Chris' Site

So yesterday was a productive day… I re-fueled the boat.. Talk about a workout. I had to manually haul fuel from the local gas station back to the boat. 10 gallons at a time, 70 LBS at a time. I did 4 trips. I was exhausted.

I also used the washer/dryer here which was nice to have fresh dried clothes. Sadly the water on the dock is broken, so I haven’t been able to refill my water tanks or wash the boat. But we did get a nice rain storm yesterday which cleaned the boat pretty good.

One of the kids (well, he’s 19ish, I think?) from the family I had dinner with the other day messaged me on instagram. They moved over to the same area I am but they are anchored out, not at the docks. There’s a gym here at my marina and he messaged asking if we could go together. I said sure, told him I was busy until 4:30 but be here at 4:30 and we can go.

Well I’m out walking astra about 3ish and I get an IG message from his brother. Apparently he got in trouble for asking to go to the gym with me and I assume got his phone privileges taken away (hence why his brother told me he wasn’t coming).

The new guy at work seems like an idiot… Or at least I don’t understand his thought process. He has me, the guy who built and designed everything for the past 7 years. The main knowledge base for this company, processes, procedures, how software works, etc etc. But yet, he has not ONCE come to me asking a question about anything. We had ONE call so far where I laid out high level how things are working, what’s going on. I even clearly told him in that meeting that we as IT people have TWO accounts, a user level access account and an admin level access account. We were in a meeting with someone the other day and he mentioned needing to get access to the servers because his account didn’t have access. WTF. 1) ANY good IT person knows you do not access servers with your USER account and 2) I TOLD YOU that you have an admin account.

He also doesn’t have ANY BC background and he has yet to ask me one thing about BC, he hasn’t yet asked me for a user account to access it.

There’s some Helpdesk tickets coming in, I’ve just been watching the shit show. He replies with incorrect information. Makes poor decisions about what to do and how to handle things.

We will see how well this goes.

I think that today I will have to move to an anchor position and pick up the parents from anchor… I really really do not want to have to move the boat into the slip they have assigned to me here at the marina.

Docking here is a bitch. And doing it alone is fucking hard.

I decided to move to the Marina yesterday. It was a rough day. Seas were rough, wind was right on our nose all day. Lots of bouncing around. Took 5 hours to go 20 miles. I really think these props that were put on in Fort Lauderdale are either under sized or not pitched right. I just feel like we don’t get the propulsion out of them that we should be seeing.

The marina had sent me a map of where I was going and it looked like a nice easy spot to get into. From satellite images it looks nice and wide, easy to just make a right and then a left right into the slip. But when I arrived here the current was ripping and the wind was blowing like crazy. Just in Neutral I was moving 2MPH (which is very fast for a sailboat!) I tried to make the right hand turn into the channel and I just kept slipping fast and fast. I nearly ran into a huge Catamaran. I yelled over to the dock hands and said there’s no way I can make it in there myself.

So they moved me to an end slip, I go down there and try to dock and couldn’t get the boat on the dock, the current just kept pushing me and pushing me. The dock hand yelled over and said, let it slide back and then come forward. Well, the problem with that is that behind me, where the current is pushing me there’s a big ass sunken cargo ship, prob 100′ away. To my left is a reef.

I slide back as far as I was comfortable and then had to power hard forward into the current to try and get onto the dock. Now for some reason, no idea why, I am being pushed ONTO the dock. My boat slams onto the dock of course missing all the fenders I had out. I throw the bow line and stern line to the dock hands and they tell me to get the bow off the dock and move forward more. I try and try to get the bow off but for some reason I just can’t get it off. Everything I do seems to just push it onto the dock harder and harder.

Finally we just get it tied off. But where I am there’s all these fucking speed boats that go flying by creating huge wakes, tossing me onto the dock. I have every fender out I have and yet it seems to be not enough. The boat just keeps hitting the piling on the dock.

The dock master said he wants to move me on Thursday to the slip I’m supposed to be in. But I just don’t have the confidence to do it. And then what if I get in there on Thursday then I have to somehow get OUT of there again Monday. Is it worth it?

I woke up at 2am this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I just kept thinking over and over, how can I do this better. How can I get in and out of there. If there were no current, it wouldn’t be a problem. But I watched the tides this morning and it seems there’s like ZERO slack tide times. It just switches from going fast one way to fast the other way.

I laid there in bed last night, just thinking of all the disasters that could happen of me trying to get into or out of that slip…

Yesterday was good… I spent an hour looking for my watch but couldn’t find it. Found a lobster instead which was kinda cool.

I got invited to dinner on another boat. Family with 5 kids. They were super nice. The kids are fun. They made steak bowls and some dessert which was amazing.

I was hella nervous about going over there but it ended up being a lot of fun.

Going to try and move the boat today to the marina but super nervous about docking in a new marina I’ve never been too….

Also, today could have been three years. 🙁

Well, yesterday was a nice day. I went to the city walked around. Saw some sights. Had a good time.

Got back to the dinghy, dinghy back to the boat. Was hooking the dinghy up to the hoist and a heard a “plop”. Looked around and didn’t notice anything missing, so wasn’t sure what it was.

Got on the boat, was petting astra and realized. “FUCK! MY WATCH”

I lost my fucking watch in the water.

Then last night the winds came back stronger then ever. Fucking BLEW all night long. Fucking annoying. I barely slept.

My therapist said I need to journal every day. Write about the good things happening on this trip…. That was on Wed and so far I cannot find one good thing over the past three days to report on.

I have seriously been stuck ON THE BOAT for three days now. I left once yesterday to take astra to the beach cause she refuses to pee on the boat. But it was a nightmare. We’re in this little cove trying to hide out from this passing storm front. Winds are blowing non-stop 25-30MPH. The waves in this little cove even have small white caps on them.

I don’t want to be stuck on this fucking boat this long. I have nothing to entertain me. I keep looking at the same three websites over and over.

Trying to figure out what to do with the boat long term. Researching how to get it to the BVI’s and that sounds just too daunting to me.

But then I read these journals about people who have done the trip and the amazing Turks & Caicos, Puerto Rico, the DR. Places that would be amazing to visit. But maybe just better to fly there and visit by land.

This storm is supposed to last until Monday/Tuesday. I do not want to be fucking on the boat until then. I was really looking forward to moving to a marina on Monday but if these winds keep up, I cannot do that! The forecast is for 10′ waves on Monday! I cannot move the boat in waves like that.

I just want to go home.