Woohoo!

I just found first dates for the America’s Cup in SF – apparently they’ll be here Aug. 11-19 and Aug. 27 – Sept. 2.

That gives me a little over 6 months to get the IS up to speed to catch up with them. 

Now taking crew applications. 

Suzhou boats

I was in Suzhou China last  week on business.   I had some spare time so went to the Humble Administrator’s Garden and walked around the area as well.  Suzhou is called “The Venice of China” because it has so many canals, which used to be a significant source of travel in the area.  Not so much anymore, but they are still quite scenic.

At the Humble Administrator’s Garden, some workers were pulling mud from the bottom of a canal and filling a boat with it.  Once the boat was almost sunk with it, they jumped ashore and pulled all the mud out to spread around bamboo, presumably to serve as both mulch and a weed preventative.

Travel on the canals seems to be primarily tourists, so they have these lovely little boats to go around the canals in.  However, mid January just before Chinese New Year is not high tourist season, so the skipper was taking advantage and having a nap.

 

Now I’m back in Oakland, but we’re finally having some rain, so probably no sailing for a bit.

Helper

I am incredibly jealous everytime I see a boat with a dog on it, wagging its tail, tongue tasting the salt air.  I would truly love the companionship on the boat (and elsewhere).

My boyfriend is adamantly against our getting a dog, so I have been trying to turn our cat Merridoc into one.  Recently, I brought him to the boat when I was working on it.  He’s getting better with car rides, but peed all over the gangway getting onto the dock (I believe he was frightened).  Once at the boat, he settled right in and in true cat fashion, found the most comfortable spot on the boat.

Later, he didn’t want to leave.  I may bring him back again.

Let there be light!

Continuing with the electronic work, the starboard cabin lights are back in action.

I’ve taken the port light apart, and with Paul’s help, found that the socket is broken. And the mid boat cabin light needs a new switch. Once those are in place, I’ll be done with the lighting for now.

I’ve met a few of the neighbors, folks at this marina seem a little more down to earth than at the last one. With any luck, that will keep my boat safer.

Christmas shopping by boat

This past weekend, I went Christmas shopping by boat. Brilliant!
Had a lovely sail across the bay to the secret free dock by the Ferry Building (shh!). My intrepid crew, Miles, and I stopped for warm coffee and took the opportunity to check out Christmas shopping. We saw pottery, fancy honey, hats, carvings, kitchen stuff, chocolates and more. We bought wine stuff, some Prather Ranch bacon, and the best donut on the planet.
Arriving by boat makes me feel like James Bond.

By the time we got back to Alameda, it was dark.  Good thing I have working lights.

Electronics Update

The worst is over! I have lovely, brand new marine grade 14 gauge wire strung throughout the cabin, one to supply the cabin lights and one to supply the running lights. I left the various mast wires alone, with the exception of the ground. There it was, sticking out of the mast, labelled by me, with the end waving in the air like it just didn’t care. I have no memory of removing the rest of it, but must have since it had my label on it. So, I restrung that one from the mast back to the ground. I went crazy with the Cooper-stencil (aka, a Brother label maker) and labeled every wire at each end and in the middle plus anywhere else I thought might be confusing.
I still need to tidy up and secure the wires, so currently, the main cabin is a bit of a mess.
Once all, the wiring was in place, I turned my attention to the electrical panels. I had hoped to keep the original, highly corroded, but did I mention original, Coronado switch panel. I took it out and brought it in to the boat store, where a salesman helpfully gave me armfulls of replacement parts, then said, “you know, these are about $17 each, but you could replace the whole panel for $49.” I thought about it, I really did, but at heart I am cheap, so I bought a brand new panel. Plus a new bus bar. Actually, 2 bus bars, but then I looked at the back of the package and it said it was designed to be used with both positive and negative (separate sides). The saleswoman was superhelpful – when she found out I was doing the work myself, she gave me lots of pointers and basically wouldn’t let me out of the store till I’d bought a crimper. She was totally right on that.
I’ll return one of the buses, unless I find out that you can’t piggyback negative connections onto them. Anyone know?

New bus - see how I have multiple ground wires to a single connections. Is that okay?

I got all that done, put the brandy new electrical panel in after a long phone call to my dad wherein he told me the panel was wrong, it couldn’t be made the way it was, I needed to take it back. After about 1/2 an hour of this, I guess I said the right thing, because he said, “oh, well in that case, yeah, it will work.”
My boat is definitely bringing my family together.
With fear and trepidation, I reattached the battery and ….

Let there be light!

Voila!
Success! The radio worked, the lights worked. I may go back and do some changes, but I’m no longer scared of the electrical system now that I understand it better.

Moving day 31Aug11

 

 

I moved the boat to Alameda on the last day of August, with the help of my trusty crew, Amy and Tony. We saw this ginormous boat near the Spinnaker Restaurant in Sausalito. At first I thought it was the Maltese Falcon, but now I’m not so sure as I think it only has 2 masts, not 3.
Anyway, we successfully defeated it in combat then sailed away to the south,

with Amy at the helm.
We saw lots of gorgeous dolphins along the way, and finally arrived safely at my new dock.

Tony and Amy bound gratefully ashore

Wiring Frightens Me

Yes, it’s true.  Electrical wiring is one of my two main fears.  (Llamas is the other one, but they don’t appear near boats.)

Today’s cliche is “One thing leads to another.” OK, so in a previous entry, I went through the whole Drunk boater damaged the Indian Summer, I fixed the window and hole in the side quickly, the damaged wood panelling slowly, and the lifelines even more slowly. Now, I’m reworking cabin wiring in preparation for repapering (vinyl – it looks better than it sounds).
Here’s the thing – electrical wiring scares the crap out of me. I know why, it’s no mystery. I remember sticking my finger in an outlet as a toddler and getting a really painful shock. (My parents were proponents of the theory that “she’ll only do it once.”)  And as a teenager, lightning hit a pole, travelled down the wire to hit the house, right where I was sitting, and knocked me out.  Ever since, if I get too close to an outlet or a wire, a charge jumps out and zaps me.  Oh yeah, and my parents’ house burned down due to faulty wiring.  It all adds up to me being frightened of electrical wiring.

However, when you have a boat of a certain age, the electrical wiring can be … not factory standard.  All along, I’ve been ignoring the odd wires in random places.  However, now that the cabin lights no longer work, and this is my chance to fix them, it can’t be put off any longer.  I spent this weekend trying to figure out which wires were useful, which ones didn’t attach to anything, and make a diagram.  This also required long phone calls to my dad and brother to ask how to splice wires.  See how a boat brings the family together.

First, I tracked the port cabin light wire back and replaced with a new wire.  To do that, I had to remove some panelling, and found that one of the wood blocks the panelling attached to had come loose.  So before I continue with wiring, I had to reattach with fiberglass.  OK, since I’m fiberglassing, I should touch up the engine well where it’s gotten beaten up.  Plus, some of the wood attachment blocks have holes that have enlarged over the years.  Pull out the wood putty, fix them, and they’re right next to the remaining damaged wood, so work on that too.  Oh yeah, and the quarter berth lazarette cover is damaged, so try to repair with the wood putty as well.

Hours later, I get back to my plan for the weekend – diagramming the wiring.  In figuring that out, I found wires running from the battery back to the engine well where they end in … nothing.  Similarly, wires were running along the cabin, then down through a hole in a lazarette, to attach to nothing.    Wires to the port side for no reason, extra to around the radio,  and a few pieces along the cabin not attached at either end.  I removed them all, first detaching the battery so I wouldn’t inadvertently electrocute myself.  Next week, I can get started on what I had planned for this week - diagramming and replacing the useful wiring for replacement.

Estuary

I did it – turned in notice at the marina in Sausalito after hearing from the marina in Alameda yesterday. I’m going to move the Indian Summer to Alameda at the end of the month, where she’ll be much more accessible to me. The sailing may not be as pretty as Sausalito, but I think there will be plenty of fun destinations.
This should make heading up towards the delta more of a possibility, as well as San Francisco sails.

Safety First

After almost 2 years of no life lines, they’re back! With a little help from Marla (apparently growing up on a ranch makes you handy on a boat!), I got the rails back on, nicely embedded with Dolphinite, and the new lines snapped on.
That makes it sound easy.

This actually took me almost 2 years, it’s not like I took them off then decided I didn’t need lifelines. I took them off in the first place after getting hit by a drunk boater. He smashed in the side of the boat right under one of the deck plates and broke a window. To fix those, I had to remove the vinyl cabin wall covering as well as the rail on that side.   That led to the realization that since the life rail was off, it was a good time to repair the leak into the cabin ceiling that was causing damage to the wood panelling.  Plus, the lifelines were pretty old so should be replaced since they were off already. 

It became like a giant, boat shaped sweater that was unravelling in many places at once.  But eventually, I found a pair of scissors and cut the yarn.  I decided to focus on the lifelines, as safety related, as well as part of the cabin ceiling, as pretty.  That led me to a long foray into veneers as the ceiling had to be fixed prior to the lifelines.  In case you’re wondering, gravity is not your friend when applying veneer to a ceiling.  Glue doesn’t work, but fiberglass does.  It  isn’t the best job, but it is better than it was with all the corner leaks.

The veneer you can see on top is a lovely teak piece that I got at Macbeath Hardwood, an amazing store in Berkeley.  As you can see, the wall is totally jacked from removing the veneer, but as luck would have it, there is another store, right across the road from Macbeath, called Urban Ore.  At Urban Ore, I found an entire roll of light grey vinyl wall covering for $6.  Now all I have to do is rewire the cabin lights, cut the vinyl to fit (the stuff I removed was too wripped up to serve as a pattern), get the vinyl to stick to the walls, and put everything back together.  That’s all.

 

Or I could just forget all that and go sailing since the lifelines are in place.