June 6th to 12th

Blog Update June 6 to June 12

SPLASH DOWN, yes Dream Ketcher is finally in the water. Now that that is out of the way I will bring you up to date on what has been happening.

Wow can that possibly be right, it is the 12th of June already. Where has the time gone.

Progress seems to be so slow now yet I can’t think of any time that I have been goofing off except fot he trip to Charleston Memorial day weekend.
So here is the current status of our preparation.

Rick, the mechanic that is helping me with the heavy lifting, claims that ours is the coolest engine room he has ever been in. One of the P.O.’s installed 2 fluorescent lights and a big fan so the you have lots of light and a fan to keep you cool.

Engine alignment
As it turns out I had the engine/shaft alignment really close. We just fiddled with it a little and it is good enough until she sits in the water for a couple of days and settles on her lines.

I got the new cutting board mostly finished. Million thanks to Don B for the Maple 1”x1” boards. I used alternating Maple and Teak. Boy does it look nice. I will post a pic tomorrow. Thanks Don B. I just have a little finish sanding remaining and then it is on with the coconut oil. Turns out that coconut oil is one of the few food based oils that won’t go rancid, at least according to the web site I found.

Exhaust Manifold finally came off and with a little help from PB Blaster, Liquid wrench and of course a generous dose of Marine Pal. It is back on now and no signs of any leaking so far.

Wrestling with the XM satellite weather and the garmin chart plotter.

As I mentioned in the last post, I had hooked up all of the gps stuff, well most of it anyway. The cool part of the satellite weather is that it will display right on the chart plotter. I will be able to see approaching weather systems, their severity and speed. We can also check sea state (wave and swell heights and directions) and wind strength and direction. Should be a great supplement to the NOAA weather forecast that I can download to the computer and view there. Well after checking all the connections, I don’t know how many times, I got a message that told me how old the updates were, (ranged from 3 to 10 minutes) but I got no graphic data on the screen. Well three Different calls to XM, a lengthy consult with the Garmin expert at the main West Marine and still no luck. I was mentioning my problems to the manager of the local W.M. and he gave me the vendor tech support number. Great and I got right thru to a very patient techy guy. Oh, did I mention that he was very patient, a critical characteristic when I am working on computers (Neris will confirm this as well). Well after an hour on the phone we (the technician and I , if you believe that then I have some beach front in Nevada for ya)
Came to the conclusion that there was a problem that we couldn’t fix. He checked out his technical notes and sure enough there were numerous reports of the same problems. So now we just wait for Garmin to call us and send us the fixed software. Everything is working now except for the audio from the XM satellite. I have gotten several different opinions on the problem, but that can wait. I really wanted the audio so we can listen to husky games this fall.



The new toilet is in the forward head, same as I installed in the aft head. Locking type Jabsco.

Aussies leave
Farwell to our Australian friends was an evening toast to their safe travels. Eduardo’s hand delivered Chilean Wine was the wine of choice to toast their safe travels, fairwinds and following seas. Since we are from Washington, I felt it appropriate to give them a bottle of Chateau San Michele Reisling to be consumed whenever it was properly chilled and the entrée appropriate for a fine reisling of this quality. (UGHHHH). And the third bottle was my last bottle from that renowned winery in Sonoma California, next to Cousin Garys home in Sebastapol. This gift to the Aussies came with very specific instructions. They were to use this wonderful Northern California Merlot for the sacrificial toast and blessing to King Neptune as they cross the equator on their way home to Australia. I need to find a digital copy of the story of Stu. You see the Aussies had not quite caught on to the name of the wine, Stu Pedasso . I can’t wait to hear from them when they know the whole story behind Stu and his sister wine, Rayjene Beach. In spite of the tongue in cheek approach to the labeling, it is really pretty good wine. And certainly brings a smile to many faces.


Jennifer from R HQ, and her husband John, came by for a visit and dinner out at Whitey’s Fish Camp. This is one hopppin’ place. John told us that this is the place to come tie up your boat early in the afternoon and then sit back and watch as the locals, with less than optimal docking skills, try to get into their favorite seafood restaurant. Sounds like the entertainment value is logarithmically relative to the alcohol content of the participants..

I decided to check out the spinnaker pole. The pole car topping lift line was really falling apart. I was amazed that it was actually holding up the pole. Turns out the pin on the outboard end of the pole was frozen, corroded solidly to the end fitting. Well that’s ok I said, a little Marine Pal and that should loosen things up. No luck, well how about a drift punch from the end of the fitting. The hole that the stainless steel pin fits in goes all the way through the end fitting. Well I pounded on that thing pretty agressively, still no luck. Ok, take the 3 ss screws out of the end and twist the end off. Ya Right. Well I got one of the screws out and whoosh. That water squirted out the screw hole 30 feet into the road. Pretty darn entertaining. The pole was full of water. So more pounding with the punch, and still no luck. OK time for drastic measures. Out came the grinder and the hose. Didn’t want to burn any holes in the deck, sails or lines, so I had Patti play fireman at the ready. Gave the whole mast area a good soaking and on with the grinder. Boy was that ever fun. I haven’t used a grinder on stainless before. Gotta get me one of them now. I guess the porch crowd found our little project rather entertaining. Me standing there with an electric grinder and Patti squirting me with the hose. Well she wasn’t exactly squirting me, at least I didn’t think so, the water never got on the grinder, I made sure of that. So the pin is cut out enough to get the outboard end of the pole off the mast. Now time for the inboard end. It was fitted with a really nice quick release socket and pin./ Pull the release and the pin separates from the fitting and you are holding the pole in your hands. Ya, well in a perfect world maybe. Out came the Marine Pal, and a little bit of another anti corrosive and guess what, it actually came apart. OK the inboard end was ready to use, after a generous application of Lanacote to prevent future corrosion.

Now for the outboard end, you remember the end that I cut the pin on. So now, how does the end come off. Can I salvage this piece of over- priced hardware? $ 375 was not in the cards, I hope. Well, Dennis the yard guy, who has a Whitby just like ours, said he had 2 spinnaker poles but he only needed one end. Great I got a new end for the pole. Now for the fun part. How do I get the ends off of both poles so I can put the good one on my pole.

MORE FUN So I tried several different approaches to driving the end off of the pole. Dennis came by on his way to lunch and gave it a try, and said, “ I’ll check back after lunch,” and off he went. Well an hour later he came back, looked at my total lack of anything resembling progress, looked at me and got the little kid’s,Tim the tool man Taylor, glint in his eyes and said, “ARE WE READY FOR DRASTIC MEASURES.” I knew that “ARGH, ARGH MORE POWER LOOK” and replied oh ya. So out came the grinder and after looking at the issues with cutting 6” off of the end of a 15’ Aluminum pole that is 3” in diameter, and getting anything resembling a straight cut, he looked at me and said, you know I have a cut-off saw. Oh Boy even more fun!!!!!!!!!!.

Well the end came off as an after thought, with a straight cut I might add, almost anticlimactic to the actual cutting of the pole. The new end went on without any real difficulties, I know boring, but still one more thing accomplished.

We finally got in the water on Friday. Now it will be a real busy time getting all the stuff done. I am hoping to get most of the big things done before they ask us to move to a mooring, then we can just leave and head north. I went up the mizzen on the mast mate webbing steps that fit on the sail track on Friday to measure for some wiring runs. Saturday, Phil cranked me up the main mast at 0630 so I could get at all the lights. The tricolor on the masthead literally crumbled in my hands, leaving three very nice stainless steel machine screws corroded into the light bracket. Ended up twisting them off, as they were so stuck in the fixture.

Tues and Wed the weather was very nice at the yard, hardly knew it was Florida. Thursday it really heated up and today it was hot.

We splashed on Friday 6-11-2010. No leaks yet. There were a couple of drips but we quickly fixed those. Now we are actually sitting in the water at the pier, a boat at last.