I hate that saying.
Friday, November 13
True to his word, Ray (our mechanic) showed up at 8:30a.m,
ruled out a couple of easy fixes and then went out for a test drive. I suppose it
was a good thing that the engine whine appeared as predicted with the
mechanic on board, and Ray was 80% sure it was coming from the cutlass bearing.
Dan thought the whine was coming from
the transmission (especially since the cutlass bearing was just been replaced, like
two weeks ago). But Ray made a good case
for the source of the noise and believed there was a problem when the bearing
was installed. Sooooo, for the 3rd time this year, s/v Maja was
hauled out to check out the prop, cutlass bearing, all the good stuff that
works underwater. Fortunately, we were able to get the haul out scheduled and done
this afternoon.
Test drive #2 revealed that the haul out was an expensive
non-fix to our problem. Sooo, next up, pull out the transmission, order a new
seal kit and bearings. Parts due in
Monday.
And then we did what all cruisers do while waiting for boat
parts – scrub the deck, fill the fuel jugs, organize storage lockers, take
showers and drink beer!
Tuesday, November
17
Around 1 pm Ray showed up with our rebuilt
transmission. One set of bearings was
definitely bad and now we have 4 new ones.
The job was finished around 4pm, and since we are pinned to the dock
with strong SE winds, we decide to do a test drive on Wednesday.
Wedesday. November 18
Yeah, Wednesday sucked too. White caps crossing the ICW in a
heavy 15-20knot SE wind. This is when
it’s NOT a good time to be on the face dock.
Because we were planning several test drives with the mechanic on the
boat, the face dock had been best place for us to easily leave and dock. And for the first few days, we had a mild
North wind that helped push us from the dock when we left … and kept us from
hitting the dock when we returned. Not
so with a SE wind … Now would be a good time to
move to the back bay, but we’d never be able to power Maja off the dock in the
small space we had.
Not so bad … but bad enough to cancel the test drive when
Ray came over at 8:00 am. And bad enough to gouge our freshly varnished teak rub rail even with constant monitoring of the position of our bumpers. :(
That left us the rest of the day to prep to leave as soon as
the tranny tested out OK. Dave, the
wonderful dockmaster at Daytona marina, drove us to the Publix and we did a
quick run through the aisles.
After the fridge was all packed, I figured it was a good
idea to go out for dinner. We are tied
up right in front of the Chart House restaurant which has a dynamite happy
hour, so we celebrated our departure from this unexpected 7-day diversion to
Daytona Beach with wine! Yum.
Thursday. November 19
We settle our bill with the marina. We pump our holding tank
and fill our diesel jugs. We are
definitely leaving today. The wind was
calm at sunrise so we were up and prepping at 7am. Ray showed up at 8am and out we go for a test
drive. Transmission looks good. Alignment looks good. But, why won’t that damn whining noise go
away?
We come back to the marina … this time they put us in the
back bay … which kinda sounds like they expect us to stay for awhile and want
us to be comfortable. Well. Damn. We are
perplexed. Everything from the stern to
the engine has been checked or replaced.
The engine sounds good. There is
just no reason for that whine, and the only thing we could do further here would be
to haul the boat AGAIN and pull out the prop shaft, looking for something
strange. We are not going to do
that. So, our plan is to run the boat in
the rpms where the whine goes away … and maybe it eventually will!
10:00am: We are out of the marina, heading south on ICW. Whew.
Not a good sign
3 miles out, Dan went below to check the engine and found a
POOL of transmission fluid. It hadn’t
been there this morning, but it’s there now. {insert a variety of swear words and sad faces
here}. And we are turning around. Ye Gads, like a bad penny, we just keep
rolling back to Daytona Marina.
Noon. Ray was on the dock when we pulled in; I’ll give him that; always prompt. By 1pm, they had deduced that the shift lever
seal was leaking. So Ray took that part and was able to see that he had torn
the seal during installation, and he put in a new one. Back on the boat by 4pm. Too late to leave so the marina gave us
another free night at the dock. (they really
really treated us well there).
And just as we were lamenting the unexpectedly long delay in
our plans, our paths crossed with Jim and Linda on s/v Winsome. A little after 4pm, they came in for fuel as
we were saying goodbye to Ray. As they
were backing away from the fuel dock (right in front of us), their steering
cable broke and they lost steering. Jim
promptly dropped anchor in the channel, got out his emergency tiller, and in 45
minutes was able to get his boat back to the fuel dock. That was amazing to watch.
Even more amazing was Jim’s question to Dan: “Do you have a
1/8th inch clevis pin?” And Dan’s answer, “well, yes, I think I do”. And he did!
Dan spent the next couple of hours over on s/v Winsome, helping Jim make
the repair to his steering system.
Another pair of knowledgeable hands is always appreciated, but someone
who can help you make educated guesses and assumptions is even better. In short, they were in awe of how creative
Dan was (duh!). And our good karma cup
runnith over! It felt so good to be
helpful after the string of bad luck we’ve been having, and to get a boat
repair done in 2 hrs with one clevis pin!
After showers, Jim and Linda invited us to dinner at the
Chart House, only this time, we went UPSTAIRS for the first time and dined on
white table cloths! Nice. They are in their 70s and after 10yrs
wintering in the Bahamas, they are thinking this may be their last year. Something to consider when people ask us how
long we plan to keep this up!
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