A cold front has descended on Port Townsend. It's in the mid 40's as I sit here in the porch of the ice cream parlor. I can't believe I'm wearing a coat in August. We may hit 60 if luck this afternoon. It's about 15 degrees colder than normal. Hey--go figure. At least it's not raining.
Yesterday was general task day on Zephyr. Tracy spent the morning cleaning and vacuuming and collecting all of Snowshoes hair. Boy that boy can shed. Her hip has been bothering her recently. A pinched nerve apparently. If she stands and a kind of strange angle, she is fine. If she stand normal, she is not a happy girl. It hurts to walk unless she looks like the hunchback of Notre Dame--with out the hairy eyebrows.
I spent the morning making Zephyr legal. As you can see from the above photo, she now meets the U.S. Coast Guard requirements for her documentation. I finally got the "hailing port" decal on. She is now "official". In the United States, you can list any city or place you want as a "hailing port" . This is considered you home port. All legal mumbo jumbo. We've seen lots of boats with very elaborate decals and thought we would keep Zephyr nice and simple. Since the decal company screwed up the order, we even have a backup decal in case anything happens to this one. Today, I get to wax the stern. We have to wait 24 hours after application before you can wax over it. After that is done, the hull will be officially done!!!
We went to the farmers market again. About 30 -40 vendors. Lots of veggies and food but nothing out of the ordinary.
I finished the boot stripe in the afternoon. This is the white stripe that separates the blue of the hull from the black bottom paint. It's a nice stripe of white fiberglass that had gotten stains on it from water as well as some of the blue from the rubbing compound as I did the upper hull. Now she is nice and white.
After that, I took apart the windlass. This is a very powerful winch that pulls up the anchor at the bow of the boat. It needs service each year--grease and oil. She is all nice and clean now but couldn't figure how to get into the oil pan area. The owners manual is quite vague about it. It just says to look in the "sight glass" and make sure there is enough oil. They don't tell you where the "sight glass" is, just how to take it apart for cleaning. I took some pictures that I will send to the manufacturer on Monday and hopefully get a response this week. They have been great in the past sending me an owners manual. There was one on Zephyr, but I had wanted to read up on the windlass when we were in Denver. It's not hard getting the anchor down, but I sure want to make sure I can get it back up without killing my back. A 66 pound anchor and 225 feet of big chain would not be pleasant to haul up by hand. Oh--my aching back!!! Jack--the electrician has to look at it as it no longer works either. Doesn't appear to be getting juice. All the switches are on but the light at the main terminal isn't on.
Jack, the electrician, came by yesterday for a few minutes. Glad he did as the fresh water pump had failed again. There is something wrong with a connection down there. If you pull out the fuse and reinsert it, it will work, but not every time. I did that and nothing. Jack did it and it came back to life. I let him know about the windlass. It had worked fine in Newport--should work fine now. He said he will be back today to again try and catch up. With luck, maybe Robin the woodworker will show up also and work on the bow. I'd love to see that finished as the mast is to be reinstalled on Thursday(sure hope so).
We had a nice quiet(except for the band playing down the road) evening and crashed for the night. I'm not sure why bands think their music sounds better if you turn up the volume all the way. We're just glad they stopped at 10pm.
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