Our hearts go out to the families of our fellow boaters who lost their lives down by D.L. Bliss State Park this past weekend, as well as all the folks whose boats ended up ashore. Debbie and I were in the Bay Area when it all happened and I ran up Sunday afternoon to see how Splendido was faring after the squall.
In October 2010, we were caught out in a squall aboard Splendido that was only a fraction as violent as last Saturday’s event, and the memory of that afternoon haunts and humbles me to this day. We are so grieved at the loss of the folks aboard the 27′ Chris Craft off D.L. Bliss State Park and will reverently observe our own private memorial to them the next time we pass that way.
It’s taken me more than a decade to realize that living with a “good old boat” might have a lot of similarities to giving birth. Few can imagine the effort you have to go through to get her launched, but most folks can appreciate the magic and magnificence that happens when the pain subsides and the pleasure begins. 🙂
This year marks our 15th year of owning our lovely sailboat, Splendido, and it seems we were as busy over the winter fixing things as we’ve ever been. My sailing pal Ancil Sigman likes to joke that all she needs is a new gas cap and she’s a brand-new boat. 🙂 In a nutshell, we:
1) Disassembled, installed a complete rebuild service kit, and reassembled the Hurth transmission
2) Replaced all four motor mounts
3) Repacked the stuffing box
4) Dropped the rudder, cleaned the shaft and installed new rudder washers
5) Replaced the glow plugs and fixed the electrical wiring so the plugs actually warm up — now it starts like it should!
6) Re-wired and grounded the alternator properly with the help of AI and now everything works as it should — including the tachometer and battery warning light on the panel.
I learned so much working with Ancil over the winter. The man is mechanically gifted, to say the least. However, he’s not the best weather forecaster. Three storms ago he told me spring was sprung and we wouldn’t be seeing any more nasty weather. 😀
Launch day went very smoothly, although I tell my wife Debbie that owning a sailboat around here is like having an erector set (that was a toy kit back when we were kids where you could build things out of various parts, which they still make today) that you pull out in the spring and in the fall. First, you launch the hull and check for leaks. Then, you step the mast. Then, you attach and tune all the shrouds and stays. Then, you install cotter rings on everything, and then you put rigging tape over all those. Then, you have to wipe down the boat inside and out, as the pitter patter of everyone’s feet leaves your ordinarily white decks a hazy shade of gray. C’est la vie.
Here it is, June 1 already, and I, unfortunately, have not been able to sail yet. I spent the better part of a day trying to adjust the stuffing box I’d recently repacked, and didn’t quite nail it. You’re supposed to get 2-3 drops of water per minute when the drive shaft is turning, but I either got a lot more than that or nothing at all, which is not what you want. (No drips means it’s probably adjusted too tightly, so it’ll heat up and possibly score the drive shaft.) It’s a dicey thing, though: Who even wants one drip of water in their boat when it’s under way? 🙂
As I was playing with the stuffing-box adjustment, suddenly water started spurting out of the back end of the heat exchanger. A little investigating revealed that the back-end boot from the heat exchanger tube had developed a crack, so I phoned Trans Atlantic Diesel and ordered up a new boot. It should arrive this week. In the meantime, I’ve got all the little things taken care of around the boat, so she’s technically ready to sail right now.
The good news is, the lake level is high, the Tahoe parks folks have done a great job of cleaning up the detritus where I keep my dinghy, and the smell of the pines and the lovely breeze beckons me to get out on the water. More when it happens — until then,
Sailing Lake Tahoe on a good old boat 