The Sailing Rode

In this episode, we get back on the air and talk about our extended honeymoon over the last five months. We have some more adventure sailing news and our featured product is a new marine sealant that will save you money.

Intro Chat

• We are back after getting married and buying a new house. Life is starting to settle back down so we will be more consistent with the podcast and videos.
• Many people would think that buying a house is the antithesis of the cruiser lifestyle, but it is good to have a home base.
• Love our new home, great to have the boat on the property to work on upgrades and other maintenance. One exception is the Squirrels, they discovered that the plastic pieces of the boat are tasty. Had to cover cleats and winches with wire cages to stop the damage.
• Squirrel also built nest in our tow vehicle and Steve had to rescue and relocate the baby squirrel.
• Steve installed our new Standard Horizon VHF GX2200 and Garmin 547xs Chartplotter and integrated them for AIS, it was fairly simple after routing the wires and worked first try! We will talk more about the installation and features in a show soon.
• We served as ground crew as Steve's brother Shawn participated in the 2017 Everglades Challenge adventure race 300 miles from Tampa to Key Largo in small wind and oar powered boats. Shawn was trying to be the first person to finish the race in a West Write Potter 15. Unfortunately, high winds pushed him onto the shoals near Cape Haze, FL. Shawn trailered the boat down to Key Largo and spent a few days sailing Florida Bay. He made it to the Flamingo check point and back to Key Largo. Florida Bay has some really shallow water and he sailed through some areas that had less than one foot of depth. Great use of the shallow draft West Write Potter 15. Check out the video Shawn produced on his adventure.Our 2017 Sailing & Cruising so far:
• We have cruised on our sailboat eight nights so far in 2017, well below our average.
• We took the boat to the Mount Dora Art Festival - Friday and Saturday, we anchored on Lake Eustis on Friday night, cruised the Dora Canal over to Mount Dora on Saturday, and spent the day buying art under the influence. It was an expensive day, low cruising cost as we stayed at the town dock for free, but our art purchases added up. The fish and sheep were worth it!
• We also talk about sailing the Cortez bridge, Anna Maria Island, Long boat key area were we hosted all our boating friends. We anchored out Thursday-Sun. Thursday/Friday Anchored at Jewfish Key and it was very protected from the strong West winds. We put out back anchors and had the beautiful Sandbar as our back yard. Saturday we anchored at Cortez bridge. We were harassed by one of the local derelict boaters and had to relocated away from them in the anchorage. We had a great dinner and drinks at Bridge Tender Inn and the other live music spots. The anchorage became rolly at 2am as the West wind picked up and we made the call to move back to Jew Fish. We were rafted up with three other boats, so we woke everyone up (I doubt anyone was able to sleep) and moved back to Jew Fish Key for a quiet night.
• Our most recent trip was to the Ft. Pierce / Stuart area, this was a new cruising ground for us and we will cover it on another show.

Sailing & Cruising News

• Sailaway is a great new online sailing game that simulates sailing and cruising around the world. The boat behaves just like a real sailboat and the wind and waves are simulated from the current NOAA weather reports. Trips in the game take the same amount of time as in real life, so you can set the boat to keep cruising even when you are not on the game. You can also race against other players as you cruise around the world.
• Two Canadian sailors have been sentenced for setting ...

In this episode, we feature our trip to the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, MD. We have some more adventure sailing news and our products of the week will help you keep your boat fresh and mold free.

Intro Chat

• We are back after an extended break from doing the podcast. We have been very busy with work, travel and a couple big life events.
• After we got back from the Annapolis show, we decided to fit in a week long sailing trip in the Florida Keys before year end. We had a blast and we will feature that trip on a future show.
• I was able to fix our broken throttle cable on our MacGregor 26M with a 50hp Honda engine. It was not too difficult, the trickiest part was getting the throttle control out and back in the pedestal as it was a very tight fit. Here is the cable I bought that has a 4" minimum bend radius to help avoid the wear that happened to the old cable from raising the engine all the way up. I bought a 12ft cable, but it ended up being a little long and I think 11ft would have worked a little better.
• We also decided recently to buy a new house! We found a place with a half acre lot so that we can keep our boat at the house instead of a local storage lot. We will move in late December.
• Steve also decided he was not busy enough so he started to build his first boat. It will hopefully be a Storer Quick Canoe that he hopes to turn into a sailing canoe and possibly a sailing trimaran.
• Check out these great sailing documentaries we watched recently, both are free to watch. The first is Chasing Bubbles about a young sailor Alex Rust and his circumnavigation. If you watch it, please give some support to his charity, it is great karma to support something that gives you enjoyment for free. The second documentary is about App Applegate and his building of an 80 foot sailboat in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. The password is on the screen, FreeRoam. Both are great.
• We imagine that most sailors in the northern climates have put their boats in storage for the winter so we will do our best to get you through the winter with some interesting sailing and cruising interviews and podcasts.

Our Trip to the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis

• We attended the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis October 6th-10th, 2016. It is a great show with a very large selection of boats and vendors.
• We nearly cancelled the trip due to Hurricane Matthew targeting Florida as we were nervous about being away from the house during the storm. It turned out that the storm stayed far enough off the Florida coast to avoid any damage in Orlando and the weather in Annapolis was great Thursday and Friday. It rained all day Saturday and was overcast and windy on Sunday, but we still had a great trip.
• We got the chance to meet Paul and Sheryl Shard of the Distant Shores video series. They are in the process of building a Discovery 48 that will have a lifting keel similar to their last boat a Southerly 49. Keep their awesome sailing / cruising videos in mind for Christmas gifts, they are great to watch and fuel your cruising dreams.
• We will eventually release a YouTube video on our visit to the Annapolis show, but for now we will share some links to the boats we thought were unique.
• Catalina 385 & 425
• Pair of Jeanneau 54s different layouts, Jeanneau 58 new boat of 2017 dinghy dock under cockpit.
• Amel 55, awesome boat
• Gozzard 41, beautiful light blue hull, high quality woodwork, unique layout living room salon layout in vberth area.
• Southerly 57, made famous by distant shores, went out of business, but back in production. Lifting keel, 10ft9in down, 3ft6in up.
• Wauquiez 48 p...

In this episode, we feature part two of our interview with Jamie Furlong and Liz Cleere from the followtheboat YouTube sailing channel about the extensive refit of their Oyster 435 sailboat in Thailand.

Intro Chat

• We had a great time hanging out in Nashville and listening to great music on Broadway every night. We even had time to check out Percy Priest Lake and some of the local sailboats at the Nashville Shores Marina. We also enjoyed a great lunch at Papa Turney's BBQ right above the marina offices, that is some tasty BBQ.
• We have been watching the Olympic Sailing races, but it is disappointing that NBC did not have broadcasting on many of the early races. It is much more interesting with Gary Jobson and two time medalist, Randy Smyth providing commentary.
• New resources page on TheSailingRode.com It includes all the other sailing podcasts and websites we follow along with other resources we have found helpful.

Interview

In part 2 of our interview with Liz and Jamie talk about the refit of s/v Esper, a 1989 Oyster 435. They are currently cruising in Phuket, Thailand. They also talk about a rough passage in the Indian Ocean.

Liz and Jamie refinished essentially every surface of the boat and spars. The refit took just over a year to complete.

Check out some great videos of Millie and Liz fishing:

Millie & Liz fishing video

Millie catching her own fish

Get access to additional details on their refit and costs by becoming a patron of followtheboat here.

Check out there great videos on their YouTube channel here.

Also go to their website followtheboat.com to see their blog and lots of amazing pictures by Jamie

Sailing News

• Expanded Panama Canal Opens
  • Canal Pilots trained in mini ships at France facility
• Piracy Drops to a 21 Year Low
• Couple Swims Seven Hours after Sailboat gets Stuck in Great Salt Lake

Product of the Week

This multi-tool is used frequently during boat projects.

Here is our amazon affiliate link to the product

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