Waiting for a transmission... no, not from our home planet :-) Well, we're at a marina again... but this one is actually a boat yard and they are going to put a new transmission on the starboard engine.


Here is the starboard transmission. It's a Hurth HBW100 2R / ZF 10M -- which means it was built in Italy after the ZF company acquired Hurth. This is good for us, because this particular transmission is still being made (only now it's just the ZF 10M).


Can't see the crack? It's not easy...


But "Dr. Diesel" at foleyengines.com says that despite their wonderful properties, the Hurth is a "dollar an hour transmission" -- about $1200 for a new one, and it will probably last 1200 engine hours... ours were both purchased in 1999 from Foley. So in a way, this is not unexpected. We are hoping (hope, hope!!!) that the port engine, having been used less than the starboard, will last a little longer before needing the same treatment. Also, the starboard engine has been under a great deal of strain with the misalignment due to the untightened mounting bolts (viz. Mark Hyma, our otherwise wonderful mechanic in Pensacola) coming loose and the engine thus moving on its mount, misaligning itself, which stressed the flex coupling (trashed -- replaced by Mark de Jong, our mechanic in Key West) and the damper plate (also replaced in KW by MdJ -- to do that, he had to take the Hurth transmission OFF and put it back on again afterward). Now, MdJ realigned the engine and the bolts are tight, but the case was already cracked... Derek had reported to MdJ and his guys that the transmission seemed to be losing fluid, but they told him to put an absorbent pad underneath it to monitor the situation... the pad that was soaked through when the tranny failed just outside Marathon's Boot Key Harbor.

The weather was full of lightning and thunder last night not too far off, and this morning is the usual after such a thing passes: mostly sunny and wind from the north. Right now it's still from the NW, but it will clock around as the day passes, and the forecast has it building up to nearly 30 mph. That's hairy-chested weather for sailors, but if it's pointing against the Gulf Stream, that's insane weather for crossing. Not to worry, the new transmission can't be here before Tuesday...


The cat seems to be better. She's sleeping a lot, and we're not sure she's eating anything beyond the occasional vitamin, but we have tasty "Nutri-Cal" to feed her if she really isn't eating (she hates it: I have to smear it onto some tongue-accessible part of her fur and she licks it off but then won't talk to me for hours). She has a favorite sleeping place at the moment, so we are leaving the comforter piled onto the portside settee to allow her to recover right in the center of everything.


When we came in Thursday, they told us they had an open space along the wall for us, but when we got into the creek itself, there was no open space. So they told us to raft up alongside this big ol' wooden powerboat, which wouldn't be so bad, except:
1) She's got termites
2) She's covered with bicycles, so moving along her side decks is downright dangerous
3) She's in need of a lot of maintenance
4) Getting up onto her deck to get ashore is an athletic event from our deck, and Heather's arm-pull abilities are seriously affected by that left wrist still in the process of healing.

Turns out, a sailboat called Setting Sun had happened into the same creek just before we entered, and took our spot without a word to anyone. By Friday afternoon the office people had figured out what was wrong, and they asked Setting Sun to go raft up to someone else... they chose a nice, new, lower-decked catamaran (gorgeous boat, really), and they are now happily rafted. Here's the boat we were rafted to, and Setting Sun in the background with their higher class of raftup:


The area is interesting: the town of Marathon itself spans a number of different keys, the main one being Key Vaca. There is a Boy Scouts of America Sea Camp nearby, called BSA Florida Sea Base. Apparently, the yard we're in is also the yard that services their boats:


Heather finished the chafing gear for the two lines of the anchor bridle. It looks a bit like jeans for a really tall and skinny pixie:

We saved Derek's last pair of destroyed jeans exactly for such a purpose, having read in one of the many cruising books we absorbed that because of its softness and sturdiness, old jeans material is great for chafing gear.