Daily Archives: June 13, 2012

We got up Tuesday morning thinking all we had to do was take a leisurely ride to Target for household supplies, but we got instead a knock on the hull from Andrew from the boatyard.

“I’ve been thinking about your rudders all night and I just want to make sure they’re right,” he said. And he checked and rechecked, climbing from a tight squeeze in one hull to a tighter squeeze in the other, asking us to turn the wheel back and forth while he adjusted and tweaked until he felt confident that our steering was exactly as it should be.

He spent so much time in the hull that he noticed one end of one of the engine exhaust hoses was cracked, and he suggested we replace it before too long. That was one of the items the surveyor pointed out, and we had all looked and thought it was fine. “You have to get close to see it, but it’s definitely cracking,” said Andrew, and once we knew what we were looking for we saw it too. We checked the other side and it was also cracking.

Andrew directed us to a chandlery right down the road that would probably have the right size in stock and we jumped on the bikes and headed out. Fifteen feet of heavy exhaust hose is pretty hard to carry on a bike, but the store clerk told us he was leaving on his lunch hour and he’d drive it up the road for us. Jack met him at the boatyard gate for the handoff. Nice!

No sooner did we get back than the Travelift crew came over to ask if we were ready to go back in the water. Yikes! It was only 2:00 and we thought we were scheduled for 5:00. We scrambled to get organized and when the Travelift drove over I picked up Izzy to get her off the boat.

Meanwhile we finally met the Boyer family whom we’d met online because we were both shopping for Mantas at the same time. They have a blog too, and it was so great to meet them all in person, especially since we will more than likely be tailing each other for the next several months as we’re on more or less the same route.

I knew from the Boyers’ blog that they had a cat, and that the cat would be on vacation with Grandma while the family was on their sailing adventure. I carried Izzy to their boat, Anything Goes, to meet the girls and she immediately had three very attentive cat sitters while Escape Velocity was carried back to the water.

And of course, as soon as we were in the water again, a massive storm hit us with another soaking downpour, but it felt so good to be floating again.

When the rain stopped Jack started on the exhaust hose on the side we thought would be easier. Not. After several frustrating hours with both of us taking turns climbing down into an impossible space, we got the new hose on.

Wednesday morning Andrew stopped by to see it we wanted help, but we told him we managed. He looked at what we’d done and gave us a thumbs up. But of course that’s only half the job.

Paul had the rudders reinstalled and adjusted early on Monday morning. Jack finished the second coat of bottom paint on Sunday, so the only thing holding us up was the new zincs for the saildrives. Luckily they arrived Monday morning and Jack got right to work installing them.

The props are another dramatic change after this trip to the yard. Jack spent a lot of time cleaning them up, greasing the gears and coating them with Lanocote. There are as many opinions on how to prevent marine growth on props as there are sailors. They were previously coated in bottom paint, so we’ll see if the Lanocote does as well or better than the paint.

Here are the before and after photos of the props.

By noon on Monday we had everything pretty much done, so we took another bike ride into town to do some touring. We visited the National Cemetery, a very small but peaceful one. Many of the graves dated from the “Indian War” of 1835.

Then we rode to the old City Gate and the 17th century Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fortification in North America and we got there just in time for the firearms demonstration.

Moments later, the historic weapon they were shooting exploded prematurely, injuring the park ranger.

We couldn’t tell from a distance what the injury was but we couldn’t see any blood so we suspect a burn. Eventually the paramedics came and he seemed to be in good hands. Never saw that one before.

We passed on going into the fort and instead just walked the perimeter.

Then we moseyed back home up and down the lovely streets of old St. Augustine.

We feel pretty good about the day, and just plan to take a trip to Target before our launch Tuesday.