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Shake and Break, part 2
Shake and Break, part 2
April 10, 2015 - Happy Birthday to my middle sister! (This is being sent from a marginal WiFi connection near Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. This is the first stop in which we had any connectivity, and thus the delay in posting. I'll try to catch up, slowly, so as not to overwhelm!) Well, following our pattern from the last 26 months, we expected to leave 2 weeks ago. Every time in the past couple of years, in our shakedown (now called shake-and-break-down) of all the work we've done aboard, either just after we arrived on the hook somewhere, or just as we were about to leave, there was some problem which prevented (as opposed to being merely an item on the to-do list) our departure until that problem was remedied. And thus it was that it started to rain just before we left. We'd had the replacement of our forward hatch lens on our radar. We were very nervous about that, having broken the "legs" getting the two main cabin hatches off in 2009, resulting in buying new hatche$$. As well, the fitment of a new lens, as well as FINDING one, might be very challenging. It had cracks which we'd successfully taped to prevent water intrusion. However, a couple of those had now progressed to open breaks. Our rain that Friday morning exposed the reality that our patching was insufficient. Indeed, there was active water entry, despite the rain being only moderate. In heavy and extended rain situations, we would have collected rainwater. We've discovered that - compared to lovely, just fine, municipal water, available free at the fuel dock - rainwater is incredibly sweet. Of course, it's also perfectly "soft" which makes for less soap usage, as well as less water usage for rinsing. Here on the hook in Vero Beach, with readily available (albeit at the cost of un- and re- mooring and the toddle to the dock and back) water, conservation is of interest only in the sense that we don't want to run out. That is, we want to refill before we're truly empty. However, we've had our sights set on returning to the Bahamas, where water is scarce, and when available, may have to be carried in plastic jugs (we use collapsible camping containers) from some distance to the dinghy, then to the boat, then decanted into the tanks, or, at a price of up to $0.50 per gallon. So, we've been practicing our conservation. But I digress, and get ahead of myself. Wary of the previous two, over the salon, hatches' experience (we broke the hinges trying to remove the pins, and had to buy new hatche$), before attempting to remove the roll pins (slightly expanding pins which make up the hinge pin of the hatch), we hit the fixed portion (one has to be secure, the other half moves freely in the hole) with penetrating oil a couple of times over a couple of days. In the meantime, we removed the solar ventilator (a fan which blows air into the cabin when the sun is shining), and then the lens (think of a pane of glass, but it's plastic, which has now cracked/broken). We wanted to be very careful with the lens, as it would be the pattern for our new piece of plastic. The reason for this being a gamestopper (we HAD to address this before leaving) was that our weather was forecast to be "heavy" - and there was a real possibility of a breaking wave landing on top of the hatch. Those sections which had progressed to actual breaks would fail, and a large amount of salt water would end up in the forward cabin, landing on the bed. Once wet with salt water, the Tempur-Pedic clone - foam rubber, essentially - would be nearly impossible to ever get dry again, as the salt from the water would stay until we could very thoroughly rinse it with fresh water. We're talking hundreds of gallons here - and then we'd have to dry that foam... So, we got it all off without incident. In our previous investigations we'd found a supplier who had what we thought we'd need for the plastic - 3/8" lightly tinted Lexan. As it turned out, that was the same folks who'd fabricated our replacement piece of sole (the "floor" in a boat) when we were resolving the leaks in the forward shower. They'd done an amazingly fiddly job in replacing and staining the wood so as to look like our other 35-year-old sections. So, I had high confidence in them in general. We'd already done a lens insertion in the aft cabin hatch, so we felt comfortable that we could do it. Just in case, I again called the manufacturer of the original hatch. Oops. It's 3/16", not 3/8" plastic! That would explain the seemingly very thin lens we removed! To use the piece we'd expected would mean that it would stick up far too high, making sealing challenging, as well as a place to catch stuff, including toes! Fortunately, our Ship Shop (the name of the supplier) had a piece of 1/4" - and that could be beveled at the edge. Reassured, we set about reconditioning the frame. It's - to be kind - very fiddly work. However, with a variety of tools, Lydia and I got it free of previous adhesive, as well as the last little bits of the original paint. Off I go to Ship Shop with my old lens as a pattern. Philip drags out this huge piece of plastic and cuts a blank near the size of ours, and then trims it to size. He also cuts the center hole for the ventilator, and drills the holes to mount it. The original had used screws, which is an invitation to cracking; we make it sized for small machine screws ("bolts" with screw heads), which I'll get from my stores aboard. He gives me a chunk of leftover to play with to see about prep for installation of the actual piece. It turns out that it's of a size which would replace one of the smaller hatches' lenses. They have a lifespan of 10-15 years, and ours are getting ready... So, back to our "workshop" in the carport of Lydia's mother's retirement center cottage. Oops. The radius on the corners is too small, making for the corners not being the right size - and problems with sealing. A call reveals that Philip is still at his shop, so we take the frame along for reference this time. Rounding the corners to a larger radius won't take but a couple of minutes. However, once there, knowing that this is the sort of thing they do on a very frequent basis, we elect to have him do the lens mounting. There's no question that he'd do a better job of it than I, and the adhesive/sealant that he uses is different than we'd use, with some very fiddly bits but also some cleanup attributes that were very nice. In the end, it wound up costing about 30% less than another supplier we already knew about, and, as well, we didn't have to ship it off to Connecticut, nor wait 3 weeks for the sealant to fully cure. Ours was ready after the weekend, and we reinstalled it without incident. We DID, however, order new gasketing material, and the special adhesive it uses, from Hatchmasters - that Connecticut supplier who'd guided me through the installation of our aft hatch lens. We elected not to replace the gasketing at this time, as that hatch has, in the past, had NO leaks. We settled in to watch the weather, and today - again a Friday - looked perfect to stage to Fort Pierce, and depart the following morning, heading straight to the Bahamas, as the weather to go south - a better place to leave from, given the N-flowing Gulf Stream we'd have to cross - won't reappear in the foreseeable future. So, we put the dinghy up in the davits, all ready to leave. Unfortunately, despite reminding ourselves after our last (aborted) departure, we didn't retrieve our mooring line from the ball. As we discovered/remembered that just as we were about to set off for the fuel dock, and we'd have to lower the dinghy to remove it, we left it. So, there are two there, for the next arrival! Off to the dock for a full load of fuel and water, we're ready to go. As this is already a bit long, we'll leave you there. If you'd like to follow our travels, you can see where we've been, for several years, even, by going to (no leading "www") tinyurl.com/FlyingPigSpotwalla. That's a site which keeps our tracks for as long as we want; you can look back from immediately current times by adjusting the block on the left. You can also get the satellite view by clicking the appropriate button. We won't be in the picture, as it's imagery from previous satellite scans, but you'll be able to see where we are/were to within a few feet. We'll tell you about our crossing, and future travels, in future installments. Stay Tuned! L8R Skip Morgan 461 #2 SV Flying Pig KI4MPC See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery ! Follow us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog and/or http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land. - Dr. Samuel Johnson |
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