Ship's Log
April 23rd, 2008:
With spring
running rampant, and temperatures in the bubble getting a little TOO
warm (the surface of the deck measured 120 degrees last Saturday),
we're working as fast as we can to put the boat back together enough to
bust out of our cocoon!
We chopped some holes in the bubble to keep it from getting too stifling. As ol' Band-Aid face said a few summers ago....
We didn't complete as many projects this winter as we'd have liked, but
we didn't do too terribly, either. Most of the deck hardware has
been pulled, and the holes left by the screws/bolts were reamed out and
filled with epoxy. The leaky hatches have been rebedded and no
longer leak. We cleaned about 300 lbs of unneccessary junk out of
the cockpit lockers to make room for cruising supplies. Our
busted propane locker has been rebuilt, and we officially determined
that several of our main batteries are, in fact, deceased and need to
be replaced.
The deck is a
mess of tools, hardware, and other project supplies, and it's time to
start thinking "sailing machine" again vs. "floating project garage".
The floating garage in action: Brian building the new propane locker! You'll notice that quality work takes all day.
There are several steps we've got to take in order for us to get sailing by our self-imposed June 1st deadline:
1. Finish pulling and rebedding the chainplates
2. Rebed deck hardware
3. Replace dead batteries with new ones
4. Commission the engine
5. Service mast & re-step
These batteries are dead, and they weigh about 170 lbs each! Removing them is going to be ridiculous.
The order of
steps four and five is significant because we'll have to use our engine
to take an odd little "road trip" in order to get the mast
re-stepped. A couple of weeks ago, at our request, Bill Lockwood
of Lockwood Boat Works came out to the marina to look at our
mast, where it's been resting in the boat yard all winter.
We also took him aboard to look at the mast step and to chat about what
we need to do to get our mast and rigging tip-top. He had some
great suggestions, and we're really happy we found him.
While we usually
strive to do all our own work, we don't know enough about rigging to
trust ourselves to do such an important job. We need to know what
needs replacing, what needs servicing, and what is in perfectly fine
shape. After all, this is our main source of propulsion we're
talking about here, and a rig failure at sea would be a
catastrophe! This is a job for a trusted professional, not
a couple of amateurs like ourselves.
So: the
road trip. Our trusted professional's marina is in South Amboy,
NJ on Morgan Creek. If money grew on trees, we could have our
mast driven to Lockwood's on a tractor trailer, worked on, and driven
back. But since our every little dollar counts, we'll do our own
shipping. We'll build some braces and strap the mast to our deck
for a trip over there under motor power. It's about 17 nautical
miles, and it'll probably take around 4 hours for us to arrive.
We'll drop off the rig and head home mastless to complete a few more
projects. In a couple of weeks, we'll power over there
again to have the new and improved mast re-stepped and the rig
tuned. Then, at long last, we'll be a sailboat again and we can head
home under canvas!
Tina rips the lid off it.
Being low-budget
folks in the wealthy world of boating means we usually have to take the
longer, weirder way around things. In the beginning of Ike and
Tina Turner's version of "Proud Mary", Tina ferociously tells the
listener, "You know, every now and then I think you might like to hear
something from us nice and easy. But there's just one thing, you see,
we NEVER, EVER do NOTHING nice and easy." Neither do we, it
would seem. But it keeps life interesting, anyway!
The Bus gets spring-cleaned. Wink!
From then on,
we'll be sailing, sailing, sailing as much as we can, in as many
different scenarios as possible! As of May 2nd, Alicia will be
finished with her comfortable, air-conditioned job in Manhattan, and
her full-time job will be pouring her blood, sweat and (hopefully not
many) tears into cruise preparation!
So, we're on the cusp of some crazy times here on Sarabande!
Happy Birthday to our best friend Louis Quincy Tannenbaum, who turned 8 sometime between April 16th and April 20th.
Click here for the recipe for Louie's Birthday Cake.
Love,
AMC & BWN
