Foreword: We’re stilling hanging in there, practicing
the recommended distancing protocols, and keeping busy. And we are reconciling with the reality that things will be this way for quite a spell. While
leadership is hard to define and impossible to teach, the absence of it
eventually becomes obvious….and costly. Churchill
once said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, it’s also what it
takes to sit down and listen.” We don't have a Churchill. Of course
Sir Winston also said “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” So there’s that. Keep on going.
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| As if We Weren't Spending Enough on the Boat, the Condo Got a New Fridge / Freezer. |
By this time we originally had planned
to be in the Bahamas, but for obvious reasons that wasn’t going to happen this
year. So during the second weekend of
our stay at Loggerhead Marina in Palm Beach Gardens we took care of a mix of
personal and boat business. Charmaine
(Chelle’s mum) drove down from her winter home in Frostproof, FL, and we loaded
up her car with supplies and food.
Chelle and Char then drove back over to Fort Myers to our condo and got
Char settled in. Unfortunately, as they
were stocking the freezer they discovered it wasn’t cooling; that had happened
before, so we decided we were done with that (LG) unit and had a new one
delivered. LG may make decent
televisions, but their refrigerators are crap.
Rick had a couple of projects to attack
over the weekend as well. The first
priority was tracking down a slight water leak somewhere on the starboard side
of the forward engine room compartment.
That turned out to be the strainer lid for the main engine’s raw water
cooling loop; it wasn’t loose or cracked, but it was missing one of the two
o-rings that provide the seal between the acrylic screw-on lid and the
strainer’s bronze housing – an easy fix.
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| Strainer Baskets Leak a Lot Less with the Correct O-ring in the Lid. |
There were also two other minor items
that Rick had been putting off for a long time – and time was one thing he
currently had available. The first was
cleaning, lubricating and adjusting the three sliding doors on Ghost Rider – two small ones in the
pilot house, and the big beast at the rear of the salon. Another item was the anchor’s blocking pin on
the bow pulpit. That’s a beefy stainless
steel rod that serves as a mechanical brake when the anchor is stowed, and it has
worked well enough except for the way that Nordhavn fashioned its safety line
tether: a length of wire rope attached to the bow roller pin, whose rotation
tended to twist and wrap that wire into a gnarly and tangled ball. Rick cut off the wire rope, tossed it in the
trash, and replaced it with a much more flexible segment of paracord, attaching
that to a fixed stanchion instead of the roller. That’s one less thing to worry about when
deploying or retrieving the big Manson Supreme.
Maintenance – Part III
Yacht Tech reappeared at the boat on Wednesday, 08-April, to begin tackling
our next project, which was to replace some of the aging and increasingly
odiferous black water hoses. If there
was ever a maintenance item worth offloading to a third party, this was it. It’s a difficult, messy and smelly endeavor. But parts of Ghost Rider’s black water plumbing was showing its age, and while
we had no leaks (thankfully) some of the older hose runs were permeating. If one opened certain compartments or
inspection plates a distinct sour odor would start to waft around. It was time for action….or a divorce
according to Chelle.
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| It Isn't Difficult to Tell Which of These Two Hoses is the Smelly One....the Bottom (White) One is Still in Good Shape, but the Top (Yellowed) Hose Needs to be Replaced. |
Dan & Paul drew the short straws at
Yacht Tech, or were on James’ shit-list, we’re not sure which. They wore gloves and masks, although this was
an endeavor that called for that regardless of CDC guidelines for the current
pandemic crisis. We decided to go with
James’ recommendation of Shields Poly X sanitation hose (at $22.50 per foot, or
$30 if you’re crazy enough to buy it at West Marine), but pulling old hose
lengths and running new ones is not for the faint of heart. We decided to focus on the oldest (yellowest)
hose runs and ended up replacing about 40 feet in total. And, since one of those hose runs was the one
going from the master head toilet to the black water tank – and that required
disassembly of the toilet – we also replaced the toilet’s base and sealing gasket,
using a spare kit that Rick already had onboard.
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| Paul (with the Heat Gun) and Dan Looking Less Than Happy Pulling Out Old Black Water Hoses. This is a Project That Warrants Hazard Pay. The Heat Gun Was Needed to Remove Some Hose Ends that Had Been Glued. |
While they labored on that delightful
project Rick tackled one of his own down in the engine room. The dipstick housing tube on the main engine,
a big Lugger 6108A2 diesel, is a rather poor design – it features a sleeved fitting
that wasn’t particularly tight and would seep small amounts of oil after a few
hours of run time. It certainly was not
serious, but it annoyed the hell out of Rick.
The consensus was a whole new replacement tube would be just as
problematic. Bob Senter (aka“Lugger Bob”),
the NOG’s resident Northern Lights expert, recommended removal, a thorough
cleaning, a light sanding with a 3M Scotch-Brite pad, then a coating of either
Permatex or Loctite Blue before reassembly. We had both sealants onboard but
Rick chose the Permatex, since it tended to be less brittle after curing. Reassembly was fairly straightforward, and testing
will occur whenever we sortie back to Fort Myers.
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| The Dipstick Housing Removed from the Engine Block. |
Then, on Thursday, 09-April, Yacht Tech decided to shutter its
operations. Some neighboring shops were
starting to report employees with suspicious symptoms and James did not want to
take any chances with his employees and customers. He got no argument from us,
it was the right thing to do. Together we
had made good progress on the Ghost Rider
punch list, with only two items left outstanding – the rub rail replacement on
the port bow, and the Triac heat cycle switch on the A/C compressor. The former is just cosmetic, and Rick thinks
he can figure out the latter item on his own between now and the next time we
need heat on the boat.
Chelle drove back from Fort Myers to the
boat on Friday, 10-April, this time
in our own vehicle. Eventually we’ll
return to fetch it back home. Her only stop was to fuel up ($1.69/gal at Costco) and also brought along a few fresh food items
that we needed to restock on the boat. Then we began to plan our escape from Palm
Beach. Right now it’s looking like we’ll
have a decent weather window to get back underway on Tuesday, 14-April, with
the rather modest goal of simply getting back to our home port in Fort Myers. That will be an interesting journey since
there are no marinas along the way accepting transients, but we’ll figure it
out. We’ll have more on that in the next
blog.
In the meantime take care of yourselves
and each other.
