August 22, 2009

I almost skipped an August update too!

I'm still here at the boatyard.

I think the last we "spoke" Bella Vita was getting ready to go back in the water after doing the bottom and other stuff and I was planning on going to the classic boat show. She went into the water on Thursday and Friday a guy ran into the side of her while I was sitting at the dock. I was inside doing something when I heard an engine rev up and a good solid thump on the side. I was tied up close to the launching ramp and I think this guy had just launched his boat although I'm not sure about that. The boat was a classic Lyman Morris wooden boat with a good size V8 and a jet drive. The jet drives don't really have a neutral in their transmissions. Actually, they don't really have a transmission. You control whether you go forward, backwards or stop by directing the water jet. To go forward, it goes straight out the back and the boat goes forward. To go in reverse, the water jet is diverted so that it goes forward making the boat go backwards. To stop, the jet is diverted downward so it doesn't drive forward or reverse. Of course when in this neutral position, it's assumed that the engine is idling. Anyway, he started the engine with the drive in the reverse position and the throttle far too far forward. The engine started and the boat went flying backwards in a circle, colliding with my boat on the way. There wasn't a lot of damage but there was a gouge through the paint below the water line. That meant that the boat had to be pulled out of the water to fix it. Monday we pulled her out and she stayed out for a little over a week while being repaired. The work didn't take that long but there are several layers of stuff that you have to put on and each has to dry before the next can go on so the elapsed time stretches out. It came out OK and he paid for it all, along with some wine and rum for me, so it wasn't too bad.

We did go to the boat show and as forecast, the weather was wet. It rained until mid-afternoon and then finally cleared up and was nice. The boats were beautiful. I would not want a wooden boat because of the maintenance but they sure are pretty. I think the requirements to be in the show were that the boat is at least 25 years old and wooden. It seems like there was some way for older fiberglass boats to be entered but I can't remember the details. We went through several of the larger ones and admired the smaller ones. There was even one from Versailles, KY, owned by John Williams. It's the runabout with the wicker chairs.

Natalie and I had planned a trip to Tangiers Island. This is a small island about 95 NM south of here that time seems to have missed. There are only a few families on the island and they tend to live as they have for hundreds of years. They make a living from the Bay by fishing and crabbing. It turned out to be a little further than we had time for so we went to see some friends on Church Creek off the Little Choptank River. They also have a Lord Nelson Victory Tug like Alegria. They both retired from the Air Force and have a twenty acre spot on the water. They have been designing and building a house for the last nine years. It is gorgeous. It has a nautical theme throughout with a lot of varnished walnut, cherry and mahogany. Most has wainscoting and they have made it all, even the doors (solid mahogany), the trim (walnut and cherry), cabinets, etc. They have a great dock and let us stay there for a couple of nights. There LNVT was in the shop being painted but the dock will hold about a half a dozen of them. We stopped in Galesville on the West River on the way back for a night and then at Londontown for a steak grilled on the rear deck. Londontown is a work in progress of the restoration of a very early settlement. A couple of the original buildings are still there but most are gone. They have a public dock but seemed surprised that someone actually came in by boat.

I went to NC for my nephews wedding in Kill Devil Hills. I had never been to the outer banks before and really didn't know what to expect. It is pretty much completely built up and very commercial. The beach is beautiful although it doesn't have the sparkling blue water of the Caribbean. They had rented a big house, 10 bedrooms, for the week but it was full and several of us ended up staying in a motel. I think the motel probably worked out better because it was quiet and peaceful. This was the first time I had met Joe's bride to be and she turned out to be a really nice woman with two beautiful daughters. The wedding was on the beach and went very well. I wish them the best in their new lives together.

When I bought Bella Vita she had hanked on headsails. To change the amount of sail I had up I would have to take down one sail and put up another. This required a trip to the bow which was not fun when the seas were rough. When I anchored or was staying somewhere for a while, I needed to take down the head sail, fold it, bag it and store it below. The alternative, which nearly all boats have now, is roller furling. This rolls up the sail around the head stay and can easily be done from the cockpit. I finally decided to put roller furling on Bella Vita. I had pretty much decided on the Spin Tec furler system and when I went to Bacon Sails to see one, I liked it and bought it. Since the head stay was old, I decided to replace it also. The headstay was ordered from a rigger in FL while the furler was built to order in CA. The headstay came in pretty quickly but the furler took forever. The shipper had put the wrong address on the shipping label; everything was OK except the street number and name. The Gibson Island Yacht Yard is the only commercial facility on Gibson Island and Fed Ex delivers there frequently but since the street on the shipping label was not in their system, they could not deliver it. After several calls to Fed Ex by Bacon, a couple from me and I think some from the shipper, it was finally delivered after about two weeks.

Now that I had the new headstay and the furler I was ready to put it on. I laid out the new stay on the walkway beside the well where they lift boats to start the process. Just to make sure everysthing was OK before I started the installation, I drug out the old headstay and laid it out beside the new one to check the length. At Bacon they said the new one would be within a half inch of the old one. Well the new one was about a foot longer than the old one. When it was measured, it was measured from "pin to pin" or from the eye at the top of the mast to the bottom of the turnbuckle at the bow. When it was built, they seemed to forget about the turnbuckle. I made another trip in to Bacon, in Annapolis, and they checked it, agreed that it was wrong made arrangements to have it redone. The attachments at both ends were swaged on where the fitting is put over the wire and squeezed down until it is formed tightly over the wire. The stay needed to be cut to the right length and a new fitting swedged on. Since it was a Saturday no one was open in Annapolis who could so it so it would be Mon before I got it back.

Monday I made another trip to Annapolis to pick it up and then started the assembly on Tues. The assembly went well and in a few hours the furler was assembled onto the new stay and laying out on the walkway. The furler consists of a drum at the bottom where the furling line wraps up when the sail is extended and a series of extruded aluminum foils that mount over the stay. There are bearings that you need to install about every two feet inside the extrusions as they are installed and then aluminum inserts that go inside the foils to lock them together. There is a polyurethane adhesive used to hold the extruded sections of the foil together and I wanted it to setup before installing the unit on the boat so I let it set overnight. In the morning, I got the halyard attached to the mast end of the furler and got a couple of the boatyard guys to help as I raised the furler to the top of the mast. Then I got my safety harness attached to me and started up the mast to attach the stay to the masthead. I don't like going up the mast, even though it's only about 45 feet from the deck to the top of the mast, but I did it and soon had the top of the stay installed. Then it was just a matter of attaching the bottom of the turnbuckle to the bow and adjusting it. With that done, I was ready to get the sailmaker out to measure the boat for the new sails.

I had gotten quotes from a few sailmakers in Annapolis: Bacon Sails, UK Sails, Doyle Sails, Housley Sails and Quantum Sails. I liked the Housley sails the best but they were too expensive. This was a small loft that makes their sails right there and does a great job of hand finishing them. I finally got it down to either Bacon or Quantum. Bacon measures the boat, spec's the sails and has them built in the Far East. Quantum has a loft in Annapolis and makes some sails there but also has a loft in MI. The Bacon sails were quite a bit cheaper but with all the trouble I had with the headstay and furler, I was a little worried about getting sails made there. Also, since the boat is for sail I felt it would be easier to sell with a well known name on the sails so I went with the Quantum. They are a heavy duty bluewater set of sails, a new headsail and a new main. I ordered them and had them shipped to Lexington since I was going to be in Lexington for a while.

One other thing I needed to do was have my liferaft serviced. It is a four man Avon Ocean raft and is supposed to be done every 3 years. I bought it 4 years ago but forgot about having it done last year. I took it to Vane Brothers in Baltimore who is supposed to be very good. I asked to be there when they opened it up and tested it so I would have some idea of what to expect if I ever had to use it. When he checked the paper work with the raft, we saw that it was actually 5 years old. I had bought it at the Annapolis boatshow from Vane Brothers who had ordered it for someone who then backed out of the deal. They gave me a good price on it and I never thought about it being a year old already meaning that it would need serviced a years sooner. The raft is packed in a fiberglass canister held together with stainless steel bands and sealed along the edge with duct tape. I thought they would just pull on the painter and let it pop open but they very carefully opened it up and checked everything before inflating it. Everything looked good so one of the guys pulled on the painter which opens the valve for the CO2 cylinder and inflates it. It started filling up when suddenly there was a stream of CO2 coming out the side of one of the two flotation tubes. There are overpressure relief valves on each tube and one of them had broken just sitting there in the canister. That tube never inflated. I was thinking that if I had to abandon ship, I would be sitting in a very wet raft but probably still floating. The bottom tube inflated and looked good but then we noticed that it was getting soft. The valve on the bottom tube had a large crack in it and would not hold the pressure in the tube. In a few minutes that tube was flat also. My emergency lift raft completely failed and if I had to use it, I would probably be dead now. The technician immediately called Avon and they agreed to replace the valves under warranty and told him that there had been a service bulletin sent out regarding the valves but he had never heard of it and I got no notice. I did find later that two other companies who make liferaft and use the same valves had recalled all their rafts to have the valve replaced but I could find nothing on an Avon recall. It certainly doesn't do much for my confidence in their raft.