We returned to the boat on Monday. There were still a few pieces to attach to the engine, and then there would be testing. We speculated that we might be able to leave the marina by Wednesday. Ha!
When it came time to attach the starter, the mechanic discovered that the starter sent with the engine would not fit on the engine. When Larry and the mechanic examined it closely, they discovered a major difference. It was not the right starter for this engine. That problem has been dealt with, but it isn’t the end. There seem to be daily revelations of “just one more thing.”
Yesterday morning we expected the mechanic to finish his work. We thought we could put the boat back in order in the afternoon, run errands today and depart tomorrow. Not to be. A few minutes before 5PM the mechanic left to look for yet another part. When he had not returned at 6PM we called and learned that he would not be back until today. The saga continues.
I told someone that it was like daytime TV, maybe “Days of Our Lives.” We have certainly lost a lot of days to this project. A lot of dollars, too. The slip rental alone will be staggering when the final bill is presented. Shipping costs have been shocking. The boatyard, like the government, charges fees for everything. The service company that provided the diesel mechanic, the crane and etcetera will undoubtedly charge for every little thing. We will be glad when it is over.
The good news is that the engine works. You push the button, it starts. This engine starts in the blink of an eye, something the old engine never did. It always had to huff and puff a bit before it got going. So that’s nice. It also runs much more quietly. I told Larry it almost makes me think of a lawn mower, and that is rather disconcerting. I think it should sound powerful. Maybe I don’t really know how it should sound.
The final bit of excitement is the delayed arrival of the replacement starter. The starter that was originally rebuilt for our old engine is back in service now, but we paid for a new starter, and we were expecting one. The latest update on its status is that it may be here by next Wednesday. Is this not fun!?!?!
The engine runs, and so shall we. We have paid our bill to the marina based on a departure on Sunday. We will hang around in Lake Worth until the starter gets here. We might get internet there by using our wifi antenna. We will work with what we have. Our phone works, so they can call us when the part arrives. Then, at last, we can finally go north.
If I were in the business of telling tall tales, I could hardly make up a story with as many hitches and glitches as this one. Still, we are almost on our way. Whew!
If you ever decide to cruise in a sailboat, be prepared to flex until you are tied in a knot. The fun never stops!
As many of you know, we thought we would head south last Monday after a quick check of the keel. We thought wrong. The rock we hit in Maine last summer left a signature in the form of a gouge into the fiberglass matting. There were some dings and scratches that could have been tolerated, but that deep gouge required attention.
It took a whole week to do the work. The temperature was so cool that Larry had difficulty working with the fiberglass and epoxy required for repairs, and the same problem cropped up when he was applying paint to the repaired spots. We were finally on target to leave on Monday (Monday, November 9, 2009).
We got up early and made sure we had our pre-departure tasks done before 10:30, our scheduled splash time. We cleaned out all our trash, because we can’t discard trash while under way in Chesapeake Bay. We hosed down the deck and cleaned the cockpit. We washed the cockpit curtains. We were ready when the lift arrived. The lift operator had to make a few adjustments to our radio antenna and pole on the aft deck, because the lift for splash was smaller than the lift for haul, but very soon the boat was back in the water. I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself to start feeling excited about our winter plans.
Larry and I climbed back into the boat. The lift operator and his helper guided our boat out of the slings, and then they told us we could start the engine. One of the things I have always enjoyed is the sound of the engine starting, because when that sound hits my ear, we will be going somewhere. Larry turned the key and pressed ’start.’ We heard a couple of feeble wheezes. He looked startled, but after fiddling with the gearshift to be sure the engine was in neutral, he pressed the button again. No doubt about it. That engine had a serious flu. Larry went below and reconfigured the battery bank in order to combine the full power of three batteries instead of just one. Sad to say, all we heard was a feeble, limping thump instead of the roar of diesel power.
The boatyard men pushed and pulled us over to a nearby slip where we tied up. Larry had been threatening to buy a new starter battery for a while. I guess that week on land gave the battery a good excuse to retire. That explanation is as good as any. Fortunately the boatyard includes a full-service marine supply store, and they actually had a battery we could use. This one is even more powerful. That should mean that it is not only better than a dead battery; it should also be better than the old battery when it was new. Larry brought it back to the boat, we sat there for half an hour to bring it up to full charge using shore power, and then the engine started. Yay! All looked well. Ha!
One of the casualties of our never-ending departure mode is that I keep having to top off the supplies and food I need for a three-week jaunt without stopping to shop. It took us a whole week to get away from Harborview after we thought, “Tomorrow,”, so I had shopped to replace a week’s worth of groceries right before we went to Tidewater. We were supposed to be there for only a couple of hours. After it turned into a week, I again needed to shop to make up for that week of food we had used. We left Tidewater and cruised over to the fuel dock where we were shocked to discover that the price of fuel had risen to $2.95 per gallon. We gritted our teeth and filled the tank with 80 gallons. You do the math. Then we headed for an anchorage across the street from Safeway.
Because we always expected to simply cruise, not to go shopping, we had deflated the dinghy and strapped it down on deck. We don’t drag it behind us when we know we won’t use it for a while. Therefore we had to unwrap it and inflate it and throw it back into the water before we could shop for groceries. That took a while, so we didn’t leave for the grocery store until 4:30 PM. I had a very complete list, and Larry is a good shopper, so I sent him to gather up some things while I did the picky ones. We hurried back to the boat, had a nice dinner and discussed our plans for the next day. Since we had had such a scare with the battery, we decided to run the engine a while to bring it up to full charge before we went to bed, and that is what we did. We both felt a little gunshy after that unpleasant surprise at the boatyard.
Next morning, I got up a bit before Larry, and I got everything ready to make coffee. Coffee-making requires AC for the grinder and coffeemaker, and that means the inverter. Given our battery scare, I decided not to risk turning on the inverter and using up too much power before we had to start the engine for our trip. When Larry got up, he said, “How are you?” and I said, “Coffeeless.” “Well, I guess I better turn on the engine so we can turn on the inverter,” he said. He turned the key and pushed the button, and all we heard was a click.
This can’t be! This is a brand new battery! We carefully charged it up last night! What is going on!
Larry tried any number of little tricks, but none of them worked. There we were, stopped in our tracks again. After some time for thought, Larry came up with a plan. We were anchored near a marina, less than a quarter of a mile. We would use the dinghy to push the boat to the marina, where we hoped they would let us tie up for a few hours and use their shore power to charge this battery. For the right price, of course!
You would have enjoyed the show. We tied the dinghy to one side of the boat, with any number false starts as we tried to work together despite radically different perceptions of the right way to get this task done. Then Larry climbed into the dinghy and started the outboard. I went into the cockpit and turned the wheel so we could test whether the dinghy could provide enough power to move the boat. It actually worked!
So — the next move was to tie the dock lines and fenders on the other side of the boat and call the marina. I busied myself with lines and fenders, and Larry went back into the boat. I thought he was calling the marina. Then I saw him come back up and sit down beside the starter for the diesel engine. He turned the key, he pushed the button, and miracle of miracles, the engine started.
We both heaved a sigh of relief that we would not need to use the dinghy to move the boat, but neither of us regarded this outcome as a reliable indicator that it was time to head out of town. We called Harborview and arranged to go back so Larry can figure out what really happened and fix the problem.
So here we are. Still in Baltimore. Still not headed south. And I expect that we will be here two or three days. We could be here for a week. It is hard to imagine when we will actually be moving southward. I may even need to shop for groceries again!
Well, at least I have internet, but that is another story. Before we left Harborview for the boatyard, Larry purchased an antenna and software that are supposed to connect to the networking hardware in our laptops and enhance reception of wireless signals. He asked me if I would like to try it, so I did. It didn’t work. We loaded the driver, plugged in the antenna, and nothing. You would have thought I was in a desert. So, we uninstalled the software. I went back to the laptop’s own wireless features, found wireless networks and clicked one to connect. It failed, and I have not been able to connect since. Right now I am using my Dell mini. I hope that using this little guy I can connect to Microsoft support and figure out how to recactivate my network adapters. AAAAAAaaaagggghhhhh!
All I really want is peace and connectivity and the wind in my face as I cruise south. I’m doing just fine, but boy am I flexed!
Aboard No Boundaries
July 10, 2009
The movie “Captain Ron” came to mind often as we made our passage from Cape May, New Jersey, to Block Island, Rhode Island. His stock line when engaged to train people to sail and survive at sea was, “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.” “Out there” was at sea, far from land, at the worst possible moment. The things that would happen to his protégés during the movie were surprising and always “out there.”
During 50 hours at sea, a few things happened to us “out there.”
We started from Cape May, because something had already happened “out there.” We had sailed from Cohansey Cove a few days earlier. Sailing down that Bay at 8 knots was a thrilling experience. We cruised out the mouth of Delaware Bay and hit our first waypoint, still under sail. At that time, however, we had to make a decision. If we continued to sail, we had to deal with the speed and direction of the wind, both unfavorable for making progress toward our destination. Unlike Captain Cook, who had no choice but to accept the wind and make the best of it, we could turn to our diesel auxiliary engine. If we sailed, we would increase our travel time by 4 or 5 hours and add more than 20 miles to our route. We decided to motor until the wind direction and speed were more useful. We were seven miles from the New Jersey shore in the North Atlantic Ocean when our diesel engine made a weird noise and quit. We were adrift.
We observed fairly quickly that there was a current in the ocean that wanted to take us to Gibraltar. Or maybe to Casablanca. Rather than drift, we chose to deploy the sails again. There was little wind, so we couldn’t make much speed sailing, but at least we could avoid going to Europe while Larry tried to fix the engine. In theory, we could have proceeded on our journey under sail and waited to repair the engine at the other end. However, the wind was very light and changed direction at the drop of a hat. We couldn’t make much progress, and unless Larry could fix the engine, we had no backup for the sails in any sort of emergency.
Larry worked on the engine for seven hours. I sailed up and down parallel to the Jersey shore, trying not to go to Gibraltar. A pod of dolphins kept me company for several hours. I actually saw at least a dozen fireworks shows, one of which was truly magnificent. Unfortunately, Larry was not able to find the explanation for the engine problem, and he was unable to make it start again. At 2:30AM on Sunday morning we made the decision to go back to Cape May, call a tow boat and get to some location where we could connect with a diesel mechanic.
Larry took a nap, and I continued tacking up and down the coast until 4:30AM. Then Larry took the watch and I took a nap. We thought we were being very self-sufficient and doing the wise and responsible thing to sail ourselves back within reach of help. Without an engine we could not navigate that canal or enter a marina, but we could get to the canal entrance. We did everything for ourselves that we could do. About 8:30 Sunday morning, we called the tow boat and they arrived in 20 minutes. Later, however, when Larry and the tow boat captain were discussing the charges, the captain complained that we didn’t call him sooner. He would have made more money on our account if we had called him when we were still seven miles out! We thought we were being wise and responsible to do everything we could for ourselves, and he thought we could have been a little more dependent so he could make more money!
If you have never seen a professional tow boat captain work, you have missed an experience. Those guys work magic. It was not magic to give us a line to cleat onto our boat and drag us into the canal. However, when the tow boat tied up to the side of our boat and took us into the marina, I am sure that a magic wand and pixie dust must have been in use. The tow captain told Larry to steer our boat without thinking of his boat as anything but our power. However, the tow captain provided guidance that allowed the two boats to navigate in the very narrow fairways of the marina, and at the end, after Larry turned the boats toward our designated slip, the captain gave the signal to let go the lines that attached us together, and our boat slid neatly into its place at slip 14 in Utch’s Marina, Cape May, New Jersey. (I didn’t forget the “H” in the name. There is no initial “H.” The real name is Utch’s.)
We arrived on a Sunday, and we couldn’t get a diesel mechanic until Monday. However, we were in a full service marina with showers, laundry and internet. No cruiser lets such an opportunity go to waste. Even though I had had only two hours sleep the night before, I gathered up my laundry and my shower bag and hustled over to get things done. My energy lasted long enough to manage those tasks, but then I was done.
The next day, we discovered that our problem was beyond the scope of the local diesel mechanic, so we had to wait until one could arrive from Atlantic City. His schedule kept us in the marina past the checkout time, so we decided to stay one more night. The diesel engine mechanic got the thing going again. However, he did not explain the problem, and he did not explain the solution, which bothered Larry quite a lot.
On the morning of July 7 we exited the Cape May Canal under engine power. We needed the engine to get out of the marina and out of the canal. We were still under engine power, about a mile from the canal entrance when the engine made the same funny noise as before and quit.
I could hear Captain Ron saying gruffly, “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there.” We had arrived “out there” and our problem had recurred. What would we do now?
In blogs yet to come, I will recount how we faced the challenges and what we did to solve them. Feel free to disagree with our choices. We were disconnected from the rest of the world in a unique way for this time in history. We had a goal that was being seriously challenged by circumstances. Check back often for more blogs to find out what came next and next and next. After 50 hours, we arrived in Block Island, and both we and the boat were intact.