Kaimusailing

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0UkeurjmS2tNJSuj4kqJAbIGDNAxGM4RY
That is the link to the SPOT tracking that I have been using. Unfortunately the automatic tracking puts a location every 10 minutes and only retains the last 50 locations, so the track only has a small portion of the passage. A work around is to manually sent up positions, like maybe every 2 hours or so.
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After arriving under sail alone into the mouth of Beaufort Inlet, I of course took a long nap at anchor. I was right across from the Coast Guard station and wondered if they would call me, since my boom was lowered and the boat looked like hell. I monitored CH16 and heard a lot of chatter, boats requesting help, Sea Tow responding, TOWBOAT/US responding, Coast Guard responding. There was still a lot of wind although in the inlet it was protected from the swells out in Bogue Sound.
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I prepared to work on the engine which had an electrical problem. I knew of a fuse on the primary 12V line inside the engine cowling that fed voltage to everything which would explain why the power tilt didn't work as well as the starter. The multimeter was dead, so I stripped it down and found lots of corrosion on the circuit board within. It was cleaned up with cotton swabs with clean water and then denatured alcohol. When reassembled it did not work properly, intermittently coming on and off. I found the 9V battery was bad, one of the terminals was coming apart. I looked in my electrical tool box for a trouble light which might help troubleshoot the engine problem. I found a meter that I had forgotten about, a wrap around ammeter that also had voltage measuring function.
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I prepared the jumper cables so that I could bring ground from the battery down into the engine box with me, hook up the negative pole of the meter to it, and test for 12V on the engine wiring. It was complicated by the fact that the engine was tilted up which put the wiring, at the front of the engine, out of reach and out of sight. It was also difficult to slither down in that space to do any testing. The engine cover was off and I began pulling at the wiring, trying to find that vital fuse. And there it was, no need to do any testing, the wire was broken. It had been repaired in the past with crimp fittings and vibration over time caused the wiring to give out right at that crimp fitting. It was not that difficult to prepare the wiring and put new spade and female fittings on it.
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Now the tilt worked and the engine fired up. I found that the manual choke wasn't working, the cable was frozen. It didn't matter. The anchors were drawn up and Kaimu motored up the inlet to the anchorage in Taylor Creek in Beaufort.
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The tide current was coming out with a lot of force and we burned about 5 gallons of gas to go about a mile.
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Rest and recuperation continued. I made penne with mushrooms and ham in an alfredo sauce. More sleep.
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Once again Sunday happened to not be a day of rest. The wind generator was removed from the stern crosstube. I could see what happened. The following wind that drove us along from the reef also spun the wind turbine backwards. The nut holding the blades on its shaft unwound and off went the blades.
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The damaged double turning block was removed from the genoa and staysail sheets still wound around it, then the bolts and wood still attached were removed. I found a piece of wood that had been used long ago as a pad for clamping some part of the boat when it was being built. It was thick enough and large enough to provide a piece of backing for the turning block. A paper pattern was made of the underdeck inside the pilothouse, where the backing piece would be installed. Then the piece of wood was marked and cut with the circular saw using the generator for power. It was test fit in place and fit perfectly. It was jammed from below to stay in place while the turning block was put in position on deck and its bold holes marked down below on the backing piece.
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The holes were drilled and a large batch of epoxy with colloidal silica was mixed, about a cup of resin and hardener with about 3 times that of silica mixed in. The backing piece was slathered in the epoxy mix and jammed back into position. From above the void of what used to be plywood was now filled with the epoxy mix, kind of like icing a cake. New longer bolts were installed in the turning block and a piece of plastic wrapper was put onto the base of the block to keep epoxy from jamming it up after the epoxy cured.
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The block was installed, bolts were drawn up, the rest of the epoxy was used to fill any remaining gaps. It was the end of the Sunday workday. I made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich out of the remaining bread, some moldy cheese, and ham leftovers.
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The picture is of the mouth of Beaufort Inlet which looks deceptively calm. The wind at this point is around 20 knots. The picture on the previous post was once again turned on its side by sailblogs image algorithm.