9/2/2012: Getting Ready

Well its my last night on land so I figure I had better give a recap of the events of the past week while they are still fresh in my mind. I'll focus on the things which have gone wrong as that's probably more interesting and this week (as I surmise most weeks before departing are) was a bit of a comedy of errors.

When I arrived, Eric informed me that the new part for the exhaust system which had arrived that afternoon was wrong. There was a mix-up somewhere in ordering the piece and was two and a half inches inside diameter when we needed two and a half inches outside diameter. This meant a trip to visit Bob Berg, the machinist whom Eric likes to use, a former gunsmith who suffered from polio in his younger years and now lives and works in a mobile home which was brimming with books, guns and machining tools. Needless to say, quite a character. He did quick work however and we just stepped out for a quick cup of coffee and when we returned he was finished. After a jaunt over to the welders (who worked out of his garage) to get the freshly machined piece attached to the exhaust system, I got to set foot aboard Fiona for the first time. She's certainly a handsome boat, quite rugged, you definitely can picture her sailing amongst the icebergs in the antarctic.

The following day we installed  welded piece of the exhaust system in the engine room with much less stress than we anticipated as the over sized piece had to fit into a rubber hose reinforced with steel wire that its self was two and a half inches inside diameter. Once we had this finished the boat was put into the water with considerable ease by the competent men at Frank M Weeks' yacht yard.

The issues started for us in earnest the following morning. We attempted to raise the jib after re-attaching the bobstay but at every joint in the stay, the carriage caught. It took three trips up in the boatswains chair with a file by Eric for us to finally get the sail raised. Raising the chair by winch was an extremely stressful experience for me. Not quite certain of how to operate the winch which held Eric more than 20 feet in the air was not something I relished in the slightest. Once we had the sail up we started the engine to charge the batteries. Unfortunately, sea water began splashing all over the engine room when we did and it was obvious that we had a leak. It took us a good hour to find the leak which was a trickle coming from a coupling on the gear shaft. To ad insult to injury we were unable to tighten the coupling at all and the leak continued, a leak which Eric felt would sink the boat if we left it unattended. We had to loosen the joint until we were able to clean the threads with a wire brush and then liberally apply grease. Finally with a c-clamp bracing the shaft against the side of the hold we were able tighten down the coupling to the point that the leak stopped. While I thought things were as bad as they could be, the next day, before I was fully awake, I stood up and hit my head on the boom and when I recoiled I hit my face on the steering column. I gave myself a bad bloody nose and coughed up a bit of blood over the rest of the morning. My spirit and dignity were badly maimed but ultimately I was fine.

Eric and I salvaged the day with a lovely sail in the Great South Bay over to Fire Island with Walter, who circumnavigated the globe with Eric years ago, in Eric's Rhodes 19. The rest of the week has been filled with cleaning and loading the boat and exciting rides in Eric's lovely collection of antique cars. 3 Bentleys and a Jag.