Friday, August 21, 2009

Day 479 Bus rides and jobs to be done.



I took off early this morning on the 8:17 bus to find a new propane line for the galley stove.  The one we bought last year snapped during the trip down the coast and emptied all the propane from the tank into the boat.  We're lucky we didn't catch on fire or explode.  Tracy hooked up fans in the boat and pushed air down into the bilge to make sure all the fumes were out.

I headed for Amerigas, the local propane dealer and keeper of all things related to propane.  I walked in with the broken hose(see above picture) and they asked what it was used for.  Here comes the good part!!  "On a boat?  Oh, we don't do boat stuff".  What is wrong with people in this town?  There are lots of boats and fishing people in the area.  Why would you shut yourself off from a gold mine like that?  They sent we to Newport Marine & RV several miles South of town.   I walked across Highway 101 and waited for the bus to take me there, or at least sorta close.  While I waited I made several phone calls.  

One of the calls I made was to Orca Green.  They make the mast head light that not only is set up to be used as an anchor light, but also for an emergency strobe light and a set of navigation lights.  It also comes with a photo cell that will turn it on as the evening turns dark and off at dawn.  Neat piece of equipment.  Only problem is that ours glows with the intensity of about a 2 watt bulb.  When I explained the problem, they fessed up that they had had a problem with the computer chip inside the fixture and would replace it at no charge.  Now all I have to do is figure when I will actually get it.  I finally told them to ship it to the house and I'll have it forwarded to us some where down the coast.  Oh, boy, I get to go up the mast to swap it out!!  The top of the mast is about the height of a six story building.  It's up there.  I've never made it to the top so this will be my first time.  Tracy usually goes up but this will be my turn.

I finally got to Newport Marine & RV and they actually had the hose fitting I needed.  It was the last one they had.  I got lucky!!  I picked up a few more fittings and started the long walk back to the marina.  The bus only makes stops at any particular place about every 90 minutes.  I could walk the distance in a lot shorter time than that.  Once back at the marina, I took all the fittings and made sure the threads were covered in Teflon tape and she went in slick as a whistle.  We had propane again.

I called Ted, one of our friends from our last time here in Newport and asked for a lift to Amerigas to get our tank filled and a stop at Englund Marine for some wire to fix the solenoid that controls the propane coming out of the tank.  It turn on and shuts off the flow of gas with a switch inside the boat.  I'd checked it earlier while we were at Neah Bay and found that no power was going to it to have it turn on.  Today was the day to fix it since I had fixed the propane line.  I pulled out my volt meter and checked.  Zero volts.  I checked at the switch and had 12 volts.  Must be a broken wire.  Oh what fun--threading wires through the walls even behind the walls and inside cabinets.  A fun afternoon was ahead of me.  I picked up the wires with Ted and headed back to start the project.  As a last resort, I pulled out the volt meter and checked one last time.  Nope, still no volts at the solenoid.  Lightening suddenly struck me in the head!!!  Check to see if the screws that hold the wire to the switch are tight!?!  Hey, guess what???  They were loose.  I had to turn one screw six times to get it tight and two others were also loose but not to that extreme.  Suddenly(you guessed it)I had power at the solenoid.  I'd already cut the old(probably still perfectly good) off and had a new one all ready to be installed.  Now I had power so out came the wire strippers and crimpers and special shrink butt connectors for the wires.  You crimp the wires into the fitting and then use a heat gun or even a lighter to head a tube on the fitting and it shrinks around the wires and makes a water proof seal so once set, no water can get in a corrode the fitting.  A must have for any serious boater who wants to keep electrical shorts out of their life.  Now we were all set.  New hose and a new solenoid and we were set.  I also came away with a 30 foot piece of two strand 16 gauge wire for future projects.

Onto the forward head.  Ever since we launched and even before we launched, the forward head kept refilling with waste material after I had flushed it.  What is called the "Joker" valve had apparently failed.  It's a one way valve made of rubber that closes after each flush to make sure it only goes out and never comes back in.  I drained the bowl and took the fittings apart.  No real problem as I had made sure the only thing in the plumbing pipes was salt water by repeated flushings.  Out came the old valve and in with the new.  Another job done.

We were currently set on "F" dock which is right on the pathway for every small fishing boat that comes and goes in and out of the water at the marina.  With tomorrow being Saturday and many, many boaters expected, we wanted to move to "J" dock with the rest of the cruisers.  We waited till the tide had risen( about 2030 hours) and the wind had dropped and headed over. We started out from "F" dock and suddenly, all the lights in the marina went out--power failure just as we were getting underway!   As we rounded the corner to "J" dock we suddenly came to a complete stop.  The water was still low enough that we ran into the silt bottom that had built up at the base of "J" dock.  It's right beside the entrance to the marina and it gets a lot of current as the tide raises and lowers and it slowly fills the area with silt.  We ran smack into it.  We were going slowly so it was no big deal.  I slipped Zephyr into reverse and slowly backed her off the stuff and back out into the marina.  We decided to head over to the "maintenance dock" area for the night.  The marina staff had given us permission to go there if we wanted to to avoid the pandemonium that will be taking place where we had been tied up.  It only had 3.5 feet of water under us so we slipped across the way and tied up to a long dock that belongs to another boater but he is off in Alaska and isn't expected back any  time soon.  We figure we will move over to "J" dock tomorrow afternoon when the tide is in.  The only problem with that is that we can only leave the marina during high tides.  We'll just take it as it comes and see what happens.

Another project I took care of was to reenforce the head board of the mainsail.  You can see in the picture that the top of the sail has two slides in it that attach to the mast.  It used to have only one.  I added the second  on the right side of the plate.  Now it will be better supported as it get pulled up the mast.  When we had had the sails inspected by Port Townsend Sails, they had recommended that this be done.  Since I had taken a class on sail making and repairing from them, I figured I could do it(perhaps not as well) a lot cheaper than they could.  Out came the 1/2" webbing and a needle and thread(industrial waxed thread for sails) and on it went.  Not the main is better prepared for what is to come in the future.

I've already made a list of jobs for tomorrow.  the weather down South is supposed to be rotten for the next five days or so, so we could be here for a while.  No problem, I have lots of jobs that still need to be done.

Tomorrow is another day.  More to come!

No comments: