Maine Passage - Successes and failures, Moving On...


Written mostly a week ago; current stuff at the end...

We left you as we had thrown out the hook in Portland. We've
spent the last week enjoying the hospitality of our hosts, my
sister and brother-in-law, who live in the Portland area. We've
also been the beneficiaries of their watching a mooring at the
Portland Yacht Club, currently vacant and sufficient for Flying
Pig at the owner's suggestion, thus our parking spot while we've
been ashore. We've found the area's unusual weather this
summer...

Unusual because at this time of year, Maine is usually beautiful
and wreathed in sunshine and warm weather, followed by
crystal-clear nights at great sleeping temperatures. It's why we
came all this way, hoping to enjoy the bounty of the Maine coast,
cruising to all the wonderful places cited to us on various
mailing lists to which I subscribe, and then moving down-coast.

Instead, we've had nearly unrelenting rain. Today is overcast and
foggy, with chances of thunderstorms later today. The area has
had many weeks of constant rain, causing lots of high-water
warnings and traffic reminders not to drive through standing
water, as it may disable the vehicle, etc...

This weather is forecast to be with us for the next several
days... Last weekend and yesterday were the only clear days
we've had, and we were fortunate enough to take advantage of both
of them.

Saturday we had a marvelous daysail on our hosts' Ericson sloop,
"racing" - at different times - several boats where friends from
the Portland Yacht Club were on the same path as we, and beating
them handily. Sunday we took a ride in their powerboat to an
island where he spent his summers in his youth, a marvelous
re-introduction to all that I found charming about Maine from my
prior visits to the area. Those were our only times on the
water, other than trips on the tender from the club to Flying
Pig.

And, Wednesday, we got to go over to Concord, NH, to visit my
85-year old father, in a "CCRC" - continuing care retirement
facility - during another clear day, enjoying our time there. It
seemed rather a waste to sail all the way to Maine and not drive
the 2 hours over to see him, and in retrospect, I wish we'd
budgeted a couple of days, as he clearly didn't want us to leave,
and there's an excellent possibility that we'll not be back in
the area until his funeral.

Of course, we have had many "maybe last visits" with him,
beginning with Lydia and my wedding celebration, now several
years ago, and he's in marvelous shape and spirits, despite his
rapidly failing (macular degeneration induced) eyesight which
leaves him, for the last couple of years, legally blind, though
he does manage to get around very well with the limited,
peripheral vision, remaining sight he has, though even that is
fading fast.

So, back to the title...

We had many successes, mostly revolving around our initial "blue
water" voyage. We were as far offshore as 250 miles for quite a
while, and as our earlier postings have revealed, were very
blessed to have had ideal conditions for the first week or so of
our trip.

We succeeded in an extended (well, brief, really, given the great
successes in utilizing our forecaster's information, and the
initially ideal weather) voyage together, just the two of us. We
learned a lot...

Our watch "schedule" wasn't really - that is, there was no set
time of watch rotation, but it worked well for us. We'd come off
watch either because the other relieved, or because we rousted
the other from sleep, because we were failing in our ability to
remain sharp. The off-watch would go immediately to bed, in
order to gain the sleep available, and thus, we were both
remarkably rested despite having maintained a 24-hour watch, at
the end of the voyage. So, that was a success in that we're now
confident that we should be able to maintain our rest but still
stand effective watches, for extended periods.

We got a great deal more familiar with our new sails, occasioned
by the originals with the boat's being torn to shreds in our
weather incident which ultimately ended on the rocks 18 months
ago. We're very pleased with the performance; we'd never have
achieved what we did on the passage with the old ones...

We sailed on every point of sail other than spinnaker run, from
poled-out wing-and-wing through a very tight beat, in widely
varying weather. We had anywhere from ghosting zephyrs to small
gales (well, perhaps full gales, if that's what 45+ amounts to -
I forget...), and I got to do a bit of hand-steering in the early
stages of a storm, which was not only exhilarating but good
practice for the time when it might be very much more than that
in both sea state and wind. We also hove to during one
particularly nasty set of weather, doing just what the exercise
was designed to do, which was get some rest and relaxation while
the storm raged outside.

We caught two large fish in succession, making it so that we had
to suspend fishing activities in order to finish them off before
we landed. And, in fact, those, along with the remains of the
chicken and steak chunks we'd prepared before leaving, fed us for
the entire voyage. We look forward to throwing out the gear
again on our way south, of which more, anon. Meanwhile, I got
much more experienced at, and even fairly successful in, fileting
our catches. What bounty the sea provides - and we are hopeful
to utilize it for the majority of our animal protein. Whether we
succeed will remain to be seen, of course, and we're not the
least bit overconfident; just the reverse, we were very
pleasantly surprised at our results, as prior efforts have not
been nearly so successful.

We got reasonably familiar with, and nominally successful at (the
challenges being blamed on worldwide lousy HF radio signal
propagation, but perhaps an issue with our rig??) sailmail, the
radio-based email program which allowed us to send and receive
email from the middle of the coastal Atlantic.

Despite our having to reset the mast collar due to a prior
rigger's having loosened the rig so much that the mast moved in
the deck opening (the deck didn't move due to a vertical stabilizing
rod standard in the Morgan 461s), even with our overtightening of the
rig as seen below, we were able to stiffen the rig as well as
successfully reattach the mast boot which had come out from under the
clamp holding the top to the mast, and there has been no movement
since that fix.

While we were under way, of course we couldn't access the links to the
current charts (that is, the forecasting charts showing the direction
and strength of the currents flowing in real time), our forecaster's
recommendations made it so we were able to either avoid adverse, or
take advantage of positive, currents. Still, those links were
invaluable to our initial planning, and will figure, again, in our
planning when we actually leave here.

Regrets, I've had a few... A riff on Ol' Blue Eyes, not really
regrets, but failures along the way, some avoidable, some just
overcome as they arose:

Our spinnaker pole's bail, used to hold it up in use, failed from age.
I did a workaround, and it will suffice until such time as we are able
to take it somewhere to have a new wire bail installed.

However, and I really don't see any way around it, if one is to
maintain the ability to reef the genoa with the pole in place, our
expensive new running rigging (the lines controlling the sails) had
chafe on both of the genoa sheets where the spinnaker pole jaw rode,
and, with the flexing of the sail, the sheet moved in the jaw. The
sheets aren't yet damaged, but will be, soon, if we were to continue.
I have not yet figured out a workaround for that problem.

In the course of trying to mitigate the amount of movement the mast
has (had, I fervently hope!), I overtightened the shrouds (the
stainless steel wires holding the mast in place) on the sides of the
boat. That caused the hull to flex, pulling inward slightly, which
caused the plates which lift out of the sole (the cabin flooring) to
bind, aft of the mast. We've loosened those shrouds since, and have
the flooring almost completely free, but we'll wait until we sail a
bit to twiddle any more, as I certainly don't want to return to the
state of the previously floppy mast!

In the course of the heavy weather, when we had to use extraordinary
effort to reef our genoa prior to heaving to that morning, the tube
connecting the bottom to the top had a weld fail. That is a simple
age issue, and better to have discovered it in a marine center, where
we were able (albeit expensively!) to have it removed and rewelded.
Given that a new one is in the mid 4-figures, we're very glad that
Harken said it would be perfectly sound to reweld it, which Handy Boat
Services did for us at a contractor. Just a heads-up for any
interested parties - the invoice for their work was the most
uninformative piece of paper I've ever seen: "Tube on drum of furler
needs to be welded" Labor......XXXX Environmental Charge....YYY Total
Amount Due.....ZZZZ - no rate, no hours, nothing but a dollar amount
along with some environmental padding...

As seen in one of the daily passage notes, we ran out of fuel. That
was just laziness, not checking the engine hours against our last
fill. However, it allowed us to further mark our dip stick, showing,
now, the exact 5 and 10 gallon levels remaining in the tank - as well
as learn, for dead certain, the exact capacity of the fuel tank. As
our surveyor (the quality control manager at Morgan during the entire
production run of these boats) had observed, the tank sizes are
nominal by calculation, and as they're laid up fiberglass, usually are
smaller than the nominal amount. That was true in our case, but we
now know that we have a true 83 gallons when full.

Our spreader, foredeck, and mast lights became inoperative between
Fernandina Beach and Maine, somewhere along the way. A trip up the
mast, after first checking for power at the panel, was fruitless, if
educational. Sparing you the gory details, it was a ground in the
panel, overlooked as I was expecting power difficulties, when I was in
there. In the end, merely reattaching the unattached ground cured all
those problems. Sometimes the simplest solutions are overlooked...

Our hailer on our VHF radio has not worked since installation. More
up-the-mast work, and replacing the new horn installed when the storm
and wreck 18 months ago caused the other new horn to take flight, and
the new horn (the third new one) doesn't work. In the end, there's
some fault in the cable, as the horn works at the mast base connection
point. Because we're anxious to leave on a lovely weather window,
I'll wait for the replacement of the cable, already in hand for
another day. I like it up the mast, anyway, and will do the last of
my electronics stuff while I'm up there - changing out the power
supply for the wifi unit at the top of the mast, making the only
remaining AC device the monitor on our computer system (well, and
Lydia's laptop)...

In the course of chasing leaks which have plagued the forward cabin,
it was noted that the berth base was suffering from rot in the very
front, and as that's part of the support system for the stay (the
stainless steel wire partway up the mast) on the inner staysail, that
was a critical event. Interesting and contortionist activities on my
part got the old rot cut out and as it was just 1/2" plywood, the
8x3/4" solid birch I replaced that segment with will be massively
stronger. Any time I've found rot aboard, I've replaced the old with
something much stronger...

So, back to the leaks, Lydia has been aggressively applying Captain
Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure everywhere on deck, and has found many
places where leaks might have occurred. The smallish rain we had last
night was not a good test, but there are no leaks in the forward cabin
at this writing. Every actual-user's report on this stuff has raved,
so we'll be sure to do so ourselves if heavy weather proves it to have
cured our persistent leaks!

And, still in the bow cabin, we took off the cushion covers to wash
them - but the best we can tell, my sister tossed them with the
garbage in our rush to get out after our trip on the weekend, as
they'd been put in a plastic bag to protect against the spray and rain
in the tender on the ride back. By the time we discovered their
disappearance, the yacht club garbage was long gone. New covers are
on order from a local fabricator, and will be far more robust, being
of an ultrasuede clone, than the prior ones. Eventually we'll have
the entire boat done in the same sort of stuff, but it's
breathtakingly expensive, so it will have to wait.

Finally, due to the fiddly construction needed for the flush mounted
handle on our freezer, the mounting point finally failed due to a
smallish material footprint available. When I defrosted the
refrigerator, I took advantage of the warm time to remove the door
entirely and Lydia epoxied up the failed area. On reinstallation,
voila, the refrigeration worked as expected, rather than struggling to
maintain proper temperatures as it had in our journey. At this
writing, I've not replaced the screws but will instead drill and tap
the epoxy for a machine screw mount, which should be very superior to
the original screw-in-wood.

So, with our various boat chores finished, and our time available for
going down east having been rained out, tomorrow at first light we'll
head down the coast under the northwester which has sprung up this
afternoon, arriving in Cape Cod Bay some time on Thursday, all other
weather and boat stuff being as forecast.

I may not do an under-way posting; we'll have to see how that turns
out. However, Flying Pig is again aloft, heading to Cape Cod, then
the Canal and Nantucket, where Lydia will catch up with her best buddy
from her days in Sarasota many years ago.

All in all, the rainout aside, this has been a fantastic voyage...

Stay tuned :{))

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
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