February 17, 2009

I see I skipped a couple of months on my updates. Sorry about that. I have no real excuse except that I am getting back into the lazy mode quite well. I have had several boat projects to do as well as working at the VIERS camp.

Boat projects have been mostly fixing things that broke on the trip down with the new motor mounts being the toughest. I got the four new mounts and they sat here for a week or two while I pondered how to change them. Once I decided that I just had to go do it and not worry about how it wasn't too bad. I had to remove one of the old mounts at a time and replace it with a new one. That took a couple of afternoons to complete and then I had the engine realignment to do. When the rope wrapped around the prop it pulled the engine back an inch or two so the first thing to do was to get it pulled back to the approximately correct position. I have a long, about 4 feet, solid brass bar on the boat. I have no idea why but it was here when I bought the boat and had stayed hidden away in the aft cabin. I dug it out and used it to pry the engine back into position. The engine weighs about 500 pounds so moving it is not a minor task. After I got it about where it needed to be, I started doing the alignment. There is a 5 inch diameter flange on the back of the transmission and a matching flange on the front of the driveshaft. To do the alignment all you have to do is make sure the gap between the two flanges, before the 4 bolts are put in, is the same all the way around, or at least within a couple of thousandths of an inch. To change the gap you move the motor mounts up or down to change the angle of the engine. It's a tedious process but not too difficult except that you're working down in the engine compartment and I started doing it on the hottest day we've had this year, or at least it felt like it. I think it was two afternoons to do the alignment also. Once the alignment was OK I had to reconnect all the stuff I had to remove to get access to the engine. The engine started right up and actually seemed to be much smoother than before all this happened. I think the old mounts were ready to be replaced and the new ones adsorb the vibration much better.

The other big job was to replace the house batteries. Bella Vita has 4 16L batteries and they had gotten to where they simply would not hold a charge. I turned off the refrigerator and almost everything else until I could get the new batteries installed. These are big batteries, probably 3 or 4 times a big as a large car battery and each one weighs about 115 pounds. They live under the back counter in the galley in a hole smaller than one of the batteries. I had to remove part of the wall to get them out and the new ones in. I was able to get all four of them out and up to the cockpit in one afternoon, although it was a long afternoon. The next day I loaded the four new batteries into the Boston Whaler and took them out to the boat. To get them into the boat I put a block on the aft end of the main boom, a block at the front of the boom, a block on the headsail sheeting track and then ran a line through all the blocks and to one of my main winches. I could then swing the boom out over the Whaler, tie a battery to the end of the line and winch it up over the lifelines. Then it was a simple matter to swing the boom back to the cockpit and lower the battery. I repeated this procedure 3 more times and I then had eight batteries in the cockpit. Reversing the above process put the four old batteries in the Whaler and left the four new ones to be installed. I was able to haul each of them down the companionway ladder to the galley. Getting them back through the little hole and into their final resting place took about a half hour each but I had them installed and wired before dinner.

I put the wind vane back together but haven't tried it out yet. I think the broken mounting bolts are from the unit being installed wrong many years ago. Two of the mounting struts were cut off shorter than they were supposed to be with the result being a much higher load on the bolts than they are designed to handle. I'll try to find some new struts but I found several extra bolts onboard. I'd guess this was not the first time they had broken.

I still had some sail repair to do and some paint to touchup and a few other small projects to do.

At VIERS we have been in the mode of constructing buildings. When I got here in late Nov. the new office building was up and nearly ready for windows, roofing and paint. That's all done now along with the tile floor and the wiring completed. I built a couple of desks for it and did part of the wiring. As soon as it was done, we moved everything from the old office and tore down the old office building. The floor was extended eight feet and a new building put up which was to become the new Tektite museum. We started on the teardown early Jan and the building was done in time to setup the museum for the 40th anniversary of the first Tektite project. The dedication of the museum was last Sunday, Feb. 15, and two of the original 4 Aquanauts and the project manager were here for it. Bruce Spoonover, a part time local resident, put together a great presentation on the history of the Tektite projects and presented it to a large group, about 115, mostly local people. This was the first time the Aquanauts had been back to St John since the completion of the project in 1970. They had a chance to snorkel over the site where it was located and were able to recognize many of the seafloor features in the area. One of the volunteers painted a nice mural that you see as you enter the front door. I didn't work much on the construction but did the model of the Tektite, still a lot of work to do on it, and built the display cases. There are many pictures of the Tektite projects and articles from many magazines including LIFE and Popular Science along with several artifacts like one of the original bubbles from the habitat.

Not many guest on the boat this year. Steve Applegate was here for a week and since he has been to all the local spots before, we stayed here and enjoyed the snorkeling and hiking. Both were quite good and we always seem to find a nice picture of Bella Vita. The weather was not very friendly for sailing so that worked out well. The trip to St Thomas to pick up Steve was the first time I have been off the mooring since I got here.

The hiking is still great here on St John. I have been doing a short hike nearly every day just for the exercise. I go from the VIERS camp up the road to the top of "the hill" and then up the Cabrite Horn trail to a ruin at the top of the hill. It's only about a mile each way but it goes up about 360 feet in a short portion of that mile so it's pretty steep. It certainly gets my heart and breathing rates up. The view at the left is from the Cabrite Horn Ruins and the one at the right is of the ruins. The post is a piece of Lignum Vitea which is one of the densest woods there is. It was used for bearings and other high wear applications before plastics came along. It got to be very expensive and rare but is not used much anymore.