About Ms Bettencourt

Ms Bettencourt is a Swedish built 25-foot trailerable trawler. Her hull was completed in 1971, No. 1117 of about 2500 built. The boat is named for my wife Dia, whose maiden name is Bettencourt.

This little vessel came to me as a gift in 2004. Before then she had been abandoned about 12 years on the Savannah River near Augusta, GA. I have repaired and refitted the boat extensively, and I have cruised her along the East coast of the US, from Cape Lookout, NC, to the Florida Keys. I dream of taking her to Havana some day.

This blog started in 2011 to chronicle the building of a hard top for the boat to replace leaky canvas. Since then the blog has become an Albin-25 boatkeeping and cruising journal.


Sunday, April 20, 2014

If it's in the logbook...

...it must be true. Oh, well, that's probably right. My brother Paul and I were too busy piloting and going over events of the last 50 years to spend much time fabricating log entries.

So, today it is blustery and rainy in Augusta and I am reading the logbook, re-living the trip and looking for numbers to calculate fuel consumption. Entries are interesting, in a minimalist kind of way. Here's the whole voyage, according to Ms. Bettencourt's log (with events I didn't enter italicized in parentheses):

April 11, 2014

0930 Underway downstream on the Savannah River with Paul.

1100 Arrived at Lock and Dam. (Called lockmaster on cellphone. He forgot his keys and had to go home to get them. Tied up at the courtesy dock to wait. Walked around in nearby swamp. Tracked black mud into the boat).

1220 Cleared lock. (Idiots fishing off lock wall cast lines over our bows and cabin top. Paul climbs on deck with pocket knife and cuts same. The water level is very high and the current as fast as I have experienced on this part of the river. Paul takes helm while the Captain starts lunch).

1240 Paul hits submerged wing dam. (Wham! Eight-knot momentum carries us over the pilings. Potato chips and trail mix join the mud mess underfoot. Captain springs to helm, pulls throttle to idle and shifter to neutral. Machinery and rudder appear to be undamaged. Bilges dry. Captain steers back to the channel, while Paul says something about changing his shorts).

1815 Anchored in 14 feet of water at Little Hell Landing. (Opened engine access port and placed foil-wrapped yeast rolls on top of motor about an hour earlier. Hot buttered rolls went very well with dinner. Trail mix for dessert).

April 12

(Honda 1000 generator starts on first pull. Strong coffee and toasted English muffins with orange marmalade for breakfast. Paul opens a new bag of trail mix).

0850 Underway downstream.

1030 Burton's Ferry and Highway 301 bridges.

1620 Stokes Bluff Landing. (We slow and ease toward the beach to get a closer look. Bathers seem to flee as we approach. They must not recognize us as relatives. Paul shoots many photos as we withdraw).

1900 Anchored in South end of Cutoff #6 on the Georgia side of the River. Depth 20 feet. (Pitch-black dark with fishing boats moving about. Deployed anchor light. Microwaved lasagna for dinner. Found the Oreo cookies. Life is good).

April 13

(Checked engine oil, coolant and alternator belt. Adjusted shaft stuffing box. Added 10 gallons of diesel fuel from on-board jerry cans).

0920 Underway downstream.

1102 Passed under the unopened SCL Railroad bascule bridge at high tide with 3 feet to spare. (Put the VHF antenna down and had Paul on the roof just in case).

1145 Passed under the unopened Highway 25 swing bridge, vertical clearance 8 feet. Proceeding through Port Wentworth and Savannah Harbor to the Wilmington River and Thunderbolt, GA,

1450 Docked in the basin at Thunderbolt Marine. (It is a custom at this marina to deliver hot donuts to transient boaters on departure mornings. The dockmaster asked how many people Ms. Bettencourt had aboard. First, I said "six," then settled on three, thus assuring a 6-pack of Krispy Kremes for breakfast tomorrow).

April 14

0750 Underway for Beaufort, SC, beset by a swarm of biting 'no see-um' gnats. (Insect spray, prudently packed by the Captain, leaves dashboard littered with little black bug bodies. Weather radio announces a gale warning, so Captain elects an inside route through Calibogue and Port Royal sounds).

1445 Beaufort Downtown Marina. Tied up at Fuel Dock awaiting turn of the tide to move into a nearby slip.
(We meet my friend Major and his wife Linda who have graciously hauled Ms. Bettencourt's trailer to Beaufort for a return trip by road).

1615 Memorable stern-first berthing. (Captain miscalculates. A plan to belay a bow line with a strong wind swinging the stern about into the slip was thwarted by contrary current overpowering the wind. Ms. Bettencourt was jammed sideways, threatening to spear a sailboat with her anchor. Major, Paul and two dock hands achieve control.  Captain administers first aid for barnacle scrapes Major receives from piling).

April 15

0930 Underway for Lady's Island boat ramp. (It is raining torrents, but the current is in the right direction for a departure without drama. Major and Linda are at the ramp with the trailer and loading is wet, but otherwise uneventful. With the boat out of the water, we note a few wing dam dings in the hull's antifouling paint -- wing dam dings? -- but no other damage. There was also a snarl of monofilament fishing line around the propeller shaft, which yielded to my pocket knife).

1320 Launched from the North Augusta ramp into the Savannah River.

1355 Secured at Ms. Bettencourt's home dock.

(Trip statistics: Another 250 nautical miles or so under the keel. The fuel burn was 0.52 gallons of diesel per engine running hour, a number somewhat better than Ms. Bettencourt's usual 0.68/hour rate. All the Oreo cookies were gone. About 1.5 pounds of trail mix remained. It was still raining).


Note: For a closer look at our cruising area you may wish to consult NOAA charts 11514 and 11515 for the Savannah River; Chart 11512 for Savannah Harbor and approaches; and Charts 11507 and 11518 for Calibogue and Port Royal sounds and the Beaufort River.

These charts may be found at: http://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/staff/BookletChart.html

Thursday, April 17, 2014

The first cruise of '14

...in photos shot by my brother as we went down the Savannah River from Augusta to Savannah last week, then to Thunderbolt, GA, and Beaufort, SC. (Click a photo for enlarged views).

You don't have to look very hard to find wrecks on the river. Here's the hulk of a once very nicely restored Chris Craft that disappeared from the marina a couple of months ago. Apparently, it didn't survive a trip over the dam.


A houseboat went missing in Augusta about the same time, but this one isn't it. This vessel looks like it has been in the water a much longer time.



And here's the old steel tugboat Tomochichi, abandoned at Augusta in the 60s, raised and restored in the 70s and abandoned again in a sinking condition sometime after that. She's been yard art at a river home a little north of Port Wentworth, GA, long enough to grow through-hull trees.


The Georgia Power nuclear plant near Waynesboro is adding two new reactor units.


Ms. Bettencourt's 3-cylinder Kubota engine, upon which we heated rolls to go with our dinner the first night out. (If you wrap rolls tightly in foil, they will heat to butter melting temperature in a hour or so of running time and they won't taste like diesel fuel).


A memorable sunset in the anchorage at Little Hell Landing.


Piling wing dams. High water levels made many of these structures, built in the 1930s to help scour river channels, into dangerous submerged obstacles.


A double row of pilings extends underwater from these end posts to the nearby riverbank.



Either a darned big dragonfly or a shrink-wrapped helicopter.



Ocean vessel Arthur Maersk brings containers to the Port of Savannah, assisted by two Moran tugs:


Ms. Bettencourt, hanging with the big yachts at Thunderbolt Marine.




"You again!" the dockmaster said when we arrived the next afternoon at the marina in Beaufort, SC.

"Every time you show up here it rains!"

Paul Stokes photos
The front passed through Beaufort the following morning, with rain slowing only briefly while we loaded Ms. Bettencourt on her trailer.

The boat's back at her dock on the River behind our house now. Planning has begun for the next cruise, probably southward from Savannah in the fall.





Friday, April 11, 2014

Into the wilds! (Finally)

We'll be shoving off from Augusta in a few minutes, bound for Beaufort, SC, via the Savannah River and Thunderbolt, GA. The Savannah riverbanks between here and Savannah are largely uninhabited. No People. No convenience stores. No ice. No groceries. No repair parts. Should be fun.

We will be anchoring on the river two nights before transiting the Port of Savannah to the Wilmington River and thence to Thunderbolt Marina for another overnight before jumping off for Beaufort.

There may be cellphone coverage, in which case we will activate the wireless hotspot and post an update later today or tomorrow.


Sunday, April 6, 2014

"Vorsicht mit der Gelben Gefahr."

That statement, or something like it, has been attributed to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm-I. It was taken to mean at the time that the West should be wary of oriental powers; that European nations should "...beware the yellow peril." Presumably, he was referring to the growing  military power of Imperial Japan.

But we have a different kind of yellow peril here in Augusta, Ga.: Tree pollen. The stuff is everywhere. It has been wafting down like fine snow all week. And, though this is an annual event, no one can predict when the blizzard will end.







There are even pollen trails on the Savannah River. The photo at right shows a procession of  yellow blobs drifting past our gazebo, headed toward Savannah. (Click on the picture for a closer look).
















I have rinsed Ms. Bettencourt twice this week. The boat is still yellow as a gourd. Horizontal surfaces inside are also gritty, but accumulations have slowed since I shut down the solar ventilators.

Meanwhile, preparations continue for the Beaufort, SC, cruise which will commence next Friday. A systems check on the boat yesterday revealed a fault in the navigation lights. The problem turned out to be a double-pole, double-throw on-off-on toggle switch that I can't find locally.

West Marine's warehouse in California had one, which is now on its way to Augusta by (expensive) air freight. It is to arrive Wednesday.

Also, it is always a bad sign when you step onto your boat and the automatic bilge pump starts pumping. Such was the case this morning.  A search revealed that water formerly in the fresh water tank was now in the bilge. I found and fixed a plumbing leak in the pressure water system and refilled the tank.

So, the plan now is to hose the pollen off  Ms. Bettencourt one last time after the final loading Friday mid-morning, then head off down the river to make a noontime date with the lockmaster.

I fear we will  find ourselves in a fog of the yellow stuff most of the 200-mile trip to the coast.

On the bright side: We shouldn't run out of water for coffee and the lights might be working.