Scratch ONE item off the project list: Re-certify life raft.
It failed, badly and is now condemned. Apparently the internal valves that are supposed to release pressure if it gets over inflated are all shot. No more are available due to the age of the raft, and the cost to repair would be half the cost of a new raft even if the parts can be found.
So now the decision is about whether to replace it now or wait.
As mentioned, here is the master list for Winter 07/Spring 08. All of this is supposed to be done…by May? Ha.
I see the source for many updates here as I beat myself senseless trying to get all of this done.
I think that’s about all of it. I’m not doing all of it myself thankfully.
A comma splice is a sentence in which two independent clauses are joined by a comma with no conjunction. – Wikipedia.
It has also been the bane of my existence as a writer since high school. I still suck at commas; having had two English teachers for parents they STILL don’t let me get away with it. And since I suspect that they are two of the three people that might be reading this blog perhaps I should work on it.
Frankly I’m more interested in learning to splice ropes than commas these days. Consider it part of my wacky charm and style.
Teak decks are lovely. Comfortable on the feet, good traction when wet. Pretty to look at when well kept. They are not fun to maintain.
At some point I will start posting bits of the “Master Plan” for Evenstar over the next two years. It is a horrifying amount of work and expense if you put it all in one place and add it up. But part of that is the reason I am going to school, of course.
But back to the teak, the daunting task I am starting now. Recaulking. It’s not clear if all of the teak needs to be recaulked just now. However some of the black caulk is coming up way too easily, and most of it is sticking up above the wood (or “proud” as the surveyor called it) indicating some wear to the wood. At a minimum that stuff needs to be razored – but the stuff coming up is what has me alarmed.
Being both cheap and jaded with regards to hiring out big jobs like this, it seems that I will try and take advantage of my hiatus from classes the next four weeks to take a start at some of this. Armed with a Fein Multimaster with a special teak caulk blade, a case of TDS (Teak Deck System) caulk, a power caulking gun and a sander I plan to spend the next three weeks crawling about under the shrink wrap, snorting fumes and sawdust while getting Teak Caulk in my hair, under my nails on my clothes and with luck, into the skinny cracks in the teak.
Wish me luck.
Finally, months after the fact I will get around to putting a small bit of information up about the second longer cruise we took last summer.
The itinerary was pretty simple – head up through the Cape Cod Canal to Gloucester, then over to Provincetown then home. This was the last week of summer before Labor Day.
What a great trip. But of course – not without a bit of adventure. We started out with a rip roaring ride over to Onset, which is a little harbor just South of the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal. With winds blowing 30+ from the South it was a screaming reach out of Newport all the way to Buzzards Bay and up to Onset. We hit almost 12 knots surfing off of waves…yes, it was a 27 ton surfboard.
Onset had charm, but less than we’d hoped. Maybe we missed something from the cruising guide. It is a very narrow and tight approach to a pretty (but shallow) harbor. We anchored out, but found that in town there isn’t really all that much by way of restaurants and things to see. A nice park, and a small grocery store.
The REAL adventure in Onset was getting out the next morning at slack tide. I think the lesson there is that at low tide the chains on the buoys marking the channel out are slack too, and maybe the channel isn’t quite where you think it is. Or at least the big freakin’ rock that we hit on the North edge of the channel, right before the day mark. By all accounts we were in the channel, but I have a divot in the keel now that says otherwise. Fortunately we weren’t moving fast and our boat is built really tough – loud noises and a lift up out of the water but no damage.
Passage to Gloucester was uneventful – very little wind and an easy motor. The Cape Cod Canal is interesting – scenic, with ripping currents. It seems most power boat operators are either illiterate or simply choose to ignore the very clear warnings about transit speed and wakes. The bridges on the Canal look a LOT lower then they are…very deceiving and unnerving, even on the way back when you’ve already been under them.
Gloucester is a neat place, once you figure out where you can land your dinghy and how to get your head pumped. The cruising guides are noticeably mum on both those topics, but you can tie up at the harbor masters dock and there is free pumpout if you just ask. This is not posted anywhere. Lot’s off good restaurants in Gloucester and in nearby Rockport. Rockport is a neat day trip destination too, with it’s quaint little town area. Taking a Whale Watch from Gloucester was the highlight of the trip for the kids. Lot’s of whales to be seen, so close that my daughter got soaked by the exhalation from a Humpback.
Heading to Provincetown we saw some more whales from a distance but we decided against trying to approach them, mostly because we don’t know what we’re doing and wouldn’t want to break laws or endanger the Humpbacks. We did our best to stay on the Stellwagon Bank for maximum whale sighting, but the wind didn’t cooperate so much.
Provincetown was nicer than I remember, and more family friendly than I remember too. Of course, the last time I went there I was 20 and visiting with three other young single guys on the make. Visiting with the wife and kids, well we didn’t see so much of the late night flora and fauna. Only one short parade, and the ubiquitous drag queens handing out flyers for the night’s shows.
The harbor in P-Town is not one I think I’d enjoy anchoring out in. We picked up a mooring, which was fortunate, as there is no dinghy friendly dock anywhere in the main downtown area if you are not staying on a mooring. The public dinghy dock is a mile or more down Commerce Ave., really far from the best shops and restaurants and almost in a residential area. The mooring was worth the money, to be able to ride in and be right in the thick of it.
Things that we saw included the Pilgrim tower, and a tour of the nearby Dunes. The Dunes are worth the price of the tour – do not leave this area without heading out there. We saw some neat wildlife and some of the historic dune shacks, and the guides give you a feel for the natural ecology of the area you don’t otherwise get. We only tried one beach, the name of which escapes me, but we didn’t love it…I’m sure there are better ones elsewhere with fewer rocks and finer sand.
We ran into a surprising number of people we knew there, including some friends I’d raced against on our old boat at Block Island Race Week in 2003 and 2005. They were in a sister ship to that boat, a Beneteau 40.7 called Downtime. One thing I learned there – I like my new boat in the blow a LOT better. We left for home about 30 minutes after Downtime on our last day there. When we passed them they were looking miserable. It was a dead into the wind slog, motoring because we needed to make the tide in the Canal. We were warm and dry, wearing t-shirts under the hard dodger as Evenstar went through the 3-5 foot chop without slowing. Our friends were not having such a great time of it; watching them in their foulies getting drenched as that lighter boat was slowed by every ill timed wave brought back more than a couple of damp and clammy memories of similar trips out our 40.7. Not that it wasn’t a lovely boat most of the time…but boy did she suffer motoring in steep chop in heavy air on the nose. I shivered in empathy in my T-Shirt.
Overall a a great vacation, we’d happily do all those spots again…if there weren’t so many other great places to see too! To much world, too little time.
Looking back over the various posts I noticed that I talked about a “special” new block coming from Lewmar in September. Well, It’s February and I still have a gimpy jury rig on the outhaul.
Fortunately I have what every boat owner should dream of – a family friend with a machine shop. This friend has bailed me out more than a couple of times before, including machining a new wheel post and drum for my old Beneteau 40.7 when the wheel fell off while France was closed for August, and reaming out and cleaning up the threads for the zinc screw on my Gori prop that I carefully snapped off clean.
So I brought my busted-ass block and my two-of-a-kind left in the world sheaves over to my friends shop. We pressed. We pressed more. Then we had to heat it, drill it, press it, drill it again and press it some more. Finally the remains of the pin came out of the block. There is NO WAY that Lewmar ever intended this thing to come apart in the hands of a casual user.
So – the obvious questions…
1) Why did Lewmar not want this pin to be removable
2) If their engineers are so set on that pin never, ever coming out of the block – why sell me a sheave that I can not install? Well, that one’s obvious.
By destroying the pin we were able to remove it. Fortunately, being in a machine shop we could handily make up a new pin to fit. In fact we made two, since I do have two of these broken blocks awaiting repair.
Some day my new bionic turbo super strong block will arrive from Lewmar, I know it. I’ve always counted my friend with the lathes and presses high on my list of assets…but he’s moved up even higher. Fortunately for me he breaks his computers from time to time and I can bail HIM out.
Back to school for me. As a part of learning to manage this rather large and complex boat I’ve enrolled in the “Marine Technology” program at a local technical college.
The thinking is simple. Some day I am going to take this boat someplace where I don’t speak the language too well. Then, I’m going to break it. Badly. At a minimum I need to understand what is going on so I don’t spend months sitting in an unfriendly port at the tender mercy of a foreign boat mechanic as he slowly leaches the life out of a “rich gringo”. At best I’ll be able to keep my own boat running like a top and swap the occasional boat help for a nice bottle of wine or a couple of steaks.
Going back to school – to a trade school – at age 41 is not without it’s adjustments. I figure most of my classmates weren’t quite born yet when I was awarded my B.S. degree. While discussing the difficulties of the math classes with some of them, I mentioned that I didn’t have to take them since I was not going for a degree and just taking the technical courses I wanted. “Lucky for you” they said; “No, I took all of that stuff back in the eighties.”
“Oh yeah, the Eighties…hippies and all that.”
To say that my peers do not quite relate to the realities of being a married homeowner (or boat owner) with children would be an understatement. But their a nice group of guys so far and they seem to be accepting of the idiosyncrasies of the oldster in their midst. At least none of them have called me an “Old Fart” to my face. Yet.
So, this quarter it was Basic Engine theory – stripping down and rebuilding an engine and learning the basics, and Welding 101 (Oxyacetylene and MIG). Next quarter the real meat starts – Diesel Engines, Marine & RV Systems, Advanced Marine Electricity, Marine Electronic Installation, and Gas Engine Maintenance. Future quarters will include Fiberglass fabrication, painting and refinishing, and outboard troubleshooting, maintenance and rebuilding.
It’s funny how being a grownup this time at school changes my attitude towards it all. Attending every class and doing the homework – what a concept!
OK, so the summer didn’t end in early August. I just dropped off the face of the earth for a few months. Lots of cool stuff happened but I just didn’t take the time to blather on about it.
We did take our second vacation – to Gloucester and Provincetown primarily with a few other stops along the way. What great destinations; maybe more to come later, but suffice it to say a good time was had by all. Interesting sights, cool places, great food, and lots of whales.
More updates will follow; we saw some cool stuff on that vacation. And we’ve a lot in store for the boat in the off season.
The block we blew up was wimpy, really.
OK, apparently these things have in fact been exploding…in the United States. In Europe, the original blocks from Hallberg-Rassy have been up to the task. Apparently in the States we get a bunch of ex-race boat owners like me that go and buy them, then trim the hell out of the sails. And things start breaking. If I was a well behaved sedate cruiser type, this would not happen.
It may not be helped by the fact that I have now upgraded the sail from old floppy Dacron thing to an Aramid weave (very strong), and also now upgraded the outhaul line to an aramid line with a breaking strength in excess of 17,000 lbs. This thing does get loaded up after all.
Frankly I find it shocking that anything on this boat isn’t up to severe abuse; Hallberg-Rassy generally overbuilds everything. There are, in general, no wimpy parts to this boat.
As it turns out, there are no replacements for the block we broke to be had anywhere in the world for love or money. My rigger procured the last two sheaves in the world (according to Lewmar, the manufacturer) made specifically for these blocks. A little time on a press machine, and we can get them back on.
In the meantime, Lewmar and Hallberg-Rassy have developer a better, stronger block for this application…available in September. So we wait, and jury rig the outhaul until then.
My rigger misses me, I can tell.
Back in the days when I was racing my old boat hard, I was in a couple of times each week. Usually because I had bent or broken something while pushing boat too hard. Of course the number of times I broke something when sheer stupidity or ignorance was the cause was zero. Right. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
When racing it was it was busted halyards or cracked sheaves or broken blocks and the like. My rigger like to use me as a good toughness subject, sort of like the gorilla in the old American Tourister ads.
So…now to the kinder gentler sailing style: Cruising. What can I break? My blender?
Well duh…now I have POWER winches and way more load on the much larger boat! So I can break things more efficiently and find new things to break that aren’t supposed to. Opportunities for rampant carnage and destruction abound!
This past weekend we went to Block Island…nice weekend, but the wind wasn’t great. Leaving Friday night we were headed out into 20 knots on the nose. When we began to unfurl the crispy new main it looked…wrong.
Being impatient to sail after a week of non sailing life I decided I didn’t need to wait for my wife to help me. Typically setting the main is easy; it involves the pushing of two buttons simultaneously – one to unfurl the main and one to grind the winch the outhaul is on (that’s the line on the back corner of the sail). Unfortunately, because of the Bimini installed over the cockpit you can’t actually see the outhaul at the end of the boom if you also have your finger on the “Unfurl” (or “Uit” as it is labelled in Swedish on our boat) button, so when I set it myself generally tell it’s position by the shape of the sail and fine tune it when the sail is pretty much out.
Unbeknownst to me some of the guys that were working on the main sheet clutches earlier in the week completely eased the boom vang on the main sail. For the non sailors in the crowd, that is a device connected from the boom to the base of the mast (roughly) that is used to pull the boom down flat – it is a very important sail shape control. In my excitement to get sailing in all this breeze I failed to notice this. When the boom is off the sail looks really curved…which is the same when it looks when the outhaul is not fully cranked on.
Net result? I cranked the outhaul all the way out and the sail did not look out. I cranked some more, then my wife pointed out that I had run the outhaul all the way out and had the whole mess under considerable strain.
Now, when the outhaul is loaded up the only way to release the clutch (device that latches down and holds the line) is to give it a teeny little additional grind in to loosen the clutch up, then you can pop the lever and off you go. This time, when the lever popped the sheave in the block guiding the line exploded off of it. My wife took two direct hits, one leaving bloody scratches on her right arm and another leaving half of her left hand bruised. Keep in mind that my wife does surgery several times per week as part of her job; this is potentially Very Not Good.
So we have broken bit #1 – the sheave on the foot block. We hurriedly furl the sail back in making our second major mistake which sets us up for breaking the outhaul itself on the way home. The outhaul is a long and strong rope, designed for supporting major loads.
That was easy enough; we did a quick and shoddy job rolling the sail, as we were concerned about the extent of my wife’s injuries, and securing the boat and assessing the damage. So we we decided to take the main sail out on the way home…it refused to come out. All bunched up in the mast and it wouldn’t move. The way to solve this is to go in and out in small bits with the outhaul and the furler together while changing the tension on the sail.
In and out with the outhaul over the broken hub of the block also will do what to the sail? 10 points if you said “break it in very short order”.
So now, I am getting to see my rigger a bit more frequently. Which is nice in a way since the proprietors are lovely people and a pleasure to visit with. I could do without the bills though.
