Day 311 Compromise

As I said in yesterdays post, discussion was needed as to how to handle the transmission situation.  We come to an agreement that we will take Zephyr to Seattle and have Pat's Marine come down and inspect and adjust the gears if it is possible.  They will also do a service on it--change the transmission fluid--while on board.  Since we have been lead to believe that they can stop the prop shaft from turning while in neutral, it will give us the best shot as to stopping it with out having to go to the lengths of taking it out and shipping it back to the manufacturer.  Since they have installed hundreds of these transmissions, I think we can trust them to take care of the problem if it is possible.  Now we just have to make plans as to when to go over.  Saturday looks to be very windy from the South--20+ winds.  Sunday may be better with less winds coming straight at us.  It's all a crap shoot as they say.  I guess we will just see what develops and go when we see what Mother Nature brings us.  We plan on staying at the Shilshole Marina on the North side of Seattle for a day or two depending on what they find.

The installation of the hatch is proceeding.  Bob made more cuts and has the teak rim for the hatch all built and expects to finish up today.  We will be applying gel coat to the lower section of the opening as it is made of simple fiberglass panels glued together.   With luck, we will be about 90% by the end of today.

Meanwhile, I checked the electrical bonding wires on our through hulls.  Each through hull fitting is wired together so that they don't corrode and fall out of the boat due to stray electrical current eating them apart.  I don't quite understand it all, but they are supposed to be joined together by wires.  Since we have at least 8 of them, it pays to check.  The last thing--well almost--is to see one of them pop out of the hull due to it being corroded apart.

We refilled the water tanks yesterday.  When I got up yesterday and turned on the faucet, lots of air came out with a bit of water.  That normally means the tanks are just about empty and instead of the pump sucking up water, it's sucking air.  I hooked up the hose while Tracy opened the inspection holes on the tanks.  Strangely, they were about a third full.  I turned on the water again and it went back to all water.  I guess there was some residual air in one of the tanks--heater maybe--that had gotten trapped when I put in the new pump.   All was actually well but since we had the hose all ready to go, we filled the tanks anyway.  Now we are back to our 260 gallons where we belong.  The six weeks in Brownsville(we filled just before we left Port Townsend) hadn't used but about half our supply.  Not bad.

I made an attachment for the outboard motor to flush the salt water out of it.  It's recommended that this be done after each time you use it.  The dealer had sold me a fitting that screws onto the motor to put water right into the block.  It then pushes the water out the drain.  Since I only saw water coming out the water intake to the motor, I called Mercury this morning to see if it was really flushing out all the salt water.  Nope--it only will flush the lower section, not up through the block.  For that I need to buy a different fitting that screws onto the inlet pipe for the motor, start the motor and flush it that way.  Basically, I was sold a fitting that does only half the job, not all of it.  It allows salt water to stay in the engine that could cause it to fail due to corrosion later.  Off to West Marine again.

Rained and hailed yesterday--add a bit of Sun and there you have it.  Today--sunny and bright.  We will see what today brings.

We rented a small storage space for the excess we don't want to take to Alaska but will need later in out trip.  I expect we will be making several trips over there today to get the boat some what emptied.

It's another day.  Have a great one everyone!