Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Cat Tales on Hard, Crew in Canada




Well, it was a whirlwind after St. Georges, mostly involving the work of decommissioning the boat and putting it away.

We managed a few meals with friends, a second HASH (walk/run), and a cooking demonstration, though.  Interestingly, the cooking demonstration at True Blue resort turned out to be about cooking conch, so we have finely tuned our cooking conch protocol, and are ready for next year.  We'll save you from the rest, however.

Haulout on May 4th went well at Spice Island Marine in Grenada. The work on the water and in the boatyard was difficult for us; and we put in very long days.  It was not too bad with evenings in air conditioned comfort at our little room at Cool Running Apts. 

Laurie's birthday was celebrated at Timbers with friends for a lovely meal out after a hot and sweaty workday on the boat!  Timbers is the restaurant in the boatyard, only a 5 minute walk from our rented apartment.

The flight home on May 9th was also comfortable and without significant event, although customs and security lineups in Toronto were outrageous, and we had to stay over one night in Toronto unexpectedly  due to a flight change. 

All was found to be well at the cottage, with no failures or problems with any systems or the structure.  As well, as a result of a rather mild winter, we found all our friends to be in good spirits.  A special thanks to Hugh and Liz who checked on our place and picked up our mail for 6 months!  Laurie has been thrown into the chores at the cottage and within the neighbourhood, and Dawn is setting up to assist Jean, her mother, in a major move from condo to retirement home.

TECHNICAL
Poor Laurie in over 40 degree temperatures on his birthday!
 The big story with the boat was the changing out of the old diaphragms in the saildrives.  The diaphragms keep the sea out of the boat while allowing the engine and drive leg to vibrate and move.  The primary one is a very heavy piece of reinforced rubber in a disc with a hole for the leg, held in place against the hull by the bolts of a retaining ring, and against the saildrive by being sandwiched between the upper and lower assembly of the leg and related transmission.  The secondary one is a thinner rubber membrane held onto the upper portion of the retaining ring and the upper portion of the transmission by special steel rings not unlike giant hose clamps.  Between these is a screwed in sensor that tells if one or the other has allowed water into the interstitial space.

Removing these suckers was hard work, involving the unbolting of the engine from the saildrive and moving it forward (onto bits of lumber scrounged in the boatyard), the complete removal of the saildrive, and the dismantling of the saildrive on a scrounged table under the boat.  It was heavy, hot, dirty, hard work; and I am proud that we were able to do it.

Now here is the bad part.  There is no difference in the new and old diaphragms.  I could wipe off the old ones and sell them as new, even though they are 20 years old.  The manufacturer said they should have been replaced 15 years ago, but in fact there seems to be little known history of failure from fatigue.  So there we are, a job done well that maybe shouldn't have been done at all.