Love Odyssey

The past three days we have been vendors for Love Odyssey Charters at the Oriental Boat Show.  This was our first time “selling” our charters to the public.  It was fun telling the Love Odyssey story and answering questions about what we do on our cruises.  I also loved taking folks below to show them our beautiful boat.

The weather was fantastic–blue skies and warm breezes.  I’m sure the weather encouraged folks to come out  and see  the boats and vendors of stuff nautical.  The press found us and we got a good plug in the New Bern “Sun Journal”.  We also were interviewed for a Sportsman’s  program of a Rocky Mount television station.  Now we will wait and see who wants to schedule an odyssey with us this summer.

Helen    04/15/12

Today is Bryce’s birthday!  Happy birthday, my captain!  Another year has passed and we will celebrate tonight with champagne and birthday cake.  As we get older birthdays are bitter sweet.  We start to wonder how many more birthdays we have left.  It’s obvious that after the age of fifty you will have already lived at least half of your life.  You start to examine whether you have met the majority of your life’s goals.

I think I can speak for Bryce by saying that Love Odyssey cruises are near the top of our list for remaining goals for the next phase of our lives.  It was heartening last night to get a call from a couple interested in booking a May cruise.  We would love to do one cruise a month through Oct. or November.  This combines our mutual passion for sailing and working with people on a happiness trajectory.  I know that Bryce’s other major goal is to complete his second book, of which he has five chapters already on-line.  Personally, I think he has a few more books in his head, but I guess time will tell…

Anyways, Bryce I lift my glass in a toast to you…to many more birthdays!!  and much happiness!!

With all my love,

Helen

Yesterday morning we finally got out of the boatyard and took Dragon Lady back to her slip in Pecan Grove Marina.  Hurray!  It was wonderful to finally get “back home” in our slip.  It seemed like much longer than three weeks that we were up “on the hard” at Deaton’s boat yard.  Climbing a 12-foot ladder several times a day gets old very fast (and I’m not getting younger, either!).  We celebrated by going out to lunch yesterday, which we rarely do–this called for some beer!  Then yesterday afternoon I spent at least two hours scrubbing her from stem to stern, literally, to get off all the dust and yellow pine pollen that she collected on her teak decks over the course of her stay in the yard.  Now she has had the total “spa treatment”!

Today Bryce scrubbed the dinghy, Dragon Baby, that hangs on the davits at the stern.  It has been raining on and off all day, so he did not get to the silicon polish that protects her from UV’s.  I guess that will be my job tomorrow while Bryce works on replacing bungs in the teak deck.  There is never an end of “boat work” but it is generally pretty satisfying.  You can look at what you have accomplished that day and feel good about the time spent.

Be sure to come and see for yourself how lovely Dragon Lady looks.  She will be at the Boat Show at Pecan Grove the weekend of April 13-15.  We will be giving tours down below and we have hand-outs about our marital interventions.

Helen    03/31/12

I hate living up on the hard–not only do I have to climb a twelve-foot ladder several times a day, but the dust and dirt is everywhere.  The boat yard is gravel, which creates its one kind of dust, and then there is the yellow pine pollen which has enveloped everything.  So I close up the boat whenever we are outside for any time, but go below and it is hot!  This weekend we had the choice of opening all the hatches to let in fresh air (and dust and pollen) or close everything and sweat.  No good choices there.  So Bryce and I are very motivated to finish this project.

Last weekend we thought we were close to the finish line when we painted the bottom of the boat.  But oh no!  After the paint had dried we noticed we had many small bottom blisters in the gel coat.  So yesterday Bryce drilled them out, applied epoxy, and let that harden overnight.  He also put caulk between our rub-rail and the white hull.  That was a back-breaking job on a ladder.  This morning Bryce sanded the hardened epoxy and I painted 2 coats of bottom paint over it.  But oh no!  Now we saw more blisters that did not show up yesterday.  Fortunately they are shallow and only on the rudder, so I guess we could stay in the yard for a few more weeks and work on these–but I am sick of being here.

It just started to rain and I had to close every hatch and it is stiffling–NO!  Next Friday we are going to take this boat back to our slip at Pecan Grove Marina and turn on the air conditioning!!

Helen   03/24/12

My right arm is getting pretty tired.  Yesterday I scraped and scraped the bottom of Dragon Lady.  Today I did another hour of scraping and finally I laid down my tool.  Now Bryce is sanding.  You can hear the sander all over the boat yard.  He is dressed in a painter’s outfit that covers him literally from head to toe and he is wearing a respirator.  This is a pretty dirty job!  As if the sanding doesn’t make enough of a mess, the yellow pine pollen is falling everywhere.  Last night I briefly considered sitting out on the deck to have a glass of wine–the temperature was perfect–but the pollen all over the deck was an immediate turn-off.

Today the sky is bright blue, the temperature is about 70 degrees, and the humidity is low.  At least the weather has cooperated to make our work easier.  Suzy and I just went for a walk around the block–to get away briefly from the noise of the sander and the reminders from the boat yard that our work is not done.  We figure that if we get this wonderful weather next weekend, we could conceivably finish  by Saturday evening and splash the boat the following weekend.  I really hope so–I’m tired of living up on the hard and down in the mess!

Helen   03/17/12

Yesterday morning we hauled out Dragon Lady in the middle of the rain.  First of all, we hit two bumps going out of the Pecan Grove channel–not a good sign–and then we got good and stuck in the channel to Whitaker Creek.  Bryce kept trying to get us “un-stuck” and finally we called Tow Boat to pull us out–and of course, as we saw their boat heading toward us, we got lucky and got free.  So we got hauled out and now we are living “up on the hard” for a month.

In spite of the rain yesterday we washed our hull and got off two years of stains and dirt.  We had to use several products to get it all off, but now she looks clean and white.  Today we have been putting a silicon polish on that white hull.  We put it on with a rag, wait until it gets dry and hazy, the take it off with a terry towel.  Today we did this twice and tomorrow we plan to put at least one more coat of polish on before leaving for home.  Whenever I have a few spare minutes I have also been chipping off loose bottom paint.  After the hull dries for a week it should come off easier; that is our project for next weekend.

We got an estimate from the boat yard about the cost of sanding the bottom, the job I hate the most since it is so dirty.  Seems like the cost will be out of our price range, so I guess next weekend we will also be sanding.  Work, work, work….

Helen     03/10/12

This has to be my least favorite thing to do on a boat–a haul-out.  But the hull badly needs to be cleaned and waxed and the bottom needs to be painted with anti-fouling paint.  So we have scheduled out haul-out for next Friday morning bright and early.

This weekend Bryce changed the oil on both the main engine and the generator.  It is a tedious process that involves lots of paper towels to wipe up various spills, special engine “diapers” to keep the bilge clean, and a large round can that sucks out all the oil through a vacuum system.  You have to run both engines for at least a half hour prior to these ministrations in order to heat up the oil so it will flow freely.  I usually try to stay as far away as possible since Bryce tends to use colorful language as he does his deeds.  Today I took Suzy for a  long walk around the marina while Bryce was so engaged.  We came back just as he was finishing up.  Then we went out to lunch to celebrate at least one more thing checked off of our to-do list.  Onward to the haul-out….

Helen   03/03/12

Bryce and I think that Love Oyssey Cruises is a great product but the hard part is selling it to the public.  We both have professional degrees but have never taken a course in sales or marketing.  So we often have discussions about how to market our cruises.  This season we have decided to try two new venues.

There is an annual boat show at our marina, Pecan Grove, every April.  This will be the first year that we become official vendors and set up a table with brochures about our cruises.  We are hoping that the local media will discover us and do a story.  If not, maybe friends will hand brochures to folks they know are getting some couples counseling…at least we can hope!

The other thing that we are doing is writing an article for submission to “Cruising World” magazine.  Bryce has been working on this all weekend and I have been his editor and critic.  We learned that it takes about a year to be published if they like the piece, so it will not help us this coming season, but maybe in the future.

Now we just need to get the outside of the boat waxed and the bottom painted and back in our slip by April 13 in time for the boat show…whew!

Helen   02/26/12

Last night we had a small dinner party on board the boat.  This is one of the ways we while away the winter months tethered to the dock.  We invited some old friends over for a dinner of Indian food, including spicy chutneys paired with some savory appetizers, a chicken curry and a cooling cucumber-yogurt sauce, and then strawberries with chocolate fondue.  Yum!  The food and company were a perfect antidote to the winter blahs!

On a more serious note we use the winter months to fix things on the boat.  We have a workman tasked to fix our steering fluid leak under the aft bed and to replace the impeller in the generator.  Then we seem to have a leak in one of the feed lines to our aft water tank that Bryce needs to tackle next weekend.  Yesterday he had to re-fill the propane tank so I could use the stove.  In addition, he is working on making a bridle for our hurricane anchor in preparation for the next big hurricane that will eventually come some year.  So we do keep busy even in the winter, finding a balance between work and fun.

Helen   02/05/12

We have had some incredibly warm days for the month of January.  In fact, I can’t remember another January being this consistently warm in the thirty plus years I have lived here in the south.  An advantage of the weather  has been the ability  to keep the outside of the boat cleaner than usual this winter.  Although the water has been turned off at the docks for over a month, I can still take a pan of hot water out of our taps and clean off the bird droppings and other scum that seem to have an affinity for our decks. 

We plan to haul the boat out of the water mid-March to clean our very dirty hull and sand and paint our bottom.  Most years that project means living on the hard for at least six weeks.  Usually we start by getting the boat yard to power wash the bottom and then we work from top to bottom, scrubbing our white hull several times to get off the grime, then putting on at least two coats of wax.  This part alone can take several weekends, especially if we are unlucky enough to get a cold, rainy spell where we cannot comfortably work outside.  After we get the topsides looking decent, then we procede to the bottom.  We have to scrape off loose bottom paint, then sand and sand, since the new paint needs something rough to adhere to.  We like to put on two coats of bottom paint and the temps need to be at least 55 degrees to do this job.  Whew!  I get tired just thinking about the whole process.

So far we have ordered our bottom paint and stored it in our shed down here.  This year we are trying a new type that is ablative but much harder than what we have previously used.  It is paint used on commercial vessels and actually cheaper than what we used in the past, if $150/gallon compared to $250/gallon is cheap!!  We also bought some new silicon polish that we will try instead of wax this year.  It goes on and off faster, which should make the job go a bit easier.  I tried it yesterday in the cockpit and it made a difference with only one coat.  I figure two coats should be even slicker and shinier!  So spring time, we are ready for you!

Helen  01/29/12