Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Survived a medical emergency and two hurricanes. This post discusses maintenance & repairs, upgrades, and sailing.

Medical Emergency: I previously discussed my medical problem in a separate post. It occurred to me that if I had been in a remote region then I would have been a goner, so I have been studying how to mitigate this risk. I have since taken a Wilderness First Aid course (2-day training) and I will eventually take a follow-on course called Offshore Emergency Medicine. I am also assembling my own first aid kit and medicines.

Hurricane Hellene: I sustained no damage, but due to the storm surge the marina sustained a lot of damage to its facilities.

Hurricane Milton: Tampa Bay Florida sustained a direct hit. The very center of the hurricane was within 30 miles of my boat in Ruskin and some say Ruskin was within its eyewall. Winds were extremely high. I lost most of the dock cleats and as a result my boat collided with my neighbor. Damage was limited to some minor fiberglass and gelcoat damage. It appears my life raft served as a fender as it was ripped off my boat and it sustained significant damage. My neighbor sustained some minor damage. Finally, the marina sustained widescale damage. Mandatory evacuations were in effect and I had evacuated to stay with relatives.

Maintenance: I’ve been trying to do all the maintenance whether it needs it or not, so as to learn about the boat and the necessary tools and know-how. The engine, fuel-polishing, sanitation, freshwater, water purification, and water maker have been done. The starter battery and aircon require monthly maintenance. I recently completed maintenance on the anchor windlass and that was extremely challenging. The major system left is the winches. I will also soon need to varnish the exterior teak trim. Finally, while it is not necessary now, I will have to learn how to clean and paint the boat hull bottom.

Repairs: The bow sprit was cracked and as a result it seemed to be extremely dangerous to use the anchor. Somehow, this deficiency was missed in the pre-purchase marine survey. I’ve added some steel supports and now it looks very strong. The VHF radio, freshwater pump, wind generator controller, and bow wash down pump controller were broken and all have since been replaced. I am in the process of arranging repairs for the hurricane damage to the fiberglass and gelcoat. I will also be replacing the life raft as it was severely damaged in the hurricane. Finally, the windvane was lost in the hurricane and I will be replacing it as well. Other minor miscellaneous repairs have also been done.

Upgrade – Dinghy: I have recently obtained a dinghy as the boat did not come with one. The boat is analogous to my house and the dinghy to my car. I wanted to get gasoline off the boat, so I decided on an electric motor for the dinghy. I don’t really have enough solar power to support an electric dinghy, so I have obtained a portable rail mounted solar panel which would be dedicated to charging the dinghy motor.

Upgrade – Starlink: For internet access I have obtained a Starlink Mini. It works well. At the moment it is powered by AC. To use DC, I will need to add a USB-C (100W, 20V, 5A) outlet. I am currently assessing the best permanent location for the Starlink which would drive the location of the outlet.

Upgrade – Passive Radar Reflector: The USA doesn’t seem to require recreational boats to be equipped with a passive radar reflector. Some countries do and I think it would be a wise upgrade, so I have decided to proceed.

Upgrade – Electric Cooking: I have an electric kettle and a portable induction cooktop to supplement my propane galley. Propane can be extremely dangerous, so I’ve been evaluating the feasibility of an all-electric galley. Unfortunately, power requirements are extremely high, so it looks like I would need to keep the propane stove. I will have to run some tests to assess whether I have enough solar & wind power to use the electric equipment when I am on anchor.

Upgrade – Rigging & Electrical Evaluation: Not really an upgrade, but more of a safety measure. I’ve seen some YouTube videos on dismastings and to avoid that nightmare I have decided to have a professional rigger evaluate my rigging system. The boat is 40 years old with a lot of DIY electrical work. Since electrical fires are common, I have also decided to have a professional ABYC electrician conduct a review of my electrical system.

Sailing: Surprisingly, aside from the training sails I have not done much sailing. I hope to change that.

If you want so much electric devices on your boat, I suppose you will have to install a diesel generator cooled with sea- water.
I have sailed with a sailing boat ( from Alaska Kodiak to Seattle), which had even an electric driven propellor. You need a lot of costly batteries (heavy). And still it is nuissance to have the generator on..
.
Things which need heavy ampères on board you can better avoid at all. You don’t need a heater in Florida I suppose, but where I am boating now I have a diesel heater. There are also diesel cooking and oven devices. Recently there are also small diesel outboard motors for dinghies on the market. If you do that you need only one fuel on board. Only your watermaker and communication devices will need electricity. Which is possible with some solar and/or windgenerator.
For long sailing trips we used windvane steer. So that needed also no electricity.

Ps: we had a hard shell dinghy on that sailingboat, with oars to row ashore.

I'm glad you were able to find and take a wilderness first aid class. At a certain point, there's not much you can do, but barring that, I imagine you're much better prepared for any adverse medical scenarios going forward than before.

Sounds like you have made a lot of progress beyond that as well. Repairing stuff and figuring out systems on shore before you hit the water seems like a smart approach. Keep us posted on your sailing shakedown voyages.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I am currently on anchor in Tampa Bay Florida. This post comes courtesy of Star Link.

J_ wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 25, 2024 11:01 am

Recently there are also small diesel outboard motors for dinghies on the market.

Thanks for your comments. While I am aware of large diesel outboard motors, I am not familiar with diesel motors small enough for a dinghy. A google search was unsuccessful. Do you know of any makes and models?

As far as electricity consumption, yes I am concerned about it. There is not enough space for a diesel generator (a portable gasoline generator is just crazy). I am trying to make do with solar and wind power. The real concern is my electric dinghy. I have a dedicated solar panel for it and hopefully that would be sufficient. My boat is a tropical boat and is not built for the colder climes. I may have to get a petrol outboard, but I am trying to avoid it. I would be interested in your ideas on a diesel outboard.

Why not oars?
Much cheaper, less complicated, easy to fix or replace, available everywhere.

Add: I read about a guy who had oars for his yacht as well. The oars were longer and he obviously had rowlocks installed on the yacht. Apparently it was possible to get the yacht moving at a good clip. Also good for docking in a no wind situation.

I made a mistake, there are no light diesel outboards. (A check at Alibaba, where I found one first, appears in the specs to use petrol).

I second @jacob with regard to the use of oars. As I wrote to you we used such a dinghy in our Alaska-coast sailing trip.

What kind of battery and motor are on the dinghy?

Modern brushless DC and lithium ion batteries might be competitive with diesel. In some ways like maintenance I think it’s better. People are powering hydrofoil boards with very small brushless dc motors and LiPo battery packs. The quiescent drainage on a modern lithium battery is also very low. Like <20% a year. If you don’t use the boat much a small solar panel should be able maintain it.

If you’re into diy engineering you can likely put a very high performance (size/efficiency) setup together using large scale RC boat parts. And you can wire the prop for regenerative charging when you are anchored. Engineering a marine grade system is an extra challenge though. Everything is more complicated around water.

Just a crazy thought. I’m sure you have better things to do like cruising.

jacob wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 25, 2024 12:48 pm

Why not oars?

I believe the red baron is singlehanded, so that's going to take a lot of muscle especially with unfavourable wind or tide.

My boat came with an inflatable dinghy. It was terrible to row with no wind and impossible to row in a hard breeze. I eventually traded a friend a foul weather suit for an old wooden dinghy. My 100 meter commute back and forth to work went from an ordeal to a dream.

Family update:

My mother has dementia. Dementia has seven stages. I took care of my mother when she was in stage 4 and 5. My sister took over at a point in time when my mother was transitioning from stage 5 to stage 6. I relocated to Florida to pursue sailing when I transitioned responsibility to my sister. It has been a little over a year. My mother's condition has deteriorated greatly in that period of time. She is well into stage 6 with some elements of stage 7. Stage 7 is when the body shuts down. She was using a cane, then a walker. Given her progressive decline it will not be much longer before she is using a wheelchair. Given her rapid and serious decline and vastly increased need for care, our family made the decision to move her into a Memory Care facility. She's been there about ten days now. We had originally thought to move her to a facility at the end of 2025 or early 2026, but her decline has been precipitous. I'll be home to see her for her birthday in June, and I will be back for Christmas.

The Grim Reaper will be making an appearance, but when? She's been declining fast, but stage 7 can last a long time. The end of stage 7 is pretty dire, but most people die before they reach the very end. I'm estimating sometime in 2026.

That’s a tough path for you. Sorry.

My mom was in late stage for two years. The path to death depends on whether she had events like falls, mini strokes, or respiratory disease. Each one was like a fall off a little cliff. She’d recover to some extent but never quite to where she was. Between the events she’d just go sideways.

Short answer is it depends if you can prevent falls, strokes or respiratory illnesses like pneumonia from food aspiration. If you have really skilled and patient care you can avoid these killers. Then it becomes a waiting game. The endgame is when mom won’t swallow. Once that happens she’ll dehydrate and pass in a few days. So it can last days to say a year depending on how lucky you are. Lucky…is that mom passing sooner or suffering the long haul while burning buckets of money. That’s a tough one.

A crowded memory care facility will speed things up. Patient one on one care will stretch things out. A feeding tube can lengthen the ordeal for many years. I saw a neighbor do this. Lucky for him he had throat cancer before he had dementia so his carers knew how to tube feed him.

Good for you coming home to help your sister. My siblings would have sailed off into the sunset if they had your boat. They finally showed up six months after I buried mom. It’s going to be a rough stretch and it’s no fun dealing with that alone.

Good luck with things.

You can wonder whether you want to prevent death by pneumonia when you're in stage 6 or 7 of dementia. Maybe not. In the Netherlands they used to say that pneumonia was the old person's friend - by ending life in a reasonably merciful way when life here has become almost too hard to bear.

Do you want to live forever? Maybe everyone does (secretly, deep inside), but maybe not when dementia has almost erased you already, anyway.

I hope your mother won't suffer much.

Yeah that’s a good point. I had a few chances to let pneumonia run its course on my mom. Maybe two years before her actual death.

As much as I wanted things to end I couldn’t take that action. I stretched things out till the last possible moment out of a kind of weakness that I mislabeled as love. As I said it is really hard to make this decision especially when others are watching you.