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I'm going to post some little stories here about my experiences from the last few years of crewing on Valkyr. 🙂 hope everyone enjoys them. These are things I have written over on my personal weblog at http://www.scottcarle.com/wordpress that were about Valkyr. Hopefully over the next few months I and Zsanic will start putting up some current stories as owners of Valkyr 🙂
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This was from a trip in November of 2007
Friday I went up the ICW with Angela, Zsanic and Sailor the cat, on Valkyr. First thing before leaving the dock we had issues with the engine not pumping raw water again. It was looking like we were not going to go for a bit, but Richard came over and saved the day. He found that the anti-siphon valve on the raw water cooling side of the engine was no good. So we bypassed that quickly and were ready to go. We still left the dock in time to make the 10 o’clock opening of the Sunset Beach bridge.
It was a rainy overcast day with us all bundled up in foul weather gear the whole way.
Angela at the Helm
A little more than halfway there we overheated because of were not sure what… had to add antifreeze to the system. here is us hanging out on deck while Richard looked at engine again. He was on the LC Marie and they caught up to use here.
Me standing their in the red foulies and angela in the yellow
Zsanic
Sailor the cat chilling.
Still a grey, rainy and overcast day
Even the wildlife was grey 
That evening we all kicked back for a bit at the Provisioning Co.
Angela
Richard
Jerry
Zsanic
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This is the return trip back from the the race we went to above. November 2007
We had a great day sailing back on Sunday. Broad to beam reach with winds 15 gusting to 20.. Valkyr was moving like a freight train.. nothing could stop her. Jerry on his Catalina 36 was having to work just to keep in sight of us. We gradually pulled away from them over the course of the day.
A pirate boat isn’t a pirate boat with out its own pirate flag.
Independence at the beginning of day lead us out the shortcut on the south side of the capefear inlet.
Not long after we move ahead of them just abit. I got some really good shots of her cutting through the water. They were really moving good.
After a while I got up on the end of the bowsprit on Valkyr and got some great shots of her just going like that proverbial freight train through the water.
Miriam just crashed for a while in daves lap
Sailor now crashed in miriams lap
Zsanic crashed on sailor
We had a great trip back about 5 hours dock to dock.
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Winter Sailing
December 2007
Well it’s mid December so it should be winter.. but with average temps in the 70’s it has been feeling like very nice spring/fall weather. I just couldn’t resist the invitation to go sailing on Valkyr. Not a lot of wind today but enough for a steady 3.5 to 4.5 knots of boat speed. The ocean was almost flat with just a few ripples from a stronger gust or two. We just set the sails and balanced her out and didn’t really even have to touch the helm for long periods of time. We lazed around on deck with the warm sun on our faces. The perfect day with just a bare hint of cool in the air with enough sun to warm us while we watched the dolphins jump out of the ocean under a clear blue sky.
Lee Kaufman was out on his boat also. Later on our way back to the marina we gave him a hand. The tide was extremely low and he ran aground in an area that normally he should not have had a problem with back in the inland waterway. We were coming in behind him and he gave us a call on the radio and wanted to know if we could pull him off. After taking a look at the situation Angela wanted to pull him over by his main halyard and heel his boat over sideways till the keel floated off and he could motor to deeper water. I was on the helm of Valkyr and made a practice run up on Lee just to see how the boat would handle in the current and make sure I could manuver safely to pull him over and keep from grounding ourselves. Lee draws 3 feet while Valkyr draws more than 5.5 feet. Angela rigged up a line to pass to Lee from the bow of Valkyr with a dlink on the end of it that Lee could just click onto the shackle on his main halyard. I came in at an angle, bow first, slowly, letting the current move me down on to Lee’s boat. Angela got the line over to Lee and he got it on the halyard and I slowly backed down on the line till most of the slack was out of it. Lee during this time was back at his motor ready to gun it and motor out as soon as the keel came off the ground. Everyone was now ready, I slowly backed down on the line and heeled Lee’s boat over. Just like clockwork his keel came off the ground and he gunned the motor and slid out of the shallows back into the channel. At the same time I put Valkyr in forward and let the line slacken so that lee could get to the shackle to release our line. only one more tense moment where Lee came close to bumping us as both we and him tried to quickly get back out in the main channel before the current took us back into the shallows and near by docks.
I felt real happy with my handling of Valkyr. I don’t have a lot of experience maneuvering bigger boats such as valkyr with a single prop and full keel so it felt good to acquit myself well.
After my success with the helping Lee I asked Angela If I could bring Valkyr back into her slip and Angela more than bravely said yes. It was a good day and time for me to try it. Almost no wind at all by now and the tide was right at slack tide. So no current or wind affecting the boat coming into the slip. However all my nerves about doing this for the first time on a 20+thousand lb boat were wasted. Again the tide was so low that 4 ft before even getting to the slip the keel was touching the mud and getting into the slip was more a matter of driving through mud than a real docking. But I did it !!!
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June 2008
I went out on Valkyr with Angela and Zsanic yesterday. We were planning to go sailing but everyone on the boat was tired and the weather was really kicking. I would have been an challenging time sailing so we all voted to just anchor out behind Bird Island and grill some steaks and sausage. It was the right choice!!!! The wind started out about 20 knots and we were gusting to 30 knots by the end of the day. It would have been some fun sailing but a lot of work.
We spent most of the day at anchor watching the antics of the power boaters out there. To be honest they just about stressed us out a few times. Several came real close to cutting our anchor line with their props. A group of 3 and then 4 boats that were rafted up drug their anchor about 40 yards and never even noticed till will told them. They finally stopped dragging after three of the four boats put down an anchor.
This same group also seemed to see the inlet as a trash can as they deliberately kept throwing empty bottles and cans overboard. I wanted to holler at them but took the easy way out and just kept my mouth shut. They had been drinking pretty steadily all afternoon and It probably wouldn’t have been a nice confrontation. The one boat that I noticed the name on was called “Waterproof” so if anyone from waterproof sees this “you guys need to take back to the dock what you bring out” quit littering!
Overall though it was a great day. I spent a bit of it just kicked back reading and just hanging out with Zsanic and Angela.. Most of the conversation revolved around not going back home but just heading for Bermuda or the Bahamas..
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August 2008
We went sailing today from Valkyr’s new home. What a difference a face dock on the the ICW makes from being buried deep in a marina. Leaving is just a matter of pulling away from the dock. No backing and carefully missing the other boats in their slips or worrying about the current carrying you into them etc.. It also is really nice to sit on deck looking at the unobstructed view of the marsh across the waterway and watch the sun come up.
Surprisingly though not as long a haul to the ocean as from little river it was still a bit of a ride as the wind was on the nose most of the way to the inlet. On the final turn out the inlet we raised sails and sailed out. Winds were light so we had a long slow sail straight out till about 3:00 pm and then headed back. We had two large freighters pass us on the way in as they came out the Cape Fear Inlet. The first one did a bit to freak us out as they were on our port side approaching and wanted to cross bows with us so they could pass on our starboard. We went ahead and did as they asked and all passed safely but it was kinda weird that they wanted to do that.
After getting back in we did the docking drill and it was much less crazy than in Valkyr’s old slip. Even though there is a lot of current and cross wind at the new location becuase it is on a face dock the approach is wide open and your able to just ease in instead of doing Angela’s normal Capt’n Ron approach.
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October 2008
We took Valkyr (a Downeaster 38, Mast head sloop cutter rig) out a couple of Sundays ago. It was supposed to be Angela, Zsanic, Jay, Eva, Barbara and me on the boat but a few days before we were scheduled to go out Angela found out she had to work. When she did she offered to let me captain the boat and take everyone out anyways. To be honest I have several people that have made similar offers of letting me take out their boats and I never have felt comfortable being responsible for their boats. Up till now I have always just said thank you for the offer but never taken them up on it. However, in this case, there were a lot of people looking forward to going out on Valkyr and it would be the only chance Eva would have to go sailing before she went back home to Slovakia. I have probably sailed as crew on Valkyr more than just about any other boat other than my own so I am very comfortable with how she handles and sails. The next positive is that Jay was going to be onboard and I knew that I had a very experienced boater and sailor to give a hand if I needed it.
We all met at the marina at about 9pm and quickly got the boat ready to leave the dock and away we went. Well, away we went to Jay’s marina to pick up another GPS unit as the Garmin on Valkyr was on the blink. I’m not sure if it was just corroded contacts or something more serious. We did a couple of touch and goes at the face dock of Jays marina to drop him off and pick him up a few minutes later after he had retrieved the gps from his boat. (ironically his gps wouldn’t turn on either)
We decided to press on anyways.. we were not going far and were in waters that we know quite well so.. off we went. We ran out the Cape Fear Inlet and hung a left and sailed up the coast in front of Bald Head Island for about an hour and half before turning back. The waters were close to flat and we had some very good wind.. Easy 12 to 15 knots. Coming back in the wind was dead on our nose as we entered the inlet but we were feeling lazy but not so lazy that we wanted to hear the engine. We rolled the head sail up and just used the main and the self tacking staysail to sail back in. I was very impressed we were able to tack against the current and wind all the way back in the inlet and actually up the river till we were past southport.
All in all everyone had a great time.
and pictures were taken so.. here we go.
Eva posing for the camera
Me and Zsanic.. I didn’t know I was getting my picture taken
Jay helping with a line that got wrapped up on the fore deck
Zsanic and Eva.. don’t they look like their having fun.
Eva liked this part.. Capt. Eva steers the ship
Zsanic… hugs, hugs, hugs to you.
Barbara.. what troopers her and Jay are. they had just gotten back from 5 days at Sea in 10+ feet seas and 30+ knots of wind near the gulf stream.. im not sure I would have volunteered to go sailing just 2 days after getting back from a trip like that.
As you can see I was at the helm a lot. not that I’m complaining. As Zsanic tells me my job is to Live to Serve the Ship I feel very pirates of the Caribbean when she informs me of that.
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October 2007
I hope you enjoy the video. I had fun putting it together from some old video I had taken one day while out sailing beside Valkyr and some I just recently took while crewing on Valkyr.
You can download and play a full size version of this video by clicking on the download link
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A couple of pictures of Valkyr sitting at the dock.
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There really isn't much in the way of real new news on Valkyr..
I have done a few little things lately but most of it has been measuring and ordering of parts etc.. etc... The weather has been really cold and wet this winter and I have been disinclined to work on any of the projects on deck because of that. Then the projects in the engine room haven't gotten done either "just because" 🙂 lol..
However This past week I did take a few pictures and measurements on deck on valkyr in preparation for upcoming projects. I measured the square footage of all the non skid areas on deck. I am planning on painting them with duraback or grizzley rubberized non skid paint. I calculated that all the non skid areas = 221 sq ft of non skid. This would take about 5 gallons of the rubberized non skid to cover for a end cost of about 450 for the grizzley or 660 for the durabak.
We have decided to repaint the white areas on deck around the non skid with white Brightsides. I was going to go with perfection or one of the other 2 part polyurethanes that have the longest life span but the job on deck is going to be done piecemeal over time. A one part paint that we can just open and use will make the process much more simple. If we were going to do the whole thing all at once then the complexity of using a two part paint would be a little more reasonable. As it is we will be rolling it on and tipping it. The cabin sides will be first so that we can put the port visors we just purchased over all the port on the boat so that we can open them even in the rain and not get water in the boat. We purchased them at http://www.seaworthygoods.com . The people there were very nice and spoke with me at length about fit and installation. We had to compromise on the size of the visors we got as the ports on valkyr are about a 1/4 inch larger than the closest size visor. we had to go up one size to a visor that is about 1 1/2 inch longer than the port both forward and aft of the port. The below picture is of one installed on another boat off of their website. It is a polycarbonate that is extremely strong and UV resistant and lightly tinted.
They said that as long as I didn't remove the backing on the tape on the visors that I could return them if I didn't like the fit. However they are the only people out their selling a product like this that I can find. I think they will look decent anyways and it wont affect the functionality which is the big thing. When we received the visors a couple days after ordering them there was even a hand written note by one of the owners on the receipt say how much they had enjoyed looking at the http://www.downeasteryachts.com website. I had mentioned what boat the visors were going on and told them about the website. I guess they came out and took a look at it.
The day I was doing measurements was cold but clear and I decided to do a couple of little projects. I installed a 3" nicro solar vent on the port dorade box in place of the cowl. You can see the cowl in the pictures in the last post I made. I also tried some of the tequa oil on a couple places on the dorade box. I put some on the top of the box without sanding. just brushed it on over the greyed wood. This came out very murky dark as you can see in the below picture. Also I sanded and area on the side of the dorade a put a layer of it there. Both Zsanic and I like the look of the sanded then stained area better. This is only one light application in both places. The sanding was just a quick hit with a piece of sand paper and not done very well either. I do like how easy this stuff is to apply. It isn't fussy at all.
As you can see in the picture here the solar vent is installed and just the one vent makes a big difference in the head and the boat as a whole as it constantly day and night pulls a very slow but steady amount of air out of the boat. Thought it doesn't directly address the issues with the odor coming from the holding tank or the hoses to the holding tank it does mitigate the odor in the boat almost completely over time. The one issue I have with the solar vent is that it is so quiet that being on the dorade box and not visable from inside the boat you can't tell that it is running. you can't really hear it and the flow of air is slow enough that you can't feel it either. On deck you have to put your ear against the unit to hear the fan turning.
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