Bye Bye Tree House
06 September 2009 | Deltaville, VA
Mike
September 4th, 2009 Jackson Creek, Va
It was cloudy this morning but was supposed to clear around noon. Our plan was to take off sometime during the pm. After coffee I started puttering on little jobs that ended up taking all day.
First, I replaced the wire that that connects our SSB antenna to the tuner with the proper material that Dave from "Fawkes" had dropped off the night before. Then I plumbed the line and strainer between the thru-hull fitting to the water maker. The last item on my agenda was grounding the inverter/charger, which took forever. As you know the inverter charger is behind the stove and nearly impossible to get to. However, by gimbaling the stove all the way to the port and crawling under, I was just able to get my fingers on the grounding lug.
The common ground is located in the bilge and is always wet and nasty. When I opened things up to attach the ground it was a mess. I spent about an hour just cleaning things up before hooking up the ground.
Finally it was time to put the tools away. I sorted things out, got everything in the right box and then began returning the boxes to their homes. I fired up the water heater and by the time our showers were finished, it was 3:30. I ran the jib sheets back to the cockpit, attached the board that holds our jerry cans, stowed everything that needed stowing and looked at the clock again. Too late to go anywhere today, we'll just have to leave in the morning.
September 3, 2009 Jackson Creek, VA
It is still blowing from the north and although we could travel, there are still some things to finish up on the boat. One of them was to install the brine overboard hose on our watermaker. It runs from our watermaker to our sink drain, both of which are located under the waterline. When I put things together, I plugged the fitting on the sink drain and it is potentially disaster now that we're in the water.
So after coffee I sat on the floor in front of the galley sink and stayed there most of the day. I won't go into detail... but will say that I found some minor problems in my new plumbing system that needed rerouting, the compression fittings on the Seagull filter were still leaking, and I planned our the wiring system.
At one point I rowed the dinghy to shore and walked up the hardware for parts. I returned to put things back together and it was 3:30.
Dave came over from "Fawkes" with some wire, a book and a video on grounding and ground planes that we had spoken about last night. I spent some time in the evening reading the book to return tomorrow but will keep the video.
September 2nd, 2009 Jackson Creek, Va
After two months and a day we're floating. I tied off the mizzen topping lift while drinking coffee and headed over to yard to find the lift operator. Ed (the manager of the Marina) bid me farewell and the driver (who's name I should know) said that he'd up about 9 to pick us up.
Kathy and I bled the fuel lines and we were ready. The launch went without a hitch and we made the 100 meter cruise to our anchorage. It is rough on the bay and even though our destination is less than two hours away, we've been our there in north winds of 25 and there is a video to prove it somewhere. It wasn't pretty.
We were in the water about 10:30 and spent a few hours checking things out. We had some lunch and then I we lowered the dinghy off the foredeck and into the water. It was filthy. We put it away in that state and it got worse... imagine that. I loaded up with cleaners and a bucket of water, went over the side, and spent about two hours scrubbing. I rinsed it off and then sprayed it with 303s pretectant.
The rest of our afternoon was spent reading. There were a few boats out and about, but not many. Later we saw a ketch coming from up-river and heading our way. Even at a distance "Fawkes" was easy to identify, no one carries orange fenders off the stern. They anchored next us and a little later stopped by for a chat. They had spent the winter in Florida getting Angel testing and into a college and then were in Deltaville for a new engine in the spring. They missed us here by 2 days. In fact, as we were leaving Norfolk I heard Dave on the radio talking to shipping traffic but couldn't raise him.
We had some left over roast beef and lots of vegetables, so I made some beef stew with dumplings for supper.
Today Lansing was warmer that Deltaville by one degree. It felt wonderful.