Syzygy Sailing

Bought a boat, fixed a boat, sailed to Australia, sold the boat.

Category: boat work

stories about sailboat maintenance, repair, and projects

  • Pride and Slapdowns

    At 6pm wednesday afternoon, as we were sailing out of the Berkeley Marina, there was substantial reason to be proud of ourselves.

    We had replaced all of our standing rigging–the very important wires that hold up the mast–by ourselves. We had replaced the bearings in our supposedly unmaintainable furler (“Profurl bearings are sealed and can’t be replaced,” said the rigger at Svendsen’s) by ourselves. We had sanded and painted the bottom by ourselves. We had replaced the through-hulls and added backing plates ourselves. We had repaired our delaminated rudder by injecting epoxy, ourselves. We had glassed over damaged areas of the keel, ourselves.

    None of us had ever done any of these things before, never even seen them done. Without tooting our own horn too much, some of these jobs are a hell of an achievement for inexperienced guys like us. Things like getting the rigging to fit perfectly the first time, and creating beautiful through-hull seacock installations, and replacing sealed bearings are almost always jobs left to the professionals. We did it though, and we are FAR from professionals.

    But above all else we felt proud because at 6:30pm on Wednesday evening we were heeled over and hauling ass on a close-reach, pointed directly at the Golden Gate Bridge, just before sunset, in 20 glorious knots of wind with waves splashing over the bow and down the deck. We felt proud because we had done all of our yard work all ourselves, in just two weeks and were already in the water, headed for our slip ready for us in Emeryville.

    Now for the slapdown part. Right when you’re feeling on top of the world, like you pulled off some sort of sailing coup d’etat and maybe this whole thing isn’t all that hard after all . . . that very moment is the perfect time for a dose of humility.

    I did not succeed in parking the boat in our slip. As we pulled into the Emeryville Marina a low was moving in, and it was gusting to maybe 15 knots in the marina, which are somewhat challenging docking conditions especially since our slip was downwind but honestly not particularly abnormal. However, I am completely inexperienced motoring our boat around. With her long keel and skeg rudder, she turns like an elephant and backs even worse. As we approached our slip my anxiety skyrocketed–rightfully so, because I was realizing far too late that I had almost no chance of getting us into the slip without damaging a boat. Our boat weighs 22,500 lbs–you can’t hold that off with brute strength–and the wind, not me, was in control.

    I barely got the nose in the slip before the wind rotated the rest of the boat right past the slip. To avoid hitting the neighbors boat I threw it in reverse, sending us backward across the narrow fairway and leaving Jonny and Karen on the dock. I proceeded to carve a full circle as I was blown down the fairway, able only to motor forward and backward enough not to hit other boats. Syzygy came to rest, mercifully lightly, on the stretch of dock at the end of the fairway. I didn’t hit any boats, but I also didn’t get in our slip and we were in a tough spot blown up against the dock. Compassionate bystanders came to our aid (I give thanks) and helped with docklines while we formulated a plan. We ended up powering off the dock (a delicate task, with no room to maneuver) and parked in a massive, uninhabited, upwind slip that even I couldn’t mess up. We would move in the morning when the wind had abated.

    After the pride I have rightfully taken in our successes, it was important to receive this slapdown–this reminder of how much we still have to learn, and how this isn’t a game in which our failures have no consequences. Skippers all over the marina park their boats without mishap every day–it is no particularly impressive skill. Yet it is a skill that I lack and that I must acquire.

    The next morning the wind had not abated at all, but we needed to move out of the slip that wasn’t ours. I cannot tell you the anxiety this caused me. Jonny and I spent over an hour motoring in the empty space of the marina, practicing parking around a downwind buoy, pretending it was our slip. It was horrifying how infrequently I was able to accomplish the job, even around the buoy, and when we finally turned towards our slip to do it for real, I felt more fear of the consequences of my imminent failure than I have in years. I had very little reason to expect that I would accomplish the task any more successfully this time than I had the night before. In truth, I had more understanding of how likely it was that I would fail, given the failure rate while practicing with the buoy. It was as if I was readying myself to go out on the stage for some recital, knowing full well that I couldn’t perform the piece.

    Well this time I got us into the slip without damaging anything. I felt immediate and overwhelming relief–of the sort that makes you want to hug everyone in sight and makes you feel like you could exhale for a whole minute from all the pent-up air you were holding. Not pride though–I’m not proud of it because I have no right to be proud of a success that resulted from luck more than skill–and even if any of it had been skill, it is a basic skill that a dozen other skippers a day perform all over the marina.

    So Syzygy is finally resting safe in her home, her slip. For now. I have as much curiosity as the next person about what will happen the next time we take her out and try to bring her back!

  • I’m broke, but happy

    You can tell it’s been a good week by looking at the contents of the big rubber trash can next to the boat: beer bottles and coffee cups and cans of beans, rubber gloves and dirty rags, rusty screws, burnt-out light bulbs, old bearings, bits of corroded wire, paper bowls lined with epoxy residue, stiffened paint brushes, three empty paint cans, three dremel bits worn down to the nub, two broken drill bits, and one broken dremel tool.

    The broken dremel was our first tool casualty — I burnt out the motor while sanding the old paint off of the propellor. It popped, then stopped spinning, and then a few wisps of smoke snaked out of it. It was bound to happen, and I’d been kind of expecting it since meeting a guy in Mexico who broke half a dozen grinders in the process of refurbishing his Norwegian steel-hulled boat. So Matt went out and bought a new dremel, which we immediately put to use by grinding down a couple of our new backing plates. So far so good.

    We’ve gotten very good at buying tools and parts; in fact, my mental map of this new place I call home consists mostly of places to get them. I used to know intuitively how to get to bike shops, bars, restaurants, friends, and parks. Now I know how to get to five local hardware stores, a screw manufacturer, a bearing distributor, a plastics place, a sailmaker, and three chandleries. It’s worth noting that at Svendsen’s, the best chandlery around (particularly since, as new boat owners, we get 40% off everything), I can name most of the staff.

    They say that a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into, and they’re 100% right. During the last two weeks, I’ve spent $1000 (2/3 or it at Svendsen’s) on two sanding bits, two hole saws, a depth gauge, a medium punch, die grinder, a tap, and scissors; 125 paper bowls, 200 rubber gloves, 12 plastic syringes, 12 small brushes, eight mixing sticks, two rolls of painter’s tape; three 3x3x1″ pieces of plastic, two rubber spreader tip covers, 15 feet of 1″ rubber tape, one spool of seiizing wire; two industrial bearings and four oil seals; four nav lights, four gold-plated coax connectors, two waterproof cable clams, a heat gun; four bronze through hulls, two bronze rods, one bronze seacock, one 4×6 hull zinc, two 1″ round prop zincs; 1 quart of epoxy primer, 1 quart of bilge paint, 16 ounces of marine-grade lubricant, 14 ounces of molybdenum grease, 12 ounces of epoxy resin, 8 ounces of anti-sieze lubricant, 1 can of penetrant, and a caulk gun; 30 6mm set crews, 15 5/16 lag screws, 12 2″ machine screws, nine 2″ cotter pins, eight 1/4″ phillips screws, eight 1/4″ socket screws, eight lock washers, six 1/4″ lag screws, four 1″ cotter pins, and four locknuts — all A-4 grade stainless steel, with less than .02% carbon and at least 2% molybdenum.

    The worst part? Those stainless-steel screws aren’t cheap, but they’re nothing compared to bronze. Last week, at Svendsen’s, Matt was searching for 1″ lag bolts made of silicone-bronze, the most corrosion-resistnant marine-grade metal available. Instead of buying 18 bolts, he figured a bag of 25 would be cheaper. So we put ’em in our pile of stuff. As Pat was ringing us up, I asked her how much the screws were.

    -“Oh, you don’t want those,” she said.
    -“Waddya mean? How much are they?” I asked.
    -“Seriously. You don’t want those. They’re $144.”

    Yep, Pat was right. We didn’t want those. $6 per screw was too much. (And that was with the 40% discount.) So we got stainless steel lag bolts, for about 50 cents each.

    This week, we had no choice. We rebuilt the zinc on the hull, and the 4″ screws that hold it there had to be conductive. Bronze it would be. No two ways about it. The price: $12 per screw. We bought ’em.

    And that right there is one of the best analogies for owning a boat: spending an exorbitant amount of money only to get screwed.

    But… then again, the hull zinc is mounted perfectly. Our seacocks and through-hulls are now bombproof. Our engine exhaust now spits out above the waterline. The four coats of bottom paint I just applied should last years. Our rigging — knock on wood — is burly. Our mast is wired elegantly. Our bow pulpit will be mounted solidly. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done by the book, as it should be done. We’ve cut no corners. After just two weeks, I think our boat is at least 20% less janky than it was before.

  • Tingling with giddiness

    I sanded so much today that my fingers were still tingling 20 minutes after I put the sander down. My shoulders ache, my hands are sore, and if you were to ask me to pick something up off the ground, the manner in which I’d bend over to do so wouldn’t be very graceful. It reached 90 degrees here today — probably a record — and I spent most of the day in a full-body Tyvek suit, with rubber gloves and a face mask on, while holding a 10-lb sander above my head. My hair is matted with sweat, and my shirt (the same shirt I’ve worn all week) is a little bit stickier. My fingers are covered in blue dust. So are my feet. And my hat. And my cheeks. I’m about to go take a shower at Matt and Karen’s place, and am contemplating taking a bath in Gojo instead.

    How much work was it? I’ll put it this way. After two hours of sanding, and little to show for it, I asked Nick, a yardworker more or less my age, how long it takes him to sand a 40′ sailboat, to see if I was on track.

    -Nick: “Oh, I’m lucky. I hurt my shoulder, so I never have to sand any boats, because I can’t lift my arm above my shoulder. I can’t even do a pushup.”

    -Me: “How’d you hurt your shoulder?”

    -Nick: “Surfing. But I can still surf.”

    So the guys who work here, the guys who get paid to do work: they dislike sanding to the extent that a personal injury seems like a blessing.

    At any rate, Matt and I finished sanding the bottom of our boat (he sanded the port side, and I the starboard) and it looks really good. Actually, it looks bad, because the bottom is all scratched up and patchy, but it’s a good sanding job. In fact, Carl, our much-revered yard manager, walked by and said of our sanding work, “Wow, it doesn’t get much better than that. I like to see professional work.” That made us proud.

    So the bottom is almost ready to be painted. Of course, almost is a weighted term as far as sailboat repairs go. Almost means it feels like we’re done, even though many tasks remain. We’ve still got to prime on the bare metal parts. And we’ve got to lightly sand the parts that we fiberglassed and smoothed with fairing compound (aka marine-grade spackle). And we’ve got to put the through-hulls back in…It’s worth noting that putting the through-hulls back in isn’t the quickest task, either. We’ve got to level the backing plates (aka grind away the high spots), and measure the depth of each through-hull, and cut off the extra threads. Then we’ve got to mark the spot where the seacock rests on the backing plate, and drill holes for the lag bolts that hold the flange of the seacock in place. Then we have to fill in those holes with epoxy, so that the backing plates don’t rot. Then we have to let the epoxy cure. Then, at long last, we have to squeeze in a big glob of marine-grade caulk, and screw the seacock onto the through-hull, and insert the lag bolts.

    There’s a good analogy for this: Xeno’s paradox. After hours of grueling work, we’re half way done. Hours later, we’re half way through the remaining work. Hours after that, we’re halfway through the little bit that remains. Ad infinitum… and we never get there. We never finish. But like I’ve said before, it’s fun, and it sure beats an office job.

    Some friends stopped by this week. Dave and Ben, both engineers, spent an hour poking around the boat. Kevin did too.

    -Dave: “It’s so cool how everything fits together.”
    -My thoughts: Cool, maybe, when stuff works. Not cool when it needs to be repaired.

    -Ben: “This is totally comfier than a tent, and bigger than the back of my truck.”
    My thoughts: More expensive, too.

    Kevin: “You don’t get anxious? I’d be anxious.”
    My thoughts: I think the anxiety has been replaced by excitement.

    Phil wins the best-visitor award, though. He stopped by with a cooler full of sandwiches, cold drinks, chips, salsa, and brownies, and then lent a hand cleaning the bottom of the boat. Those beers at the end of the day were delicious – thank you, Phil.

    The week has flown by in a blur. One second it’s 10:20, and I’m kinda hungry, and the next it’s 12:47, and I’m so hungry I can’t think straight. Meanwhile, I’m neck deep in a project, so eating will have to wait. One second Carl walks by and, seeing me neck deep in said project, asks, “Are you winning?” My answer: “No, but it’s a good game.” A few hours later, I bump into Carl, and proudly report: “I won the game!” Carl: “Attaboy! Attaboy!”

    I’ve learned so much, and kept learning so many new things, that it’s been impossible to revel in the glory of each new thing learned. That I will have to successfully figure something out and then move on to another thing is no longer a surprise. Only when I stop to think about it do I realize that this week I learned how to tap threads, how to disassemble industrial bearings, how to splice coax cable, and how to fiberlgass, such that I can drill a hole in my boat and patch it and still sleep soundly onboard that boat. That beats an office job, too.

    We damn-near finished working on the mast: we rewired and re-sealed the deck/steaming light, and rewired and remounted the new ultra-efficient LED nav light, too. Matt installed new gold-plated VHF connectors for the antenna, after chopping off a foot of corroded wire on each end. I rigged up a new mount for the wind vane (the old one snapped off in a storm), and Matt cleaned the butyl rubber goop off of the anemometer connection. All that remains is the furler… and the much needed parts are coming tomorrow in the mail…

    On account of all this, I’m feeling kind of giddy… like, well, like it’s almost time to paint the bottom, and almost time to put the mast back in, and almost time to put the boat back in the water, where she belongs.

  • My first week on the boat

    I’ve worn the same pants for a week now; they tell the story of the last seven days — my first week living on the boat — better than I. Embedded in them are bits of caulk, epoxy, and grease; stains of sweat, salt, snot, and blood; smudges of pasta sauce, wine, and melted chocolate; metal filings, fiberglass strands, resin shards, and saw dust.

    It’s been a week. I haven’t shaved. I haven’t washed my hair. I’ve been washing dishes with my fingers, pissing in a bucket, drinking wine out of the bottle, and sleeping sound as a baby.

    If tools are like pets, and they enjoy being petted, or maybe just held, ours are very very happy. I’ve kept vice grips in my back pocket most of the time, and relied heavily on a screwdriver, crescent wrench, hammer, tape measure, and awl. I’ve alternated between the drill, dremel, grinder, and jig saw as if they were pens and pencils, occasionally using a drill press and a die grinder hooked up to our compressor.

    This week, Matt and I put the new rigging on the mast, which entailed disassembling and servicing the furler, which is an ordeal in itself — more on that next week. We poured resin into the rudder, patched up holes we’d drilled in the hull, and fiberglassed over a crack in the keel. We re-bedded the through-hulls, added backing plates, raised the exhaust through-hull 6 inches, and fiberglassed over the old hole. We cleaned the mast step. We drilled a bigger drain hole in the bottom of the mast, rewired the mast lights, and cleaned the propeller and shaft. And we’ve begun 10 other tasks, if not more.

    In between all that, I moved in, taking up residence in the V-berth – the little V-shaped room in the bow. I shoved all my clothes into one locker, and dumped a few extra things — my checkbook, toothbrush, and a few books, on the shelf above it. During a couple of other moments, I rode over to the grocery store, and bought some food; somehow the addition of food in the galley makes the boat seem more like a home, even if the counters are covered in stacks of toolboxes and bags of screws and pieces of hose and piles of brushes and cleaners and fixtures and instruments and other various boat parts.

    I mention these projects and tools and parts a) so I don’t forget, and b) because for a certain type of person, satisfaction is more meaningful than pleasure, and these projects have been intensely satisfying. I’ve rejoiced so many times over infinitesimal mechanical achievements — extracting rusted/welded screws, for example — that I’m beginning to feel like the master of the universe, or maybe just the master of the 40-foot universe that is my sailboat.

    Along the same lines, for a certain type of person there’s also a direct relationship between the length of time since the last shower, and happiness, such that if you’re that type of person, you’ll say oh yeah, and if you’re not that kind of person, you’ll have no idea what I mean. This only occurred to me recently, when I realized that I felt something like I felt when I rode my bicycle across the country seven years ago. I was so out-there, so busy doing my thing, so engaged, that there was no time or place to worry about comfort and cleanliness and appearance. That’s how I feel when I’m climbing, and that’s the feeling I’ve enjoyed most of this week.

    There’s a cliche about boat-owning: they say that the best two days of a boat-owner’s life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Empirical evidence already suggest the opposite.

    First, buying the boat was no fun. Buying the boat — literally paying for it — entailed electronically wiring the largest check of my life to some obscure bank in Seattle, while at the same time second-guessing myself and wondering if I’d made a grave mistake. Did I get the right boat? Did I take a big hasty jump too soon? Did I just screw myself for the next three years? Five years? Life? My concerns ranged from tiny to huge, such that the actual boat-buying was fraught with anxiety and concern and distress. Which is to say that the day I bought the boat was not one of the best days of my life — 99% of the other days in my life, in fact, were better. So I don’t know what’s up with most boat-owners. Maybe they lead very boring lives? Maybe psychologically, they think that they can buy their happiness, rather than create it? Who knows. Point is, every day since the day I bought the boat has been more satisfying. That much is clear after one week.

    Second, I saw the previous owners of this boat five months ago, when we took her for a sea trial, and I would testify in court that they assuredly did not enjoy selling this boat. I think having it made them feel young, spirited, engaged, and adventurous, and that selling it only reminded to them that life’s circumstances — age, ability, mobility — had finally caught up with them and forced their hand.

    I bring up the cliche because recognizing it as false is somewhat vindicating, given that I’ve only lived on the boat for a week. It makes me feel like my experiences thus far are propelling me into the life of a true sailor (or at least boat owner), and if taking this step only takes one week, then shit, maybe I will sail around the world next year.

    Speaking of time, I was concerned, to say the least, that moving onto the boat would eat up all my time. I wondered how I’d have time fix up the boat while still having time to cook, write emails, deal with work, and answer my cell phone, let alone read the news, keep up with the New Yorker, and keep playing Scrabble online. Thus far, things have worked out well. I’ve found that I can bounce from fix-it mode to domestic mode rapidly, and probably because fix-it mode is so satisfying, I look at my computer less. At the same time, I rejoice a little more when I get a good email. Unfortunately, I fall asleep reading, but I wake up rearing to go.

  • Two days of work

    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.

     

  • Boat has arrived

    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.

     

  • Jon’s latest contributions

    Jon flew home to Denver this morning, after spending a week in town with us. Here’s what he did with his week:

    -Climbed at the gym 3 times

    -Went sailing (on other peoples’ boats – a stunning Beneteau 32, a barely-afloat Catalina 27, and a 14-foot JY) 3 times

    -Went for an hour long run one day

    -Went on a date

    -Saw 2 bands play at local venues

    -Spent an afternoon helping me make a couple hundred Zero Per Gallon belts

    -Spent an afternoon slack-lining in Golden Gate park

    -Got drunk a couple of times, during which he drew this sketch of his round-the-world ambitions:


    (*clarification via notes on flickr)

    Actually, Jon did a couple more boat-related things while here that I mustn’t omit. He re-spliced the frayed main sheet on Loren’s Catalina 27, and he attached one Norseman fitting to one of our upper stays.

    Jon was *supposed* to help us do a lot more boat-related work on Syzygy, but, since she hasn’t arrived, ended up with a week of vacation. So here’s to a productive week, Jon.

    As our luck would have it, Syzygy is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Fingers are crossed.

  • Cutting the rigging, and hoping we cut it correctly

    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.

    And if that’s no fun to look at, check out what Brion Toss has to say about rigging.

    The wire: 3/8″, 1×19 braid, 316 stainless steel.

    The fittings: Navtec Norseman (we spent the rest of the day installing them.)

    The tool: dremel, w/diamond-coated cutting blades.

    The results: we’ll find out when we put the mast back in…

  • Victory in San Carlos, Mexico

    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.

    Our first day began with minor victories:
    – Syzygy was present and floating, with only 2lbs of caked bird shit on her solar panels. Even her hull was clean.
    -The engine’s oil was oily, as it should be, which was good news, since we thought maybe the oil cooler was leaking. It also started right up, purring along. Phew!

    There was only one small defeat: Rafael, the cushion guy, hadn’t left our cushions on the boat for us. I called him, and he agreed to meet us the next day.

    We went to bed excited about being back on the boat, optimistic about the week ahead. Since we lacked cushions, we slept on wood, with a pile of towels/clothes beneath us. Also, since we didn’t close the hatches, a small army of mosquitos (who knew they lived in the Sonoran desert?) invaded our quarters, and vexed us all night. I woke up in the V berth with bug bites all over my knuckles; Matt woke up in the quarter berth with bug bites all over his face, like some pimple-faced teenager.

    The next day, with the tides in our favor, we were able to escape from the marina, and take Syzygy sailing in light winds, in beautiful green water. She sailed great.

    Another victory: the packing gland (the seal around the propeller shaft) didn’t leak one drop. Here’s to Jon for fixing it well last time.

    Then began the fixing… Matt and I replaced the cruddy/clogged drain hose in the the propane locker, and rebuilt both of our manual bilge pumps.Screens in the hatches kept our quarters bug free, but since Rafael never showed up, we slept on wood yet again.

    The next morning, I climbed up the mast with a measuring tape and calipers, and we spent an hour measuring our rigging (here’s hoping we measured correctly) and inspecting parts like the tangs and spreader tips.

    Another victory: we successfully assembled, inflated, and rowed the dinghy (which we’ve named Cabron) across the marina, giddy as 10 year olds.

    I disassembled and serviced the bearings in a couple of blocks (pulleys), such that they run very smoothly. Two down, 40 to go.I also called Rafael and left a message; I told him I was contemplating kidnapping his firstborn son in return for our cushions.

    We started the next day with business, filling out the paperwork required for trucking Syzygy up to San Francisco while at the same time trying to keep my eyes from popping out of my head on account of the very big bill I’d be footing. Note: if there’s any problem with Customs, I’m blaming Jon, because his passport is expired.

    I called Rafael again; he said he’d meet us at 3pm. I crossed my fingers, and we returned to the boat.

    We spent the rest of the day removing the dodger and bimini frame, and lashing them to the deck; removing the solar panels and stowing them below deck; and spraying WD-40 on all of our old turnbuckles, hoping to loosen them just enough so that we could remove our old rigging when the time came.

    3pm came and went, and Rafael never showed up, so we slept on wood, yet again.

    We started the next day early and worked until midnight. First, Matt labeled all of the blocks and lines, so that when we disassembled everything we’d know what was what. We disconnected the wiring at the bottom of the mast, pulled off the mast boot (the waterproof rubber seal around the base of the mast on deck), and detached the table in the salon, which is bolted to the mast.

    And then, just before leaving the marina, Rafael showed up and forked over… half of our cushions. (Jon: you’re right, I love the color you picked.)

    Then, gear stowed, we went sailing around the peninsula, to the marina where Syzygy would be pulled out and put on a truck. With more wind, and some swells, we were getting some spray across the bow; perhaps we’d jumped the gun and removed the real mast boot a bit early. I quickly made an improv mast boot out of my towel, which worked pretty well.

    We sailed into the San Carlos marina in perfect conditions, with a stiff breeze off our port.

    We tied up at the dock for half an hour, then got hauled out and moved over to the workyard, beneath a tall crane and beside another boat on a truck, all wrapped up in plastic, ready for shipping. In a few more days, that’s what Syzygy would look like…

    At the workyard that evening, we set to work in a fury.

    We removed the boom and vang, and stowed the jib and mainsail. We unreeved all of the lines (pulled them through various pulleys), and tied them to the mast, and went to bed when we lacked the energy to do anything else.

    Early the next morning, we worked like madmen to prepare the mast for removal, so that we wouldn’t have to pay for many hours of labor at $150/hr — the fee for mast removal. (I’d heard a horror story of sorts, of a mast that became welded to the hull, such that it took 2 days to remove it… at, yes, $150/hour. Ouch.) We spent an hour fiddling with needlenose pliers and vice grips, wrestling with the rusty old cotter pins in the turnbuckles, and finally disconnected the 4 lower shrouds, the 2 intermediate shrouds, and the baby stay, leaving only the forestay, backstay, and uppers holding the mast up. Then we unwired the antenna from the backstay, unbolted the furler from the forestay (a task and a half), and struggled to get the spinnaker pole off of the mast, since the quick release mechanism had locked up.

    Just as we finished, five guys from the workyard climbed aboard, looped a thick rope around the mast, and turned on the crane’s winch. Slowly, the line rose up to the spreaders, and held the mast firmly. They removed the upper stays, while one of the guys went to the bow (to removed and then hold the forestay, and prevent the furler from bending), and another went to the stern (to remove and then hold the backstay, and prevent the antenna insulators from bending), and another guy went below deck to guide the mast up and out of the cabin. And then, just like that, the mast was up in the air, dangling from the crane, no longer part of Syzygy. Slowly, they lowered the mast to the ground, and propped it up, horizontally, on two stands beside the boat, and walked away. Total time: 25 minutes, close to record time.

    We spent the rest of the day removing the rigging from the mast (four of the clevis pins were rusted/welded to the tangs, requiring the assistance of others and the use of a grinder), drilling holes in the keel and rudder (to drain water which had gotten in there — we’ll repair the holes in San Francisco), removing the spreaders, and grinding away the crack in the keel from which the water entered. Of course, I also called Rafael, and pleaded, in my best Spanish, for him to bring us our friggin’ cushions.The next day, we removed the bow pulpit, which required unwiring the nav lights that feed through the poles, as well as removing the backing plates that hold the bow pulpit in place. This, in turn, required crawling in the chain locker to access the backing plates (which had rusted almost all the way through), and grinding away the heads of the bolts on the 2 rear poles, because we didn’t have the time or energy to dismantle the cabinets in the V berth so that we could access the backing plates. (Alas, there’s a job waiting for us when the boat gets up to San Francisco.) We cut off the old crappy lifelines with a grinder (which was very satisfying), and then loosened the radar arch, dealt with the wires that run through it, and lowered it to the cockpit. We took all the instruments off the top of the mast, then wrapped it up (w/backstay and forestay still on) with lines and rags and plastic, like a big, long, $30,000 Christmas present.

    That night, our work almost done, we gobbled up some fish tacos and tossed back a few beers at the Captain’s Club, and talked shop with captain Bob, an American expat/badass-sailor/amazing-old-fella who lives on a similar Valiant 40. We told him we felt like we’d learned so much about our boat just by taking it apart, and that everything — except for getting our cushions from Rafael — was pretty much working out for us.

    We spent our last day in San Carlos lashing/stowing/packing/cleaning everything else up, and realized that exhaustion was creeping up on us. We’d been in San Carlos exactly one week, and been working so constantly that it was hard to recall what jobs we completed only a few hours before, let alone a few days before. I was amazed at how much we’d gotten done; how desperately we needed an off-day; and how we just barely pulled this whole thing off. I was looking forward to returning home, and even to the bus ride back to Phoenix, and the comfort of soft, reclining seats.

    Speaking of which, on that last day in Mexico, just as were were headed to town to get some tacos, Rafael showed up. He delivered a few more of — but not all of — our cushions. What a cabron.

  • A hail to high school mathematics

    Almost every day, I tell my students, “Trust me, you’ll need to use this math someday.” When they’re learning about arcs of a circle, and how two rays of an exterior angle cut through the circle can be subtracted and that the result equals half the exterior angle, their eyes glaze over and I wonder how better to convince them. “Well, I know it’s slightly boring, and maybe you don’t see the relevance now,” I say, “but trust me!”

    Well, kids, take a look at this: Eight pages of mathematics, all done for the practical, real-world purpose of making new water tanks.

    Jonny mentioned that before we hacked up that port watertank, Matt and I measured it, because our plan all along has been to build new similarly-shaped tanks out of epoxy-coated plywood. But he failed to mention some complications. (It’s a sailboat; of course there were complications, right?) The complications: the tank was shaped funny. It wasn’t a nice boxy shape, like a coffin, but rather one side was more like a torqued trapezoid. The first problem was that trapezoids are kinda looked down on in the shapes world as a named-yet-odd shape. More importantly, the torqued trapezoid was like a piece of paper with the top edge twisted one way and the bottom edge the other, ie. not a flat plane.

    This nefarious, twisting face of the tank was a dilemma, because 1/2″ marine-grade plywood cannot be curved in the same way that stainless-steel can. What really vexed us, though, was the way that the face was just barely curved — not enough to measure easily, but enough to make it very difficult to reproduce in wood. In a way, it’s like it was just daring us to try.

    Matt, the ex-physicist and I, the ex-math teacher, attacked the problem of determining the shape with a vengeance, each with our own methods, furiously battling to see who could come up with an answer that would best satisfy the other and thus win the king for the day. Diagonals were measured, plumb-lines were drawn, angles were estimated, cosines were determined, arc-tangents were employed, lengths were re-measured, and spreadsheets created. Around and around we went. Jonny, the ex-english-writer-something-or-other-that-required-little-to-no-mathematics person, behooved us to consider his idea for determining the shape. “Just trace it,” he said. “Nonsense!” Matt and I exclaimed. “Your assumptions are invalid!” And off again to our calculations we went. I found errors in Matt’s work; he found errors in my work. Jonny’s suggestion was ignored.

    A new day arose, and with it, the need to begin cutting the plywood. Before making those first cuts, we invoked that old saying, “measure twice, cut once,” and double-checked our measurements. What should have been a simple operation became a 20-minute math discussion, with errors discovered left and right. Once again, Jonny once implored us to consider his suggestion, but he was overruled by us math crazies. More measurements were made, more calculations completed, and then, finally, all three of us settled on a solution.

    In the workyard, I picked up the jig-saw for the second time, determined to cut perfectly. (You’ll recall that the first time I used the jig saw, I essentially cut a hole in the hull of our boat.) Matt and Jonny were impressed as I cut away, but we still weren’t 100% sure if I was cutting the right shapes.

    After I’d cut the six pieces, we assembled the wooden tank with screws, to make sure it’d fit. Voila! Fit it did! It was 1/4″ off on one end, but that was easily remedied. After days of work, our tank-to-be sat there in the workyard, a thing of beauty. Granted, we still had hours of fiberglassing and epoxying ahead of us, but we felt we’d taken a great leap forward. So we sat around and drank canned beers with the yard manager, Miguel, satisfied at having accomplished something, even if we weren’t done yet.

    Oh yes, whose method did we use? Not the ex-physicist’s, nor the ex-math teacher’s. We used Jonny’s method. King’s to you, Jonny.

    link to the work blog entry Pt1

    link to the work blog, Part 2

  • Honey, does this color make me look fat?

    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.

    Back up a few weeks to the end of a frustrating trip in which we a) didn’t fix the engine b) didn’t go sailing c) spent lots of money and d) ended up frazzled, we ran into Rafael. Rafael makes custom cushions, mattresses, and seats for sailboats. He showed us his work on other sailboats in the marina, and we were impressed.

    Nevertheless, we weren’t in the mood to spend more money. Somehow, though, Matt convinced us — he must have waved a pendulum in front of my eyes — that it would behoove us to redo our 30-year-old cushions/mattresses/seats with new foam and covers less, uh, overtly heinous. The way Matt saw it, Rafael’s Mexico prices were a mere fraction of what we’d pay back in the states, and besides, he couldn’t stomach looking at our yellowing faux-Navajo patterns any longer. He had a point there.

    So we told Rafael to bring us a few books of fabric swatches, with a wide variety of choices. This he did.

    I liked modern, pattern-less designs. Abstract. Random. Colorful.

    Jonny and Matt didn’t like my choices. They called them tacky, kitschy, and straight-out-of-the-1950’s.

    Jonny liked blues. Matt liked reds. Or maybe it was vice versa. Whatever it was, none of us agreed.

    So we rejected the first one thousand samples that Rafael had brought, and told him to bring more. He returned with another thousand, and after quickly rejecting 95% of them, we asked to keep them overnight, apparently out of stubbornness. Such is the nature of marriage.

    After dinner, we discussed:

    Q: “What about this yellow?”
    A: “Are you on drugs?”

    …The night wore on…

    Q: “I kinda like this one. Waddya think?”
    A: “It looks like a 50’s rug. We’re buying cushions. Not rugs.”

    …And on…

    Q: “This one?”
    A: “Too thin, easy to rip, and goddamn it, Jon, stop picking patterns you know we’ll hate.”

    Eventually, someone said, ‘If we end up with that color on the boat, I’m dropping out of the trip.” You think I’m exaggerating.

    By the wee hours of the morning, Matt and I reluctantly agreed to agree on a color that Jonny had previously brought to our attention. Then Jonny flipped a 180, said he had visualized it, and hated it, and that we were making a grave mistake.

    In the end it came down to a bluish beige called something like periwinkle cream (or something equally silly) that Matt favored, and a green-ish beige that I favored. In true womanly fashion, part of my objection was because I simply didn’t like the name. Jonny didn’t really like either of them, I think, but was tired of the impasse. He came down on the side of the blue, leaving me as the lone hold-out.

    Matt left for home early the next morning, before we’d made a decision. Before leaving, he made one small concession: He said if it came to it, he’d settle for the green, but that he strongly preferred the blue. The he advised Jonny to persuade me.

    By that point, though, Jonny favored a sleazy leopard-skin print, and I’m still not sure if he was joking.

    So with Matt, the husband, gone, I did when any good wife would do. When Rafael dropped by, I told him we’d take the green. Sorry Matt. Sorry Jonny. But trust me – You’ll love it.

  • a challenge already

    A couple of friends have emailed me, asking about our progress. Have we sailed Syzygy yet? Is the engine running? Have we practiced motoring around the marina, in and out of our slip? Have we fixed our leaky water tanks?

    Until last night, my answer was a sad litany of qualified justifications and hedged excuses.

    Here’s what i mean:

    Q: Have we sailed yet?
    A: Nope… but we were GONNA sail yesterday, and were all set to do so. Sails up, stuff stowed, everything set. We were especially eager to sail for the most ridiculous reason, though. We wanted to cut up the port water tank while out at sea. Why? Because it wouldn’t fit out the companionway, and was just sitting there, a big hulk of stainless steel, in our cabin salon. Why couldn’t we just cut it up at the marina? Because the jig saw is really loud, and the marina master specifically told us not to use power tools on our boat, since we’re docked so close to a bunch of fancy beach-front houses. Given that we’re so new to most everything we’re doing, we didn’t wanna get kicked out of the marina for making a racket.

    So anyway, we really really really wanted to go sailing. Thing is, the tides totally screwed us. Actually, the marina sorta screwed us, too. The canal entrance to Marina Real is shallow — about 5’6″ shallow. Syzygy has a draft of 6’6″. So she can only get out of the marina when the tide is at least 1′ above the mean. And yesterday, high tide was at 4:30am. Here’s the chart for Jan 3rd:

    3:10 AM MST Moonrise
    4:26 AM MST High tide 0.62 Meters
    7:15 AM MST Sunrise
    1:49 PM MST Moonset
    2:13 PM MST Low tide -0.20 Meters
    5:40 PM MST Sunset

    We didn’t find this out until 8am, though, and by then it was too late. It all the begs the question, though: how does anyone go sailing around here? Are all the sailboats trapped in the marina until the stars align?

    At any rate, that’s why we didn’t go sailing.

    Q: Is the engine running?
    A: Yes, finally. This is a shameful story too. We put Syzygy in the water a week ago, and it felt glorious for about 10 minutes, until Matt tried to start the engine, and it just wouldn’t catch. Some small puffs of gray smoke came out of the exhaust pipe, but that’s it. So — and I hate to admit it — we got towed to our slip. Yep. We got towed, by a dinky little dinghy, with a tiny outboard motor, about 100 feet, over to our slip. And we almost crashed into the dock. It was pathetic.

    Anyway, we were gonna have a mechanic look at our engine, but Matt persevered. On the advice of another sailor, he bled the fuel line, letting pockets of air out so that diesel fuel could proceed straight to the engine. It worked. So the engine now runs. And we know now how to start it.

    Q: Have we practiced motoring around the marina, docking and such?
    A: Well, we had planned to spend days doing this, but got caught up a) dealing with the damn water tanks, b) not being able to start our engine (see above), and c) running around San Calors and Guaymas buying tools and supplies we needed.

    Q: Have we fixed our leaky water tanks?
    A: Not yet, but we’ve made good progress. We got the starboard watertank out of the boat, but the port watertank is a couple of inches bigger, and wouldn’t fit out the door. After finding the hand-saw worthless at cutting through 1/8″ stainless steel, and after having melted through six metal-cutting jig saw blades, and after having tried-but-finally-decided-against removing the companionway trim (to widen the door), we found a cutting disc for our grinder. After a brief test, we also decided to screw the marina rules and go for it. So late last night, we closed the hatches, padded the tank in pillows and cushions and blankets (to muffle the sound), and hacked away at the thing. Actually, Matt and Jon hacked away at the tank while I stealthily patrolled the dock, VHF radio in hand, so that we wouldn’t get busted. We used a code to disguise our operation:

    Shark to Whale – Are we clear to begin feeding?
    Whale to Shark – The waters are all clear to begin feeding. Proceed.

    -15 minutes later-

    Shark to Whale – Papa shark is, uh, getting bitten by electric eels. Mama shark is taking over, because she has thicker skin.
    Whale to Shark – Copy that, Shark. How’s feeding going?
    Shark to Whale – Uh, feeding is slowing down because, uh, the shark’s teeth are getting dull, and we don’t have any dentures. Also, there’s an oil spill.
    Whale to Shark – Um, copy that. Waddya mean, an oil spill?
    Shark to Whale – The waters are cloudy. It’s hard to breathe or feed, Whale.
    Whale to Shark — Ah, copy that.

    Shortly before midnight, the feeding was over, and for the first time in weeks, things seemed to go our way. Nobody haggled us for making noise. The grinder didn’t break (though Matt ground the cutting disc down to a tiny nubbin.) The power didn’t go out. Nothing caught fire (though Matt did burn a hole through a cushion, and ripped two blankets, and filled the cabin with smoke, and covered every surface in metal dust). NEVERTHELESS, we got that friggin’ water tank cut into 3 chunks, and got it out of the boat. Mission accomplished.

    Actually, that’s only the first half of the mission. The old, leaky watertanks are out of the boat, and now we’ve gotta build new tanks, which we’re gonna make out of epoxy-coated marine-grade plywood. We’ve cut the pieces, but run out of time on this trip to continue…so it’ll have to wait.

    All of which brings up a good point: the whole “fix up the sailboat thing” has forced us to readjust our perhaps overly-ambitious, landlubber-style, deadline-driven agendas. It’s put us in some tough spots, and brought out anger, frustration, exhaustion, and unwarranted criticism. It’s forced us to discuss out approaches to solving problems together, and forced us to admit to each other that we’ve got to be more patient and easy on each other. And we’ve only just started. It’s a challenge already.

  • Hi Jon, I’d like to introduce you to acetone.

    I’ll admit it, I don’t normally buy used. I bought a new car. I bought a new condo. Consequently, I rarely have to fix things. In fact, when I tried to make a very minor fix to something in my condo a month ago — my refrigerator — I ended up breaking it. Snapped a coolant tube. Oops. So I had to replace the fridge. You may have guessed it, I didn’t buy a used model; I bought a new one. I think I inherited this behavior from my parents, who also almost always do they same thing. I also never really had experiences hanging around with my dad on Sundays, head under the hood of the car, tinkering and fixing. I’m OK with that. I get to spend my time on other things. Hey, we all make choices on where our time goes. So this whole fixing-old-stuff thing, like a 30-year-old boat, is relatively new to me.

    So I spent a couple of days trying to fix our boat’s packing gland, which is the fixture around the hole through the hull where the propeller shaft enters the boat. Clearly, if this leaks, there is a problem. Ours leaks: clearly a problem. At least it only leaks sometimes…

    The packing gland is right next to the engine, so it’s kinda dirty. I wanted to clean it and asked Matt and Jonny how. “Use acetone,” they said. So I grab the acetone and pour it into a bowl in the kitchen. I dab the cloth rag I’m using into it, go back to the engine room (two feet away) and wipe along the propeller shaft. All good so far; it looks cleaner. I go back to the kitchen, dab, back to the engine room, wipe. Cleaner. This process gets repeated a few times until I’m finished cleaning and decide to tidy up my materials.

    Back in the kitchen, however, acetone has shown why it’s such a good cleaner, and has begun to eat through the cheapo plastic bowl that I put the acetone in. Oops. The bottom of the bowl is a gooey mess, and when I pick up the bowl the bottom separates from the rest of it, and acetone spills out of the now-bottomless bowl, and gooey plastic strings dangle in the air. Good stuff. Matt laughs hysterically at me.

    The plastic bowl happened to be located on our wooden cutting board in our kitchen and now we have a permanent red strain on our cutting board — a memento, if you will.

    At least the packing gland is clean.

    link to maintenance blog packing gland post

    And, a few months in the future…

  • “How we’ve spent two weeks working non-stop but accomplished seemingly nothing,” or “What is the diameter of that goddamn pin?”

    I’m tired. We’ve worked for nearly two weeks and have yet to accomplish most of our major objectives for this trip. I feel a combination of a sense of accomplishment at working hard for two weeks, mixed with frustration at little visible progress. ‘How come you have done seemingly so little?’ some of you might ask. Other more direct people might simply say, ‘are ye incompetent?’

    Maybe. But I think my tussle with the baby stay (the inner of two wires at the front of the boat holding up the mast) is illuminating. Since we are planning on replacing the babystay, we need to know the size of the pin that connects the wire to the fitting, so that the fitting we buy to replace the old one will fit. So all I need to do is remove one small pin. The pin is my objective.

    At Matt’s advice, I take our largest screwdriver up on deck to unscrew the pin. The pin, however, having probably only been put in or taken out a few times in the last 30 years, and certainly none at all in the last five years (while the boat was in storage), has other ideas, and refuses to budge. I spend 15 minutes attempting to unscrew the pin with that screwdriver, which is admittedly too small for the job. I had hoped muscle power would overcome the screwdriver’s inadequecies, but apparently my muscles are inadequate also. Returning to the boat interior, I ask Matt and Jonny for ideas. Go ask Miguel, our new-found friend and yard manager, for a larger screwdriver, they say. Off I go to find Miguel, who isn’t around. I ask Arturo, another local mechanic, if he has a large screwdriver. Nope. He refers me to another local, and again I come away empty-handed. Goodbye to another fruitless 20 minutes, perhaps longer, given my poor Spanish skills [see ealier posts for more on those skills]. Back to the boat, where I sit and ponder. Five minutes. I think. Earlier in the week, we used a random piece of metal to unscrew hose clamps; perhaps I could find a larger piece of random metal to fit this much larger screw. I go and measure the size of slot on the pin. 18 mm x 4 mm. Ok, commence searching. Five minutes. 10. 15. Alright, I think I have the perfect piece! but it’s 17mm x5mm. Maybe I measured wrong and this one will fit. Silly me. Of course when I try to fit it in, it doesn’t go. Aargh!

    At this point I am faced with a dilemma. Continue searching, or, since it is so close, try and modify this piece. Well, since searching more would be boring, and modifying it involves using power tools, the choice is obvious.. I get the drill, screw in the piece of metal to a block of wood. Next, I get the grinder and begin grinding away at the metal. I’ve never used a grinder before, and this is kinda fun. Fifteen minutes of getting tools, tool use, and cleaning up yields what I hope is a usable piece of metal. I test it and it fits! Mini-victory! Now, I get the vice grips, chomp them down with all my might and insert my homemade screwdriver-apparatus into the head of the pin. Ten minutes later, and the pin is finally removed. At last. 80 minutes after starting, I’ve removed one pin. Victory, albeit over one pin. There are many more parts to deal with on this trip and I think they each will individually take 80 minutes of attention. And this is how we’ve worked non-stop yet accomplished seemingly nothing.

  • Good vs. Better

    Our first day in the work yard, we met a fellow gringo-boat-owner named Richard. He’d just recently bought his 10th boat, a trawler, and was busy painting it. She’s not nearly as elegant as Syzygy, but she’s definitely cleaner and shinier.

    Richard asked us if Syzygy was our first boat. We told him it was. His reply: “Wow, you guys went big.”

    You could say that made us proud.

    Throughout the day, whenever we bumped into Richard, we chatted about repairs and maintenance. We told him our plan: 1) remove and service the seacocks, 2) fix the leaky packing-gland (the waterproof seal around the propeller shaft), 3)remove the leaky water tanks and rebuild new ones, and 4)remove the old, crappy toilet.

    Richard, obviously familiar with over-eager-boat-repairmen who-just-bought-a-ton- of-new-tools -and-have-big-dreams, took the opportunity to share a wise Italian aphorism with us: “Better is the enemy of good.”

    We heard him, but not really, and continued with our plans. We were intent on achieving perfection, and spent five days tearing up Syzygy, disassembling and eventually throwing away half a dozen trash bags full of old, unwanted/corroded/cracked hoses and parts.

    Then Jon got his hands on the jig saw, and decided to have a go at repairing one of the through-hulls. Through-hulls are bronze cylinders that the seacocks screw onto, and you could say that their bomproofness is essential to any sailor’s peace of mind. Seacocks are supposed to be screwed down until flush with the hull, and this through-hull was too long, preventing the flush junction from occurring. Technically, it had been installed incorrectly. It was good, but not perfect. So Jon was just gonna shave off an inch or so.

    Jon’s attempt didn’t go so well. He was cutting under a tiny cupboard, in the bathroom, and was holding the saw at a crazy angle while all scrunched up, so that he could reach his arms in there. He ended up cutting the through-hull off at a 45-degree angle, leaving it too short to use.

    The result: yet more work for us. We’d need to 1) remove the now-damanged through-hull, 2) buy a new one and 3) re-bed it in the hull. Also, there’s the bonus result of a bruised ego for having just essentially cut a hole in your $60,000 sailboat.

    So Matt and I spent 3 hours driving around San Carlos and Guaymas today, seeking out the elusive new through-hull and the appropriate glues and epoxies and tools for setting it in place. Not surprisingly, such materials and parts are hard to find around here. We were left vexed and tired at the end of the day, and empty-handed on some counts. So you could say we’re starting to understand Richard’s advice.

    link to maintenance blog packing gland post

  • Getting our hands dirty

    Let’s start with some basics: Like most sailboats, Syzygy has a whole bunch of holes in her hull below the waterline. Syzygy has 8 of ’em. Two of em hold instruments that measure depth and speed. One of ’em lets exhaust out of the engine. The remaining five have seacocks (aka valves) on them, so that we can let water in or out of certain pipes and go about our lives like normal civilized people. One lets water into the galley sink. One lets water out of the galley sink. One lets water (as coolant) into the engine. One lets water into the toilet (so we can flush it). And then there’s the last one, the most glorious seacock. It lets shit out of the holding tank.

    So our first task, here in San Carlos, was cleaning and, for lack of a better term, “servicing” the seacocks. It’s a task you can only do when the boats on land, and it’s a task we wanted to do before putting Syzygy in real water, since you’re essentially screwed if the seacocks leak or don’t properly close. It’s also a chore. The seacocks are big old bronze things, with short stubby arms that rotate 90 degrees. Let me be more precise: if they’re in good shape the arms smoothly rotate 90 degrees. If they’re old and corroded and full of caked-on, calcified shit, they rotate most of the way there, with a lot of force.

    So Jon and I rolled in to San Carlos after midnight Sunday night (Matt’s flying/bussing in tomorrow), and slept on the beach, which turned out to be much frostier than we expected. We slept well after 15 hours of driving, and woke at first light, eager to finally start getting our hands dirty with all kinds of satisfying repair jobs. After quick breakfast burritos, we headed over to the marina office, arranged to have Syzygy moved to the work yard, and immediately set to removing the seacocks. Three hours later, at 2pm, the marina closed, since it was Christmas eve. Jon and I had only removed 3 of them.

    The next morning — marina still closed on account of Christmas — Jon and I got to work cleaning the seacocks on the beach. We discovered that sand + rags + muscle = kinda-like-sandpaper, and polished up two of the seacocks pretty good, greasing up the open/close mechanisms until they were smooth.

    The shit-laden seacock was another matter. Its inside looked like a giant clogged artery, and it took an arm and a leg to close it all the way. We scrubbed and scrubbed with bronze wool and a couple of bronze brushes, but to little avail. Then we improvised. We poured hot water into a cut-open milk jug (Jon brought a propane camping stove), dropped the seacock in, and scrubbed the inside with pieces of coat-hangers. Voila: if you’re looking for a gallon of piping hot shit broth with a full-bodied shitty aroma, there’s no better way to go. And, lucky for us, if you’re looking to take 10 years off the life of a seacock, our method’s not so bad either.

    So here it is: the priceless shot of Jon, getting his hands dirty, making memories that dreams are made of.

  • Into the water she goes!

    Here it is, the big moment. She’s been on the hard for a few years, and finally, at long last, she gets a little splash in the Sea of Cortez, in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico.

  • From the Masthead

    I took this photo while measuring the rigging for replacement purposes. The yellow thing is my tape measure. It rarely rains in San Carlos, but it was raining hard this day–hardest just when I decided to go up the mast.

  • the adventure is ON!

    Matt, Jon and I returned to Mexico to take Sunshine for a sea trial (aka test drive) before buying her last week. While there, it rained like gangbusters in Sonora, so the whole experience felt tinged with a sort of foreboding element. In those two dreary days we had to fix ‘er up and get ‘er seaworthy (since she hadn’t been in the water for 7 months), we had a small part of her keel re-fiberglassed and her engine taken apart, while we scuttled to figure out why there was water sloshing around in her bilge and why the bilge pumps wouldn’t pump it overboard. (We found a very leaky hose and a disconnected Y-valve, and also found out that we’d need to replace those bilge pumps.) Welcome to boat-ownership, right?

    Once things were sufficiently fixed (albeit temporarily), we started measuring parts we planned on replacing. Jon and I hauled Matt up the mast (in a downpour) so that we could measure the standing rigging. After that, we got intimate with the boat’s plumbing (aka toilet), and figured out how we’re gonna rebuild it. We measured the lifelines, the diameters of the holes in the stanchions, deck fittings, and anything else we could approach with the caliper. We flipped through manuals, turned on electronics, crawled through lockers, and poked around the galley.

    In the evenings, we met up with Capn’ Bob, a vibrant 72-year-old Valiant-40 owner and spinner of fine sea tales, and Mark Schneider, a similarly spirited owner of another spiffed-up Valiant-40. After somewhat hectic days, these two confirmed that we were making the right decision. (The beers might have helped, too.)

    Of course, on the day of the sea trial, the sun came out, but the winds vanished, so we sorta bobbed around in the sloshy water until sufficiently queasy, then motored back in to the marina. While we technically raised her sails, they never filled with wind, so I can’t really report that she sails like a beauty, or that she slices through the water, or make any other even mildly poetic statement about her agility/speed/grace/elegance. But I can say this: she floats.

    So now it’s on. The money has changed hands, and our dream is becoming reality. Here’s the easiest way to tell: for a few nights there I’d wake up terrified of expensive boat parts that I’d probably have to pay for, aware that my bank account alone couldn’t do it. Somehow, though, we will.