Home Cove, Nuka Passage, AK, 9-JUN-2024 – Another Saturday night and I’ve been working on things that don’t work well and I am completely finished. I’ll take tomorrow off, I tell Jennifer. We’ll relax, I’ll cook, we’ll listen to books and watch movies.
It is the sixth Sunday I’ve been in AK and all is finished.
I had thought everything was finished when the boat went in the water, but it overheated on the way to the harbor. There was a nice breeze, so we put up the sails and sailed the five miles. It was a nice sail, the engine cooled and we managed to make it in to the harbor, find a fishing boat to raft up to and then disassemble the exhaust elbow and clean out the clog: a piece of rust in the hole the salt water enters the exhaust elbow. That’s done, we’re done.
We met Oliver a very nice young twenty-something who owned the fishing boat, Elle. He brought his family on board the next day. A big mixed family, like him. Very nice. I said nice things about his boat while the family climbed all over it.
Our Starlink decided not to connect as it had so readily in the yard.
I had disconnected the Starlink on the deck where it will live before we put Caro Babbo into the water. Now, hooked it up StarLink would start to connect and then reboot, over and over again. I thought it might be because we were in the harbor as opposed to dry land, but that made no sense, if I needed a different contract, they would just ask once I connected. It must be the inverter. I never connected up using the inverter in the yard. It’s 600 watts, that should be enough, but perhaps not during the peak start up draw. I called the Gear Shed, and yes, they had inverters up to 2000 watts. I’ll go buy a bigger one.
Since I arrived, I’ve been spending money to replace things rather than analyzing what was wrong. Before Don showed up to give me a ride, Oliver came aboard. ‘‘Oliver, when you start up, can I plug into your inverter?’’ ‘‘Yeah, let me start right now.’’ And so he did. Same problem.
‘‘What’s the issue?’’ Oliver asked. I told him. ‘‘We had the same thing. It was a little piece of dirt in the connector at the end of the cable.’’
‘‘Huh,’’ I said and thought.
‘‘Yeah,’’ he said, ‘‘it would start almost connect and then reboot, just like yours.’’
I disconnected the cable, and then on an endmost contact was a tiny almost transparent piece of plastic almost covering it. It looked like a manufacturing defect, perhaps not, but with a very sharp Victorinox knife, I cut away the plastic, plugged in the cable and… it worked. We had Starlink, everything was complete
The next morning we went to the fuel dock, took three gallons of fuel and bought a back up fuel tank lid and off we went to Seldovia. We sailed about a third of the way and motored the rest. We turned on the water maker to test it and make some water. No water came out. At the dock, we moved the bins from the basement and I climbed in to see what was going on. Water flowed towards the water maker when it drew, and then flowed back out on the next half stroke, the stroke the builds pressure. I let it try for a while and then called it a day.
The next morning I filled the five gallon day tank that we use to hold water as it’s made and resigned ourselves to not having fresh water. We’d carry what we needed as we used to in 2016, a long time ago.
In 2022, I rebuilt the water maker after a thousand hours, as the manufacturer suggested replacing all the seals. To my surprise, not only did it run, it ran better than it did when it was new. And now, no soap.
We went for a walk that morning with Don and Brenda, who had sailed over with us and as the current changed to ebb, we left. We motored for six hours down to Chatham and the next day to Berger Bay, a very pretty but not well protected piece of water. Big weather was coming. We still had no water maker, but everything else was doing very well.
Jennifer brought with her the three types of cheese I made before I left: Brie, Feta and a basket cheese – that’s what it’s called. We started the Brie while we were in the yard. I finally got it completely right. Jennifer bought me a small refrigerator that I modified into a cheese cave and that seemed to make the difference. It is great. We gave half a round to Tim Gervais when we went there for dinner. We also gave him the bicycle I bought to use those weeks.
Weather was due to start Saturday, it was Thursday by now. Jennifer suggested we travel way up to the top of the Nuka and look around and perhaps stay there. It is half a day or so up and half a day back. The harbor was quite big and while well protected there was more than a mile of fetch; the hills were very tall, which might yield williwaws.
I said I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to motor that far, when I was sure we’d just come back and I didn’t like the setting for the coming weather. ‘‘What do you think, Jennifer?’’ Jennifer thought about it and agreed. We came into a back corner of Home Cove, where we’d anchored before in 2021 with Flora. We stayed four days, Jennifer says our log book recorded waiting out weather.
Friday night, we removed the water maker. I was pretty sure I could find the problem, and after looking at the exploded diagram, I was quite sure that I knew what it was: there is a valve in the intake that lets water in but doesn’t let it back out. I read the book again and decided to sleep on it.
When we use Starlink to download weather, we also handle all the business we have and download BOOKS, AUDIOBOOKS and MOVIES! The power consumption when it has stable connection is less than four watts. That is simply amazing.
I saw a new Czech-made movie, the Catcher was a Spy, that I had read about thirty years ago when it was released. We watched the first half after I removed the water maker.
The book was mostly about the man, a great love he had had but got away, his baseball career (something like twelve seasons with the Red Socks) and his intellect. He was a serious polyglot and a great reader of journals. I remember most of the book being about his after life: he was broke, lived a small life and had a very large abdominal hernia. [This is my memory after thirty years.]
He was somehow involved with the OSS during the second world war. He went to Princeton and somehow knew Donovan.
He was asked to attend a conference in Switzerland, assess Heisenberg and his ability to build a nuclear weapon. If he thought Heisenberg could do it, he was to stand up and shoot him dead, right then and there.
The movie was very reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan. The actual story was that Private Ryan was the last of his brothers, the rest all being Killed In Action (KIA). The army needed to bring him out of harms way. The true story is that a sergeant was told to bring him back. The sergeant hopped in a jeep drove to the front line, told Ryan to get in the jeep and they drove away. Nothing like the movie.
Moe Berg, the catcher’s name, flew there, attended the conference, decided Heisenberg wasn’t close and flew back.
The day after we watched the first part of the film, I studied the diagram of the water maker, removed the part, there was some sort of rust-colored crystal in the valve. I cleaned the valve, lubricated it and put it back. There wasn’t enough there to cause the problem, I was sure.
I put it back in place, but only hooked up the inlet. The refuse line (all the water that isn’t used) and the product line (that fresh water that is made) I left disconnected. I only used one bolt to hold it to the wall.
Jennifer flipped the switch. The water was drawn up on the intake stroke and did not flow back on the pressure stroke. After a few moments the refuse line spit water at me. It was working!
We hooked it up, tested it and it seems to work. We’ve had little sun and are saving power for Starlink. We’ll know for sure when we motor out of Home Cove.
I’m done. Nothing further to do. Almost everything is perfect. I can take Sunday off.
Sitting around after dinner, Jennifer spotted a drop of water on the table. We looked up. The gland that allows Starlink cable to pass through the deck was leaking. I had pulled the cable sideways and it wasn’t sealed any longer. A nuisance that I will need to fix.
Stupidly, I hadn’t coated the inside of the hole in the deck with epoxy, because it was watertight. Now I may have part of the deck going soggy. It will stop raining on Tuesday. I’ll find out then. The total water leaked is about a tablespoon, so perhaps there is no real damage, or perhaps the water is leaking into the core. A much different problem.
In any case, I’m taking today, Sunday, off. I’m relaxing and writing, and watching and being with Jennifer. The big gusts blow us about, but Home Cove hides us from the wind. A crab boat, FV Provider, came in Friday night and has hidden out with us. That’s reassuring: that the weather was bad enough to hideout and that we picked a good place. There are very few fishing boats at this time of year and in this place.
I’ll write more.
