Looking Like a Good Day to Paint

Whoa!!  When we got up this morning it was cool without a breath of wind... I was excited to get to the work yard and see what might happen.  I knew that they would not start right away because of the cold but by 9:00 a.m. it was time get moving.  The timing was perfect.

 

Starting the first coat.

First coat on a perfect day.

When I got to the yard the crew was just mixing the paint and cleaning the surface to be painted one last time.  It was time to paint!!!

 

The tone of the color is matching.

All this means that we are moving toward a launch date!!  The bottom paint typically goes on in one to three days and we can splash almost immediately!

This is a pretty good indication that we are getting close as well... the barrier coat is on the rudder.

More Together Each Day!

Here we go again with a work yard update!

Starting to look really good!

This has been a different few days for me since I can't get on the boat to finish or start any projects.  Faith is looking good though.  We went out to breakfast this morning and then stopped by the work yard to view the progress.  The primer is on and they had sanded a bit on that so that Monday should be looking good for further painting.  This may help my lack of patience... not that I want to get ahead of myself here.

This is going to work!!

Painting a boat is a slow process and it needs to stay that way.  One small issue we have is that after thirty days in the yard the daily cost goes up so we are wanting to speed up the time to get this done.  Having said that it is still better to take ones' time in painting if you want it to last.

While we were at it I marked the chain every twenty feet.

I installed a new faucet, as I mentioned, in the forward head but did not have a chance to take a picture of the MUCH improved utility that will give the head.  The old faucet was corroded and the place where the water was supposed to come out was almost completely blocked with a calcified build up.  This is about as updated as I can be right now... more to follow. 

The Work Yard

The new name logo.

We have done much of the mechanical work and right now I am unable to access the boat so I have a few days off!  The painters are working on the upper blue stripe and have come to a stage where the sanding is completed and the primer coat has been sprayed on.  I will sneak into the yard tomorrow and get a picture of the progress.  

Should be smooooth running.

It is a beautiful thing!!

 The mechanical parts look great and if it is as well aligned as it looks we should not have much issue with how it works.  We are actually talking about having a shake down sail in a few weeks.  The mechanical part of the autopilot is also pretty much done and I was half way through putting new faucets in the heads.  The rudder was getting a barrier coat on it today as well and we had a good look at just how much work has been done on it this morning.  It looks pretty solidly fixed at this point.  Any day now all that is out of the boat will go back in or on and it will be ready for launching.  We can do a lot of work at the dock while we get ready for what follows.

It looked even better the last time I saw it!!

We are talking about our route south too.  I checked the probable routes this afternoon and am pondering the 2-3-4 day passages that are likely.  It is simply a matter of being ready for a longer passage and the new autopilot should help that considerably.      

Back in the Saddle Again

What a year we have had!

The motorhome tour of the U.S. was a fantastic first half.  Then we had the Pacific Northwest for the summer months and now we are back in Mexico to rejoin the boat (s/v Faith) For the cruising season.

As usual you don't just show up, splash the boat in the water and take off.  There are oodles of things that need attention before going anywhere.  

The rudder IS missing!!

Since I joined Sandy on Faith in 2008 there has been work aplenty.  To get ready to go that first summer was spent adding solar panels, rigging, containment and retention "stuff" and generally making ready for longer passages.  Every year we made both major and minor improvements to make Faith more comfortable and more capable as a cruising boat.  The second year we added the boat jewelry of the five boat unit windlass to raise and lower the anchor successfully EVERY time it was needed.  Other improvements were relatively minor or incremental.  This year it is time to fix some long standing issues and make with a little bit of prettier too.

The drive shaft out of the boat.

Since we left Portland we had been plagued with a growling bearing noise in what I call the carrier bearing (just forward of the shaft seal) for the propeller shaft.  It has been annoying and until you take the whole assembly apart, from the transmission coupler to the stern tube, you can't realign it so that you have an effective repair.  There are lots of details I could insert here but for now suffice it to say that this is something that can only be done in a work yard out of the water.  We brought down from home NEW motor mounts (.75 boat units) to initiate this repair.  By balancing and stabilizing the shaking of the motor we stand a better chance of having less strain on the carrier bearing and the cutlass bearing.  Standing at the propeller in the yard you could move the shaft up and down a bit... that is NOT how it is supposed to be... it should be stable in that bearing.  So, we have taken the shaft out of the boat and removed the bearings as well.  We ordered a new cutlass bearing by way of Puerto Vallarta and the work crew is now looking for a replacement or a rebuild for the carrier bearing.  

In this process we discovered that the rudder had developed cracks along its trailing edge.  This is because we have black bottom paint on it (and the rest of the bottom) to keep the marine life to a minimum.  You really get a slow boat if you allow the barnacles and grass to grow there.  Anyway, when we leave the boat out on the hard for the summer the heat builds up in the rudder from the sunlight hitting it all the time and it expanded and cracked.  This needed a fix so the rudder, that had to come off anyway to take the drive shaft out for repair, was taken off and sent to the shop for some work.  It will be a few days before that comes back so we have time to put the mechanical parts back together and get aligned properly.

Faith out on the Hard looking good!!

A boat is meant to be in the water and when you take it out, especially in the conditions we face here in Mexico, you are tampering with so many things.

Take for instance the batteries we use to store the sunlight we have in abundance to power our electrical "stuff".  Without the batteries we would have to stay hooked up to the dock to power our refrigerator, for example.  When we left the boat after a brief visit last November I had hooked up a smaller solar panel to keep the batteries alive but probably under estimated the draw down that they would experience.  I did not want to keep our larger panels attached because we would not be around to monitor the batteries' water levels and I did not want to fry them.  Altogether we have 8 (yes, eight) six volt (golf cart) batteries as the house bank (that's roughly 800 amps of power) and one 12 volt start battery.  The 6 volters are wired to give deep charge 12 volt power for our electrical needs.  When we came back to Faith the batteries appeared to be flat dead.  Yikes.  That's a full boat unit to replace them!!!  So, I hooked up the larger solar panels again and for the last several days have been monitoring their slow rise back to useful power.  It may not work but since we are in the yard and without any current draw it seems worthwhile to try to resurrect them.

There are more projects that need doing:  we bought an electric head (that's a toilet) for the forward bathroom that I will need to install, we brought a wind generator to install to add to the solar panels, there are several small projects like a boat name graphic to replace the peeling one that came with the boat and so forth.  One large expense this year is that we should and will repaint the bottom to keep the marine critters at bay.  In addition, we have decided to have the upper blue stripe repainted to spruce up the look of the boat over all.  A couple of seasons ago we had rebuilt the life lines.  They now look so good that some of the rest of the boat needs the spruce up.  Yeah, it's a lot like dominoes.  Oh yeah, and THEN we get to put order in the below decks to start to live aboard again!!  I miss the boat and the life it gives us, so getting back on board will be a wonderful thing.

The chaos below deck while we are away!!!

Note: One boat unit is a thousand dollars.


The next updates will likely focus on how all this will come together.

Traveling

Having been traveling now for a few years there are some observations that I might make about how things you do not spend time thinking about (normally) take on a fuller life when you do travel. 

At home things sometimes break and you just pop down to the hardware store, buy the appropriate replacement part and install it.  For me that often enough means two trips but generally it fixes whatever needs fixing within a day or so.  On the boat I have to figure out what is wrong then either hope I have a fix on board or, often, wait until we are in a port with a chandlery and hope they have something for the cure.  I have spent lots of time devising work around temporary fixes.  In the motorhome I look for a mechanic with the proper knowledge, or if it is a simple matter I can find what I need at an RV store (like Camping World) or Auto Zone, etc.  The thing is, if I don’t do the work it can get insanely expensive.  Recently I had the oil changed and while doing the close out for the bill the guy tried to sell me on things I can either do myself or that do not need to be done for quite some time.  It would have taken the bill from about $65 to $865!

When we had a problem with the ABS light coming on just west of San Antonio I stopped and referred to the manual.  It said that we could continue driving the coach but to have it checked out as soon as possible.  In San Antonio the leads that I got led me to no one willing or able to diagnose, much less fix, the problem.  The RV park would not let the one company that had the skill onto the property because they did not have high enough liability limits on their insurance policy.  Oh well, on to Corpus Christi. 

Corpus Christi was where we found a shop and had a sensor replaced AND the shop doing the work plugged us into power so that we could stay there for the few days while they ordered the part and did the “R & R” to put us back on the road.  They did not even add to the cost of the repair for the electricity we used… which was not inconsequential since we had used our electric space heater to keep up with the cold conditions. 

The crisscross plan.

Over all, the places we have stopped have had propane deliverable to us in our space once or twice a week.  There are some parks where they want to control and profit from propane so they do not let the propane trucks into the park.  Since, for us, it means unhooking everything and driving to the delivery site then back to the space or waiting until we are about to leave (since we almost never remember when we arrive).  In some places we have been for longer periods it has been fairly cold so we are in need of propane in the middle of the stay.  It presents a problem when we go to the office and they say, “Oh, the truck just came and won’t be back for a week!”

Short sewer, straight back for electric, water on the other side!!

This brings me to the hook up thing.  When we arrive somewhere it takes about ½ an hour to get everything connected and positioned.  A little longer if we are putting out the awning(s).  We connect the sewer, water, cable and electricity as a basic set up then deploy the stabilizing hydraulic feet after we extend the pop-outs for the bedroom and living room.  If we are staying for more than a few days I also take the bikes off the “Toad” and move the rack to the back of the RV.  We have all this down to a science.  When we started with the travel trailer it seemed to take nearly an hour to do all this.  In part it was because it was all manual labor.  Now we have assists to speed the process but it is not perfect.

No sewer available

The variable is that the RV parks are not uniform in their set up.  The wide variations sometimes stop me in my tracks altogether.  If it is possible we just do a minimal hook up and look for a new park to go to the next or following day.

There is no pretty way to do the hook ups either.  I carry multiple ways to do everything within reason to accommodate the set ups I find.  Is it a 15, 30 or 50 amp hook up?  Got it handled with adapters.  Is the cable plug the right kind?   I have adapters.  No cable?  I raise the antenna and we now have two digital TV’s to use the air signal.  Is the sewer connection closer or farther away?  The sewer hose breaks down into sections to allow for differences.  Is there too much or not enough water pressure?  Well, I can’t do much much about too little (we have a large water tank on board so can switch to that if necessary) but we have some pressure reducing connections to handle that part of the hook up if it is too much.  It is not always perfect but we have done fairly well these last few months.

Another thing we have figured out is that many states, counties and occasionally cities maintain superb RV parks.  Some of them are just a way to use their large facilities like fair grounds or convention centers when they are not in use.  Sacramento, California had a great if basic set up like that.  It was centrally located and made it easy to get around town.  One we used a couple of years ago was in King County, California.  It had great spaces and there was a tractor museum on site.  In Galveston, Texas we went out southeast from town and there were a number of parks.  In Florida we are, as I write this, in a county park that is about as perfect as it gets. 

One item missing from many places are dog walks and such.  But that’s for another story.

A Collection of Things

We have been slow to move around but the last month has been interesting none-the-less.  This will be a non-timeline story!!

We stayed in San Antonio until New Year's Eve and then moved to Corpus Christi.  That got a bit complicated.  When we had been incoming to San Antonio the ABS (brake) light had come on.  While at the park there we could not get any repair initiated due to a combination of park rules and lack of enthusiasm by potential repairers likely due to it being just before Christmas and very cold.  In any event, when we got Corpus we made contact with a place that said they could handle the repair but it was raining and we booked the repair for a few days later because it looked like we had better weather on the way and we were going to move out of the park on that day anyway.  We ended up staying in the parking lot for the shop for two nights, while it continued to rain, and they ordered then later installed the part needed.  We were extremely lucky in the cost department at a mere $252.00!!

So, we pushed on all of twenty or thirty minutes from the repair to a small RV park in Rockport/Fulton.  It was quiet and secluded.  This allowed us to catch up with ourselves and do a bit more of what we like to do... be tourists.

While in Corpus we had visited a botanical garden where we learned a little more about the sorts of things that can grow comfortably in the area.  We also went to the Museum of Natural History and went aboard the Pinta replica and saw what remains of the Santa Maria replica.  The Niña was in the water just a hop across the channel (near the aircraft carrier Lexington) but we did not end up going there.  These ships were built in Spain from original materials and, like wooden boats everywhere, were in sad shape after little more than twenty years.  They had ended up in the hands of the city of Corpus Christi after an original group had gone bankrupt trying to keep up with maintenance!  This, according to our guide was a very contentious tax issue.

The rest of the museum was full of fascinating displays so we learned quite a few new facts from that visit.

We also had time to see the Texas State Aquarium.  It would be difficult to compete with some aquariums we have been to but this one did a credible job of displaying lots of the sorts of fish and marine creatures from the Gulf of Mexico.  What we noticed the most was that the displays tended to be very kid friendly.

When we got to Rockport/Fulton we took a day to ride on a boat out to the wildlife refuge to see if we could do some birding.  The Skimmer is an aluminum boat with a not-too-deep draft... the perfect boat for this adventure.  Here is where we got to see and photograph Whooping Cranes!!  They are a lot larger than I had imagined and set up in pairs rather than flocks.  One of the pairs had a story attached about when the young male had been bitten by a water moccasin in his youth and his head had swollen up so much that he could not make the migration back to Canada that year.  He stayed inthe area for a season (or perhaps it was two) before making the trip.  You can still see a scar on the back of his neck were the bite was.  That sort of snake is a favorite food by the way!!

After all this touristing we pulled up stakes again and headed for Galveston, Texas.  It was a rainy ride and as I write this we have our bow pointed out toward the Gulf just across the road from the park and can see and hear waves breaking.  There is so much to do here that we are not sure if we will be one week or two!!

Living Cheek by Jowl

Sandy on the River Walk, San Antonio

We have been in a lot of RV parks by now.  I mean, living for a large part of each year in a variety of RV parks has been our normal for four years now.

Some places are better than others by a little bit and others are head and shoulders above the rest.  Sometimes it's just a matter of having a patch of grass outside your door and other times it is being able to extend your awning and having a dry place outside of the "house" as you step out.  Occasionally it is having quiet neighbors and not too much traffic!  

At present we are in Corpus Christi, Texas and the park is an older one.  That means narrower streets and the important thing here has been that we are in a pull through space so that we did not have to back into our place.  It turns out, too, that our site is very level, another big plus!  It was New Years last night and the park was pretty good about fireworks going off... until I heard what were clearly gun shots coming from a unit just across our little street!!!  Yikes, I had thought that nobody shot guns off at midnight any more.  It takes a fresh look at the park this morning for me to want to stay here too long... but, that had to be a one time deal.

For the most part people in these parks are friendly.  Not, perhaps, as friendly as the folks we have met boating but fun and friendly nonetheless.  We tend to live partly out of doors most of the time anyway.  In the last few years we have been places where there was not much rain.  For the most part the weather has been very cooperative.  This year the weather has been a good deal wetter for us and definitely colder!!  

We left the Northwest at about the "normal" time and the difference has been the elevation and latitude.  Except for our side trip to visit the boat we have been further north and at higher elevations most of the time.  From the time we turned east from Tucson, Arizona we have been higher than our cruising life style would have had us.  In Alamogordo, New Mexico we were much higher and the spooky drive through White Sands felt, with the strong cold wind, like we were in a snow scene.  Our stay in San Antonio, Texas was longer than it probably should have been but we wanted to stay in one place for Christmas and that afforded the right combination of attractions, or so we thought.  We got the itchy feet thing going after only about a week there and the last few days found us getting ready to move on.  It wasn't helpful the temperatures had fallen significantly during our stay.

So, over all this little park in Corpus Christi is a fine place with some amenities but we will likely be ready for our next jump in a week or so.  At least the weather is warmer now!!