Monday, August 17, 2009

As the adage goes, "You can't change the wind, but you can adjust your sails." And so a month after taking off, we are adjusting our sails. It appears that our grounding on the rocks did some kind of damage since we are now taking on water at a slow steady pace. It isn't anything that the bilge pumps can't handle but it is not something we are willing to accept and live with.

Every cruiser goes aground at least once and usually more than once. Bill Rohde emailed that they almost went aground in exactly the same place we did but the marina staff saw them and frantically waved them off. Wish we had been as lucky. It wasn't a terribly bad grounding and yet there was damage down so we are going to have her looked at and fixed to, hopefully, make sure we can handle future situations. The next time we bounce it off the bottom we don't want it to leak again.

In retrospect it is good that it happened now before we get somewhere where being able to fix it is more problematic. So we will not be making it out the St. Lawrence and south this year. There is just no way that we can get her fixed and move the distances we need to with the degree of safety and wisdom that we both want to use as we cruise.

We have talked to the Kingston Marina here and they can haul Eos out and there are a couple of contractors who are willing to look at the job. But even though we can get it fixed here they do not have room for us to store her over the winter. Although, one of the fiberglass contractors is stopping by this evening to look at Eos even though she is still in the water we are pretty sure that we will take her to Shumway Marine in Rochester, NY at the next good weather window. Carl Berdie another cruising friend had work done there last year and was impressed with the whole set up.

Thunderstorms are predicted for the next couple of days all around eastern Lake Ontario. There is now no hurry and we don't want to subject her to rough seas while she is oozing so it may be several days before we leave Kingston.

At Shumway we can get her fixed, have some canvas work done, store her for the winter and more easily fly in and out. All in all, the best scenario we think. We have talked to Skip Shumway and he said we would be able to work out something reasonable regarding long term transient dockage there for the rest of the summer and early fall. That would let us get some things done off the ever present "To Do" list. I expect that at a minimum they will haul her out enough to see what the problem is and then may take some time then to fix it which will probably mean us getting some place to stay for a little while or flying back to MN for a visit. We might also all decide to put her back in and do the work later in the fall after we are off the boat. Then we would just stay on her until sometime in October(?) while running the bilge pumps. We will just have to see. The first thing we have to take care of is finding out what the problem is and then we can go from there. Being long term transients from now until fall will also give us chance to talk to a local canvas man and figure out how to rig some shade for the cockpit. Having the weather so very hot and the sun so very strong has convinced us that we will be much more comfortable next year with that in place. For instance, we are both trying to keep cool inside the boat right now. There is some breeze outside but it still isn't enough to compensate for the sun beating down on us.

Staying in Rochester is not really what we want to do for the winter. So when we know more what will happen for the next couple of months then we can look ahead to figure out what the winter will bring for us. Finding a place to stay that isn't imposing on anyone for so long and getting wheels will be the key things. We will keep you posted.