Thirteen days in Seward

Puffin Cove, 60º 11’ N 148º 20 W, 27-JUN-2024 – Tom, who so nicely pulled our mast, told me not to rush things, I’ll be in Seward for three or more weeks and he hates guys who have a date in their mind and work hard to make it. Tom was very nice loaning his building jack to raise the deck, using his bucket truck to remove the mast, and bringing me the blank RectTube to build the new compression post, but I always have a date and I work hard to make my dates.

I picked Wednesday the 26^th of June to be back on the ‘‘road’’ again and worked hard to make it.

Like everything, we started talking to people who told us about other people and we followed the trail.

Once the mast was removed (at Tom’s suggestion), the crumpled compression post practically fell off, I just needed to remove all the attached engine parts. The post was 90mm by 80mm, but how tall? I went to the Facebook Maxi 95 page and asked. The first ten responses were about:

• how this was a known problem on old 95s;

• my boat was no longer sailable, isn’t this a surprise;

• commiseration on my problem,

but no answer to the question: how tall was the compression post? I asked again and finally got an answer, 1703mm, with appropriate caveats about modifications to the boat, etc.

Next to try to buy a RecTube in millimeters. I can’t in this country, inches only. 80 mm by 90mm is 3¹/8 by 3¹⁵/16. The original tube had rounded corners, no rounded corners are available, or was anodization. Finally, neither was a 3” by 4” tube.

I ordered a 6’ by 3” by 5” tube from metal warehouse in anchorage and Tom was nice enough to pick it up on the way back to Seward – $169 for the tube

The tube could be cut down to length and cut and welded to 90mm. I spoke to a few vendors, the same vendors I spoke with when I was looking for the post. A large fabricator suggested Badlands Welding run by Jerrod. I called Jerrod and he said he could do it on Sunday. The table would need to be modified to fit the new dimensions of the post, easy enough, but the deck had a socket cut into it for the rounded RectTube, exactly. I thought about this and decided a 1” piece of the original post mounted atop the fabricated post would the way to go. It shouldn’t have had the same duty cycle as the top and if it held half as long as the original (50 years), it would be someone else’s problem. Check back here in 25 years, I may have a longer life expectancy than I expect.

When the post was out and I looked at it, it seems this may not have been the first failure. A piece near the bottom of the compression post had been cut out, straightened and welded back into place with a strengthening section welded inside. The wall wickness seems to be the problem. It looked like maybe 3mm, the new post is ¼”, roughly 6mm.

We walked over to Jerrod with the old post, we’d dropped the new blank off the previous Thursday, discussed the dimensions and walked back.

During our days on the dock we met people and more of my old self returned. I met Jim and his friend and his friend’s 20-month old. I helped Jim rig his boat, figure out cooling problems in his new $16,000 two-cycle engine and gave advice. He’ll be buying a tiller pilot, which will change his sailing life.

I also met Isaac and gave (asked for) career advice and met Tina and Vic who are sincerely interesting people. Vic was a Park Ranger and Tina now works for the census people – no word on what she did before that.

We had Vic and Tina over for dinner and Jim came by afterwards and sat with us. I haven’t done this in a few years, it felt very good.

In sharing the dock, we got to know Erik Teevin the captain of Sea Star out of Seattle, an 85-foot charter boat. Erik comes out of Boeing as an avionics engineer originally. He came by and ate my home made brie and drank beer with Jennifer and me.

MaryLou and Richard were on a Gulf 34 called Boreas that was in Northern Enterprises with us. Both were older than either of us, but other than disclosing, I wouldn’t have known. They came and worked with Tom and us when we pulled our mast.

Along the way, we ate out at the Tidewater Taproom where Jennifer made friends with Greg, the owner who started us on our way to repair.*

We ate out five times, not counting ice cream, in our thirteen days in Seward, a record really, though two of those were repaying the kindness of people who helped us.

Speaking with people looking for a solution is a lot like trying to solve a problem, just because you think you have the answer doesn’t mean it is the correct answer or the only one. I thought Tom would be able to help me mount the mast the following week, but he decided vacation was calling, so I wandered around speaking to people and met Laura the owner of Exit Marine a yard that works on pleasure boats. We (Jim and I) found Laura in a crew trailer on her property and explained the problem, she told us we needed to go to OBI (who just bought Icicle Seafoods), find Gil, and tell him I needed time on his 5-ton crane. She gave directions on where to find him and off we went. It’s Tuesday, I want to leave on Wednesday. At nine am, we met Daniel, he and Gil had switched jobs, he asked if we needed a crane operator, we did, and he said we’d do it that morning. With Jim’s help, the mast was installed by 11:10 am. Daniel and his helper were amazing at positioning the mast, and to my great joy, 1703 mm was the correct height. I had jacked up the deck to slide the post into the socket in the deck. On the way back we stopped at the fuel dock to fill up, 13 gallons and ten pounds of really cheap ice. We took Jim to lunch to say thanks and I worked with him and his boat for a bit.

I spent all day Wednesday tuning the mast, attaching sails and other things; we went food shopping ($177) and left this morning at 4am sharp. A sixty-mile day in very light airs, success. We’ll skip a lot of places on the way down to make up for lost time, but we’re on our way.†

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*As did Kevin and Julie on Catharpin Blue when they suggested we call Tom.

†I’ve got to call the Seward harbor master’s office to arrange payment.

††Friend is a killer adventurer, kayaking with his spouse all over Prince William and sailing his F24 trailerable Trimaran. But very low key about all of this.