In the water/Out of the water???
14 January 2014 | Fonatur/Guaymas
Gabriellas grandpa
I'm two and a half months into this season and I can't seem to start my southbound trek. I finally launched the boat about 10 days ago and last Friday I had to haul back out of the water due to strong water leaks. The people that work for the marina were nice enough to haul me cheaply since they still feel a little guilty about the generator being stolen, plus they like me! I thought the water ingress was from the strut that holds the propeller shaft in place. So I took it apart and fiberglassed the area and put in new bolts with new bedding compound. The original area of concern was the four bolts that secure the rudder stock, so I just filled in the area with epoxy instead of doing a thorough reglassing and new bedding for the bolts. When they hauled me out on Friday, the travellift had a cable jump from one pulley to another and it was an uncomfortable situation with their low tech fix. In the process, two areas on the starboard side of my ama had cracked the fiberglass. So I had to reglass those areas as well. So after a lot of prayer and a lot of nasty dirty work we launched again this morning. Oh wait....let me step back a minute. When I was test driving the boat I felt the steering not acting normal. After we hauled out, I inspected it and found one of my pulleys completely of it's mounting with all the wood pieces laying about. So I had to reinstall a new wooden mount for that and took stock of the surrounding. MY BOAT IS FALLING APART! It was built in 1974 and I'm just now realizing that the life span of a wooden (plywood) boat is NOT forever. And I do not have the energy, the motivation, or the finances too rebuild it. To save the boat, I would have to replace a lot of its structure. Back to the second launch....I pulled over to the fuel dock and inspected the leak area and sure enough it was leaking. So I say the hell with it and start cleaning and loading the stuff back on the boat and will head south in a few days. I'll just invest in multiple bilge pumps. This has been one hell of a season so far. Susan...revisit last years posts and I think I discussed the EX thing there. Buddy boating with Joe was like being married, but without the benefits! My decisions were dependent on what we both wanted to do.