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skipgundlach · 07-12-2014, 11:25

Whole lotta shakin' goin' on revisted, Part 6

Well, because it's been more than a year since our last log from Cumberland
Island and St. Marys GA, there are those among you who probably thought that
one of our gamestoppers, as seen in prior parts of this extended log, was
that we sank.

No, not that dramatic, though there WAS one failure, if the bilge alarm John
Gamble (svhotwire.com) built for us during our first refit (2004-2007) hadn't
kicked on, alerting us to it, that could have, eventually, sunk us.

This has been the story of shakedown interruptus.

At every move of our home, at the end, there was something which stopped us
from going further. We set out on January 26, 2013, for a shakedown
following our nearly-two-year refit. Before we even got out of the launch
slip, our start battery failed. Not when we were restarting off somewhere
in the middle of nowhere. Right there, where we could borrow a car, fetch
out our old, and buy and install, a new, battery - and off we went. That
was followed, after we came south, by my noticing, in my preparation for
raising the sails, the problem with our genoa which would be addressed
later, but which prevented our using it for our first several trips.

All of our moves, whether passages or mere daytrips, has been successful.
We've been blessed with all of our failures occurring such that we weren't
hindered by them at the time, and such that safety was not an issue.

Our trips (the only ones in this series you've not yet seen) from Fernandina
Beach to Saint Augustine and then to Vero Beach, on Christmas Day 2013, were
romps. Legs of the second trip can be seen in our shakedown gallery by
clicking the gallery link below. That the first was a real nail-biter in
the beginning was washed out by the fantastic sail.

However, about the paucity of logs, to shorten the tale, while our shakedown
seems overwhelmingly long, there have been multiple month-long trips to
visit family, as well as a couple of excursions related to my
national-championship Freshman (Marietta College, Ohio) crew (rowing) in
between repairs. So, we weren't stuck ALL of the time!

In addition, this year, Lydia's mother moved from the home of a friend to a
retirement center, both in Vero Beach. That's a significant portion of the
reason for our current length of time in Vero, though there have been
several game-stoppers which happened here, too. It seemed that as soon as we
got one addressed, another arose.

The summer was by far the worst we've ever had aboard, even when we've been
in a yard, from heat to bugs and beyond. At that, we're still aboard,
though it might have been close (yikes!). We - remember, this is cruising,
where, in addition to "you plan, God laughs," there is that cruising plans
are rarely cast in sand, let alone more firmly - are going to try cruising
(Bahamas and maybe further East) in the summer and sticking to a ball in
Vero Beach in the winter, a third of the time which will involve travel to
our rapidly (geographic and personnel) expanding families. In between, we
might get jobs (that's the snowbird season, and there are lots of short-term
jobs available at minimum wage or thereabouts) to try to rebuild the boat
kitty, as our refits have sucked up all the rest!

A propos of the above ground travel comments, at this time, we're on yet
another swing, initiated by the imminent birth of Lydia's 3rd grandson (I
have 10, mixed), and won't be back in Vero until sometime in November.
Perhaps we'll be there in time for the amazing cruisers' Thanksgiving the
city sponsors each year...

So, anyway, over the last 20 months, we've accomplished what amounts to a
major refit in the water. The list is huge - if you're either a masochist,
or looking for a reason why you don't REALLY want to sell your home and give
away all your stuff and move aboard a boat, or prepping yourself for your
own chore of the same nature, this will suit - over 40 significant items can
be seen in the shakedown gallery, some of which galleries include several
sub-galleries due to the complexity of the given repairs or upgrades.

In the meantime, we've enjoyed our several locales as we visited, sometimes
to fetch parts, and others as mere tourists. These are shown in the
Anchorages thumbnail and their sub-galleries. In nearly every case, at each
locale, we've met cruisers we have known during our ACTUAL cruising times,
and met others with whom we've become fast friends. Some of them we even
provided crew, encouraging them to venture out and explore. As much as we've
been stuck, many of these folks' adventures had us drooling and twitching to
get back out there.

Passages in the shakedown gallery will show you some pictures under way, as
well as screenshots of our SPOT locator beacon, available at (no leading
www) tinyurl.com/FlyingPigSpotwalla. That allows one to go back more than
the only-a-week of SPOT's page. If you're interested in where we've been on
our various passages and trips (it's been quite a while since we moved the
boat!), you can see all the way back for several years by adjusting the date
range at the box on the left.
,
We expect to be back on the water (as in, cruising/shaking down, yet again)
around the first of the year, more or less. Our to-do list, like most here
on the water, expanded nearly daily in the beginning. However, it's down to
niggling stuff, some of which has been there for years, due to the "blah"
nature of both the chore and the significance of not addressing it right
now. When we get back, I'll button up the navigation suite, which includes
removal of some equipment no longer used, a chartplotter which has had a
display screen service call, a resolution of obtaining a location fix over
the three computer-based navigation programs we have, a nearly total
rewiring of the various connections of the navigation instrumentation, one
of which solved a very significant and safety-related problem we'd had, and,
finally, a resolution to our GPS issues. After that, I'll address the two
forward bilge pumps, and, if we don't get another surprise, we'll be ready
to go.

So, thank the Lord for our protections in all of our failures, and the
directed activities which helped, or protected, or merely identified our
many issues aboard.

We'll be back at it soon. Stay Tuned!

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at Web-Folio -- Your Portfolio on the Web !
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"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other
people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of others' opinion drown out your own inner voice;
and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary".
- Steve Jobs