Jonny and I have worked moderately hard for the past two days and I am astonished at how much we have accomplished in just 20 hours.
This is what we did. We repaired the rudder delamination by injected epoxy and filling all the holes. We did all the keel glasswork also–sanded the crack, scrubbed epoxy into the lead, glassed over the crack with knytex (thick and sweet fiberglass), and filled all the holes I drilled to drain it. We repaired the “smile” at the leading edge of the keel the same way. We removed the 5 seacocks and through hulls that will require various glasswork and/or backing plates. We drilled a new hole in the mast to reroute the wiring in the bilge, and a new drain slot. We removed old wiring up the mast, pulled off the steaming light fixture, and rerouted a wire out the mast at the steaming light. We entirely dismantled the furler (jonny already had done most of this already). We located the wiring failure in the bilge that was plaguing the steaming light. Jonny pulled off the bow pulpit backing plates.
As Jon previously explained, every single job, no matter how infinitesimally small, turns out to require a hundred unforeseen steps. Doesn’t matter how small. Drilling a hole. You think it’s easy? You’re wrong. Because the bit isn’t right for the metal, or there is a wire behind the object that might be punctured . . . or . . . . or . . . or. I don’t even want to go into it anymore.
But it’s fun. It’s really fun. You see a problem, you figure out how to solve it, you solve it, it feels good. Repeat. Feel good again. That’s why it’s fun.
The video shows jonny fiberglassing the “smile” at the leading edge of the keel, drilling a new hole to reroute the wiring exit from the mast, and removing the engine exhaust through hull which was for some undecipherable reason located below the waterline.
It came on Monday, at long last. What an immense relief. I drove over to the marina and watched them pull it off the trailer. Travel-lifts are sweet–made our boat look like a toy. Since Monday I’ve had to earn money so I haven’t been able to work on it, which was proven very frustrating. Jonny started laboring away. Tomorrow is my first day off, so for me it all begins tomorrow.
My membership at cal sailing club comes in handy when friends come to town. A prompt dunk in cold water is the perfect “welcome to the bay area” greeting. Here is some footage of Jon on a JY15–a fast and tippy little dinghy–wetsuit required.
Let me tell you how I have been dealing with the situation. Since the boat has been two-thousand miles away, all I have been able to do is prepare. I have prepared until I have nothing left to prepare.
I have made lists. I have made a list of all the tasks that need to be done while the boat is out of the water in the work area. I have made a list of all the tasks that need to be done when the boat gets back in the water but before it reaches the marina. I have made a list of tasks to be done when the boat reaches the Emeryville marina. I have made a list of EVERY SINGLE THING we want to do to the boat for the next YEAR. I have made a list of the tools that we need to obtain, organized by task. I have made a list of the tools and materials to gather together before starting each task. I have made a list of each step to do to complete each task.
First it was the cushions. Now it’s getting the boat across the border.
We’d planned, months ago, to have Syzygy trucked up to San Francisco in mid March, during Jon’s spring break. Before Jon bought plane tickets to Mexico, I talked to Jazmin, at Marina San Carlos. She told me that the wacky spring tides were too low, preventing us from getting Syzygy out of the water until April 9th. (We later heard stories of other boats scraping against the bottom and getting stuck, right at the launch ramp.) So we rescheduled our trucking for April 14th, and pushed back Jon’s visit to April 25th. Since trucking Syzygy from San Carlos to San Francisco takes a week, we expected Syzygy to be here, well, now.
Then Jazmin quit (or got fired), and things got shuffled around.
Matt and I spent a day last week cutting the new rigging for Syzygy, after we spent a day going over the numbers that we collected in Mexico. Why a whole day looking at 10 numbers? Because there were, uh, discrepancies between Jon’s measurements and Matt’s measurements. Sometimes those discrepancies were only 1/8 inch; sometimes those discrepancies were 1 1/4 inch. Fortunately, that’s why we have turnbuckles — so that we can tune the rig to the proper tautness, even if the shrouds are a bit long or short.
Matt and I spent last week in San Carlos, Mexico, readying Syzygy for shipment. It was a week full of victories and discoveries and very satisfying moments, in which our labors appeared to have paid off.
We flew to Phoenix on Friday night, and then hussled over to the Tufesa bus station, to catch an overnight bus down to San Carlos. At midnight I gave Matt a pack of Mentos, and wished him a happy 30th birthday - what better place to celebrate than on an uncomfortable plastic chair beneath fluorescent lights in a shady part of Phoenix? We rolled into Nogales at 6am, and I laughed as yet again, after all these trips to Mexico, we got green lights at the border. All these trips, and never searched; while in the States, airport security takes my toothpaste because the tube exceeds 3 ounces.
I’ve heard married friends say they nearly got divorced over curtain, rug, and paint color choices, and — maybe because I’m a 31-year-old bachelor — always laughed at such stories. Those stories, incidentally, normally ended with the wife making a decision and saying to her husband: Trust me. You’ll love it.
Then I bought a boat, and, apparently, without my noticing, I got married to Matt and Jonny. Thus began remarkably similar dramatic domestic disputes.
Boat news has been a roller coaster lately: up, down, up, down, up, down.
It started when I stopped by the Emeryville Marina two weeks ago, and found a slip for us. I’m not much of a believer in omens, but I took it as a sign when the skies cleared and a double rainbow came out just as I rolled in on my bike. I was drenched, and my glasses were all foggy/drippy, but I was smiling. I could imagine Syzygy, sitting there in the rippling water, with a view of the whole of San Francisco bay — From Mt. Tamalpais to the Golden Gate Bridge to the city to Treasure Island to the Bay Bridge. It would be perfect.