Well that was fun

Do you have friends or acquaintances that “things” happen to?  You know the ones, they go out for groceries and encounter all sorts of mayhem.  They witness a car accident or their brakes go out, or some random pulley on their Ford diesel powerstroke flies off leaving a 2 inch groove in the asphalt.  Well, we are those people.

Last night I’m walking the dogs and slipped down a wet staircase.  I may have cracked my ulna and if I wasn’t such a fluffy person, I would have broken my hip or pelvis for sure.  The bruising is quite impressive.

But, the big news is that as mentioned our refrigeration system is down.  If we have a hose hooked up directly to the system, it works.  We have flushed and used a barnacle buster to no avail.  But, as long as we are at the marina, we can run it this way.  The AC doesn’t run while charging up the fridge/freezer however.  I’m surely loosing water weight this trip;)

THEN, while desperately trying to reheat a 1/2 cup of coffee while the fresh pot brewed this morning I killed our power.  Mike remembered there being some sort of trick to the microwave power and called Pete and Linda who quickly got us sorted out.  Whew…

But the big news happened while we were underway during our maiden voyage.  Barefoot Pete, a retired attorney who does not wear shoes, whom we have just met last night and Peter, former owner, came with us.  I was at the helm and we were motoring out planning to raise some canvas and get some practice in.  We were 1/2 way to the bridge, maybe 3/4 of a mile and the motor died.  We quickly lowered the anchor and Peter and Mike dug in to the engine.  She was definitely fuel starved and after 4 hours they ended up taking the fuel line from the generator to make the motor run.  We decided we would motor out past the bridge and turn around as it was getting late.  We prepared to pull the hook and the windless had no power.  Right.  Mike and Barefoot Pete pulled up their big boy pants, sat at the bow and pulled up a 60# (my guestimate)  Rochna and roughly 60 feet of heavy chain out by hand.  This sounds much easier than it is.  So- out we went, turned around and motored back to our dock, where I parked us without banging her up.

I have a plan for tomorrow (hopefully) to make it a prettier job, but I was super stoked that I did as well as I did.  Voyager has quite a bit of prop walk in reverse and I wasn’t planning on that. Prop walk?  What the heck is that?  Well, when standing in the cockpit, looking forward, the left side of the boat is the “port” side.  When in reverse, Voyager has a port side tendency, where she wants to drift that way- hence “prop walk”.  All boats have a tendency to either port or starboard, it’s just a matter of getting the feel for what your boat does. There’s also 3-4 seconds of delay in the propeller from forward to reverse that felt more like 30 seconds.  This is due to the “feathering” prop.  This means it folds in when not in use and when going from forward to reverse, it causes a delay.  All of this I can now predict somewhat.  Voyager handles so well, though that I was thrilled just to be at the helm and get a feel for her handling.  Boats have personality and we are getting to know hers.

Several good things came from today.

1. I won’t forget the microwave or toaster can’t run with AC and fridge.
2. Mike is now intimately acquainted with Voyagers nether regions ie: the Ford Lehman.
3. Barefoot Pete and I had some great conversation about boats, adoption and local culture while Mike and Peter slaved in the engine compartment.
4. We discovered these issues while safely within the range of help if we needed it.  One of our dockmates was out on his dinghy and saw us and checked in.  We really like this place.
5. We are quite accustomed to things going wrong and are adept at keeping level heads in all kinds of situations.  I have no worries when this happens because I have complete confidence in my husband.  Having Peter on board who of course knows the boat so well and Barefoot Pete who is so willing to help was a bonus!
6. Matthew was easily entertaining himself and caused no disruption.

I don’t know the moral of the story, but although we had several set backs today, we are better off  knowing about these issues before we start out on a big passage.

Obviously the last pictures include my injuries.  I spared everyone the full body hip picture and chose just a “color swatch”.

Peace out~  We will see what tomorrow holds.  The current plan is church then sailing.  I’m sure there’s another adventure in store for us 😉

Per Mike’s request, I’ve attached a photo of the fuel that he removed from a fuel line going into the engine.  And with this fuel,  when it was running, it ran like a champ.  Crazy!!  But, he is now polishing the fuel after he removed a faulty fuel pump, changed 4 filters and replaced cracked fuel lines.  Hopefully that means the problem will be solved and we can head out tomorrow afternoon.