Vehemently adhering to my tradition of not posting for months on end, I return once again after a long stint of silence. I’m unreliable. You’re welcome!
My mind has been in much better states than it is currently, due to a month on yet another ship, but I won’t get into that just yet. I figured I might as well give a little update, as the next week will be full of spending money and sailing my ass off.
Let’s see… What have I been up to? I guess I could talk about the bronze chainplates that I fabricated. They’re pretty awesome. A couple friends from S/V Robin ordered some bulk Aluminum Bronze from onlinemetals.com for the sole purpose of never worrying about stainless chainplates rotting from the inside out. I took two beefy chunks of rough bronze and milled them down to 13″ x 2″ x 7/16″ slabs of peace of mind. The painstaking process took about 12hours altogether, if you count the time it took to drill the holes and pretty them up a bit. Oh look! Pictures and stuff!






A few non-ferrous metal cutting wheels, and a couple drill bits later, I had some bad ass solid chain plates. …not to mention 170$ USD for the bronze itself. It wasn’t fun, but massively cheaper than paying for electro-polished stainless plates to be fabricated that would likely have to be replaced at some point.
It ended up lookin’ pretty nice when strapped to the outside of the overbuilt hull:

I spent pretty much every penny to my name refitting this old Cheoy Lee, so it was time once again, to go take a ship ride. Yes, yet another soul-sucking drydock.
I flew to Long Beach, CA, and boarded the Sapphire Princess. Not my best day ever. It’s a strange feeling, stepping on to a ship of that size when you would rather be bobbing around the Caribbean on your little bucket-sized life sustaining travel device. I brought my tools and personal effects to the atrium, and tried to figure out where my crew was. After locating them, I helped haul in the great many crates that were necessary to gut and rebuilt a massive three story room, and went to dinner.
We were assured the next day that this dry dock would not be the absolute clusterfuck of the previous atrium job. This was nice to hear, but I don’t take what people say when they want you to bust your ass on a ship for a month very seriously. Things can go tits-up at the drop of a hat, and they most assuredly would. We took on a pilot, tugs, and threw the lines. This was our first evening at sea:
Pretty serene, right? A fair wind and a calm sea. I had a personal little chuckle under my breath when I realized that I was likely the only person on our crew who looked at the weather charts for the area we would be entering in the North Pacific. 20+ foot seas were forecast, and I was pretty excited. 20footers on a 900ft ship is a bit bumpy at worst, but I knew we’d be seeing some green faces soon, and sure enough, the cookies got tossed. I felt right at home with a smile on my face and I had never slept as good on a ship like I did that night. It moved right. Almost felt like home. The bumpy night was left behind and we pulled into the Victoria shipyard. They crammed us in the drydock.

The first few days were chilly, but I felt ok, seeing as the nights had fallen to the 32F range in Florida when I had left. A few days later we began to see snow, and the atrium got very very cold, even during the day. You know life is fucking with you when you’re cutting a one-of-a-kind piece of stainless steel with a grinder while shivering and are able to see your breath. I looked over at the gun port door, and snow was drifting inside. The deck, being made of steel, offered no warmth or comfort. I relished the moments that a mig welder was thrust into my hand for some productive heat procurement.

This was the beginning of a snowstorm. I hadn’t even seen snow in a couple of years, let alone touched it. Still as shitty as I remember it.
The next few weeks were full of sickness, ship food, and adult beverages that were grossly overpriced due to the Canadian government, taking their cut for the first time on a ship in port. This was quite upsetting seeing as half the allure of doing these jobs is the cheap beer and cigarettes waiting for you in the bar at the end of the day. There was also sudden spurts of meticulous, careful joinery and cabinet making. Our crew is always the same bunch of knuckleheads that are really really good at what we do. My friend Alan compared it to the crew of miners they assemble to blow up an asteroid in some movie. After the movie was explained, it did actually make sense. We’re a contingent of fools that can not only get the quality of work these companies are looking for, but also withstand one of the worst work environments known to man. If you keep us knee deep in cheap beer, the job will get done. What is not always done is convincing the authorities to let us all into the country. Miraculously, we all made it somehow… Thanks Canada!
I guess I’ll throw in some pictures of things I built and some inherently out of context drydock photos. That’s how I roll.
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(I hate the wordpress slideshow, and so shall you. deal)
We made it back to Long Beach with only one night of 12-15ft rollers throwing spray onto the side decks (incidentally where our job boxes were sitting, so you got a little salty when you went to get a handful of screws), and made port in decent time. It was sunny when we arrived and we took the time to spend the last day drinking beer in port after passing immigration.
Now two days has passed since returning to my own boat, and I sit here waiting for my paycheck to make it’s way to my bank. I have this sitting in front of me, waiting to be installed:
For those of you that don’t know what this is: this is a picture of brand new stainless steel standing rigging which I purchased from Mack Sails in Stuart, FL for a laughably cheap price. Colin at Mack Sails is a great guy, and I look forward to working with him again in the future. I figure I will commission a new badass main sail from them at some point.
I have a few projects to do on the boat, then, as soon as my check arrives, I can fill my boat with food, water, spare parts, a few more tools and a shitload of charts, and set sail for Havana, Cuba. There I will pick up my awesome crew and head down to Guatemala to see what kind of stragglers are still kicking around the DIY boat meet-up. I plan to hang out in the Rio Dulce for a few weeks, taking small inland trips to visit select Mayan sites, fishing spots on the coast, and seek out the fine ales of Central America. I would really like to spend a small amount of time in Honduras after that, and see if I can procure some affordable lumber to trim out my interior and turn it into a piece of jewelery. After that, I figure I will base my operations out of Isla Linton, Panama for the next little while. I can still work on the ships out of there, and build small sailing craft in my spare time (when I’m not spearfishing in the San Blas Archipelago, or drinking 35cent beer).
The last 5 years of boatyards, shipyards, dry docks, yacht deliveries, and general shitty labor have all been about what is about to unfold in the next week. Once I make port in Havana, my stress level will decrease, and my schedule will melt away. With a decent amount of cruising kitty in my pocket, a brand new standing rig overhead, and a brick-shit-house of a new boat beneath my feet, I will claim a goal completed in my life, and can then look forward to the next more enjoyable goals. This is exactly what I wanted even before I first began this blog, and it will be a sweet victory to finally attain it, and finally nurture the hunter/gatherer lifestyle I have been cultivating.
To anyone, to whom I stated these goals, and replied with snide comments, disbelief, or stating that I should grow the fuck up and do something normal with my life, all I have to say is this:
NEENER NEENER NEEEEEENER!
Keep it weird.
-Darrin SailboatTrash
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Tags: aluminum bronze, chain plates, cheoy lee, long beach ca, sapphire princess