Groups.IO

 In the summer of 2019 we purchased a house in North Fort Myers Florida. We spent several months working on our Ohio house to get it ready for sale. As a long time member of the Rossi Yahoo group and someone with an IT background I threw my name out there when the moderators asked for volunteers. 

Heading South

Just as we were about ready to drive down to Florida, I got a call from one of the moderators asking me if I would join them, I accepted and  by the time we got to Florida I was assisting in transitioning the Yahoo Group to Groups.IO as Yahoo was phasing out their groups.

Our new house is located in a 55 plus community in North Fort Myers, on the Caloosahatchee river. The village has its own marina which is now Cloud Nine's homeport. My first boat project down here was to replace my disintegrating door slides. I purchased 4 1.5" thick lengths of Starboard from another group member.  I used a table router to mill the slides and followed directions from another Rossi owner on how to do the replacement.

Starboard is relatively easy to work with using regular woodworking tools. My hot tub seems to be my work bench these days 😁

To replace the Port side slides I removed the cooktop and the refrigerator. Half of the screws are behind a plywood bulkhead. The screws were evenly spaced so I measured the approximate distance from one to another  and used 2 different hole saws, one with a pilot bit and another without to make sure I didn't drill into or through the hull.  

I used the old rails to mark the location of the screws and drilled pilot holes. I thought this would be wise as the old rails were all cracked where the screw holes were. It was really nice to not have to worry about losing my doors anymore. 

Between the Facebook group and the Groups.io Forum you meet a lot of people who feel like friends whether you have actually ever met them or not. So when the Websters, who were doing the loop mentioned how bad their rails were, and that they had been in contact with Rosborough USA for new rails, I told Bill to have them shipped to me and we can replace them in our Marina. Bill thanked me for the offer and before long the rails had arrived followed by the Websters.  Bill and I worked like a seasoned pit crew and  had them back in business by the end of the day. My wife Wendy described their rails as held together by duck tape and a prayer 😁  

The next day they were back on their way out to the Gulf , the Everglades and on to the Bahamas.

2018 Upgrades

 After several years of replacing hoses and various other head parts and finally determining that the holding tank was the source of the never ending stench, I pulled everything out. I after lots of comparison reading purchased an AirHead Composting toilet. If it works as advertised, it should end the stench as well as give us much more available time on the hook. Typically we would need to find a pump-out after 5 or so days.

 

After viewing a YouTube video on making a futon for a Van I decided to make one for the boat. So I pulled out the dinette and relocated the house batteries to the bilge. I routed the vent hoses out to the cockpit.

  I also ordered rear sliders from Bomon in Canada. It was lots of fun removing the old windows and creating templates for Bomon. I used Debond Marine Formula to soften the caulk and picks to pull it out. 

When I finally got the new windows I still had to trim the opening some. Better to have to trim vs. fill somehow. The sliders make such a difference when it is hot out. 

I reused the drawers from the dinette so I wouldn't lose any storage space.

I actually gained usable storage by building this lift out drawer. 

Folded out all the way it is the width of a double bed. Folded up it gives you more walking room in the cabin and is more comfortable to sit on then the twin mattress that the previous owner had installed.

The air conditioner was mounted above the helm station and we had to use a dyer vent hose to get cool air down to the v-berth. I found 14" hatches on Great Lakes Skipper. I cut a new hole over the 1st mate's seat and installed the 2 hatches and cut another centrally located 14" hole for the AC unit. The AC now blows air down into the V-berth and we have more ventilation when we aren't running it.

 

Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley

July 2017 we towed Cloud Nine 450 miles to Paris Landing state park on Kentucky Lake. I had previously called to verify that we could leave our rig parked there for 2 weeks while we cruised. When we got there the dock master advised us that we had been misinformed. After discussion he let us disconnect the trailer and park it and the truck right out in-front of the Marina Office. We spent 1 night at Paris Landing Marina and started our cruise the following day.

Once we got going, one of the first things we saw was this huge empty barge that looked like it was the size of a Cruise ship.  I couldn't figure out what it was until we had gotten closer. There was lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery

Some of the views from our various anchorages were amazing. Sunsets on the water are always beautiful. Our first anchorage did not disappoint

About halfway through out cruise we stayed at Green Turtle Bay in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. They had very nice air conditioned bathroom suites that were a great pleasure after many days on the hook.

It was so hot while we were there that the entire town lost power. We were almost ready to leave and anchor out so we could run our generator when the power came back on.

Another beautiful sunset from the next anchorage we stayed at. 

Lake Barkley\Cumberland River unlike Kentucky lake has a much narrower meandering channel and can go from 50' to 1' in depth very quickly.  Most of the safely accessible anchorages on Lake Barkley are on the opposite side from the "Land Between the Lakes"

Early morning leaving from Prizer Point Marina for a 75 mile run to Clarksville. We had been wanting to take up to 2 weeks on the cruise, but the temperature and humidity were horrible so we decided to do a long run to our next marina stay in Clarksville. Tried to close up the boat and run the generator in the cockpit so we could run the ac but we only got a few miles before both of our CO detectors went off😞

There are lots of bluffs as you get closer to Clarksville. Don't think they have to worry much about flooding all the way up there. 

Our Last stop was Clarksville Marina, it is a brand new top notch facility. Clarksville is my original hometown and I was very happy to see them build this Marina. After a little more than a week and approx. 150 miles on the water, my niece who lives in Clarksville drove us the 50 miles by land back to Paris Landing to retrieve my rig. Would love to do again sometime when it is not quite so hot. 

We found the anchorages that we used with ActiveCaptain, what a great resource.

I created the map below showing our route and anchorages. 

Spring 2017 Modifications

One of the members of the Yahoo group came up this idea for extra storage. I modified his idea and built this storage cabinet. This uses what is essentially  unused space and provides a good deal  of extra storage.

Any extra storage on a boat is always a plus. The angles were pretty fun to match. The louvered doors were available online. The lower shelf is also very useful and is easily removed to access the anchor locker

We replaced our kitchen sink and faucet. I decided to replace the short galley faucet with the long gooseneck. It sure makes it a lot easier to wash dishes.

I found NMEA 2000 cables that connect directly to the twin Yamaha's. They send information from the outboard's computers to the NMEA 2000 network and allow me to use our Garmin 5212 to view fuel flow, alternator output, water temp, speed, hours, rpm etc.

Bought a king size 8" memory foam mattress and used the existing v-berth cushion to layout a pattern to cut the foam. Used a cheap electric knife to actually cut the foam. Apparently I should have bought a less "cheap" knife as I burned out the plastic gears. Sailrite sells all you need to do a much more efficient job, all it takes is money.

This should be a whole lot more comfortable than the existing cushions.

Got sick of not knowing how full our fresh water and black water tanks were, so I installed the Sensa Tank II level sensors and display. The black water tank was pretty easy to mount the sensors on. The fresh was a bit more of a challenge. Reaching down through the access hatch and attaching the sensors would be easier with longer, skinnier arms. Sure is nice to be able to check the levels, so you don't get a rude surprise.

Bought a hotel style safe at Harbor Freight and mounted it above the hanging locker. Great for stashing wallet, boat registration, SD cards for the chartplotters.

The previous owner had painted the Armstrong brackets with Copper based bottom paint. Unfortunately this can cause major corrosion and had started some serious pitting. I stripped the brackets to bare metal, sprayed with zinc chromate and then primer and topped off with white enamel.

We will see how it holds up.

I did some tailoring of our 2 shower surrounds to make our privacy surround more aesthetically pleasing and functional.  I was quoted over $2000 for someone to make a surround for us. I made ours for under $300. Leaves me money for other boat projects 😁

Gulf Shores

Early September 2016 we hauled Cloud Nine 800 miles down to Gulf Shores,  Alabama. We stayed 10 days at Lulu's Homeport Marina. The Marina is located at Mile Marker: GIWW 155.0 mi. EHL by water or 200 E 25th Ave, Gulf Shores, AL 36542 by land.

We cruised from Lulu's to Mobile bay to the west and Perdido Pass to the east. We also used it as a home base to drive to Biloxi and New Orleans.

Here we are headed towards Perdido Pass and my first foray into the gulf. Perdido Pass is a busy narrow pass with strong currents. It was actually a bit scary for a river rat like me.

Here we are returning to Lulu's from Mobile Bay. Lulu is Jimmy Buffet's sister and along with the Marina there is an outside play area for kids and the Bar\Restaurant with live entertainment. This place stays busy.

Got a kick out of our neighbor "Blue Heron" They had a Great Blue Heron fishing off of their dock finger most every day we were there. 

Heading west to Oyster Bay to watch the sunset.

Sunsets on the water are one of nature's most beautiful settings.

The evolution of our cockpit surround. We bought a hanging shower enclosure and found that if we unzipped it completely it provided privacy for about half the cockpit. We purchased a second one and zipped them together, providing privacy for the entire cockpit. It still needs a little bit of tweaking.