Repairs and Upgrading – Page 2

Waiting for Haul out in Homer

Homer Harbor, Homer, AK, 29-AUG-2022 – It happens whenever I live on a boat in a harbor for a while. The water loses the appearance of water and becomes solid like earth or a roadway. It has happened again here in Homer. We’re rafted up next to a Crealock 37 named Trinity. We look forward down a fairway towards the mouth where larger vessels tie up and raft together.

Other people’s boats

SEATAC, 17-JAN-2022 – I was speaking to John Riley not too many weeks ago. I was telling John that being away from my boat meant that I don’t have much to write about. John said, write about other people’s boats.

And so I shall.

Airplanes and Nail Polish

Homer, AK, 16-JUL-2021 — I’m here. I’m in Homer getting Caro Babbo ready to ”Splash” at the end of the month.

Splash is a very visual word and a bit joyous, making a big splash is what many of us want when we make it big. When launching Caro Babbo that is the last thing we want to envision. Splash is a sail boat falling from the TravelLift into the water, a crane tipping over and other very visual mishaps that must be pushed from my imagination.

Count down to Homer

Port Townsend, WA, 23-Jun-2021 – In 22 days I will board a Delta Flight from SeaTac airport to Homer, Alaska changing in Anchorage. Rental cars are scarce; I will pay $125 per day for a three days rental car in Homer. In Anchorage, there are none – Jennifer and I paid $13 per day for a rental last September.

I am flying to Caro Babbo. The surge of returning has taken a long time to build in me. I once saw an interview with Norman Mailer describing the effects of using a testosterone gel. He said he hadn’t felt that way in years. Norman is long dead, but returning to Caro Babbo sharpens my senses and gives me purpose.

There is never the return to her that doesn’t have some apprehension. It is the not the uncertainty in the back of one’s mind when seeing a lover after an absence: Have things changed? Will I still be loved?

No, returning to a boat, our boat, is the apprehension of returning to a house that has been shut up: Will everything still be there? Will there be damage?

Maybe it is closer to returning to a loved exotic car. All of the above for a house, plus will it start? Can I get parts for the repairs I must make?

Unique to a boat: once I get it running, will it sink somewhere with me aboard? Will the rigging fail and Caro Babbo become dismasted?

Commercial grade gear

‘‘Until something breaks’’ is the watch phrase of all sailors.

Homer, AK, 9-Sep-2020 – We’ve been reading, watching, and talking about equipment failures. A typical ocean crossing is 15 to 35 days. On every boat, things break during a crossing. It’s something sailors have come to expect and prepare for. I’ve also come to realize we, as sailors, expect this very expensive equipment to fail after a very short duty cycle.

In small harbors, where we hang around with commercial fishing boats, I try to envision a commercial vessel living with the meantime between failure (MTBF) measured in days of service. The bits and pieces of their boats are up to the task and not generally pretty: Stainless steel in some places, aluminum in others, and galvanized steel wherever that makes the most sense. We rarely see full-chain anchor rodes.

Caro Babbo Sleeps, John Doesn’t

Port Townsend, WA, 1-OCT-2020 – In Homer, AK, Caro Babbo, resting on stacked wooden squares called cribs, winterized, locked and watched over, sleeps. I on the other hand toss and turn. Dryland, people, culture, and COVID are difficult transitions.

Give me a few minutes to catch you up.

Kodiak and the home stretch

Kitoi Bay, Alaska, 23-aug-2020 — We spent almost a week at the dock in Kodiak. Like all time at a dock, it is maintenance and repairs interspersed with tourism and socializing. I never complete all the repairs and never do as much tourism as I would like.

The day before we came to Kodiak the gear shift lever refused to engage the gears. After forty-five years, it owed no one anything. After calls here and there we found that the Volvo Penta dealer in Seward, Alaska Industrial Power, could have the part drop shipped to the harbor master’s office in Kodiak. Complete with shipping, the cost was under two hundred dollars. Continue reading “Kodiak and the home stretch”

Something had to break

Three hours south of Hidden Harbor, Mainland, Alaska, 145-AUG-2020 — It had to happen, something of some consequence had to give. The workaround was thirty seconds and I realized that the moment I saw the problem, but I wasted 90 minutes second guessing myself.

Hidden Harbor is beautiful place and quite hidden. Fishing boats do not come in. It is probably the province of passing pleasure boats.The entrance is invisible after a turn. Anchorage and holding are good, though the bottom icomes up alarmingly fast. The mountains are again covered in ash. Continue reading “Something had to break”

Pumps

Ko Olina Marina, HI, 4-APR-2020 – In the 1980s, the circle I lived in, mostly PhD psychologists of one stripe or another, mixed with some computer scientists, a bunch of neural network people, a physicist or two and who knows who else, looked at the current computer architecture as a model of how the brain works. A homologue for the CPU was easy, RAM was short term memory, disk storage was long term memory, we were certain we all knew how this fit together.

We were sure we were that first to find our current technology explained the least understood mysteries of the human body. A historian in the group pointed out that when pumps were the technology rage, technocrats of the day explained how the human body, including the brain, was just like a series of pumps.

Staying put for the duration

Ko Olina Marina, Kapolei, HI, 31-MAR-2019 — The marina is where all the tourists come for whale watching trips and swimming with dolphins, for deep sea fishing charters and to spot turtles swimming among the docks. All of that is closed. The marina has settled down to a quiet neighborhood.