Hi all,
There isn't much interesting to talk about this week. At least not interesting from a sailing perspective but it's pretty exciting from my perspective. I am now officially living on a boat! This weekend we sold and gave away furniture, moved stuff here and there and late Saturday night we got to the boat, my new home. Thanks so much to Susan for all she did, she did far more than I did.
There is stuff strewn everywhere at the moment but now things can get done every day instead of just on weekends. The only real boat related thing that happened today was I had to dash around and put the screens in the hatches to stem the tide of mosquitoes that showed up as the sun went down.
A bit of catch up from the last post, the rigger spent the day on the boat Friday and fixed the problem we had with the roller furling mainsail, he lubed the furlers, installed a spare halyard and tuned the standing rigging. Unfortunately getting things organized today kept us from going out and testing everything but hopefully next weekend we'll be able to take her out when our friends T and Teri are here. The wind was up pretty high today, should have made for some pretty fast sailing if we could have gone out.
Once settled in I might well be posting updates on a more frequent basis.
Take care.
Brian
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
The call
The broker we used to buy our boat, HSH Yachts in Kemah, puts out a
monthly newsletter. This month there are pictures of Susan and I taken
during our two sea trials, with comments about one with good weather on a
not so good boat and one in bad weather on a good boat. In that same
newsletter is the below poem. It seems to cover well what has called us.
A small boy heard the ocean roar,
"There are secrets on my distant shore
But beware my child the ship's bells wail,
Wait not too long to start the sail".
So quickly come and go the years
And a young adult stands abench--with fears.
"Come on, come on", the ocean cussed,
"Time passes on, oh sail you must".
Now its business in middle aged prime
And maybe tomorrow there'll be time.
Now is too soon--it's raining today.
Gone, all gone--years are eaten away.
An old man looks out, still feeling the lure
Yet he'll suffer the pain than go for the cure.
The hair is white, the steps with care,
So all too soon the secrets are buried
Along with him and regrets he carried
And it's not for loss of secrets he cried
But rather because he'd never tried.
A small boy heard the ocean roar,
"There are secrets on my distant shore
But beware my child the ship's bells wail,
Wait not too long to start the sail".
So quickly come and go the years
And a young adult stands abench--with fears.
"Come on, come on", the ocean cussed,
"Time passes on, oh sail you must".
Now its business in middle aged prime
And maybe tomorrow there'll be time.
Now is too soon--it's raining today.
Gone, all gone--years are eaten away.
An old man looks out, still feeling the lure
Yet he'll suffer the pain than go for the cure.
The hair is white, the steps with care,
So all too soon the secrets are buried
Along with him and regrets he carried
And it's not for loss of secrets he cried
But rather because he'd never tried.
Author Unknown
Friday, March 20, 2015
No, it was not Susan's fault but she's the one that wrote it so I'll leave it alone...
Well, this is Susan and it looks like I’m doing this installation because it’s ALL MY FAULT, don’t ya know.
We
had a great weekend on the boat. Old family friends of mine- Bill and
Caroline Cheezum were in Kemah in their RV at the end of a 2 month trip
through the South. The weather had not been cooperating for them up
until now so it was good to finally see some sun. And they were finally
able to ride their motorcycles!!
Allen and Kay and their whole crew were in Galveston for the kid’s spring break so we took the boat out to Galveston Bay on Friday.
I got all confused about the sails (duh!) and messed up the main. It
has roller furling which means that instead of hoisting the entire sail
up and down the mast each time we furl it, our mainsail wraps up on
itself inside the mast. Different lines (ropes) wrap and unwrap it and I
managed to get the order wrong so it was messed up inside the mast.
Dang! We were hopeful that if we could ever get it all the way out of
the mast that it would fix the problem, but that turned out not to be
the case.
Nonetheless,
Marcus (Allen and Kay’s son) was kind enough to climb into the bosun’s
chair and get hoisted up the mast. He’s a strong, strapping, young hoss
and was able to pull it free with just his bare hands. What a stud.
At least we were able to sail a bit, although there wasn’t much wind to
speak of. Cameron, Maysun, and Trent seemed to have fun in spirit of
everything and going up the mast seemed to be the highlight of Marcus’
day!!
We took the Cheezums back out on Saturday
which was a MUCH better day weather-wise, but had the same problem with
the mainsail (yes, we have a rigger coming out to look at it this week)
but the sunshine was wonderful and we remembered to take lunch this
time!
Sunday
morning was devoted to replacing the GPS antenna. Brian has gotten it
mounted and working last weekend, but we still needed to run the new
power cord back down through the arch, over the river and through the
woods, and back up under the helm where it hooks into the communications
center. The Cheezums were very helpful with this and we were able to
get it all re-wired with a minimum of tears. And it actually works!
Hallelujah.
Obligatory
trips to West Marine, the Boat Re-sale shop, Jackie’s Brickhouse for
catfish and burgers, and to Skippers for breakfast made for a busy and
enjoyable weekend. It is so great to be able to share the boat with
family and friends.
The
next 2 weekends will be devoted to moving Brian out of his apartment
and onto the boat so we won’t be doing much sailing :( but are getting
closer to our dream of casting off the lines and heading OUT!! I had a
28 year old patient die of breast cancer this week so our decision to
enjoy life while we can seems even more urgent somehow.
Here are some pictures. Thanks to Carolyn who was an excellent documenter.
Take care,
Susan
Monday, March 9, 2015
There I am!
Hello all,
This weekend was a productive one. Next weekend we're expecting guests and hoping to go sailing so there were some things we absolutely had to get done and we did!
Last weekend the fuel and tank were cleaned. This weekend we replaced both the primary and secondary fuel filters which enabled us to start the engine again. We didn't want to take the chance the junk in the tank had clogged up the filters so we replaced them before we attempted to start the engine. Interestingly enough, there are two fuel filters but they are backwards from what you would normally want. The most restrictive filter, 2 micron, was first and then the fuel goes through a 10 micron filter that mounts to the engine. If you were going to design it you'd do it the other way. Talking to the guy we bought our supply of filters from, Yanmar (engine manufacture) doesn't know if you'll put a primary filter in front of theirs. They assume theirs will be the only filter and they use 10 micron as a good all around filter. In our case the boat manufacturer added a primary filter that has a replaceable element. The previous owner used 2 micron filters in the primary and it seemed like a good idea to us to stay with that. So the secondary filter probably only needs to be replaced every year or so.
Once the filters were changed we primed the fuel lines and started it up. Diesel engines have high pressure fuel systems, it is important to get all the air out of the fuel lines should some get in there. When you replace fuel filters there is at least air in all the filters. Most diesel engines have what they call a lift pump that you operate by hand to pump the fuel through the filters and into the fuel block (I think it's called a fuel block, a bit fuzzy there). In our case, there is a primer bulb (just like the one in the gas line of a boat with an outboard motor) to pump the fuel into the system. It works great! We left the bleed screws out of each filter and as fuel came out, we closed them. We turned the key on, pressed the start button and it fired right up. We were very impressed with ourselves. There was one small leak where the secondary fuel filter wasn't quite tight enough but that was fixed easily.
The next important thing on our agenda was to hook up the new GPS receiver to the chart plotter. Rather than take the chance of doing a lot of work mounting the receiver and running the cable only to find out it didn't work, the receiver was wedged between the bimini and arch so it wouldn't fall off and the cable was plugged into a converter so the new system GPS could talk to the old system chart plotter. It didn't work. The chart plotter still didn't know where we were. After a bit of trying this and trying that I discovered I had accidentally unplugged the chart plotter from the network that carries all the information to it. Oops! Not bright on my part but an easy fix, the kind I like. There I am! The chart plotter now showed the boat as being in a slip at the marina. How very fortunate because that is exactly where we were!
Figuring we were on a roll we decided to do a couple of more things we've never done before. First, we motored away from the dock with just Susan and I. We managed to remove all the dock lines, unplug from shore power and back out of the slip without hitting anything. I'm on a real roll when it comes to not hitting anything. Knock on wood. The next two firsts were to address two different tanks. One you always want full and one you prefer to have empty. First we went to the pump out station for the marina to pump out the holding tank. Holding what? You don't want to know. But when those heads flush, it has to go somewhere and preferably not into Galveston Bay. Not knowing where we were going, but having a general idea, we only made a couple of wrong turns. Once again I will say having a bow thruster on a boat of this size is a huge help. It got me out of a "pen" made of dock after one of the aforementioned wrong turns. But we made it! Susan read the directions for the pump out and handled the dock end while I took care of the dirty end. We are still learning our boat. That's the excuse I'll use for the fact we pumped out one holding tank only to discover later that we have two. Oh well, it'll give us something to do next weekend.
From the pump out station we motored past our slip and headed to the fuel dock. The closest fuel dock is right across the channel from the Kemah Boardwalk. If there was ever a place you could make a spectacle of yourself in front of a large audience, this is the place. But all those folks were disappointed because we managed to get there, get fueled and get away without incident. We even made it back to our slip without running aground, a first!
It wouldn't be fair to skip over the part of our weekend where Susan organized the chaos that was left behind by the two guys that were there last weekend (Jim and me). Though anyone that knows Jim knows he got the heebie jeebies being around the chaos of all the stuff that we put on the boat but didn't know where to put it so it was stacked on top of every flat surface.Susan organized the mess, thank goodness.
Saturday evening we had a fun dinner with our neighbors and friends Bryan and Cindy. We're trying to convince them they should head out when we do but we still have a little work to do on Bryan.
Before heading back to Dallas on Sunday I borrowed Bryan's drill and drill bits and permanently mounted the GPS receiver. We still have to run the cable as it isn't put away nicely but it is enough out of the way for next weekend.
Susan took some pictures while we worked. As soon as she downloads them off her phone I'll post them here.
Take care.
Brian
This weekend was a productive one. Next weekend we're expecting guests and hoping to go sailing so there were some things we absolutely had to get done and we did!
Last weekend the fuel and tank were cleaned. This weekend we replaced both the primary and secondary fuel filters which enabled us to start the engine again. We didn't want to take the chance the junk in the tank had clogged up the filters so we replaced them before we attempted to start the engine. Interestingly enough, there are two fuel filters but they are backwards from what you would normally want. The most restrictive filter, 2 micron, was first and then the fuel goes through a 10 micron filter that mounts to the engine. If you were going to design it you'd do it the other way. Talking to the guy we bought our supply of filters from, Yanmar (engine manufacture) doesn't know if you'll put a primary filter in front of theirs. They assume theirs will be the only filter and they use 10 micron as a good all around filter. In our case the boat manufacturer added a primary filter that has a replaceable element. The previous owner used 2 micron filters in the primary and it seemed like a good idea to us to stay with that. So the secondary filter probably only needs to be replaced every year or so.
Once the filters were changed we primed the fuel lines and started it up. Diesel engines have high pressure fuel systems, it is important to get all the air out of the fuel lines should some get in there. When you replace fuel filters there is at least air in all the filters. Most diesel engines have what they call a lift pump that you operate by hand to pump the fuel through the filters and into the fuel block (I think it's called a fuel block, a bit fuzzy there). In our case, there is a primer bulb (just like the one in the gas line of a boat with an outboard motor) to pump the fuel into the system. It works great! We left the bleed screws out of each filter and as fuel came out, we closed them. We turned the key on, pressed the start button and it fired right up. We were very impressed with ourselves. There was one small leak where the secondary fuel filter wasn't quite tight enough but that was fixed easily.
The next important thing on our agenda was to hook up the new GPS receiver to the chart plotter. Rather than take the chance of doing a lot of work mounting the receiver and running the cable only to find out it didn't work, the receiver was wedged between the bimini and arch so it wouldn't fall off and the cable was plugged into a converter so the new system GPS could talk to the old system chart plotter. It didn't work. The chart plotter still didn't know where we were. After a bit of trying this and trying that I discovered I had accidentally unplugged the chart plotter from the network that carries all the information to it. Oops! Not bright on my part but an easy fix, the kind I like. There I am! The chart plotter now showed the boat as being in a slip at the marina. How very fortunate because that is exactly where we were!
Figuring we were on a roll we decided to do a couple of more things we've never done before. First, we motored away from the dock with just Susan and I. We managed to remove all the dock lines, unplug from shore power and back out of the slip without hitting anything. I'm on a real roll when it comes to not hitting anything. Knock on wood. The next two firsts were to address two different tanks. One you always want full and one you prefer to have empty. First we went to the pump out station for the marina to pump out the holding tank. Holding what? You don't want to know. But when those heads flush, it has to go somewhere and preferably not into Galveston Bay. Not knowing where we were going, but having a general idea, we only made a couple of wrong turns. Once again I will say having a bow thruster on a boat of this size is a huge help. It got me out of a "pen" made of dock after one of the aforementioned wrong turns. But we made it! Susan read the directions for the pump out and handled the dock end while I took care of the dirty end. We are still learning our boat. That's the excuse I'll use for the fact we pumped out one holding tank only to discover later that we have two. Oh well, it'll give us something to do next weekend.
From the pump out station we motored past our slip and headed to the fuel dock. The closest fuel dock is right across the channel from the Kemah Boardwalk. If there was ever a place you could make a spectacle of yourself in front of a large audience, this is the place. But all those folks were disappointed because we managed to get there, get fueled and get away without incident. We even made it back to our slip without running aground, a first!
It wouldn't be fair to skip over the part of our weekend where Susan organized the chaos that was left behind by the two guys that were there last weekend (Jim and me). Though anyone that knows Jim knows he got the heebie jeebies being around the chaos of all the stuff that we put on the boat but didn't know where to put it so it was stacked on top of every flat surface.Susan organized the mess, thank goodness.
Saturday evening we had a fun dinner with our neighbors and friends Bryan and Cindy. We're trying to convince them they should head out when we do but we still have a little work to do on Bryan.
Before heading back to Dallas on Sunday I borrowed Bryan's drill and drill bits and permanently mounted the GPS receiver. We still have to run the cable as it isn't put away nicely but it is enough out of the way for next weekend.
Susan took some pictures while we worked. As soon as she downloads them off her phone I'll post them here.
Take care.
Brian
Thursday, March 5, 2015
First Overnight Guest
This past weekend I had the first overnight guest on the boat. Susan was off on a "girl's weekend" in South Carolina. There was a lot to do on the boat for the weekend and Jim Wilson was looking for an excuse to come see the boat anyway so he drove down to Kemah with me on Friday and stayed the weekend. If his review is to be believed, the aft cabin sleeps pretty well.
I said there was a lot to do but in reality it wasn't that there were a lot of things to do but rather at least one of them was a major undertaking, cleaning the fuel tank and polishing the fuel. Friday, before it got dark we were able to replace the two power plugs on the shore power cables. After completing that task, with a lot of help from Jim, I'm even more certain the problem we had was due to the guy that installed them. Right before the sea trial he replaced one that had gone bad. From our experience, there is no way one person could do that job correctly. It wasn't easy for Jim and me but we got it done before it got dark. This was a major win because it meant we had heat Friday night! It was both windy and chilly Friday and most of Saturday.
Saturday was reserved for addressing the issue we had the last time we went out, the fuel line to the engine being clogged.The previous weekend, Susan and I drove back from Atlanta with my truck looking like it was right out of "The Beverly Hillbillys". One of the many things in the back of my truck was a plastic 55 gallon barrel, empty for the most part. The barrel was an integral part of the plan for Saturday. Fortunately I also found that I had bought at some point a pump to suck oil out of an engine that is driven by an electric drill. All these things came in very handy. With the barrel on the dock, the pump hooked up to a long piece of tubing we bought we were able to suck almost all the fuel (about 40 gallons) out of the tank in 30 minutes or so. A combination of an old bath towel, paper towels (not as good an idea as you might think) and some hand towels fixed to the end of a sponge mop got the rest of the fuel sopped up.
Access to the inside of the fuel tank was through a 6" access port cut in the top of the tank. Eight bolts / nuts removed and we could get a long handled brush and my arm to pretty much every surface inside the tank. The scum / sludge / junk or whatever it is growing on the side of the tank was easy to brush off but not so easy to get out, most of it didn't stick to the brush. Luckily I have a pretty good wingspan. I was able to use the brush to get all the scum into a few small balls and position them directly under the access port. Standing on my head with my arm fully extended into the tank and my legs up in the air I was JUST able to touch the bottom of the tank. Fortunately the scum was solid enough I was able to pick it up with my finger tips. That and the small piece of paper towel that tore off inside (the reason I think paper towels aren't as good for this job as I thought they might be). When I first started the cleaning part I got a little too aggressive and ended up getting my head stuck down in the lazerette. I can't tell you how glad I was to have Jim there to pull me out. It would not have been pretty otherwise.
I wouldn't say the inside of the tank is spotless but I got it pretty dang clean, certainly the best I could do. While the access port was open I poured in the microbiocide to kill the little "things" that are the scum in the tank and then put the cover back on the access port. After, of course, dropping one of the nuts into the tank. Once more into the breach, or actually one more long stretch to pick the nut up with my fingertips.
Putting the fuel back in the tank was almost as easy as getting it out. The "polishing" part is running the fuel through a filter to remove any nasties that are in it, including water. Actually, water is heavier than diesel fuel so any that was sucked out of the tank and went into the barrel was at the bottom of the barrel. Pumping the fuel out of the barrel and back into the tank we went through a baja filter, a funnel with a 10 micron filter built into it. Rather than take a chance of putting any water back into the tank we left 5 gallons or so of fuel in the barrel and didn't pump from the bottom of the barrel. Anyone interested in 5 gallons of off road diesel with perhaps a bit of water in it?
The rest of the time was spent moving the rest of the Beverly Hillbilly's belongings to the boat from my truck. Now the boat looks like it belongs to the Beverly Hillbillys. Guess what will be a priority item for this coming weekend? Besides installing the new GPS receiver, we'll be trying to find a place to put all the stuff that is spread all over everywhere. Susan is great at organizing stuff like this, I have no doubt it'll be ship shape by the time we leave on Sunday.
That's it for now except for a huge thank you to Jim for all his help this past weekend and to Pam for letting me have him for the weekend. I might have been able to make some progress on the tasks by myself but I wouldn't not have come close to completing them. I couldn't have done it without you Jim. Thanks.
I'll sign off with what is on the back of the t-shirt I'm wearing at the moment. Money won't buy happiness but it'll get your ass on a boat and that's a start.
Brian
I said there was a lot to do but in reality it wasn't that there were a lot of things to do but rather at least one of them was a major undertaking, cleaning the fuel tank and polishing the fuel. Friday, before it got dark we were able to replace the two power plugs on the shore power cables. After completing that task, with a lot of help from Jim, I'm even more certain the problem we had was due to the guy that installed them. Right before the sea trial he replaced one that had gone bad. From our experience, there is no way one person could do that job correctly. It wasn't easy for Jim and me but we got it done before it got dark. This was a major win because it meant we had heat Friday night! It was both windy and chilly Friday and most of Saturday.
Saturday was reserved for addressing the issue we had the last time we went out, the fuel line to the engine being clogged.The previous weekend, Susan and I drove back from Atlanta with my truck looking like it was right out of "The Beverly Hillbillys". One of the many things in the back of my truck was a plastic 55 gallon barrel, empty for the most part. The barrel was an integral part of the plan for Saturday. Fortunately I also found that I had bought at some point a pump to suck oil out of an engine that is driven by an electric drill. All these things came in very handy. With the barrel on the dock, the pump hooked up to a long piece of tubing we bought we were able to suck almost all the fuel (about 40 gallons) out of the tank in 30 minutes or so. A combination of an old bath towel, paper towels (not as good an idea as you might think) and some hand towels fixed to the end of a sponge mop got the rest of the fuel sopped up.
Access to the inside of the fuel tank was through a 6" access port cut in the top of the tank. Eight bolts / nuts removed and we could get a long handled brush and my arm to pretty much every surface inside the tank. The scum / sludge / junk or whatever it is growing on the side of the tank was easy to brush off but not so easy to get out, most of it didn't stick to the brush. Luckily I have a pretty good wingspan. I was able to use the brush to get all the scum into a few small balls and position them directly under the access port. Standing on my head with my arm fully extended into the tank and my legs up in the air I was JUST able to touch the bottom of the tank. Fortunately the scum was solid enough I was able to pick it up with my finger tips. That and the small piece of paper towel that tore off inside (the reason I think paper towels aren't as good for this job as I thought they might be). When I first started the cleaning part I got a little too aggressive and ended up getting my head stuck down in the lazerette. I can't tell you how glad I was to have Jim there to pull me out. It would not have been pretty otherwise.
I wouldn't say the inside of the tank is spotless but I got it pretty dang clean, certainly the best I could do. While the access port was open I poured in the microbiocide to kill the little "things" that are the scum in the tank and then put the cover back on the access port. After, of course, dropping one of the nuts into the tank. Once more into the breach, or actually one more long stretch to pick the nut up with my fingertips.
Putting the fuel back in the tank was almost as easy as getting it out. The "polishing" part is running the fuel through a filter to remove any nasties that are in it, including water. Actually, water is heavier than diesel fuel so any that was sucked out of the tank and went into the barrel was at the bottom of the barrel. Pumping the fuel out of the barrel and back into the tank we went through a baja filter, a funnel with a 10 micron filter built into it. Rather than take a chance of putting any water back into the tank we left 5 gallons or so of fuel in the barrel and didn't pump from the bottom of the barrel. Anyone interested in 5 gallons of off road diesel with perhaps a bit of water in it?
The rest of the time was spent moving the rest of the Beverly Hillbilly's belongings to the boat from my truck. Now the boat looks like it belongs to the Beverly Hillbillys. Guess what will be a priority item for this coming weekend? Besides installing the new GPS receiver, we'll be trying to find a place to put all the stuff that is spread all over everywhere. Susan is great at organizing stuff like this, I have no doubt it'll be ship shape by the time we leave on Sunday.
That's it for now except for a huge thank you to Jim for all his help this past weekend and to Pam for letting me have him for the weekend. I might have been able to make some progress on the tasks by myself but I wouldn't not have come close to completing them. I couldn't have done it without you Jim. Thanks.
I'll sign off with what is on the back of the t-shirt I'm wearing at the moment. Money won't buy happiness but it'll get your ass on a boat and that's a start.
Brian
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