Newsletter December 2004

"My God, Why hasn’t He Written?"

Yes, sportsfans, the crew of Pipe Dream is still in Florida, alive, well and kick’n. I have been remiss in publishing my newsletters for a number of reasons. Busy? A little. Working on the boat day and night? Yes, that’s true and the word “work” just makes me sick saying it! Just plain lazy? That’s the biggest problem! Well it’s time you got caught up on the life and times of Ferdy and Jutta.
In our last newsletter Pipe Dream had just gone through Hurricane Francis and sustained cosmetic damage on the starboard side. ( For those of you in Montana reading this letter, starboard is not celestial boredom, it’s the right side of a boat when facing the pointy end). We intended to have the damage fixed somewhere on the eastern coast of the United States and get the hell out of Florida, which is the hurricane and bug capitol of the world. We paid our fees at the marina and gave notice to vacate our slip on the coming weekend. When the word got out we were leaving Florida a new lady entered my life, “Hurricane Jeane”. She was out in the Atlantic heading east and she heard we were still in Florida . Jeane did a loop and returned to Florida, came ashore at Fort Pierce and again hit Pipe Dream We canceled our plans to leave the marina, tied Pipe Dream down in her slip with twenty or more lines, and evacuated to Tampa with friends. A stroke of luck, no damage to Pipe Dream.
At that point we decided the weather gods wanted us off of the boat. We extended our contract at the marina and boarded a Greyhound Bus for a 950 mile trip to Annapolis, Maryland to visit the Annapolis Boat Show and our friends Duey and Nan on the boat, ”The Great Escape.” Two weeks in Maryland was what we needed and many nights were spent relaying the story of our trip from hell on the Greyhound Bus. After salivating over all the fancy new boats at the Boat Show, we bid farewell to Duey and Nan and drove their car back to Florida and Pipe Dream.
This brings us to the final chapter of Pipe Dream’s Christmas newsletter, “Life on the Hard”. It was time to do a little, you know what, that four letter word, work on Pipe Dream. The repairs from the hurricane and other much needed maintenance had to be done. Jutta, being a real workhorse on the boat, did what any red-blooded German girl would do when the chips were down and faced with this situation. She hopped a plane to visit her mother in Germany and left me standing alone on the decks of Pipe Dream, ready to enter the shipyard. There is a song about the cruising lifestyle and living in a shipyard which goes something like this, ”it’s a hard, hard, hard life, life on the hard”. It all begins with putting two straps around the belly of Pipe Dream and picking up those fifteen tons with a crane, then gently setting her down on the dirt, keel first, with jacks around her so she won’t fall over. The next step, they give you a twelve foot ladder to climb up to Pipe Dream, which is still your home and where you’ll be living, “on the hard”. Keep in mind Pipe Dream has two heads, or bathrooms to you land lubbers, neither work because you are on the hard. It’s only a fifty yard stroll, down the twelve foot ladder, across the boatyard to the office bathroom and shower which is only used by about one hundred workmen during working hours. We won’t describe the bathroom and shower in this newsletter! I have a wonderful galley on the boat, or kitchen to you land lubbers, and I love to cook. Keep in mind I can’t run water in the sink because everything runs out the drain and pours below the boat. All dish washing and running of water in the sink is done in a bucket and hauled down from the boat on a rope. Meals can only be described as sparse. The closest restaurant is ¼ mile away and it’s a greasy spoon. The nearest bar is ¾ of a mile away and I must walk through dark warehouse streets to get there and back. The rent-a-cop, who is one of the few living souls in the shipyard during the night, thinks he’s Elliot Ness. You are always looking over your shoulder thinking you could get clubbed by the guard heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night. As the song goes, “it’s a hard, hard, hard life, life on the hard.” The one driving force in your life, at this time, is to work 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to get out of the shipyard. Jutta did return after 14 days to tell me how nice everything looked. After twenty seven days at Cracker Bay’s Shipyard, Pipe Dream was launched and we sailed into the Intra Coastal Waterway and out of the jaws of hell. We are now in Fort Lauderdale for Christmas and provisioning for our jump to the Bahamas after the holidays.
Jutta has made a nice sign I can hold up on some street corner which says some thing like this. “Going Cruising, please help, God Bless”. Yes sports-fans, life is great.
Jutta and I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope some of you, if not all of you, would put down your hammers or briefcases and go out and play as we did four years ago. You can’t take the money with you, but you can send me some if you have any extra!

Happy Holidays from the decks of Pipe Dream

Ferdy and Jutta