May 9, 2013

It was a busy week, but a lot was accomplished.  Bruce, a master mechanic who was once a service manager for a Rolls Royce dealer and has been a marine mechanic for the last 15 years or so, helped me diagnose my alternator issues.  (He wouldn’t accept any payment, so I twisted his arm until he agreed to let me buy him a beer at our local hangout.) The alternator is fine, it’s an instrumentation issue.  I cleaned up the main ground connections on the engine which seemed to help.  I need to replace an idiot light bulb too.  No big deal.  Whew!  Hector came by to trial fit a new scoop/bug screen for the forward hatch and delivered the carpet pieces for the aft cabin to which he had added some matching edge trim.

I did some work too.  I finished the restoration of my outrigger paddle in time for a race on Saturday, glued down the carpet in the aft cabin, finished sanding the teak in the cockpit/doghouse and applied some penetrating epoxy and a bit of Cetol, finished and mounted the pinrail on the shelf fiddles in the aft cabin, and completed the cockpit table with the addition of a modified mount I found in a used marine gear store.  If that isn’t enough, I spent a day taking photographs of a group of pianists for a client of Carol’s.  Been paddling a lot too.  And yes, I’m tired!

August 23, 2012

I've always been one who eats to live rather than lives to eat, so it was a bit of a revelation at Carol's birthday dinner last week to find that gluttony can have a certain appeal.  Needless to say, the Maine lobster and its accoutrements more than lived up to prior billing. Unfortunately, the next morning I had to waddle back home to get the boat ready for our cruise to the Channel Islands.
The only construction project this week was the fabrication of new fiddles for the shelves in the v-berth (as part of the effort to make sure everything was properly secured for sea).  Most of my time was spent trying to tick off as many as possible of the 37 items on the pre-departure list: checking, stowing, cleaning, and buying.  I spent four hours with a pressure washer blasting off 8 months of accumulated grunge and another four hours sucking up bilge water with a shop vac, just to give you an idea of what a glamorous week it's been.  I also replaced the broken switch for the new light in the aft quarter berth, and, thanks to John, replaced the rather dubious bridles used to support the dinghy in its davits.  Most of the equipment checks went well, with the exception of the autopilot.  Although it had run perfectly three days ago, it was totally dead today.  Some sleuthing with the volt meter led to the discovery of a loose ground connection on the breaker panel, a thankfully easy fix.  I still have a lot to do, but enough will get done so that we can leave on Sunday.  Since we'll be away from internet access, next week's post will not happen until we're back on the following Sunday or Monday.