In November 2001 we flew into Florida to spend 2 months doing some work on Zamindar and getting her back into the water.

photos from the trip

 

Journal entries from the trip

(posted times are GMT)

[15/11/2001 12:47:49 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
We'd had a very enjoyable flight but came down to earth with a jolt as we arrived at US Immigration. Nina and I both have multi-entry US visas, which we had to sit through interviews to get, so you would think that getting into the States would not be a problem. Not so. We'd been up all night, and now they insisted on grilling us about what we were doing in the US, why we had been there four times in the last three years, etc, etc. I told them that I had a boat there, but they weren't even listening to my answers and told me that it was "suspicious" that I was spending "so much time" in the States. In the end they stamped my passport for six months, told me verbally that I had to leave in three months, and virtually told me not to come back to the US. I looked over to see an elderly woman from our flight, who was obviously on holiday, getting similar treatment and I wondered how the US expects to get ANY tourists if that's how they treat people. In all the travelling that I've done, I've never been treated like that by any country's immigration, and I have no desire to spend any more time in the US than I have to. America is not the golden land that everyone wants to live in... but I'd better stop before the men in the black van pay me a visit!

After customs, we had to go through another security check, which seemed somewhat pointless as we'd just got off a plane and anyone could have walked into the airport through the front door without going through security. We then rented a car and drove the 40 mins or so to where the boat is in Titusville. I'm always nervous coming back to the boat after I've been away from her for a while, and this time was no exception. A hurricane and numerous tropical storms had passed over her while I'd been away and I was anxious to see if everything on board was still ok. We drove into the marina, and I parked behind Zamindar - she looked fine. We then spent almost an hour looking around the boatyard for a ladder as she was out of the water and stands about three metres above ground. Finally, I climbed on board, opened the hatch, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that everything was ok.

Since we arrived, we've been cleaning and getting the boat ready to go back into the water. Taking care of a boat is a never ending job, and we've been held up for the last couple of days by a storm that's been crossing us. Right now there's a force 8 (30-40 knots) blowing outside and we've had tropical downpours all day - not perfect weather for painting. The boatyard is flooded and the boats anchored outside the marina are really getting thrown around in the waves. We're actually sitting here with the central heating up full inside the boat so it's not what you think of as sunny Florida right now!

[15/11/2001 12:51:37 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
I've just posted the above, and as I'm sitting here at the dock, the waves are coming right into the marina, throwing all the boats around and splashing up to where I'm sitting with the pc. The wind has carried on rising and is now gusting at over 50knots (67+ is a hurricane). I've just been around the boat tightening up all the supports that we're resting on so we should be ok, but there are people here standing on the dock because it's too rough to get out to their boats or it's just too uncomfortable on board. This is some of the worst weather I've seen here in Titusville.

[20/11/2001 3:03:34 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
Our hopes of getting the boat into the water quickly disappeared with last week's storm which treated us to four days of sub-hurricane, but still intense (gale force I think they call it on boats), wind and tropical, but cold, rain. This had the effect of stopping our painting activities mid-stroke and sending us inside to catch up on other, less challenging pursuits, such as email, as everyone I wrote to last week will testify. Our hope is to complete the anti-fouling, boot-striping, and polishing, and get Zamindar afloat again in the next week, and unfortunately there are not even any bars in the vicinity to tempt us away from this work.

Here in Titusville it's difficult to detect any panic about anthrax outbreaks or biological terrorism. In fact walking down the street it feels like any other day in 1950's America, which appears to be the last time that anything, especially the music, was changed here. It's a thinly-spread out road town with little reason to attract visitors other than the marina, which is the first reasonably priced place to haul-out a boat on the way north from the Caribbean. Most of the inhabitants either drive pick-up trucks and spend their weekends hunting, killing and fishing, or ride electric wheelchairs, weigh 200kg, and appear to be about 110 years old. The town is especially proud of its lack of any public transport system, which ensures that everyone needs their own pick-up truck and helps the country use 80% of the world's oil consumption every year. As the town was designed to be driven around, however, there are few places within walking distance for us and most days we get no further than 'The Coffee Shoppe', the local diner which we frequent, and I'm sure, have a reputation for under-tipping, there. If we're feeling especially energetic we may walk the 40 minutes to Subway, Taco Bell, or McDonalds to ensure that our diet remains properly balanced, but normally we reserve that for special occasions.

[21/11/2001 2:48:28 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
We now have mobility. Today we found a solution to our personal transport needs and we are now able to cruise Titusville in style. After a late breakfast in the Coffee Shoppe, we passed the local thrift store and spotted two yellow 1970's bicycles for sale in the doorway. They appeared to be in fairly good condition apart from the steering, gears and brakes not working, and the fact that they had flat tyres, but we soon negotiated the price down to $15 for the pair. Delighted, we carried our new transport back to the marina and set about re-building them. Many of the other yacht owners appeared to be confused as to why we were choosing to fix two bikes instead of BUYING A CAR as they walked past looking puzzled, and we sense that we are getting a reputation as 'the two mad Europeans'. Nevertheless, by this evening, both bikes were rideable and we enjoyed the satisfaction of a sunset ride around the local swamp where we were both eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Unfortunately, we made no further progress with the boat today, but a whole new realm of fast food options is now open to us.

[1/12/2001 3:56:35 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
Today we had the boat launched back into the water and it feels really good to be afloat again. Within a couple of hours we had a manatee and then an alligator swimming next to it. Then we drank lots of beer to celebrate so excuse any spelling mistakes...

[1/12/2001 7:54:19 PM | Bronek Kaminski]
Neither of us feel too good today after last night's celebrations. Nina has a theory that they must add something bad to the beer in the US to put people off drinking it and from now on she's promised herself that she'll only drink Carlsberg <http://www.carlsberg.com>.

[6/12/2001 5:21:55 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
Sometimes Nina talks in her sleep. Last night she suddenly shouted out, "No Bron, you can't become a Nazi!" Maybe this says something about what she thinks of me.

As I said previously, we now have Zamindar in the water and we're sitting in the marina in Titusville. We're still waiting for a couple of parts to turn up, but we're in no real hurry to leave as we haven't decided where we're going to take the boat next. One of the parts was supposed to turn up today, but when I called about it this morning I was told that it wouldn't be here until 'around the end of the year'. So, I spent all day on the phone trying to find someone who had it in stock until finally I found a place in New York with one. This is normally how you spend your time with boats.

We did have some entertainment tonight in the form of the space shuttle taking off from the other side of the river. Titusville is the closest town to Kennedy Space Centre and the launch pad is about 5 miles away, so we walked down to the bridge and had a great view of lift off. The Americans really enjoy things like this, and they all became very excited and jumped up and down screaming. Nina declared it very retro, like something from the 70's, which I suppose it is.

[17/12/2001 4:54:45 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
We've been kept pretty busy for the last week or so hunting down parts, working on the boat, and drinking in the evenings. There's something about being on boats that gives you the irresistable urge to drink, and on the evenings that you don't, you invariably get invited over to someone else's boat for cocktails. There's just no way to fight it. Or maybe we're not trying.

Zamindar is now looking fairly good again, and this week an engine mount and regulator turned up, I fitted them, and the engine is now running again. We're probably going to leave the marina and head out to anchor in the next few days, but we haven't decided whether to stay around in Titusville for Christmas or move on.

[20/12/2001 3:35:28 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
Yesterday we motored out of the marina and anchored outside Titusville. It feels great to have escaped from the dock though we have to get used to the boat moving all the time, but it was lovely to waken up this morning and look out at the sun rising over the water - we did go back to bed after that though! The shuttle landed here a couple of days ago. We were sitting having lunch in the Coffee Shoppe when the twin sonic booms as it re-entered blew the doors open. A couple of people clapped, then everyone carried on eating - it's a fairly normal occurrence for the locals.

[21/12/2001 3:24:43 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
We saw dolphins around the boat this morning within about 5 mins of getting up, and then again when we were having dinner in the cockpit, which was really lovely. Our Christmas presents also arrived today from Chris and Nina's parents - thanks. Apart from that I spent 5 hours rebuilding the fridge on board and now finally it's working again so we can look forward to cold beer for Christmas. It looks like we're going to spend Christmas in Titusville, as although we could go somewhere else, we're actually beginning to quite like it here!

[6/1/2002 1:53:14 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
Happy New Year!
... now that I've finally recovered enough to write

We spent New Year on the boat and had a lovely time, though the temperature has dropped rapidly since then. It was 0c here on Thursday night and the people of Florida have been walking around looking a bit shocked by the icy conditions - though some of them are still wearing shorts. We passed a guy walking down the main street with a chainsaw and a crazed look on his face the other day, so I guess the cold weather affects people in different ways.

We're still anchored in Titusville as we're due to fly back to Europe in another week or two, but things have been fairly interesting in the anchorage this week. Everything was quite calm on Wednesday afternoon when we were suddenly hit by a squall with winds up to 50 knots (100km/h) and torrential rain pounding down. We were confident that our anchor was dug in well enough so that we wouldn't move, but the danger is always that you'll get hit by another boat as it drags across the anchorage. Several boats appeared to be on the move, but one in particular caught our attention. There was a red sailing boat with apparently no-one on board that looked like it was coming straight for us. Nina and I grabbed our waterproofs and got out onto deck, ready to fend it off, but it slid by with some space to spare. The wind had dropped to about 35 knots now, but the red boat continued dragging and was on course to run into Titusville swing bridge, which is about 500m away from us. I called the bridge operator on the radio to warn them that there was a boat adrift heading towards them, then Nina and I grabbed lifejackets and climbed into the dinghy to go over and try to board it. As the rain was falling so heavily, it was flattening the worst of the waves down, but the dinghy was still full of water and the rain was just running down our faces and into our mouths. We made it over to the red boat as it was half-way over to the bridge, Nina stayed alongside in the dinghy with the engine running in case we had to get away fast, and I got on board. There was a wind generator hoisted above the foredeck which was going crazy in the storm, and I had to duck down low so that I wouldn't get hit by the spinning blades. There was definitely no-one on board, so I let out all of the anchor chain to slow the boat down, then put out another anchor. Slowly, her bows swung around into the wind as the anchors began to dig in, and she stopped drifting. When we were sure that she was safe, I crawled back under the wind generator, got back into the dinghy, and we returned to Zamindar, very, very wet. In the evening, however, we noticed a puzzled couple returning to their relocated boat after looking all over the anchorage for it!

[16/1/2002 5:54:08 AM | Bronek Kaminski]
It wouldn't have been right to spend time on the boat without going swimming and so today we had a refreshing dip here in Titusville. We dropped a lock over the side while we were lifting the dinghy out of the water and after lots of fishing for it with a very large magnet, we heard it clunk onto something and thought we'd found it. Unfortunately, it's been getting down to freezing at nights here lately, so the swim to retrieve it turned out to be more stimulating than I'd expected. With my fins and snorkel on, I went over the side into the water, and felt instantly like the people you see on Russian documentaries who have just cut a hole in the ice and jumped in. Swimming in marinas is not the most pleasant thing to do at the best of times due to lots of boats pumping their waste out regularly, so as you can imagine the water was fairly murky. Nevertheless, I swam down and pulled what I thought was the lock out of the mud, rose to the surface with it, and found myself holding an empty brandy bottle!

This evening, while we were cycling back from Taco Bell, we were lucky enough to see a rocket take-off from Kennedy Space Centre (or Center as they insist on spelling it). The sky was dark and completely clear so it was quite stunning to see it light everything up like daylight as it climbed out of the atmosphere. We didn't have much time to watch it though as our tacos were getting cold.

At the moment I'm reading 'Notes from a Big Country' by Bill Bryson, which, as well as being one of his best books, is essential reading for anyone who's interested in what living in America today is really like. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one banging my head against beaurocracy, inefficiency and the world's worst payphones, but, I don't care, for tomorrow we're off to the airport and leaving the US behind for a month or two (if they let me back in then). We fly to Reykjavik for a breakfast of raw fish and then catch a connection onto London where I shall head to the nearest pub while Nina rushes across London to Stansted to try to catch a flight to Copenhagen.

[23/1/2002 7:06:13 PM | Bronek Kaminski]
Getting out of the US turned out to be more interesting than I'd hoped for. Due to the increased security in Orlando airport we had to queue for an hour for the security check, during which I advised Nina to get rid of the nail files and other offensive weapons that she regularly carries around. As normally happens, however, I was the one who set off the metal detectors and was taken aside for 'special attention'. After further searching, removal of items from my pockets, and managing to convince the security officers that the smell from my shoes was not hidden explosives, but my socks, I was still setting off the alarms and a portable metal detector was put down my trousers. It was then that I dug deep into my pockets and discovered my long lost pocket knife! Unfortunately, they failed to share my happiness with this find, and went off to update my FBI records to 'suspected terrorist'.