Sail to Cock Island
The best laid plans……
I had stuff packed pretty well the night before. The only things I wanted to get on the way over were bagels (so they’d at least start out fresh!) and ice (never can have too much of that!). I told Steve N., Lee and Nelson that I wanted to leave the docs by 9:00. So they all planned on arriving between 8 and 8:30. I arrived first, a bit after 8. Lee and Nelson arrived next, not much after I did. Steve arrived about 8:30 and we started packing stuff on the boat. That was the long part, and first lesson learned: try to do all that the night before if you want to leave early in the morning!
My marker, when heading back to Wormley Creek, is a large barber pole colored stack at the refinery near the docks. Great thing is that you can see it forever. Bad thing is you can see it forever. You feel like you’re not getting anywhere when you leave, because you can still see the tower. You feel like it’s taking forever getting back because you can see the tower. With the heat, and no wind, it was a very slow journey out of the York River.
And I got burned.
I’ve had a great farmer’s tan this summer, since I wear a t-shirt and shorts most of the time I hang around the boat. I wanted to get a bit more color, though, to look better in my daily work dress. So I wore a swimsuit under my clothes. I took off my t-shirt, put on some SPF 30 sunscreen, and hoped for a bit of color. The results was that I did get some color, and the color was red. Second lesson: spend a bit less time getting full sun exposure. Might look into one of those sunscreen shirts.
Hmmm…. need to see if there’s a way to include my tracks from the GPS on here.
When we got down to GrandView, in the Chesapeake Bay, we finally had a bit of wind. Nelson took over steering at that point.
As those who’ve read my other posts understand, I’m a bit nervous about hitting bottom with this boat, since I seem to do it so often. My rule of thumb is to try to stick to water that’s at the least 10′ deep.
The waters from the York River down to Hampton Roads contain alot of shallows quite a ways from the short, so I try to stick close to the channel where I know it’s deep. Well, Nelson grew up in this area; he knows the waters well. So I guess I should have trusted him. But he wanted to take the boat closer to shore than I did, to avoid making the trip longer than it needed to be. I was still concerned about the shallowness. We finally reached a compromise on the distance from shore to stay.
We lost the wind still several times until we reached the Elizabeth River. I wasn’t concerned for me – I like just spending time on the boat. But I was worried for Lee and Nelson, who had activities for the evening planned. Next lesson: let your passengers know that it’s a bit harder to predict your arrival time when you’re dependent on the weather to get where you want to go.
Coming into the Elizabeth River, we finally got a good breeze. Blowing about 10 knots, it was finally some nice sailing. It was only 1 hour of what ended up being a 9 hour trip. But at least we did get to sail in a sailboat.
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]Sticker Shock
Well, repairs are underway and I’m having sticker shock!
There were certain things that needed to be taken care of that I didn’t think I was quite ready to handle, so I’m having them done before I take the boat out. The general repairs were about what I expected. But that soft spot on the deck was more extensive that we originally thought and that’s going to be a killer to cover!
Sorry Megan and Lissa – not only will I have to sell my firstborn, but my second born, too, to pay for it.
Not really. But, well, I did know I was buying a sink hole.
🙁
It’ll all be worth it!
Good news was that the steering column isn’t as bad as we thought. That is, the fiberglass around it is sound, so that will just require replacing the backing plate, not repairing the deck as well.
It’ll be a week or two before the plumbing and electrical work is done. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get a better price on the fiberglass (deck) work.
I did get some pics of the boat before the work started. I’ll add to it as things are getting done:
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Boat Inspection
Had the boat survey done today. For those land lubbers among you, it’s equivalent to the house inspection you have done before you purchase a home.
Overall, the survey looked good. There were, however, a couple of items that will need immediate attention: there’s a ‘soft spot’ in the deck, with an equally soft spot underneath in the cabin. That means that water has gotten in at one time or another. Depending on how bad the damage is between the layers, I may need to cut out the fiberglass and replace the core (wood or balsa), or I may need to just drill some holes and get the water out. Either one will require drilling a hole to determine the interior damage, which I don’t think the present owners will appreciate right now. The other item is the mount for the (steering) wheel. The backplate is corroded and will need to be replaced. Neither item is a show-stopper. But both will give me some room for negotiations.
My contract with the owner says that I’m to give a final decision by Monday, the 4th. But I’m trying to get hold of the broker and ask that date be stretched until I can see a final copy of the inspector’s report.
[Top]Engine Inspection
Well I talked to the guy who inspected the engine today. He said that he had looked at it a few years ago and it wasn’t in very good shape, which is why he’d recommended looking at the boat first.
He said that alot of *good* work had been done on it since then, and now he would recommend it. There were a few minor things: needs new batteries (which I knew), the alternator and starter should be serviced (as in they’ll run, but a ‘tuneup(?)’ would give me much more life out of them).
So next step is the boat survey: someone who’ll at the entire thing from stem to stern. That happens a week from Friday.
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