We spent last season sailing Amadeus as much as we could. Which wasn't as much as we should have, I unfortunately have developed a touch of anxiety about taking her off of the moorings. Severe enough that we can't cast off sometimes. Yeah, fearless captain isn't me. But we did get out most weekends at least once. We sailed a lot in the light winds that we find most weekends in the area, and managed to go out and come back without ever bumping into anything, breaking anything on the boat or running aground. And we managed this with very little in the way of navigation equipment. We have a GPS enabled chart plotter, which is a freaking godsend. But that really is all we have. Well that and really well marked cruising grounds.
I have since purchased a complete navigation system, depth/speed/temp sensor, wind speed and direction sensor for the masthead as well as a radar unit that overlays the radar on the chart plotter. The new radar unit uses non ionizing radiation so it is much safer to use than the old style I used to work on, so it is more energy efficient, and won't cook your body parts if you get in front of it somehow. Of course that also means that I can't hoist my Christmas turkey up in front of it and cook the thing in a speedy fashion either, but I felt that was a fair trade off. The E2-C Radar system I used to work on had the reputation of causing sea gulls to explode if they flew through the cone of radiation, but sea tales are all about the story, with the same touching concern with facts as our current political leadership.
We had Amadeus hauled early in November and pulled the masts as well. They really needed some work done. I was missing a halyard on the mizzen so I could not rig the mizzen sail. The mainsail had gone from difficult to OMG is this even going up? And every time we had to raise the genoa it was a battle as it kept jamming and getting twisted. We were completely unable to raise the working Jib at all as it jammed and twisted almost immediately. I wanted to examine the condition of the sheaves that live at the top of the mastheads. And really there are three ways to accomplish this.
- I could put on the bosun's chair and have Betty winch me to the top of the mast and look at them.
- One issue with this is that I have to use one of the sheaves (what the pulleys the halyards run through up there) to accomplish that.
- Second issue is I am a complete baby when it comes to heights. Scares me spitless.
- I could winch Betty to the top of the mast and have her look.
- She has no idea what she is looking at.
- Still have to use one of those sheaves.
- Pull the masts off the boat and lay them flat for work and inspection.
I started this repair/down season feeling optimistic that I could do a couple searches for pieces and parts, bits and bobs and voila I'd be able to source said parts for this beastie and in no time at all we'd be all ready to go back in the water by April no sweat. Yeah I'm an idiot. First and foremost I called Jeanneau, they made the boat after all, who never bothered to return my calls, go figure. I asked for help on the Jeanneau Pro Boards, which garnered zero responses to my requests for assistance. So I struck out on my own, which garnered even fewer useful results. So I did what I should have done in the first place, I asked the guys at the boatyard for assistance. Much better. In one 15 minute phone call I received three solid leads and they even sent my poor old busted stuff off with a sales guy for a quote. The quote that came back was frightening, but that wasn't the boatyards fault. I think I have mentioned them before, but the fine folks at Washburn's Boatyard are both kind and helpful. The ladies in the front office are helpful, the guys in the parts department are always willing to answer my newbie questions and help as much as possible. And did in fact help considerably. I was able to order custom built sheaves to replace the originals and those cost less than $400.00. Shout out to Ed at Zephyr Sheaves who handled building those for me. The old ones were super worn out, had some nylon type insert as the bearing surface. That had gone super hard and brittle over the 30 years they had been up there exposed to weather and were quite obviously past their useful service life.
I'm still looking for a series of things called exit boxes and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Of the ones I have located so far none match. Mine are frozen solid due to corrosion. I took a set of them off the mast and put them in a jar with penetrating oil for three months, ah sucks to be me, not one of them can be moved.
I had also changed halyards last year, and while I thought I was using the correct sizes, I'm once again proved wrong. While I used the same size as the PO, HE was the idiot this time. As he is dead and can no longer defend himself I'm totally going to lay the blame on him. PO is the idiot this time! HE chose the wrong size rope leading me to choose the incorrect size of rope to fashion into my halyards. So annoying. So I have to purchase new halyards this year, AGAIN (Huff, Puff, HUFF) Anyway that is another couple hundred bucks.
I ordered a bunch of stuff, a mount for my radar transceiver unit to attach to the mast, a LED masthead light, a new LED work light with separate LED steaming light that is still attached to the work light, uses some of the same wiring, a new VHF whip antenna. Feeling inadequate for some reason I got the 3' whip vice the 1 1/2' version. Will still work with the VHF so anyway there's that. The size difference isn't going to make it work better, it's at the top of a 52' mast after all, but I wanted a 3' whip. So I got a 3' whip. I'm going to be so pissed if it doesn't work for some reason. To round out my order I got some wire to connect my lights with, a bunch of shroud covers and new tip covers for my spreaders. I would be so pissed if I tore my 150% Genoa. I was flat amazed they wanted to charge close to $80 USD for leather tip covers, a piece, to sew over my spreader tips. So I got plastic. I also ordered 6 1' sections of bird spiking strips. Maybe I can dissuade the local ospreys from using my mastheads as combination butcher blocks and dining room tables. This may keep the carnage from accumulating in the cockpit, with commensurate stench. Few things smell quite as nice as week old crab guts left laying in the sun for a week.
I was going to modify a plastic cutting board to make an adapter so I could reuse the old mount I had for the radome from my old burned out radar unit. Like I mentioned earlier I got a new radar system, and who would ever include a mast mount with a new radome? It's completely unheard of for a radome to be to be mounted on a mast, you know like about 3/4 of the way up say a main mast? That's a deeply sarcastic statement if you couldn't tell. But then I got to thinking about this a bit further. I spent a pretty good penny for my new radome and if my plastic fantastic adapter failed at some point my pricy radome would fall off the mast and dangle from its wires while repeatedly flinging itself suicidally at the mast till it was returned to kit form. I doubt that B&G's warranty would cover that sort of damage. So I ponied up the cash and bought the official mount. So now I feel virtuous but a little poorer.
Now for the other fun I encountered on my off season, at the beginning of December I was involved in an auto accident. Some guy in a hurry to get gas or sometime stated he didn't see our Nissan Murano barreling up the road and darted in front of me which ended up totaling our new Murano. He got the ticket. I got the concussion. Now I am battling post concussion syndrome and am not enjoying my new status at all. :( So as this is a sailing blog I will not really be touching on that after this, because really who wants to read about another late middle aged guys medical issues? I have had a freaking headache for close on to three months now, my anxiety is through the roof, I can't seem to hit the programming zone anymore, my memory is even worse than it has ever ever been, and I would give my eyeteeth for a solid night of sleep. Yeah ok, enough medical whining.
Running up to the boat this weekend to affix my new depth, speed sensor to the wire of my old depth sensor so the boatyard guys can swap them out for me. I am just not up to doing the work at this point, I'd love to, but spending that amount of time bent over with my already pounding head just sounds like a recipe for a gigantic screw up.
I'm about to post this, so for the 11 guys in Korea that are going to instantly pounce on it 안녕하세요
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