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!
Water Inside the Boat
I hadn’t been down to the boat since we’d sailed over for lunch, so we stopped by today to drop some stuff off and to check it out. When I opened the hatch, I was met with about 4 inches of water on the cabin floor! We had a pretty nasty storm last week, and 32 year old boats will leak (from the top!). In fact, I do know that one of windows leaks pretty badly in bad storms. And I’ve come in to find the cushions in the aft of the boat wet after a good rain.
I checked the battery. I had left the charger on and it was fully charged. I checked the bilge pump, and started fine with the manual switch. I checked the fuse and it hadn’t blown. So I guessed that the floater switch had died, since that had been acting funky when Steve N had replaced the hose for me.
So I turned on the bilge pump and emptied out the cabin, as well as the bilge itself. Then, when we got home, I IM’d Dan. He felt that my diagnosis was right. He also suggested getting a Water Witch Bilge Pump Switch. He said they were more reliable than the floater switches. I ordered one from Defender, since things tend to get her pretty quickly from them.
[Top]Cock Island Race
Steve N agreed to be on my crew for the race. He also brought along a friend, Steven. Steve R and Dew found me 4 other guys to round it all out: Clint, Clint, Kenny and Kevin. Kenny and Kevin are quite experience racers. As Kevin said, he’d be sailing since he was this high (imagine hand held about knee high on a guy over 6′ tall). Kenny was my mainsail trimmer; Keith and Steve N took the jib sheets.
I told the guys that the rules were that the people didn’t hurt and the boat didn’t get hurt. I then proceeded to take 4 Degrees far enough up the Elizabeth River that no one else was around so we (I) could get some practice tacking. We were in the Cruising 3 Class, out of 4 cruising classes, so we were to start next to last.
We began working our way to the starting line about 10 minutes before start time. Mind you, I would have been happy to start after everyone else. But my crew assured me we’d be okay.
Anyway, the wind died on our way up, and we ended up starting 4 minutes after our class, 1 minute before the last class of the day.
Now, I’ve raced on other boats for 5 years. But it’s not quite the same as being the one at the helm. At least, it isn’t for me. I stayed out of people’s way. That was my whole purpose. Despite that, we were moving pretty good.
With the light winds, the course was made pretty short – only 6 miles round trip. The winds are tricky up the Elizabeth River, though. With all the large ships and the big buildings, the wind will shift, die, and pick up in short order. So I was quite grateful for the experience crew who could adapt quickly to the situation at hand.
The one part that made me nervous was heading around the turn. I tell you there were other boats out there! And they were going to hit me! 🙁
Kenny was on my mainsail, Kevin and Steve N handled the jib sheets, and I skippered. Well, I stood at the wheel, but Kenny and Kevin really handled the rest.
I moved way behind the others, upriver a bit, to get a chance to try turning. That went well. When Kenny said it was time to head towards the start, I kept to the side and did that. Mind you, I wouldn’t have minded starting last. But we headed up so as to at least start within our group, the next to the last one. The wind died on us, though, and we actually started with the last group.
I was amazed! I’d never been on a boat that was so well controlled. I told them that it went best at about a 15 degree tilt (I don’t seem to pick up much speed after that) and they literally moved bodies around to keep us at that angle!
We did stay moving, and we did stay away from the other boats. The one part that made me nervous was coming around the turn. But again, Kenny and Kevin had the boat so under control that we sailed right around perfectly. And I do mean perfectly! Because the two that came right behind us ended up colliding!
Officially, we ended up coming in 8th out of 12 in our group. But, if you adjusted for our start time, we were 2nd. Not too bad for my first race.
Now the guys are telling me I need to do this more often. They suggested to Steve R that I skipper his boat during some of the races when I’m with him. They also suggest that they’d be happy to join me on some Wednesday night races. We’ll see.
[Top]Blisters
Steve R and I met at the boat yard today. I came with resin and hardener. He came with everything else: a drill with a paint remover disk, cups for mixing resin, throw-away paint brushes, and I don’t remember what all else.
He arrived before I did, and had started squirting water on the bottom and drawing circles. He showed me that the water helped us to see the raised spots on the boat bottom more easily. The raised spots were places where water had gotten in and formed blisters. Not too bad blisters are those that occur within the boat’s gelcoat. The ‘bad’ blisters are those that have gotten into the fiberglass.
After he’d gone over the entire bottom, Steve took the drill with the paint remover disk, held it sideways, and ‘sanded off’ the spots. Most were just raised spots that he sanded off. A few actually had liquid in them and they popped like water blisters. Books I’ve read since said that some of those things have quite a bit of pressure under them and that one should be careful when they pop. Luckily, mine just oozed.
We then mixed the resin and hardener and he showed me how to paint the mixture onto the spots. For the deeper ones, we took fiberglass matting and placed it in the hole.
There were a few bumps on the keel. Those we filled with some type of filler – I’ll need to find out what we used, which was mixed with the resin.
Tomorrow, I’ll need to come back, sand these down, and put another coat of resin on them.
[Top]Repairs and Other Lessons
Okay, so, after the last disastrous time out on the water, the weather was looking crappy for the next week. So I asked the boat yard to pull her out of the water and do the repairs I needed: get the bottom painted, rebed the chainplates, repair the soft spot in the deck, and remove the outboard engine. All those were large jobs, and I really felt it better to have someone else tackle them.
The soft spot on the deck, the inspector figured, was probably due to leaks from the chainplates being repaired poorly. I could see that, since there was some awful goo around them. Looking at it myself, though, I wondered if the leak into the hull was from the pump-out, since it was right beside the soft spot. I learned later that that was an after-market add-on. In the days when this boat was manufactured everything went over the side, including the offal from the loo.
So, Mike, the mechanic, went to start on the repair. He began by trying to release the pressure in the pumpout so he could remove the pipes. Well, luckily, he didn’t get a face full of goo, but he did get a squirt from the pipe that he didn’t expect.
Well, those who’ve read the other posts in this blog know that my times on the boat have been less than ideal. I really did did intend to empty the tank from the loo. It just hadn’t worked out that way.
So, the repair waited.
In the meantime, my budget was starting to show strain. So I asked Mike, the mechanic, if he felt the chainplates really needed to be rebedded (about a $2000 proposition). He didn’t think so, since he saw now evidence of leaks from them within the cabin. But, he said he’d take a closer look when he got the deck peeled back.
Also, in the meantime, Steve (of our last, fateful, voyage), offered to help me fix the blisters on the bottom. He also suggested that painting it wasn’t as arduous a task as I thought. So I told the yard I’d take care of that.
Sense is starting to win out over money. Well, starting. 😀
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