We had winds blowing through here last night like I haven't seen in quite some time. It started yesterday afternoon and took off. I was walking over to do laundry and saw a sailboat heading into the marina. Even with no sails up, she was healing over at a good 20 degree angle. The wind was from the South so it was coming straight into the marina. I took off running onto the dock to lend a hand. Another guy took off from his boat seeing them coming in. Tossed the clothes bag into the pier and got ready. Point Hudson is a small marina with not a lot of room for maneuvering so any decisions as to what you are going to do have to be made real quick as there's not a lot of room for changing your mind. They quickly decided on pulling up to the dock on their port side so the wind would push them against the dock instead of away from it. With lots of fenders out, it's a wise decision. Unfortunately, they only had one fender on the side they decided on. There were three on the other side. In they came!!! I took the bow and kept them from crashing into it. The other guy took the dock lines and started getting them attached. The manager of the marina came down and helped too. I kept the boat from hitting the dock balancing the side against the one fender they had. As we got her tied to the dock, the skipper pulled the other fenders of the starboard side and wedged them in on the dock side. At least they were prepared with all their dock lines so getting them tied up was quick and easy. Apparently another boater came in earlier and hit a few of the boats before getting tied up. The first question the skipper of the boat had was how much damage had been done to his hull was he came in. He has the same blue paint on his hull that we have. I can understand his concern. Since I had been balancing his boat against the fender, he didn't hit the dock at all. He was quite relieved and shook everyones hand after we got it set up.
A better idea is to stay out and wait out the wind. In this case, coming in proved to be the better idea as the wind continued for the next 6+ hours and it was still blowing through the night though not so bad.
We had a gentleman in Zephyr yesterday repacking the sealing packing on the rudder. It had been packed with eight layers of material. That is a lot more packing stuff than is normally done. 6 is the usual amount. The problem of the leak was caused by who ever packed it the last time used the wrong size material. They had used 5/16" width and it required 3/8". While a 16th of an inch isn't much, it can be the difference of keeping the water out--good-- and letting it in--bad. Now she is all packed and can be adjusted once we get back into the water by simply tightening the bolts that push the top down on the packing. We should have no more leaks.
No Jack the electrician again yesterday. I guess he is still recovering from this dental surgery of last week.
The riggers showed up while it was still decent and got several cleats attached to the mast and other fittings repositioned. They took off just before the wind started going to town. I'm just glad that 90 percent of our fittings that keep the mast up were installed before the wind started. All we still need is the stern fitting and the tough stuff will be all done. There is still lots of finishing that still needs to be done to make it perfect, but that will be taken care of next week when Brion comes back. No real rush as the electrical is still being worked on. There just doesn't seem to be any end in sight for us getting back in the water.
A lovely dinner of Pork Fried Rice from Shanghai last night. It just doesn't get any better Chinese than theirs. If it calms down, I'll be doing a nice steak tonight. The barbecue grill doesn't like the wind.
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