Dead Stop
It’s cold outside. Real cold. Not cold enough that the water freezes – thank goodness! But cold enough that I don’t want to be on the water.
I had an anemometer installed by the marina 2 years ago (found the receipt – it had been that long ago!). But they never connected it to the gauges. I’d called in someone else to come take care of the final steps, but that person never showed up. So for another year, I waited for the marina to get around to it. They didn’t. So I found someone else to do it. This month. In winter. When it’s cold outside.
Well, we found a week when it wasn’t miserable.
I motored the boat to their location, not far off the marina property, docked it and left it for the repair. Then I came the next day, when the repair was done, to return the boat to its slip. As I started to pull away, the engine died, so I pulled back over and tied up again with just one line. I got the engine going and backed up again. The line fell in the water and I thought, “I need to go take care of that.” But at that point, I was drifting towards another boat, felt that was more important, and forgot about the line in the water.
I proceeded to my slip, everything going fine now, until I turned a corner. Then the engine died. At this point I’ve forgotten about the line in the water, so I think it’s engine problems and I try to restart. I do find it odd that I can’t move the throttle back to the neutral position.
Engine won’t start, and I’m too far away from my slip to pull myself in. I’m starting to drift to the other side. So I grab a line and the boat hook and a line, hoping to catch a cleat on the other side. I get the line on the boat hook, move it to the cleat, but can’t catch it before I drift again, this time to the seawall. I pull myself along the seawall until I reach the slips again. I can’t see how I can pull myself to my own slip, so I work on maneuvering the boat into the closest slip, one that’s a bit too small for the boat.
I leave the boat.
I return a few days later to see how things are doing. I haven’t been plugged into power, so the bilge pump has stopped working. It’s rained over the days I’ve been gone, and I have a leaky porthole. I don’t think that much water can get in, though.
I was wrong. There are about 3″ of water over the floorboards.
I grab the hand pump and start pumping out water. It goes way too slowly. I go over to the marina office and explain the situation, asking if they can bring over their portable bilge pump to pump out the boat. They do. They also bring an extension cord so we can get the boat plugged into power. After discussion, however, we just plug me into the neighbor’s box. He hasn’t used power in awhile and I just say that I’ll pay his power bill for that month.
Two months later, and we finally pull the boat out of the water. The line has wrapped around the prop shaft and the strut tightly. Ryan from the marina unwraps it and the shaft goes back into the boat 2″. He tries to put the boat back in the water and the shaft seal is leaking. So he pulls it back out again.
And that’s where we are today, waiting for a new shaft seal to be installed. Waiting for my engine mechanic to give the thumbs up that I didn’t damage anything on the engine. And waiting for weather warm enough to fix the gelcoat from the last adventure.
Boat Bucks and Boat Days
Boat projects are not measured in standard time or cost. Like third world country with volatile currencies and unstable governments, boat projects have their own scales. Cost overruns are a given. Time overruns are just to be expected. One boat buck approximates to $1000. One boat day (for a project) approximates to 5-7 days.
Why does this happen? Well, as sailors, we can chart the weather and waves to our heart’s content. But the tides are the only periodic constant in our calculations. Throw in the human factor (ourselves, others, life in general), and you just have to accept that the boat repair equation has more variables than we have equations to solve.
Take the story of CT, a friend who had his boat hauled out during my ‘on the hard’ period. He was just going to paint his bottom. He’d order the paint, had the boat taken out of the water, had his time set up for painting and expected to have his boat back in the water within a week.
What happened? Well, he ordered his paint. It didn’t arrive. He called the supplier who swore that he’d mailed the paint, but he would put another gallon in the mail that day. Surprise, surprise, only one gallon arrived – several days later.
Take my own situation, which I have alluded to. It has taken 6 weeks to get 4 coats of paint on the hull and deck, because I seem to have picked a very rainy period in which to do this painting.
I haven’t looked at the total cost for my project thus far. But I take consolation in the fact that it costs 5 – 8 boat bucks to paint the topside and deck and I know I haven’t spent that much out of pocket. I just received an estimate for unplugging the prop shaft, installing the batteries for the electric engine (4 – 100# AGMs), and mounting the engine: 5 boat bucks. So that one I’ll do myself, meaning I’ve just added boat days to the project.
Ah well! I now understand why the definition of a boat is a hole in the water in which you pour money. Or, in my case, time. Sigh!
[Top]Hard Times
Every relationship has them. And right now, the boat and I are having ours.
We put the lifelines back on yesterday. Realized afterwards that one set was put on backwards. Problem with that? The connection at the bow is meant to stay connected. The one at the stern is made to be removed, to make it easier to get on and off. Now, that isn’t possible.
The other set of lifelines was twisted.
In both cases, it can be fixed. It’s just one more thing on the long list of things still to be done.
There’s the rest of the non-skid that needs to be applied but hasn’t arrived yet.
There’s the stripes on the hull that need to be put on.
There’s the layer of bottom paint to put on.
And there’s the engine.
My plan with the engine was to ask the marina to remove the plug that was put in when they pulled the prop off, put in the battery box for the new 400 lbs of batteries, and mount the engine. The estimate I got back? $4900, give or take. And that estimate included a fabricated platform for the engine that I kept telling them I didn’t need.
Since the piggy bank doesn’t have that kind of money around, I’ll be doing it myself. Well, I’ll be doing it with the help of friends. I made a desperate call to Dave A., who said he’d be happy to help. If there’s anyone who knows anything about engines, it’s him.
But it brings up the other frustrating part. I’m leaving town next Wednesday for a week and it doesn’t look, at this rate, like everything will be done before I leave.
<sigh!>
This has been one hell of a spring. I thought I’d allowed myself plenty of time to get all the projects done. And what has made it most difficult is the long hours at the job that lets me keep this expensive hobby also does not allow me to work on the boat very easily during the week. The weekends have given me so much rain that it’s made it difficult to get the painting done.
And, on top of all of that, I now have wasp nests in the boat. I’ve counted three so far: two in the vberth and one aft, near the cockpit locker. I don’t like wasps. I’ve picked up some spray that I hope will work fast enough that I won’t get stung when I use it on them.
Enough venting.
Now this is a post that won’t get alot of hits.
[Top]Serendipidy
Sometimes life throws you lemons. Sometimes you get to make lemonade! :yes:
So the rain has stopped, enough for the wind to blow 30+ MPH. A bit hard to paint in that. But I have perservered. There are two coats of primer on the deck, and the topside is completely sanded so the first coat of primer can be added to that. The first coat of polyurethane has been put on the locker and cabin covers. All is (almost) right with the world.
What about serendipity? Well, this weekend, on Saturday, it was raining. After it finished, Erik and I headed out to do some sanding. I had purchased wet/dry sandpaper. But, naive as I was, I assumed that meant you could sand something that was wet. Duh! What it means is that you can keep the sandpaper wet, you can keep the surface wet, and the job goes much more quickly. I’m guessing it’s because the sandpaper doesn’t get gummed up as quickly, since you can keep washing it off. Nevertheless, I don’t hate sanding as much as I did now that I’ve made this discovery. The serendipity came in because I probably wouldn’t have discovered this if it hadn’t been raining so much.
Okay, so I went back to Don Casey’s book and he said to use wet sandpaper. He also suggested having a spray bottle to keep the surface moist. I actually found it more helpful to keep the sandpaper moist.
Second bit of knowledge gained was more of a thankful oops! When I finished putting the primer on the covers, I neglected to put the cover back on the paint can. Half a quart of $30 primer sat uncovered for two days. When I came back to it, there was no film on the paint, and it didn’t look like it had evaporated too much. Sigh of relief!
Funny thing is that the primer does dry fairly quickly when it’s applied to a surface. Interesting chemistry. I wonder what the mechanism is.
I talked with Mike at Wormley Creek. When I showed him the engine compartment and told him I was thinking the best place to put the battery bank (400 lbs of AGM batteries) would be aft, where the diesel tank had been. He suggested it might actually be better to put them as far forward as possible. He explained that you actually want your weight to be as close to the keel as possible. Besides, he said, that way it was easier to get the batteries in and out. Made sense. We’ll wait until the batteries and engine actually get here to put it all together.
I’d already heard about boat bucks. They’re about $1000 apiece, and it’s how one measures boat projects. Recently, I also heard about boat days. They equal one week. At this point, it looks like my ‘projects’ on this boat are going to be extended about one boat day.
[Top]Sewing the Sail
The UV cloth on my head sail had been coming loose for quite awhile now. And, after our recent storm event, it was looking pretty raggedy as well. I emailed a couple of places for bids on getting it repaired. Right around $500. Ouch! Well, that was including new fabric as well.
So, just before heading out of town, I pulled the sail down. As I did, it appeared that the fabric was not in as bad a shape as I thought. And it was just the one edge that was loose. So I figured I could sew it myself.
I have a wonderful Brothers sewing machine. That thing can sew through leather, according to the guy who sold it to me. I don’t know about that. I do know that he took a piece of denim, folded it in half, and sewed a seam on it. He then took that, doubled it again, and sewed it again. He repeated the process a couple more times and the machine never balked.
I’ve also sewn quilts with it. My quilts are made with denim and broadcloth, and the seams on those can get quite thick. Again, no problems.
So, rather than put out $500 on what looked to be a simple zigzag seam, I took it home and did it myself.
The machine didn’t like it. The zig wouldn’t. Just the zag held. So I sewed a straight seam in it. That did work pretty well.
But I am a bit worried about it. If you’ve ever felt the cloth on a sail, it feels like it’s permeated with plastic. So, did I just create a perforation that will make it easier to tear? Usually when one uses a zigzag stitch, it’s to allow the seam to ‘give’. Did I just create a seam that’s just going to tear more easily? Only time will tell.
Next problem: the foot was floppy. It would wave at me in the wind. After seeing the UV strip, I assumed that sewing the seams would fix that as well, since I thought I might just be witnessing that fabric flapping. That wasn’t the case. The foot is still loose. So I still may need to take this sail in for repairs.
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