The story goes on. The engine was lowered into it's home under the cockpit sole yesterday, and some adjustmentst and allignment was done before darkness. As an added bonus we had some 25-30 knots of wind and heavy rainshowers to keep us in good mood.
There is somethng about this whole project that just don't work out for us. very little bit, every piece to install, or adjust refuse to cooperate, and time is slippng away here. When the engine was mounted and the coupling to the shaft tightened, it turned out that the lever for the gear couldn't move freely. It was so close to the hull. The wire for the gear also seemed too short!? This truely seems mysterious, since both engines are Yanmar 30 hp 3-cylinder and 'supposed' to be made to fit the bill...
In our darker moments, we are starting to wonder if we ever will leave this wharf again, maybe under sail...?
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Waiting is something we had an opportunity to practice quite a bit lately. Last Friday, the 'metall partner' as Hendrik calls them, hadn't got any time to help us making new mounts. Then during the weekend nothin happens of course.
Yesterday, Tuesday, H calls me again,( could I detect a trace of embarrassment in his voice?) and apologizes for his 'metall partner' who now complains that this was a difficult task for him and he needed a little more time....
So we are still waiting here at the now so familiar wharf at Dirham Port, hoping to see him back sooner rather than later. At least he reassured us yesterday that all the other bits and pieces needed for the installation of the engine now was in the trunk of his car. We are praying for the car not to get stolen or....
as shown in this picture, new mounts ARE good idea.
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Today is a public holday here in celebration of the 20th anniversary of th Estonian Independence independence from the Soviet Union.
This day is also known as the 'singing revolution' which certainly sounds like a less bloody albeit not nedessarily dramatic event than the Frrench revolution.
Lots of credit to Hendrik who choose to spend this holday breaking loose all the rusty nuts that attached the old engine to the interior of Röde Orm's abdominal region. Not only did he choose to do so, but in fact he even brought one of his friends to help us out with this task. Bep, who work as a technician on slot machines at one of the many casinos in Tallinn, turned out to be an uncrowned king of this trade. I baptized him 'Mr NutBuster' To keep him in good mood while he fought the badly corroded bolts in a strangely folde stance in the cramped area under the cockpit sole...
Of course new problems arose, and nothing is ever so simple and easy as we think, is it?
The steel parts, bolted to the engine bed, upon which the engine were mounted, were heavily corrroded aswell, so they had to come out. Not at all voluntarily I can assure you, corroded steel is, as everyone who fought it knows, extremely reluctant to let go.
Even when it's corroded to the point when the steel kind of falls of in layers, it is still rremarkably strong. Believe me in this, my knuckles carry some bloody trace of the truth in this statement.
To be comtinued...
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Tonight we will start breaking the old engine out and then tomorrow install the ner one.
A big day for Rode Orm, but perhaps slightly less important for mankind
The picture is from Tallinn
there are more of them heree:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9218039@N06/
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The Old Town has medieval origins and is very well preserved to this day. Over 500 restaurants and bars, night-clubs, and souvenir shops and then of course tourists from all over the worrld everywhere.
Quite a contrast to our quite cruising life tha last 5-6 weeks.
The name Tallinn means 'Danish Town' in Estonian. The danish apparently founded this old trading port in the 1200's when it bacame the End, or the Beginning depending on your view of the Danish King Valdemars Trading route from Ddenmark, through all of the Swedish Baltic Coast with it's thousands of islands, via ?.land and Finland to Tallinn.
From 1561 and during the next 150 years, Tallinn was an important stronghold for the eaterns part of the Swedish 'empire'. Then it was German territory for many years, and after that the Russians took over.
Estonia with it's 1,5 million inhabitants has a quite short history as an independant nation. They became free at 1918 after the Russiian revolution, and then, ironically enough, became occupede by the Soviet Union in 1940.
Then upon the 'implosion' of the Soviet Union, they were independent again in 1988. In fact they will celebrate 20 year anniversary on Wednesday the 20th.This is called the 'singing revolution'.
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