endeavors.  By the time I got back from Maryland I knew it was finally my time.  I peeled off the last patch and said goodbye to the friend that had been with me since age 15, a friend that was always there, always ready to console, a most deadly friend.

I will carry reminders of that for the rest of my life, my lungs especially, poor things.  One outwardly obvious result of quitting is a 25 pound bouncing nicotine baby in a brand spanking new gut.  A few months ago I started using fatsecret.com, a free "all things food and diet" site that helps me count calories (or weight watcher points), monitor trends, and set goals.  Between that and time at the gym the past couple months, the tide seems to be turning.  I hope I did not wait too long to quit.

Cat House

The new cat house arrived this evening and us humans had lots of help assembling it.  Within minutes they were exploring top to bottom.  No one has tried the swing yet but the hammock has been initiated.

Life in an eclectic neighborhood

Last night, or rather this morning at 1:12 to be exact, I was awakened by voices just outside the bedroom window that faces my back yard.  There were two deeper male voices and several, maybe 6 or 7, young kids voices.  I could see flashlights and hear the voices but couldn't quite make out what they were saying.  The kittens were by that point hunkered down somewhere, probably under the bed.

I dialed 911 to report the invasion and gave them my address.  They said they would send someone out.  I was nervous enough to stay low as I watched the flashlight beams play across the ceilings and walls as the people moved about in my back and side yards.  They would group, then split up and go all around the house and yard, then group again. I felt under siege and wondered if the security doors would hold up.

After maybe 10 minutes, the entourage seemed to move off down the street and I started to relax a bit.  Then at 1:36 the cops called back to say the two men were undercover cops who were looking for someone.  I asked why, if they were cops, that they were taking along a half dozen kids during their search, but got no reply.

I think I managed to fall back asleep about 5.

Another Milestone

Don't you love metrics?  LOL  Ever since Freedom Day, Oliver has remained aloof and has been virtually untouchable.  Rose, on the other hand, has been quite the attention hog and demands a fair amount of loving from her humans.  But maybe because she was the runt and had to do so much for herself, she has problems sharing.

Over the past few weeks Oliver has watched his sister getting all the good pets.  While his purrs start almost the same instant Rose's do, he always stays more than an arm's length away.  Any time he has unknowingly strayed too close and we do reach out to him, he scrambles away and hides.

Recently Oliver has been getting much closer to us, but he still runs when we try to consummate a feline-human connection.  When laying on the couch, for example, he has a few times tucked himself up behind a bent knee.  Well, he has until Rose sees him close to "her human" and runs him off.

Last night, though, they both climbed (clawed) in bed and Oliver actually butted his nose against my hand!  When he did it again I woke enough to realize what happened and slowly moved to brush my fingers against his back.  He stiffened for a second, then turned the purr machine on full and a moment later had tucked himself up under my chin!  We didn't stay that way very long before Rose came galloping around to run off the interloper, but it is a start.