There is a God in Heaven

Doug fixed the refrigerator in the nick of time before the beginning of the biggest heat wave Seattle has had in many years, if not ever. The temperature has been running in the high 90's F. The prediction tomorrow is 97 F. That's pretty hot for a city at latitude 48 N. I've been surviving with a fridge full of ice cold Heineken beer. Hallelujah!

Today I rearranged the boat and cleaned it up in anticipation of the arrival of Brenda who will land at Sea-Tac airport tomorrow (29 July) at 10 PM. I will leave tomorrow morning to make the bus-ferry-bus trip to the airport. We will return the following day by the same route. Shannon at Port Townsend Rigging did a great job of finding the bus schedules for me.

This morning BUMS put that extra coat of antifouling that I requested.

Arnold dropped by to pick up his motorcycle seat that had been upholstered by Sea Bear Canvas above the rigger's premises. They did a brilliant job and Arnold was very pleased.

I am on standby for having Pachuca returned to the water from Friday onwards. Joe from BUMS says that it will probably be on Friday. There is a good chance that the lower extrusion will arrive and Dan will be able to put together the forestay before the lift. Otherwise the boat will go into the water with two halyards holding up the mast in place of the forestay.

With luck the diesel maintenance will be done on Monday or Tuesday of next week and Pachuca will be cleared for sailing at midweek.

Meetings

On Thursday I met with Lisa and discussed the remedy for the Profurl system. The choice was whether to repair the existing drum or replace it with a slightly more robust one. In either case a new lower extrusion was required. Dan said that he could repair the drum with confidence that it would get me back to Australia OK. However, after looking at the stripped threads and extra holes drilled in an attempt to keep screws in I realized that I had had enough of that drum and elected to get a new replacement. That will add $1,000 to the roller furler cost.

On Friday I visited Kelsey to discuss the proposed sail repairs. We went through the proposals line by line. The big change was that we've taken the replacement of the UV edging on the jib off the table, saving about $1300. If I expect to be in a tropical port for more than a few weeks I'll drop the jib and store it below to protect it from the sun. I had the bright idea of dropping off the jib next week and sailing the San Juans with one of my spare jibs, the light one Kelsey was delighted because it allows them to work while I am away. I am to be back by 4 September to hand in the mainsail for its repairs, which will require about 3 working days.

Incidentally, much of the chafing damage to the jib was exacerbated by the loose headstay that I ran with between Australia and New Zealand. Between damage to the jib and the roller drum that problem has cost me plenty. Another hard earned lesson for me.

Refrigerator Working

Doug Roth visited the boat for the 5th time and found that the refrigerator tubing had no more leaks. He evacated the gas from the tube with the pump shown in the photo then charged up the unit with Freon 12. Two hours later I had an ice cold beer from the refrigerator. For Quality Assurance reasons I soon had a second cold beer. I then decided to mop up some water at the bottom of the refrigerator compartment and found that it was covered with a layer of ice. Just before Arnold arrived I had a third cold beer under the well established principle of longtitudinal camparative consistency analysis (translation: I felt like another beer). Doug will return on Monday to make sure that all is well and I settle with him. Doug is the old fashioned we'll fix it no matter what kind of guy, which is in sharp contrast to the swap jockeys that prevail today. He never gave up. Monday will represent his sixth trip to the boat.

Last night after dinner I opened the package containing the new Bosch temperature sensor for the SABB diesel. It appeared to be the correct part. Arnold did some research on my behalf and this morning I ordered a new cooling fan which I will set up to evacuate the heat from around the refrigerator compressor and coils. I also ordered an up-market 12v-120v 300 watt inverter that puts out a true sine wave.

This morning we purchased a 10-ft pressure treated plank at Home Depot for under $10.00. We had it cut in two and I will stow them below for use as fenders when tied up to pylons.

Deck Work Finished

Today I reinstalled the traveller. It is the original track with new blocks that will give me more purchase. I got everything started then got help from Anders of Port Townsend Rigging with tightening the nuts. He worked above with a screw driver while I worked below with a wrench. For once I got sealant just right because a thin bead of the material was squeezed out from both sides of the track. Later I fitted new lines.

I also worked with Dan and Lisa on the specification for a new mainsheet. I had found that the sheet was too short to allow me to push the boom almost abeam when running downwind. No wonder. We worked out that I needed 90 feet of sheet and my existing one was only 54 ft long.

Yesterday I installed the rope organizer and the padeyes for anchoring down the running back stays when they are not in use. The organizers are on black plastic-like blocks similar to the "Star Board" on which we bedded the stanchions in Hawaii. I would have preferred white blocks but black they are.

Yesterday I got a call from the sail maker and was asked to visit for a face-to-face on their findings. Lisa loaned me the company pickup truck and soon I was at the sail maker's loft for what turned out to be a one hour visit.

We went through their recommendations on the mainsail step by step and they all made sense. The total cost was just over $3,000. Much of that work would be to bolster the sail up and give it better protection rather than outright repairs. Then we turned our attention to the jib which I had almost not brought in because it was only one year old and seemed OK to me. The recommendations on the jib added up to just over $2,000. A total of over $5,000 was too rich for my blood so we went through the process again identifiying only the essential items. The total was reduced to just over $3,000. They could not complete the work before 17 August which was not acceptable to me so we agreed that I would return the sails on the last day of August.

The sail loft has an extremely good reputation for producing offshore sails that last 60,000 miles. Looking back, they were attempting to send me back out with sails to their high standard. However, I paid $5550 AUD, about $4440 USD for the laminated jib one year ago, a technology that the sail loft does not have. I paid $5709 AUD , about $4567 USD for the mainsail in Aug 2005. It didn't make sense to me to invest more money in the sails than I had paid for either one of them.

Today I put the mainsail back up and had a close look at it as I handled it. It didn't look that bad to me.

This is Sunday and I am on a break visiting Arnold and Sandra.

Yesterday I sanded the four round winch platforms then painted them with three coats of 2-pack paint. The top photo shows the wooden toppings that I removed. In the second photo you can see the six filled-in holes in the near platform before the painting. The four holes not filled in are for the padeyes used to stow the running backstays. The thired photo shows the four painted platforms.

I also polished the stainless steel bow protection plate.

The lower photo is of a Hunter 31 that caught my eye. The boat seems to have a lot of freeboard and very little keel. I'm sure that the Hunter 31 is a fine boat but I'm wondering how much sail it can carry.

Progress Report

Yesterday was very productive for me. Dan at Port Townsend Rigging sent one of his people to Pachuca to set me up for filling in the 24 holes of the winch platforms in front of the cabin. He brought everything required including a mask for me. He showed me the technique of reaming out the top of the holes with a countersink bit to give better support to the filler material. He then mixed the epoxy and showed me something else that I had not seen before: using a plastic injector for inserting the epoxy from the bottom of the hole up. He then left me to it. I filled in the 24 holes then filled in several other areas, in particular the four screw holes over the head that had been filled with silicone sealant until then. I then mixed another batch of epoxy and made the repairs inside the cabin ceiling which I believe will stop the leaks on the starboard side.

In the afternoon I had a go at tightening the headstay. Jeff Compton had showed me how to do it in Honolulu but I must have not been paying enough attention because I could not get the drum to go up. Dan told me how to do it. He says that one of the good things about Profurl is that you can get to the turnbuckle to adjust the headstay while the sail is still on the roller. Anyway, I eased the backstay and tightened the headstay turnbuckle three revolutions. I then tightened the backstay and after that tightened the inner forestay to give the mast a slight bend. I can say that I now have a "feel" of how to go about tuning my standing rigging, which is about time given that I've sailed 1/3 of the way around the world.

This morning I found that I had to mix up a small batch of epoxy to tidy up some flaws in yesterdy's filling work. I then check the patch up work in the ceiling and it looked very good. On that basis I put the two ceiling panels back up, pleased to note that this marked the start of putting the boat back together again.

I saw Joe at BUMS and asked him about the antifouling he is using on Pachuca. He's using the premium stuff which he says is 70% copper. I didn't think that it was possible to have than much copper in antifouling but he insisted that it was seven zero percent copper. If it is that strong then the third coat should surely see me through to Australia if the boat doesn't sink from the sheer weight of the copper.

Arnold and Sandra came by with their visitors Willie and Jacky, who are about to embark on one of those coastal cruises to Alaska. Willie came on board and I gave him a tour of my shambolic boat. After they left I used the Dremel tool that Arnold had brought to clean up the end of a toggle pin that had been giving me trouble.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I'll put two coats of paint on the repairs that I made on the deck then visit Arnold and Sandra for the weekend. At this point I am at the mercy of Dan and his reception of equipment that he has ordered for Pachuca.

So the things left to be done are:

- Third coat of antifouling (to be done early next week by BUMS)
- Rigging work (by the end of the week hopefully)
- Return of my head and main sails from the sailmaker (promised by Friday)
- Engine maintenance (after boat is in the water)

Once the boat is in the water and I have access to running water again I'll have to spend at least half a day cleaning the boat from stem to stern.

The top photo shows the leak repair work in the ceiling.

The second photo shows a treat that I got for Pachuca, even though she has cost me a lot of sweat, worry, and money: a digital temperature and humidity guage.

Small Jobs

I spent literally hours cleaning the places where I had removed fittings. Scraping every bit of sealant off in preparation for filling in and painting was a tedious and slow job.

Dan passed by and offered to lend me the pickup to take the headsail to the sailmaker's. I replied that it was less than a year old and that it was OK but after some reflection I realized that I only thought that it was OK. Maybe the sail maker would spot and correct a problem before it got serious. So I took the sail to the loft this afternoon and two of the women helped me to drag it inside. Gee I like that place. Maybe I can put on some drag and apply for a job.

I removed the jib halyard and will hand it in tomorrow for a replacement.

I had a chat with Joe at BUMS about the antifouling. I told him that I accepted that their antifouling was good for 2 years, but that would be here at latitude 48. I had 20 months of sailing ahead of me and much of it would be in the tropics. It seemed to me that a third coat of antifouling could make the difference in getting me to Australia without the need for another haulout. He agreed, so next week he will give the hull a light sanding and put on another coat of antifouling.