Heave, Heave, HEAVE

I'm happy to report that the mast is up, and she actually looks like a sailboat again. I went up Friday night after work (and after Wendy's shorted me a patty on my Triple burger but tried to offset it by giving me pickles and tomato which I had requested be left off. $15 an hour? Right.

Waking up Saturday morning, I had grand visions in my head of the yard whisking me into place and hoisting the mast at Bright And Early O'clock. It actually happened about 1. Turned out they had actually wanted to try it Friday, but were unable to get the outboard started after a couple dozen yanks on the starter cord. So much for that theory on the on/off switch. The switch is still broken, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't the only thing I guess. Carb rebuild to come. But I did get it running in relatively short time, probably a dozen pulls or so, it finally sputtered to life. Smoked a little, but that settled down after it warmed up. And after motoring into place, we had the mast up quickly. Motored back to the dock, gave everything an initial tension and debated on the next move.

One of the things that the boat has, is a Spinnaker in a chute stuffed into the corner. I had never flown it, but since I had added a spinnaker halyard, I wanted to try. As it turns out, I could've saved the halyard space, but I guess it never hurts to have an extra? The sail itself is relatively small, and with the chute, you lose another foot, foot and a half at the top. It's nothing fancy, more of a light wind genoa really, so I'll likely discard of the chute, and just hoist it like normal if I want to use it for light wind, downwind days.

You'll notice my custom framing in the picture by cleverly using my hand as a shield. I also want to draw attention to a section of that picture, so I zoomed in:

It's been evident in other photos too, but this section of the bow pulpit has been broken since I purchased the boat. This has been annoying, and it leaves it rather flimsy up there. So keep that in mind, we're going to come back to that. First, let's get out on the water. Engine fired right up, and I motored right out. Very light wind (ideal for a Spinnaker... no, I didn't use it), and I was planning on just motoring east a little and anchoring for the night, as the Ontario 300 had kicked off that morning. Their path brings them down around near Oswego so I had planned on getting up on Sunday morning, sailing or motoring out to watch the parade of entrants pass by. I assumed motoring, since the forecast was basically the same as it had been for Saturday - light winds, good sun, that was the plan. This is also Lake Ontario. Let's remember that part too.

I anchored out, and set it with a good old reverse burst, and watched as, yet again, the waves and wind don't match. Just off-kilter enough that there's more side-to-side rolling, than there is wave-on-bow action. It's annoying, and even though it wasn't violent rolling, it was just bugging me. I inflated my raft, and rowed to shore by the dunes, and dunked myself in for a cool bath. The dunes are really neat to see.

Once back aboard, I decided that it was time to figure this wave/wind issue out. I've read about using a stern spring line to your anchor rode before, which in theory helps to turn your boat where you want it to be. So in my case, the wind was coming from the North, the waves from the West. I used my anchor spring back to a cleat on the starboard of the cockpit, the idea being it would then allow me to pull the stern more with the anchor to help face the waves. We're just going to say that this does seem practical on paper, when the wind shifted slightly, I was useless again. I finally gave up trying, and dug out the little secondary anchor that I had, rowed it out and dropped it. It wasn't the greatest set since I was basically setting it by hand from the boat afterwards, but it was more for my own amusement than anything. Worst case, it breaks free and... does nothing? But it did do better to point me into the waves. I then decided to enjoy the view one last time before going to sleep.

12:30 AM. I'm still not sound asleep, and I can tell the rocking has gotten a little more intense. I'm annoyed, but I assume the waves have shifted a little, and that with my stern anchor, now I'm not facing into them as much. It's still mostly bow-on though so I kept trying to sleep.

6:30 AM. I give up on staying asleep, though I had only dozed on and off. I think there was a 2-3 hour stretch I did manage to stay under, but it didn't feel like it. What it DID feel like, was a washing machine agitating me back and forth. I look out the starboard portholes and I see water. Sky. Water. Sky. Ugh, I get up and open the companionway hatch. Hey, this isn't five knots and two foot swells. This is more like fifteen, and five. Fortunately, the waves were in mostly the same direction and the stern anchor wasn't killing anything. But now the tricky part. I have to retrieve a stern anchor, in these rocking conditions, while managing the boat... solo. Plan B was to crawl to the bow, release more rode to allow the boat to back down to over the stern anchor, and heave it. I tried Plan A first - Brute force. It's a very small anchor, I wouldn't even use it for a lunch hook on a calm day personally. So I heaved, and somehow with the wave action and my grip, it did pop free and took almost no time to reel in. I deflated my raft and shoved it down into the cabin to finish airing out. The motor only took a few pulls, thank goodness, but already I knew it was going to be interesting to get out of there. Every third wave, I can hear the motor lifting from the water. Definitely the weather for an inboard.

I had about 8, or 9:1 scope out. My anchor rode is 200' of 1/2" Three strand Nylon, and 30' of 1/4" chain, shackled to a Danforth 13s fluke anchor. And it was SET. Here's the problem.... I'm solo, and I have no windlass. I have eight thousand pounds of boat beneath my feet, and I have fifteen knots of wind and a four to five foot sea state to overcome. Now before you think I'm illogical, My first plan was in fact to motor up as I pulled in the rode. I fully intended to. I just need to make sure I don't motor OVER the rode and wrap the motor. So I thought ok, I'll just pay out some and walk it back to the stern. As soon as I did, the boat started to swing beam-on to the waves, since now the anchor was to the side. Abandoned that plan. Plan B again. I braced my feet against the bow cleats, sitting on the deck, and started pulling, trying to time my pulls with the waves. It took a while, but I finally see chain. And that's where the problem hit me. It was REALLY set, and I have nothing I can tie a chain onto or secure it to. And it's a lot harder to hold a chain in your hands than a line. It took a few minutes of swearing and trying, but finally, FINALLY I feel a release, just barely, and I can see the bow start to swing a little. I raced my hands along the chain and pulled the anchor up, tossing it down the hatch to get it off the deck and out of harm's way, to be dealt with later. My anchor locker only holds the rode, I don't have a bracket for the anchor itself yet.

I run back to the cockpit and put the motor in gear and painstakingly slowly, we finally start to turn up into the waves again. And slowly, because every couple seconds, the stern lifts, the motor loses grip on the water, we stall progress. Normally I would've just lowered the bracket another notch, but we were already burying the shaft to just below the cowl as it was, so any farther would've risked flooding out. So instead, we soldiered on. Small grips at a time, every now and then turning a little down the waves to keep up some speed, then back up. I easily figured out why I didn't see any other boats around, and I also abandoned my plan to go see the Ontario 300 parade. No way was I motoring the wrong direction in this stuff. I know the weather would eventually die out, but that could be in hours, and I didn't want to sit there being tossed about for that long. All in all, it took almost two hours into that weather, to go the mile and three quarters back to the marina. Once in the bay, the sheltered waters were calmer and I docked without incident. I took a few minutes to rest, still trying to stretch my fingers from being sore from that anchor haul. Speaking of that anchor...

I think now is a good time to replace it with a new Fortress FX-16, don't you?

The last thing I did for the day, was to revisit that bow pulpit. Especially after yanking that anchor aboard without a solid handhold, and I actually had all the tools on hand. I did have to cut open a couple inches of the fiberglass liner inside to reach the back of the bolts, but I was able to use a sawzall to cut the old tubing, and use a new same-diameter (slightly thicker wall though) piece with a sleeved piece of smaller tubing to join them. Hard to see the joint, but it definitely works better. Sealed everything with 4200 to keep leaks out, and also around the sleeve inside the old tubing to hold it in place a little. I normally would've used 5200 there, but I a) don't have any and b), it's such a tight fit, it's not going anywhere anyway. Can barely see the seam, so I guess that's a good thing.

After that, a shower, and I called it a weekend. Maybe this next weekend, I can even get company!

Happy 4th Weekend

So it's been a few weekends since my last confession. Boat visit. Same thing, I think. Oh right, I was up on the 22nd or was it the 23rd of June..and did nothing but throw some varnish on the table, and wallow in misery at my battery blunder. Since then, most of my time has been spent at work, watching the marina webcam to see if by chance my little blue blip on the screen would be moving. Unfortunately, as I watched a seemingly endless parade of every boat that wasn't mind, I felt quite a few emotions. Partially frustrated, despair, and just plain bummed, to name a few. Putting those aside, I decided to go up for the festivities of Fair Haven's 4th of July celebration this weekend. Saturday night brought about their Ring of Fire (everyone lights up flares along the shore of the bay, a great way to burn off expired flares!), followed by the town's fireworks festival.

Oh wait, I completely got ahead of myself! Ok ok, yes, it was a fun filled night of fireworks and things. But I forgot to mention that my battery bank is nicely replenished, thank you Mr. Solar Panel. I'm sure it's a little unhappy still, and I still plan on doubling the bank at some point. Even more importantly though, between grilling up some burgers and cleaning the boat up a little, our Yard guru happened by and asked when we wanted to turn this thing into a sailboat instead of a land yacht. I used the ever-popular line of "Whenever you're ready.". I don't know if with all the commotion trying to sort out flood waters, perhaps he forgot that I had previously asked, or maybe he didn't realize I was actually ready when I asked? But either way, he said ok, first thing in the morning Sunday. Music to my ears, really. Especially as I had been seriously considering just having them convert my rate to Summer Storage instead of slip rental, which has a marginal difference, but really, I was losing hope for the season.

I woke up way too early this morning, Sunday. They keep 9-6 hours (roughly) at the marina as far as work goes, and here I am, beating my alarm by only a little bit - Six Freaking Thirty. I pulled the hatch open, and was greeted with overcast skies, and fifteen knots of wind. It wasn't long before he came by to chat, and let me know that the gusts were going to mean that the mast couldn't be stepped, and wanted to ask if I'd rather wait and do it all at once, or go ahead and put the boat in the water and step it later. An hour later...

You can see what direction I went with. I wanted to get the boat in the water and at least feel accomplished, even if it meant the mast wasn't up yet. Plus, it means not trudging through mud or around hillsides to get to the boat any more if there was more work to be done on it.

So that was step one. Now, all I had to do was start the motor, and pop out into my slip. How hard could that be? As it turns out, when you have a Mercury outboard that doesn't like sitting for more than a week or two before deciding it doesn't want to start, pretty hard. I was hoping maybe, just maybe, a miracle would present itself in the form of a first-pull start. That's a nope. Luckily, they weren't scheduled to use the lift again right away, so they left me there to tinker for a bit, and let me know that when I was ready, let them know. When I came up and ran it a few weeks ago I put brand new spark plugs in. We ran it for about ten, fifteen minutes in a barrel to get it warmed up. But then it sat for three weeks. Four? Something. But this motor has always been picky when it sits. I pulled the plugs, they looked clean, so I re-gapped them again, put them back. More pulls, more nothing. This particular motor is a mid-80s model, and has an on/off switch on the left, as well as a tiller-handle mounted momentary push-button kill switch. I've never used the handle button, but I did notice there wasn't really a lot of travel, so on a hunch, I unplugged the wiring to the kill switch. A few pulls later and voila! It. Is. Aliiiiiive! I put the wires back together, sputtered out. Unhooked, started. Could this be what the issue has been all along? I do always end up flipping the on/off switch when it doesn't start, and that switch and the button are linked in the wiring, so perhaps there's something going on. We'll see as the season goes though, and maybe NEXT year is the year I buy a replacement? After a few minutes, we dropped the slings out from under the hull, and I motored slowly to the slip. Tied off easily enough, and that was that. We'll put the mast up another time, but at least we're halfway there.

The only tiny hiccup in my plan is actually at least three tiny hiccups. The end of my mast has become home to a nest of birdie babies. I'm not sure if mama bird will track them down, I would imagine she does. But what happens if they haven't flown the proverbial coop when it's mast raising time? I would hate for them to just get dumped out, so we might need to relocate them. Then again, if the next wasn't in the mast, they wouldn't need to be disrupted. Me? I blame the parents.

Tick Tock, still no dock

Weather sure has a way of toying with one's agenda. After having the week before last off but not able to get the boat in, the marina had hoped to be able to get me launched last week. I hoped they could hold off until the weekend so that I could be there for it, but either way was fine with me. I had gone up last Saturday and run the motor to get it warmed up, so to speak, after all.

So this weekend I went up and, well... waited. Well, for a lot of things - water, dryness, charging, to name a few.

I arrived Saturday around 11 AM, and upon entering, I could hear this constant high-pitched tone. Weird, that's the noise my power inverter makes at low voltage. So, I pulled up my Victron bluetooth app to check my batteries. Bring on the collective gasp - 5 volts. Have you gasped yet? For the uninformed, I have a 12v battery bank. And with batteries of such, in order to maximize (or - NOT KILL) your batteries, the recommendation is to not drop below a 50% state of charge. And I most certainly dropped. I was confused, VERY confused, when I saw the readout. That is, until I glanced up and realized that I had left my bilge pump in full running mode. For two weeks. We can get into the fact that it's wired wrong at any other point in time.

I have a 100 watt solar panel that did it's damnedest but after three days straight, judging my the history graph, it just couldn't take any more. I did my best to position it better throughout the days to maximize capture, and was getting about 85 watts most of the time. It did put a big damper in my wanting to use my laptop at night though. I don't have access to power where I'm on the hard, so I've always relied on the batteries, and never usually have a problem, but when you obliterate your battery with a constant drain, well, there's only so much you can expect. I even went so far as to hook up my emergency jump pack from my car to the bank just so I could power up the inverter long enough for about a half hour online. I gave up.

So what else to do, while waiting. I walked around the beach a few times, and watched the travel lift get stuck trying to retrieve a boat from it's stands to launch. This makes me less hopeful for my own prospects. I'd like to think where I am is a little more hardpacked than the grassy area of this other one, but it's still disheartening. I then decided to re-mount my fishfinder which is basically my depth reading, and that's it, onto a swing arm in the cabin so that I can move it in and out and not have it outside all the time. It isn't that it's not weatherproof, it is. But the area in which it was mounted, was in dire need of repair. There was an old regular piece of thin plywood that was just caulked into place to cover old instrument holes, and it all just needs help. So by removing it, it frees me up to eventually fix that. Last time up, I did glass over the inside of the holes, and this time, I started filling them with thickened epoxy. A little more to go and I can sand, fair, and paint that area and finally make it less awful looking. But regardless, I mounted the fish finder in the cabin on a swing arm, and fed the wire out the little access board I have. Should I mention that I wish I had brought a saw with me?

I also mounted a little voltage meter I ordered off Amazon for a few dollars. I'd prefer something fancier but it would really be overkill for what I use, and the money spent on one would be almost enough to effectively double my battery bank and another solar panel. And that is definitely planned for this summer.

I put a couple coats of Urethane on the table. And waited. That was all my weekend was, really. Oh, Sunday morning I got up and pulled the floor of my GL apart to see if I had water ingress. Nope. A story for another post, but it was something to pass the time with. And at the end of Sunday afternoon, still no water beneath the hull, and only a 75% battery bank by that point. I called it quits and headed home.

And 45 minutes later, turned back around to come close the hatch that I forgot to take care of when I left. Oops.

One step closer. Or six.

As we still wait for the waters to subside - which could be a while - I decided that with the coming week off of work that I had intended on spending on the boat, would still be started in spirit. So here's a slight timeline breakdown of what happened.

Saturday:

I loaded up the car (truck, SUV, whatever you want to call it), and headed up to the boat. I didn't need to take anything other than clothes and a ladder since I had left all my tools up previously. So the first thing I noticed on site, was that there's still plenty of water on the ground. Lake Ontario this year, as with all the Great Lakes, is suffering from much greater levels than normal. At last check, Ontario itself was almost three FEET higher than normal. And considering the shore isn't usually three feet above water level, it has led to lots of flooding and water issues. Fair Point Marina is no exception. Luckily, they use floating docks, which are less impacted, but the grounds themselves are. Compared to a normal year, only a fraction of the boats are in their slips, and even the launch area has been under water for a lot. Here's a map of the grounds. My boat is where the yellow circle is (that's not my boat, but it's where it stands). The red lines show where that particular section of road was blocked off due to a trailer and equipment on one end, and a section of docks stored on the other. No problem for me, I took the long way around, parked to unload, and then moved my cartrucksuv back to the normal parking area on the left side of the map.

For reference, here's a picture I just grabbed off the live feed webcam:

I decided first thing on my agenda would be to fit the new starboard bulkhead into place. The pieces I had pulled out, measured 7/16", but I'm not sure what it was actually made of. It was certainly plywood, and varnished, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just off-the-shelf stuff used at some point. The new pieces being 1/2" thick, presented a slightly tighter fit, but I did manage to get them in place, drilled and mounted. Here's a shot of the old one with the rotted wood, and thre replacement.

Then I sat back and tried to figure out what to do next. After careful consideration, I splashed a little bottom paint over the previous fiberglass patches. Back up on deck, I then decided that since I was sick of tripping over the remnants of the plywood sheet - a 5' x 4' section was left from the bulkhead project - so it was time to break out the saw. I used a regular basic jigsaw run off my inveter on the boat for my cutting, and it did rather well. A bunch of cuts later, and I was left with a new cabin table, a new section to use for my switch panel, and even new companionway boards, though those were more of a test than anything else. The originals were 4 boards, with a notch top and bottom to fit together. Without an easy way to make such a notch, like a table saw, I opted to try using the adjustable base on the jigsaw which angles to 45 degrees in either direction. Not ideal in that it leaves a pretty sharp point, but it did in practice manage to lock them together. I ran to Lowes and picked up some Minwax. I intended to get Varnish, and instead, ended up with a Stain/Polyurethane product because I got looking at colors and not labels. But I decided to forge ahead anyway, and stained the top of my table pieces and left them a couple hours to dry. Tossed some stain on another piece too. At that point, it was pretty much time to call it a night, so locked myself in, and watched some YouTube before bed.

Sunday:

I woke up knowing that I needed to find some motivation. It took a good drink of Crystal-Light-infused water, but I dragged myself up and decided to tackle the halyards. The easiest way to do this is with the mast down, which I was fortunate enough to have. But rather than try to fish them up and down the sheaves while perched on a ladder, I muscled the mast forward, until the masthead was on the stern rail and unbolted the piece on top. Laid the new halyard in place, bolted it back together, and then took the chance to flip the masthead arrangement for the VHF, anchor light, and the windex. The prior setup had the wind indicator at the front, which meant angling my head forward to see it, and it was just annoying. So now it's back to a traditional layout, and ready to go. While at it, I reused one of the prior halyards for a spinnaker set on the double block that was already mounted on the mast.

Back inside, I managed to put the hinges to a slightly larger table. The original design as best as I can tell, was a fold-down table from the bulkhead that could then open up to give a full-width table. Mine had at some point, been replaced with a slightly shorter, single table. I reverted back to the original style.

After the table, I tackled fixing the switch panel area. Prior to doing much, I glassed over the backside of the original instrument holes in the cockpit bulkhead to seal from weather. And then just used a stained piece of the marine ply as a new panel to cover up all the holes in the inside. Here's a before, and after:

Once I had decided that I was done playing in sawdust, I couldn't think of much else to do, so I passed the time with some painting of the liner inside. At some point, the main cabin area was repainted with a tan color, possibly to just cover up old dirt? And the V-berth area was painted in a dark blue. The problem is that it makes it rather dark inside, indeed. And without loading up with too much more light, the easiest way to brighten a room is to lighten a color. So a few coats of white in the upper half of the V-berth as a test, as well as the main ceiling of the main cabin, and I was surprised at the coverage. It certainly needs to be done proper, but for what little effort I put in, I was pleased.

I stayed until Monday evening, before realizing that with little to do on the to-do list any longer, there was no point staying on board while on the hard, so I came home. I did receive an e-mail this evening scheduling my launch for next week sometime. I'm hopeful they can push it til the weekend, but either way, I'll head back up this weekend with fresh spark plugs and gasoline for the outboard, as well as a sawhorse and barrel and give the outboard a good testing once more, just in case they launch mid-week when I'm unable to be there.

With any luck, we'll be wet soon, from the bottom up instead of from the sky down.

High Tide

Rocky and wet start to this year, that's for sure. Very high waters on Lake Ontario have hampered my launch a little, but not so much as needing to finish a few things going into the season.

A couple weeks back, I went up to assess the situation, and get the boat lined up and ready to go in the water. That was the plan anyway. Met my dad up there, we looked a few things over. First and foremost I wanted to get an idea for some measurements for things like the thru-hulls, the cockpit width and so on. I also pulled the outboard and brought it home, since I had left it with the boat the whole winter. I'm good like that. We also noticed some starboard bulkhead rot. Even though there were no signs of corrosion on the chainplate, the wet wood behind it was unmistakable.

Fast forward a little, to two weeks ago. I went back up, glazed over the old transducer with some thickened epoxy as basically a fairing compound and to seal it from the outside of the hull - this is the one that was seeping water at first launch last year, so this should prevent that from recurring. I also made a wooden plug coupled with more epoxy and covered with a couple strips of fiberglass to the old head discharge. This was the one that had a pinhole leak in the valve handle when in the open position. And since I couldn't even budge the valve off the thru-hull even with a pipe wrench, this seemed the next best way to give a little extra protection for that too. I do still have to go back up, sand, prime and paint those spots, but at least the hard work is done.

The outboard is refitted on the mount, after being able to get it fired up. I still haven't figured out why it gets temperamental when it sits for extended periods of time, but I THINK I've narrowed down a way to speed up the process of starting it in those cases. We'll see soon enough, and if I prove correct then I shall reveal my secrets. Otherwise I'll say it, it won't work, and I'll look like an idiot.

The most important part though is still sitting home and waiting replacement - that Starboard bulkhead. I removed it when doing the other work, and it does come out intact. The way the chainplates interact with each other is a little strange, but I removed the bulkhead and brought it home. My hope is that next weekend I'll be able to pick up new plywood, cut it out using the old section as a template, and take it up. Seal it with some epoxy, and get it back in and then seal the chainplate better. Can't really put the mast up in any manner of confidence until I get the new wood in there, so that's where I'm at right now.

Good thing the weather has been junk and that I took time to go on a small road trip, or I'd be a little sad about not being on the water yet.

The season approacheth.

First, I'll apologize for the falling off at the end of last season. There wasn't much to report in on afterwards. Didn't get much chance to take the boat out afterwards, but did spend a couple weekends on it towards the end of the season at the slip. Just to get away from home, really. Other than that, there wasn't much excitement, and eventually it was hauled out and stored in the corner of the yard. I spent a good chunk of this winter fighting with the Jag more than anything, and with any luck, will have a replacement soon enough. With that out of the way, here's what I'm looking forward to this year:

There were a couple of things I had made note of last year that I wanted to address while on the hard this spring. The first, is the over board discharge thru-hull from the old holding tank. The ball valve on it is not really in the greatest shape; If you open the valve, there's a pinhole leak in the handle area. Closed it's fine, sure, but I'm not full of a lot of trust that something doesn't go wrong. If I had time and weather, I would likely glass over the whole hole. But I'm not sure if that'll be an option this year, based on the location of the boat in regards to power, and sanding, etc. I can run an inverter off the car and do that, but I prefer not to sand fiberglass in the yard, considering the setup and everything. So the option this year may be to just replace either just the ball valve itself, or both it and the thru-hull with something new.

The next is similar. When we launched the boat, we noticed seeping water in an existing depth transducer thru-hull on the port side. Tightening down the ring had solved that problem. However, it's a wooden backing plate on it that seems to me like it just might end up repeating this. My guess is that it first gets wet, gets soggy and then leaks until it's compressed down again. I'd like to replace that, or again if time permits, glass over it. If nothing else, I'd like to pull the old backing block off, fashion a new one down with thickened epoxy and sealed, and see if that fixes it. It's not used for anything, but if it saves me having to glass over and repaint for another year, all the better.

Next up is the outboard. I'm looking for something more reliable. This old Merc does work, when used regularly. I did find that I liked the tiller shift on it, especially for low-speed maneuvering in the marina. But when I don't get to get there every weekend, and then it starts taking a long time to pull start it, it does get old in a hurry. I had an offer for a used Tohatsu from a gent in the marina, and if he still has it, I might. If not, I'll find one on Craigslist before the boat goes in the water. I'll just get used to the lever again.

And then rounding out the plan, is just new gear in general. New Fortress anchor, new halyards including a spinnaker set, replacing the one last missing stanchion, and fixing the pulpit finally. Then, a summer of enjoyment.

Mostly the last one.

A light weekend

Not much happened last weekend, other than going up and hanging out on the boat for the day, and finally getting my lazy self to work with some soap to scrub some of the deck. It actually made the boat whiter. Who knew!

So that was how last weekend went. Now let's fast forward to the first weekend in August. Leading up to this week, my brother had been hoping he'd be spared a weekend at work and be able to come up and enjoy some weather. But with the nature of the beast, comes the last minute text that he would need to head back in on Saturday. Hopefully he can get up next weekend and enjoy taking it out, even if I won't be able to join due to some other stuff I have planned already. However, the bright lining is that I had talked to my dad earlier as well and told him he was more than welcome to join. So even though my brother couldn't, my dad could. It's always more fun to take the boat out with company. It also makes docking a whole lot less stressful, as long as they are on the same page as you are. Don't believe me? Well fine.

I had intended on going up Friday night after work, but had some minor surgery to perform on one of the cars. Up early to do that on Saturday, and I finally got loaded on the the road around 10:30 AM. After stopping to grab some quick food - hot dogs and sandwich ingredients, I arrived at the marina about five, ten minutes after my dad had. I was glad he didn't have to wait for me too long. Wasn't a lot to load up, so we tossed it in the boat and then decided to head to grab some lunch prior to going out. Treated to a Chicken Tender sub, and he went with the Shrimp Basket, courtesy of Giuseppe's Sub and Pizza. Heading back, we pushed off and headed out into the lake. Anyone want to take a guess where there wasn't any wind? So we floated around for a while. There wasn't even enough wave actions to flog the sails, that's how dead the weather ended up being. I took the opportunity to jump into the water and cool off a few times, and even floated around on a tube and scrubbed down the sides of the boat a little. The starboard side had been pretty dirty so it was nice to get that cleaned. And it's always satisfying to send some spiders into the abyss where nothing but fish await. OH! Speaking of fish, we did notice on the boat loading trip, an interesting one hovering at the dock. I didn't have my camera, but it was one of these:

I had to actually look it up to see what it was, and was surprised to learn that the Spotted Gar is indeed native to Ontario and as of 2016, classified as Endangered. Kinda cool.

We chose to head back in for the evening. It wasn't so much that there wasn't a good spot to anchor nearby with no wind to get us there, but more that this was the weekend of the annual Fair Point summer bash. In true weekender style, I managed to bork up the shift linkage in the outboard as we docked. This is a 9.9 Mercury outboard, with a tiller shift design. I wasn't sure I had turned the motor off in Neutral so I turned it, and CLUNK into reverse it went - never to return. Oh well, we'll deal with that tomorrow. For the time being, the Bash! A great live band, and catered with some good eats. Even a Tiki Bar! They do this every year, but was the first time I was actually going to be at the dock to take advantage of it. So that gave us dinner and entertainment. We headed back to the boat and sat in the cockpit as the stars started to come out. We discovered Mars looking pretty bright - just recently it was the closest it's been in 15 years, so it wasn't too surprising. We also saw a couple floating lanterns go high overhead. And we also saw what we can safely classify as a UFO. Aliens? Who knows, but definitely unknown. It looked quite high in the sky, as if a plane. But was moving relatively quick, to where my dad surmised it might be a satellite flying past. Except as we watched it, we noticed it had a waver in the line it was on. Out over the lake it went, no sound, and disappeared. It was quite strange.

We woke up around 7 Sunday morning. My dad headed to the shower, and I woke up shortly after. Well, no time like the present to tackle this outboard thing. A recent knee injury has me being slightly more cautious (usually) than I normally am with putting weight on it, so I waited for him to get back, and we moved the boat a little, so it was angled in the slip. This brings the stern in a lot closer and allows me to remove the outboard from the kicker bracket from the dock, instead of trying to lift it up over the stern. Then came the long trek up the dock carrying the dumb thing. It's only about 80 lbs or so but it's still a workout. We propped it on the tailgate of his truck and tried to figure out what could possibly be gumming up these works. We first tried to remove the lower unit, thinking maybe something got borked in there. But we couldn't really see anything, and it would only drop about an inch and a half. So we abandoned hope of it being in the lower, and turned our attention back to the linkages under the cowl. The way this works, is there is a cable system from the tiller. This turns a cog wheel thing that not only operates a linkage to the throttle, but then also shifts gear. But for some reason, this sucker wouldn't shift! Finally my dad suggested we unbolt the piece that turns the shift, so we popped that 10mm bolt off, and bingo, instantly let us move things. It looked as if somehow, it skipped a tooth, is the best way to describe it. Here's a parts diagram for this thing, so you can see what I'm talking about:

So on this diagram, the shift assembly is #2 - two pieces that mesh together and turn in concert when the handle moves. There's a nut (#6 on the diagram) on the other end of the bolt that had us a little nervous since there's no way to get to it without removing the whole mess, but we chanced it. After removing the lower section of the shift assembly and re-aligning it, we put it back together and woohoo, we have shifting again! I tightened the bolt, and if I'm honest, I couldn't swear the nut wasn't turning on the other end, but it did feel relatively snug, and there's a bushing that the plastic piece sits over anyway. Back to the boat! Hefted the outboard back onto the bracket, and started the motor, shifted to Forward, yay! Shift back to Ne---no. Nothing. Now we're stuck in Forward. Talk about a "WTF" moment. I pulled the cowl, and that bolt had loosened up almost completely. This let the assembly not give any good bite, and wouldn't shift. I think what happened, looking back, is that when we first put the bolt in, it didn't REALLY get a bite on the nut. But this time, I said well, worth a shot.. and grabbed the wrench and it actually tightened up properly again. Ok, sweet. Problem solved. Until it changed problems.

I started the motor, shifted both directions multiple times, ok, so far so good. Wait.. why is there water pouring from the leg and not out where it should? Sonofa... I jumped onto a YouTube video of someone changing the impeller. There's a long copper tube from the top of the motor, down the leg. Then, there's a rubber sleeve, that slips over that, and then down onto the impeller housing in the lower unit. So what happened, we figure, is when we pulled the lower unit and even though it only got down an inch, it was far enough to dislodge that sleeve off the tube, so when it was running, it was just flooding water up the leg, and not up the tube. I also found the little clip shown in the video, that was holding everything from coming out. So we removed the pin from that, pulled everything down, reassembled properly, and FINALLY, we have water running, we have shifting. We even have a breeze. Away we go!

We had only a light breeze, about 1-2 knots of boat speed leaving the channel into the lake, and headed North for a while, as that's basically where it would take us. The sun was out, hardly any wisp of clouds, but we were moving, and that's what mattered. We chatted for a bit before he retired to the cabin for a nap for a bit. At that point, the wind slowly built up so we had a good 3+ knots of smooth sailing towards the West. After another hour, I decided to swing back around. I had a hunch the breeze was going to subside, and I figured if I turned back, it would mean a shorter motor back into the dock if it came to that. Dad woke up, and we had slowed a little bit, but we did continue making our way East towards the shore, and circled around a larger motor yacht anchored out. As we turned back towards the marina, it started getting pretty fluky on the wind front, so, a mile or so from the channel, we just dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way in. We had a smooth soft landing into the dock, and started unloading. It didn't take too long, and I let him head out while I buttoned the rest up. Overall a nice sunny weekend, and if you take out the no wind on Saturday, and the 2 hours of messing with the motor Sunday morning, it was pretty pleasant. I even took my new little Breeze 4k drone out for a test drive. Well, in the marina. I want to get a feel for it before I take it out and about on the water.