Two and a half months later
16 March 2013 | Kolonia
raining big time
It was a big day on Friday. The reassembly of the engine is well on it's way. It's now right side up and after over two hours of trying, Jun finally got the transmission reattached to the engine. When Peter took it apart, he wedged his back against the wall and kicked and kicked and kicked the engine until it finally disengaged from the bell housing. There it sat on the bottom of the engine pan. Jun raised and lowered the engine numerous times trying to get the spindle from the transmission to match with the engine. Finally, just a 1700 was looming, he made it. It was in and bolted on. During this process, we found that the bolts that attach the motor mounts were only about 1.5 inches long with 1" of it being taken up by the mount. That left only a half inch of the screw actually holding down the engine. No where near enough to actually hold down the engine. One of our tasks for the weekend was to find 3" stainless steel lag screws to properly do the job(Tracy found them Saturday morning).
Saturday morning, Leslie and Phillip off Carina held a class on how to get Google Earth photos onto the Open CPN navigation program. Out here, charts aren't the most accurate when it comes to things being where they are supposed to be. Putting Google Earth photos over the charts corrects the problem putting you actually where you are in relation to the reefs that surround many of the atolls out here. Great class with about 12 cruisers attending.
In the afternoon, we headed for town to do the laundry. There are two "laundromats" in Kolonia that we know of. One had about a dozen washers and 6 dryers. The other has three washers two dryers. We headed to the "big" laundromat first. Every washer was taken and only one of the dryers was working. Tracy made the decision to head for the small laundromat. It's actually a small container off a ship that they have cut windows and doors into set along side of a dirt(coral really)road off the main road. Nice a clean with larger washers and dryers. Wash costs $1.50 and to dry costs $2.00. Well, they were all busy too but we finally got up and running about a hour after we got there. We were done by 1830 and stopped at a restaurant to have dinner on the way back to the boat. Found Harry and Haily off "Jack the Toad"(another pair of cruisers)there so we had dinner together. Back at Zephyr about 1945. A long day for sure.
The really big thing that has taken us two and a half months was that we were finally able to put the doors back on the engine room!!! We've had them leaning up against the wall ever since we got here and now they are back where they belong. It's been a long time.