Thursday, July 3, 2008

Day 63 Part two


Finished the epoxy this morning on the propeller bracket.  Went fine.  I cut off a piece of the epoxy tube--just like Billy Mays says to--and mushed it together for about a minute.  It turns from green to white.  Smashed it into the space left by the old bolt and let it cure.  It is supposed to cure in 10 minutes and be "hard as steel" in an hour.  Yeah right-insert turnip truck here.  Four hours later I could still make small marks in the surface with my fingernail.  Now yes, it was a lot harder but "hard as steel"-- don't think so.  I'll let her cure over night just to be on the safe side.  Tomorrow, I'll start up the engine and let her rip here at the dock.  I figure my dock lines will hold Zephyr in place for a bit of a push.  I want to make sure she's ok before we leave the dock.  I don't see any reason she won't be.  As a matter of fact, I figure the fix we did will make her a lot better than what she was before.  There can be no shifting of the shaft the way we fixed her.

While the epoxy was curing, we took off for Lincoln City 27 miles north of Newport.  We had to go to Wells Fargo to take care of some business.  There is no branch any where in Newport.

We had a lovely lunch in a restaurant just north of Lincoln City called Wild Flower. Tracy had the Lumpfish and chips while I went with the more traditional Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.  Both were excellent.  Sure beat McDonalds.

On the drive home, we stopped at every hardware store looking for 20 gauge, 6 conductor wire.  I want to hook up the wind indicator that we use to tell us what the wind is doing to the autopilot.  This way, we can use it to steer the boat by the direction of the wind and not have to steer by using the compass heading.  If the wind is blowing toward Zephyr at 90 degrees from the right, we can set the autopilot to maintain that angle to the wind at all times instead of telling it to steer at say 335 degrees.  That way, if the wind shifts, the boat will shift its heading to keep the wind at 90 degrees and will move much faster.  I can program an alarm to sound if the course of the boat shifts more than say 15 degrees.  With the autopilot being controlled by the wind, it will make sailing her when the wind blows a lot faster and with less course corrections.  Unfortunately, not a single store from Lincoln City thru Newport had the correct wire.  After 9 stores we gave up and decided to wait till we get to a bigger city. 

We will be here thru the 4th and if the weather changes, be off for Astoria early next week.  We missed the weather window for this week and there was no reason to travel during a week with a holiday in it.  We need winds from the south or southwest to make it a nice sail to Astoria.  With all the work we have been doing, we have only left the dock to go sailing ONCE since we got here two months ago and that didn't last long with all the chaos on board and with the very stirred up ocean.

Tomorrow, the engine test. 

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