Wasting Money
The lower Chesapeake Bay is a great place to have a boat; you can sail almost all year long. But the weekend weather hasn’t cooperated the past few weekends. It’s been rainy or too windy to feel ‘safe’. But there are other things to write about, such as money spent before research was done on purchases for the boat. And that’s not smart, since unwise purchases can be expensive.
I don’t have alot of upper body strength. That being said, when the mainsail came with no winch, I put that on the list of things to purchase. And I did, for about $125 at the local used boating supplies store. Well, with all the other stuff I got done and spent money on in the winter and fall, the winch never did get installed. Now, at the end of the summer, I have developed a bit of upper body strength and have no problems hoisting the main myself. So, get rid of the winch, right? Well, I can get about 1/4 that for it on eBay. Ah well!
The compass onboard when I purchased the boat had no liquid in it. Filling it would cost about $150, for which I could buy a new one. So I did, using the dimensions the marine mechanic gave me. Afterwards, I found out that the previous (or a previous) owner had created a tube to stick on top of the pedestal to hold the compass. But there was no way to attach the compass; the old one had just been dropped into the tube. I’d already thrown out the receipt by the time I’d figured this out. So I did sell this one on eBay (at a loss, of course) and bought one with housing.
So now I’m trying to figure out how to get the new compass installed. Problem with this one? The bolts holding the wooden plate in place at the top of the steering column are just inside where the holes for the much smaller screw holes are in the compass housing. Well, I think I can get it in by cutting holes in the housing in order to get the bolts in place. But hopefully, this, too, wasn’t a waste of money.
The rubber/plastic(?) gasket on the top of my Anderson winches had cracked. One of my crew thought it a good idea to remove it for me. It was cracked, after all, right? Nope. That rubber was allowing the mechanism to turn correctly. So I put the broken pieces back in and purchased a maintenance kit for the winch. The picture online looked like it had what I needed. Wrong. It didn’t. So I called the supplier. What I was needing was a spring. Why it’s called a spring when it doesn’t look like a slinky, I don’t know. But that’s what it’s called. So I bought two, one for each winch, to the tune of $40 apiece! Ouch! For a piece of molded plastic! Luckily, this did do the trick!
Lesson learned. Figure out if you really need it. And, if so, do some careful research to make sure what you buy is what you need!