Chainplates - An Excuse for Chaos

Nine of Cups was looking pretty fine below decks. I'd scrubbed and cleaned and polished and felt good about my boat, knowing in the back of my mind that all hell would soon break loose. Eventually, the installation of the chainplates would begin and absolute chaos would ensue. The nuts and washers that secure the chainplates to the hull would penetrate through eight separate lockers and bookcases, the contents of which would be … everywhere. We were anxious to get the work done as soon as possible, but I was dreading the process. At the moment, however, Cups was a calm, peaceful, neat and tidy boat.

Initially, all we had to do was empty part of the forward bunk for the first chainplate pilot hole and measurements. Out of sight, out of mind ... I ignored the initial mess as I walked past the series drogue on the saloon floor next to the mast and extra storm sails in the forward head and the bins that were now taking up part of the port settee. The pilot hole left a little mess, but nothing major, easy to vac up. I was dealing with it quite admirably, I must say. Then the project work finally started in earnest. First, an untidy boat drives me to drink … luckily we have lots of wine aboard. Second, I really hate loud noise … it drives me crazy. We've gone way beyond messy and noisy. We've entered that netherland known as chaos.

I had in mind that they would do one chainplate at a time … or maybe one side of the boat at a time, but I was absolutely wrong. I realize that's not efficient, but I like living in a pipe dream world. I think David let me believe it as long as possible to minimize dealing with my angst and complaining. Of course, they're doing all the chainplates at the same time, so all areas had to be cleared at once. Books are piled high … on every flat surface. There are more crates and bins and plastic tubs lined up on the port settee with stuff piled on top of them. David's nav station has disappeared. Our tidily, folded t-shirts and clothes are stacked up haphazardly on the aft berth and we have to move them to get into and out of bed. Locker doors are off their hinges and hidden somewhere in the mess. My sunglasses have disappeared and there's not a snowball's chance in hell of finding them anytime soon. I have maintained a small space on the port settee for us to sit and eat though the mess threatens to encroach upon it.

In addition to the usual Cape Town dust and grime, we have fiberglass and sawdust all over the place. The cockpit is full of David's varnishing project tools and supplies and chemicals … a project which is on hold at the moment till the chainplates are finished. In addition, the new chainplates and hardware line the cockpit benches. The worker guys tramp in and out of the boat, up and down, all day long, hollering back and forth through the hull, over the sound of drills and Fein tools and saws. The decks are filthy grey. At the moment, there are 45 holes drilled through the hull, but no chainplates yet installed. There are more holes yet to be drilled and the saga continues.

Luckily we have a double-wide berth and no neighbor. In order for the workmen to work on each side of the boat, we hand-line it from one side of the berth to the other … sometimes several times a day. And then, there's the stern-to and bow-to maneuvers which occur every couple of days and take a bit more effort. It takes me a minute to figure out  which side of the boat to step out of in my first, hazy-minded morning run to the clubhouse each day. Obviously, the side with the finger pier works best.

I'm in the way no matter where I sit or stand or try to work. Someone always needs to be in my space. We thought it would all be finished in a week … scout's honor. I was geared up for that, but it's dragging on and on. David will fill you in on the latest delays and screw-ups. Yes, things will eventually be back to normal. I can hear all the other yachties reading this thinking “Get a grip, Marce. You live on a boat for heaven's sakes. Quit your whinging.” I know … I know. We've had much worse chaos aboard, on many different occasions ... though David usually convinces me to visit my sister when the projects get too out of hand (remember the fridge redo?). I just thought I'd share a day when things aren't so nice and neat on Nine of Cups and instead of calm, chaos rules. If you're OCD or ataxophobic … this is not the life for you, trust me!

One of Those Days

It's been one of those days. You know what I mean. Whether you're at work or in a house or on a boat, everyone has one of “those” days once in awhile when everything is a challenge and nothing seems to go right. Today was our day, right from the git-go.

Our boat insurance payment was due and we'd arranged a wire transfer for payment last week. Our insurance agent e-mailed asking when we anticipated paying them since the insurance would not be in force if the premium was not received. Hmmm … thought it was all handled. I called our bank in the USA via Skype and after an interminable wait, I was finally connected with an “associate” who asked questions and then put me on hold. Yup, you guessed it. I was disconnected almost immediately. I tried to call back, but couldn't get onto the internet. It seems our Vodacom internet data account had just run out. Unfortunately, in order to buy more credit on line, you must have an online account. This isn't usually too difficult to accomplish, unless you are using an overseas credit card, in which case one must speak directly with an account associate, who were all busy at the moment … It took about two hours to get our account setup and buy more time, and when I finally called the bank back, their business hours for the day had ended.

We rented a car and planned to do yet another big provisioning, top up the propane tanks and buy fuel … an ambitious day with lots of errands and running around to do. We started out with the provisioning … all those heavy, bulky items that are hard to lug in a backpack. It took nearly two hours and two grocery carts to buy everything on the list. We waited in a long queue, obviously having chosen the slowest check-out clerk on the planet, and then after what seemed an eternity to ring up and bag our order, our credit card was declined. How embarrassing! We're not deadbeats … really. Luckily, we had an alternate card that went through on the second try, but another phone call was necessary … this time to the credit card company to sort things out. Put it on the list!

We lugged all the groceries back to the boat. It's about a 100 mile walk from the parking lot to the boat when we're each pulling a heavy trolley full of food (and perhaps a few bottles of South African wine). Our finger pier is too flimsy to handle the weight of the carts, so David off-loaded to me at the bow and I stacked everything on deck and in the cockpit and then we moved all the bags down below. Two bags ripped in the process of transporting them, spilling their contents  all over the place ...one was rice. One egg broke and the potato chips were smashed. Sigh!

We didn't need all that much diesel, so rather than taking the boat to the fuel dock, David opted to put jerry jugs in a dock cart and make a couple of trips. He likes to filter our fuel before putting it in the tank and it takes too much time at the dock. He used the cart to carry the jugs over, but found that the cart couldn't be used to get all the way down the steep, narrow fuel dock . He had to lug the jugs to and from the upper dock. Each jug holds 33L of diesel … very heavy, but he managed. He handed the attendant his credit card to pay, only to find there was a 5% surcharge for using a card and he didn't have enough cash. Luckily, the attendant knows him and allowed him till the end of the day to pay which meant we needed to get to an ATM.

In the meantime, finding a place to top up the propane tanks was proving a challenge. Once everything was stowed, I searched the internet and called a dozen different places. They would all exchange South African tanks, but not fill tanks. I finally found Woodstock Gas, not far away and we took off to fill the tanks. First, we got lost. No GPS in the hire car, we didn't have our iPad with us and half the streets in the area are not marked. Walking in the area is easy, but we were in unfamiliar driving territory. We drove around until we finally found the place and yes, they'd fill the tanks for us. Unfortunately, they didn't have the proper fitting for our American and Australian tanks. Did we have one that would work? Yes, we did … on the boat. We drove back, got mixed up once again on the one-way streets, then waited at the end of a long queue to get back through a security checkpoint enroute to the yacht club. David ran back to the boat, got the fittings and we began the trek back to the gas company once again. We remembered our way (but forgot the iPad). Where before the place was empty, there was now a queue for filling the tanks. We waited impatiently for the 30 minutes it took to fill the tanks. We found ourselves getting snippy with each other.

Now to find an ATM close by. We were in an industrial area and decided to head into central Cape Town for a better chance of finding an ATM. We finally found one and David double-parked while I jumped out, ran to the ATM and waited in line. He ended up having to drive around the block a few times to avoid people swearing and beeping at him for holding up traffic. We retraced our route and only then did we see an ATM almost directly across the street from the gas company. We rushed back to the chandlery to pay for the diesel and managed with five minutes to spare. Unfortunately, it was now low tide and getting the cart down the steep, metal walkway to the dock was a challenge, as was getting it down one step and then pushing it over the uneven dock planks to the hinterlands where Cups is berthed. Once again, he managed, but not without some choice invectives.

It was a long, trying day and I still had the bank and credit card companies to contend with, but that could wait. We each grabbed a beer and sighed in relief as we sat and relaxed on the boat.  A quiet dinner aboard and a movie was just what we needed. Oops! Forgot that we need to hook up the propane tank again … and oh yeah, the water tank just ran dry.

Social Media for Cruisers

Since we've been in South Africa, several folks have sent us e-mails or stopped by to say hello. They all seem to know quite a bit about us and we don't always know them. That's how social media works for us on Nine of Cups. We sail from country to country and port to port. We write blogs about our experiences and observations and people actually read them. When they see that we're in their neck of the woods, they get in touch and it's always a pleasure. Melvin from Cape Town stopped by the other day to say hi and, of course, we spent the day in the Winelands with our new local friends, Belinda and Benjamin.

We've maintained a website for years. In the early days with minimal internet access and a cheap digital camera, updating the website was difficult. We sat in internet kiosks in third world countries for hours, trying to upload a couple of pictures and some text. Now we can update offline and upload to the website. The fact that we're so far behind is a matter of laziness rather than accessibility plus one other  issue. We've used Yahoo Sitebuilder to build and maintain the website over the past 10 years. Unfortunately, Sitebuilder hasn't had any upgrades to optimize for mobile device displays. We've found alternative software, but none allow an easy migration from one format to the other. With hundreds of pages to convert, we're dragging our feet. We like the website approach because it's static and  provides an historical picture of where we've been and what we've done versus a blogsite which is a daily snapshot. The “history” seems to get lost in the shuffle of daily posts.

Our Just A Little Further (JALF) blogsite is our niece, Gentry's, innovation and it's in its third year. We write and send pix, but she does all the work of maintaining it and posting blogs. She posts the blog every day without fail and then posts on Facebook (FB) and Twitter and StumbleUpon and YouTube and Pinterest and others with which we're not even familiar. If you're reading this post, it's because of Gentry. We love the immediacy of daily blogs. Our audience is quite diverse. There are sailors who are interested in the liveaboard life and folks who just enjoy our nomadic lifestyle regardless of how we travel. Local people seem to enjoy our observations of their cities and towns … a fresh look at sights they see everyday. We always wonder if anyone reads the blogs and then, out of the blue, we get a comment or an invitation to meet up with someone who's been following for years.

We also post daily on SailBlogs which is more specific to cruisers, but accessible by anyone. While we're in port, the posts are the same as the JALF blog. When we're at sea, we post our position and at-sea blogs daily. We stockpile relevant blogs for JALF and Gentry posts them along with 2-3 day summaries of our life underway. The positive aspect of SailBlogs is that we can post from the middle of the ocean via SailMail using our single sideband radio. SailBlogs will also post directly to FaceBook as an option.

So why bother with social media while you're sailing? It's our link to the world. It allows us to stay in touch with relatives and friends and meet new people. It's a good way for us to share our experiences and adventures… good and bad … with other cruisers and prospective cruisers and folks who just  wonder what it's like living on a sailboat, sailing around from place to place. We try to appeal to travelers as well as sailors … a little something for everyone. It's also an excellent way to document our travels and trips with text and photos ... and at our age, we need all the help we can get!