blog5

profile ready to launch

Blog 5 – We have splashed...but wait...there’s more.

In the slings ready for launching

New Years Day is fast approaching and Panacea has seen many of her neighbours launched. A short-term neighbour – Skoal- owned by a guy from New Hampshire had an urgent pullout after launch with some minor repair required and with only a few days before he was to pick up his first charter of the season in Marsh Harbour (in the Abacco Islands). He was ‘pressed’ about getting the repair performed and re-launching – but clearly considered the weather “acceptable” regardless of where the wind was coming from. He was blessed with good weather, as things turned out. He joins a growing number of acquaintances who seem to regard the crossing as very straightforward.  Most of these folk have boats larger, and therefore faster, than our Panacea. The object lesson seems to be that size and speed obviate some of the issues. I wonder how we will fare with the new engine ...perhaps faster? In my dreams anyway.

Our cruising mates are all dealing with ‘maintenance’ issues. Some issues are only minor while others will be holding back their departures. We will be part of (potentially) a four boat flotilla bound for the Bahamas. We had been hoping for a departure in early January and worked very hard to sew up so many issues with that hope in mind.

Back to this blog over a week later and we are launch-ready! It is New Year’s Day and raining steadily. We will be asking to splash when the office re-opens tomorrow. Whew!  Of course it remains to make sure that everything behaves as intended – but our confidence is high. We need to be afloat. And we need to cut back the urgent pace a little. Our beach time has been seriously cut back in recent weeks.

A week later there is further news:

in the water no leaks

We finally got into the water only days before our expected crew (Tristan) would be stepping off his plane from Canada. Close inspection on each Sea-cock revealed a total lack of hull leaks. The engine started right away – but one of the line attendants pointed out that we were blowing bubbles beneath the hull.  Whoops! I had the raw water pump connected wrong – something which was quickly rectified. The next engine run-up was better with the raw water system performing as it should. The so-called “closed-cooling system” did not prime and would not pump anti-freeze through the engine as it should.  I soon realized that the heat exchanger was not mounted on the engine when I received it because it doesn’t plumb in efficiently there. More fixing will be required but we decided to prime the heat exchanger manually so that we could run the engine long enough to drive Panacea to our slip.

We primed and slept –since darkness had fallen. Upon trying to start the engine in the morning we discovered that the engine would not start when we tried it. Anti-freeze was now(at last) in the system and after some cranking, I found traces of it in the intake manifold. Conclusion: “Yikes...a blown head gasket!” This was the problem with the previous engine!

Susan urgently texted Tristan to tell him that we can’t sail out on his arrival. His response to the effect that this won’t be a problem and advising that we get the head gasket for him to install was cheering news. Susan spent the day stowing things and generally making space for the third member of the crew.

changing out head gasket

She also located a supply house for engine parts so that we can get the new gasket on the same trip in which we will be making to pick Tristan up in Ft Lauderdale. Friends from Osprey and Stettler towed Pancea to her new slip. The number of other boats which have towed Panacea continues to grow.... darn-it!

Susan took Trish and the kids (S/V Selkie) to a laundromat while husband Justin performed a cleanup before departure for the Bahamas and home to Ireland.

I spent the day with Victor, re-aligning the prop shaft with his engine on Whisper. They only arrived in Ft Pierce yesterday after serious delays at home and it looks like they could be ready to leave before we do. However things continue to move forward, with progress on all sorts of less urgent boat repairs to fill the days while awaiting the needed parts.

Scotch Mist from Nova Scotia donated some citric acid for the pending engine flush and also had helpful advice about how to recharge the refrigeration system. They have since launched and sailed – and here we sit.

The head gasket recommended on a cruisers forum arrived in less than 2 days from a farm equipment website. Unfortunately it was for a Mitsubishi K4D.  Our particular Westerbeke is a similar Mitsubishi (identifier code unknown to us)– except with a slightly larger cylinder bore so we were disappointed. We would like to re-order – but have yet to locate any identifiers on the engine block.  In desperation we tried to order online from Westerbeke (at nearly triple the price).  Their website gave us a price but refused to complete the transaction and produced screen pop-ups directing us to a company in Miami. The Miami company would not deal with us because they have ‘protected’ agents in Ft. Pierce. The old ‘Merry-Go-Round’ of pre-internet commerce!  Sigh!

One of the Westerbeke agents here in Fort Pierce is the very same fellow who last year declined to assist me with repairs on the old engine, or even to discuss the matter. For that reason, we elected to deal with the other agent, Brian, at Whitaker Marine Services. We requested next day delivery to us at our marina. Brian wanted an additional seventy dollars for next day delivery. He really pushed us for the extra money, but when we agreed, he advised that delivery would be in 3 or 4 days. We told him we’d accept regular delivery as a part of his stock order.  He charged us a lesser amount for that form of delivery, even though it was his regular weekly stock order. The gasket arrived 7 days after we ordered it and we had it installed a few hours later.

Meanwhile Tristan, Susan and I were busy with other things. 

 

The electrical system is receiving a lot of attention, with LED lighting going in throughout, a new stereo which uses our existing files from our hard-drives – transferred to thumb-drives, a cleanup and remounting of the Radar, anchor rode maintenance...and as they say...much much more!

The only one of our sailing companions who is actually ready to leave in Now or Never.

They have waited patiently in a slip at Harbourside Marina for both Panacea and for Tekla Bramble, which has remained delayed in Titusville with technical issues.

Meanwhile, the Mantees are getting ready to whelp, with as many as eight females playing and basking around us in the tiny inner harbour of Riverside Marina. pic

Whisper is preparing to launch and we expect to sail south to Miami ‘in company’ with Now or Never and (Perry and Irene). Other cruising acquaintances may also be ‘in company’ for some part of the trip south and subsequent crossing to Bimini and on through the Bahamas.

Blog 4

Blog Four – Ho, Ho, Holy Christmas Blog

Christmas Lights at the Bar Code Mansion

As I begin to write, we are still awaiting our new prop shaft so that we can finish the installation and move forward to splash day. The word is good although the propeller company providing it were unable to use my coupling. So I guess that we will have replaced every peripheral part to the engine on this install.

 We had fortune smile upon us in the form of an old watermaker which still seems functional. It will fit inside the engine space and share the water inlet of the refrigeration cooling system. Hopefully it will function, although, for what we paid we expect to replace some of the wear items. The watermaker is a very small model  (it only draws 4 amps @ 12 volts) so we will have our solar electric power supply provide us with fresh water this year after all.  We had given up on being able to get one this year and were adjusting our travel plans as a result.  We owe this good fortune to becoming acquainted with a local figure at this marina, named Dave, who arrived last week in his small RV from Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia accompanied by a little Italian street dog named Goldie.

Dave is a trader in boats and boat things. He purchased a boat for his son, and removed some of the items which his son advised that he did not want. His loss is our gain. At the present time Dave is a two-boat sailor. His Roberts designed Spray class cruising sloop is awaiting a purchaser and I suspect that he is negotiable since he is paying yard costs on two boats and needs one gone. Anyone out there want a steel 38 footer?

Two days later – and the engine has been removed twice. I was expecting this but it does not stop me from being pretty tired. The greater bulk of the new unit and its very hard to get at central aft-end rubber mount led me to install engine bearers which act as ‘rails’ upon which the whole power unit can slide forward and can be adjusted on one plane. The long and short of this is that after a total of only three removals for small adjustments, Susan and I torqued the mounting bolts all around today into an unmeasurably close tolerance of under one mil. I have been hoping to achieve a 5 mil tolerance so this was quite a surprise.

The really great news is two-pronged (for those who share my enthusiasm for this kind of thing). Firstly, as the mounts were drawn tight with the wrenches the flange clearance disappeared. This install is coming out as good as it can get.

The second piece of great news which derives is that I did not require any blood transfusions as a result of the work. A very close friend said (more than once  - if I remember correctly) that I am usually not hard to find because I am always working on something – so the seeker need only go to the last place where he or she saw me and follow the trail of blood and broken fingernails. Sad to say – today I did bleed three times – a first for this season. I kept telling myself it was time to quit and have a beer – but needed to reach that next ‘important’ goal.

I finally got sent to the showers by ‘the coach’.

Thank you Sue!

As a result of today’s great results, we can launch on short notice. We expect to run the unit RSN (Really Soon Now) and to have an embedded link to a video of the engine running from tanked water. There are only a hundred or so small details that we must clean-up in order for this to happen.

teak restoration

Susan has taken the restoration of the ‘brightwork’, AKA the wooden trim, to heart and has sanded all of the teak, applying two or more coats of epoxy before installing a finish of UV stabilized varnish.  She hopes to have this all done before we depart for Cape Coral to celebrate Christmas.  For you gamblers, the smart money is going with ’not quite’, since she also decided to tackle the underside of our hardtop. I am pretty sure she will achieve her goal with the epoxy layers – but I figure that we are going to save the urethane varnish for a later date.

I cannot wait until she starts on our deck gel-coat problems! Panacea is starting to look quite presentable.

Our thoughts lately have been about Maria, Evedene, Sawyer, Lorelai and Felix.  The grand-children aren’t going to see us this Christmas – except perhaps by Facebook.

After New Years we will be moving the boat southward to Biscayne Bay – to await a weather window for departure to the islands.  We will be wanting crew for some passages this year so keep us in mind when you are planning a winter getaway and – keep in touch.

Our most recent neighbour in this 400 boat live-aboard campground is named Tim. He is a very splendid fellow who has recently completed 7 years of single-handing from Washington state to Chile to New Zealand to Hawaii to Mexico and Panama, and via the central American countries to Florida.  What I find to be most interesting about Tim is that he single-hand sails with aplomb - but depends on the expertise of others for all service work. This is a leap of faith which I generally fail to embrace. With the ‘crap-shoot’ in the delivery of services to boaters here, along with all of the technical knowledge required to keep your boat happily afloat when help is not available I was really surprised to learn that he has practically no tools – and claims that he would not know how to use them. He watched as I changed my cutlas bearing the other day. It was all over before the yard employee even showed up to work on his boat. When I installed my new propeller shaft an hour later he was still waiting for his $ 60 per hour yard (and already on the clock) employee to show up.

Tim’s lament is that the yard workers are holding him back from summertime in South America. His new thru-hulls did arrive after the above part was written. The yard guys had him floating 2 days later and He eagerly sailed away – destination: Cape Horn.  “Go for it, Tim!”

 Before I met Tim I would have said that no person could survive seven years at sea without a ‘fixit’ gene. He is a tribute to the builders of his boat – a Valiant 39.

I guess cash can be a substitute – although this has not been working out too well for some here in Florida.....the tales are all horrible:  $20,000 spent (so far) in an attempt to correct a badly rebushed centreboard, $400 thrown to the wind to replace an alternator – only to have the system fail to charge after the specialist departed with his payment (heard the same story twice the same day from two different boaters)., $10,000 to deal with misalignment issues between the power module and the propeller shaft.  That last issue was finally dealt with by another boater – who went aboard, welded in an ‘ear’ to support a ‘floating’ engine mount on one of the bearers, before actually performing an alignment. The owner had been towed back to Marathon for the third time when the other boater decided that the yard staff doing the work were inept and offered to help.

It is the evening of December 22nd^st as I write this. As of today we have reconfigured the new exhaust, as well as the glycol pipes on the engine. The instrument ‘pod’ took a while to put together and is cabled –in. Tomorrow is alternator day!  Pic of the progress  We will probably do a 5% citric acid flush – on the recommendation of our newest acquaintance in this yard- another norther with a boat in Cape Breton as well as one here.

 As Christmas approaches we still do not have our refrigeration back in service – despite promises made. Having decided to tie the refrigeration in with the engine ‘room’ renovations, the surprise arrival of our water-maker has led the designer (moi) into a series of interdependent moves that will see the waste brine from the watermaker being pumped thru the seawater manifold of the refrigeration compressor by the watermakers pump. I am quite proud of the concept – and I will get back to you about whether it was brilliant or... not so. This will probably save us the expense of replacing the seawater pump for the fridge.

The Christmas “Parade of Lights” was spectacular this year.  We joined friends Peter and Kathlene of Now or Never,  and Brian and Dianne of Stettler to watch this boaty version of the Santa Clause Parade. Video or pics from Peter with credit to him Days later there are still single boats out there, going from marina to marina – all decked out in Christmas lights. Of the several hundred boats tied-up in Harbourtown Marina – a significant number have Christmas Lights outlining their rigging. Pic of the rigging lights

During my morning walk today I bumped into Dave. Dave has been around this yard for some number of years and as we talked he pointed out boat after boat which have been ‘on-the-hard’ for longish periods of time.

On our right: The teak-built Grand Banks was renovated from the sheer-line up - with plywood exterior walls, household windows and sheetrock on the walls before the enthusiastic young couple who own it drifted away leaving the hull untouched.  pic

Behind me lay a sixty foot racing sloop on the ground with the stern torn off. “The hurricane that came through here 9 years ago took that one.  She was in the ‘City Marina’ when all of those floating concrete docks broke loose and basically pulverized every boat there”. Today the City Marina is still being rebuilt. They have a large area where docks are yet to be installed but should be able to take about 300 boats when they get finished.  This time the whole tie-up is sheltered behind ‘dragon’s teeth’ breakwaters.

To our left was a twin engined ‘wedding cake’ with a hull similar to that of our Billy Joe B. “Those folks come by every now and then and spend some time polishing the railings and whatnot – but it hasn’t been in the water in years.”

That varnished mahogany sloop? “No one has touched it in the decade that I have been around. It’s a dead duck!”

“The record holder is a guy who has been coming here every year for the past 32 years!” Dave opined.

“Huh?” says I.

“That’s right. He comes and has barely got the hatches open when he gets a telephone call from his parents. They are in their nineties now – but this has been going on all along”. Last year he was here 2 days before he had to go back to assist them in New Jersey.  His boat will never see water again now!”

Every yard has got them because boats represent that Freedom Dream! Some people NEED to go around Cape Horn. Others simply need the escape machine which could satisfy that fantasy, ready in case they ever break free.  Many never break free – while the rest of us exist all somewhere in between.

Happy Cruising and Merry Christmas

by the pool