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