Cheap Fill

This is going to be a quick, low-quality, cut-rate, disappointing post to fill in this big blank period between the last post and the next post. I'd call it an interim post, but I think I've overused that term in some of my earlier shallow excuses. We are working on a new post, but other commitments keep splattering on the windshield of life and delaying us. Hence this Cheap Fill of a post to let you know we haven't forgotten you. Nope. Not at all.

We had a visit from an old friend in late June. The "Star of the Sea" stopped by the island on another run to Haiti. Captain Bob Nichols and crew spent several days here, taking on fuel, food, and water. If you have read previous posts in this blog, you have read about the missionary work that the three-masted schooner has been involved in. If not, or if you'd like to read up on the boat in more detail you can take a side trip to that post by clicking here: Star of the Sea.




While setting up that link I noticed that we've written and posted photos of the boat on four different posts. I am hoping most readers know that if you click one of the topics on the list over on the bottom of the right side of this page, you'll be instantly transported to posts on those subjects in a separate window. When you're done, just close that window and you'll return to this one. In the perfect Internet world, that is.

We heard Capt. Nichols on the VHF radio one morning as they approached Providenciales on their way in from the Bahamas. They're once again out sailing the seas to deliver donated food and supplies to orphanages. They sail from Florida to the orphanage in Cat Island in the Bahamas, and then they sail from Cat Island to here. From the Turks and Caicos Islands they go pick up more supplies at the Morton Salt Company on Great Inagua and take them to starving children in Haiti. We published a map in the earlier post. Here's a photo of the ship docked at the Southside marina. This was taken from a little shelter where it's rumored that passing sailors and motor cruisers occasionally put aside their differences and get together for cookouts and happy hours. It's a nice spot to take a break on shore for cruisers who need a break on their journeys between the Southern Bahamas and the Caribbean.



We did have another reason to visit the boat again besides just saying hello. Captain Bob had decided it was time to replace a couple of the main sacrificial anodes on the hull of the Star of the Sea, and this is a good place to do it. For any non-boaters out there, these anodes are just big hunks of the metal zinc. Boats with metal parts in the water (and especially those with electrical systems) generate electrolysis in seawater. The short version of all this is that zinc acts like the weakest link in this circle of electron swapping. It corrodes away first before iron, steel, or aluminum corrodes away. This is useful information to boating people who don't want their boats' metal parts to disappear.

When these hunks of zinc anode are all eaten away, the electrolysis starts eating on the aluminum, iron, and steel parts next. So from time to time someone has to remove old corroded zincs and replace them with new ones.

Captain Bob had located two suitably sized anodes here in Providenciales, but they needed to be modified to fit the mounting studs welded to the hull of the Star of the Sea. He brought them over and left them for me to do a little 'bush machining'. I ended up 'milling' the slugs down and drilling some holes to make them fit. Here they are sitting in the skiff.



I should have put something in the photo for scale, but the line there is ½", if that gives you an idea. I said I 'milled" the ends, but actually I used a reciprocating demolition saw to cut the ends down. This is because the studs welded to the hull only protrude about an inch, and the zincs are too thick. Ideally, with correctly sized zincs, the holes would be drilled in the steel mounting flanges. If you're curious about the labels, "Camp" is the name of a company that specializes in zinc anodes. There are lots of different versions. Painting over the zinc is bad because paint protects it from the sea, and the electrolysis goes looking for something else to eat. Like, a rudder or a propeller shaft.

We took another look at the ship while we were delivering the zincs. I don't think that I ever showed you where cargo is stored in the previous posts. I was trying to think of something new to photograph, and I know that I was interested in where they stacked seven tons of food.

This is the starboard side of the cargo hold. The food boxes are stacked in there between the fencing and the hull.



You can see photos of those food boxes being offloaded in Haiti if you jump to the second half of the post Loose Ends.

I don't know, exactly, what's inside one of those food boxes. I'll try to remember to ask Captain Bob to send us a photo of the contents one of these days.

This is the port side of the cargo hold. Yes, that's a mattress on a sheet of plywood on top of the cargo cage. This is where one of the crew sleeps for the entire cruise. No air conditioning. No television. No room service. No privacy. No kidding.

And not very comfortable in ten foot seas. What holds you on the mattress?



The food is decent though. I certainly wouldn't begrudge them a good meal. We can also verify that in addition to being an old-fashioned modern-day sailing missionary, Captain Bob is an excellent cook. That's another oxymoron, isn't it? I had already decided not to call him a swashbuckling Christian, and then let old-fashioned modern-day slip by me. I'm leaving it in because it comes as close to saying what I mean as I can think of right now, if you know what I mean.

Capt. Bob and his crew were out at the house playing catch with Dooley the Dervish. Well, it was 'catch', or 'fetch' if he missed the catch. Dooley loves it. And Bob noticed that all the fuzz was chewed off Dooley's favorite tennis ball. He said he had about 500 used tennis balls that he was taking to Haiti. He figured he could probably spare one for Dooley. So I asked him why he was taking all those used tennis balls to Haiti. Bob told me the majority of these kids in Haiti have never in their lives owned a rubber ball. If they want to play 'catch', they have to use a rock. If you've ever played catch by throwing a rock back and forth, you probably know that it's a totally different experience than playing with a bouncy rubber ball. There's something missing from the fun of the game when you have to catch a rock thrown at you. A single used tennis ball would be the equivalent of the best gift these kids ever received. Probably the only gift they ever received that wasn't immediately eaten to survive. Things are pretty bleak in Haiti.

We try to help where we can. Like, getting the word out that the mission still needs donations to pay their expenses to make these life saving trips to the orphans. When the accumulated donations add up to five thousand dollars, and the donated food is ready, they can start planning the next trip. The food is donated by churches in the USA. Bob donates the ship, and the crew are all unpaid volunteers. The money goes for diesel fuel, food, and supplies. Using a sailing ship is about the cheapest way there is to transport tons of cargo. I thought I would show you guys that donations to the ministry are not going for luxury ship accommodations.

We took a tour of the ship again when we dropped off the modified zincs. While we were down below decks, Dooley the Detective was searching the deck for the kinds of things he's interested in. Every time I looked up, he was pacing past the portholes, and peering in to see what we were up to. I thought it made for some good photo ops:



I was also playing around with some of the effects built into the photo software, looking for a frame that would complement the round porthole:



Dooley really wanted to come down below with us, but we decided it best to leave him up where he couldn't get into much trouble. If he had smelled rats on board, it would have been a different story. It's very, very obvious when he gets on the trail of a rat. I'll spare you the ugly details, but suffice it to say that rats use Dooley stories to scare their kids into behaving.



We didn't abandon him on the deck, of course. We wouldn't do that to him. We'd have to pay for any damages. Anyhow he was in good company with one of his new buddies. This is 'Sharky', from Cat Island, Bahamas.



Did you notice that anthropormorpologically speaking, Sharky and Dooley have assumed the same pose in that photo? Is anthropormorphologically even a word? I doubt it. And if it is a word, there's a better than even chance I am misusing it. I am trying to say they have settled into similar sitting positions, given their obvious differences. Dooley is the one getting his ribs scratched. Looks to me like they are both enjoying it.

Sharky is sixteen, and is the son of the director of the Cat Island orphanage. He is making his first big sailing trip away from home. Nice way to start. Sharky brought us a watermelon from Cat Island. We iced it down and shared it with the crew. Delicious.

We noticed that the ship is starting to show the effects of all the wear and tear of constant traveling in the tropics. This boat gets tied up next to some pretty marginal docks and wharfs and quays and, well, rocks. She gets a beating. Bob told us that she is going to be hauled out at a shipyard in Florida after this trip, and the hull will be cleaned and painted. I'll try to show you some before and after photos the next time she comes through 'town'.



Speaking of beatings, I really don't mean to beat you up about donations but we believe that what these guys are doing is just one of those worthwhile things in life. It's very basically just the right thing to do from a purely humanitarian aspect. These food donations are not just a big box of candy bars. Those kids are starving, literally. And it's not just the children who are helped by this. Bob was telling us that on the last trip they were in Haiti during the cholera crisis. The survivors of the cholera are intended to be put on specific diets in order to let them recover from the ordeal of being completely cleaned out of nutrients and the good kind of intestinal bacteria. But the right food is seldom available to most of them, and continued dehydration and starvation are very real threats to their continued existence. The donated food is the ideal mix for cholera patients. So in addition to that seven ton cargo feeding hungry orphans, it is also being used to increase the chances of survival of the adults that are taking care of them.

I posted a link to the Star of the Sea mission on that previous blog post. This time I am posting a link to their Facebook page: Star of the Sea. There are more photos and information there for you Facebook fanatics. If you can spare a few dollars for a good cause, please help. And it doesn't always have to be just money, although space on the boat is somewhat limited. I've already told you about the tennis balls donated to liven up life a little for the kids of Haiti. While the crew was in town here, we also took them to rendezvous with a local businesswoman who was sending a pile of donated clothing back to Haiti with the ship.

Now I'll get off my soapbox, and back to our own little privileged world, where nobody starves and where children are never even asked to imagine living a short miserable life in a hungry world without toys.

Ah, speaking of toys (how's that for a segue?) I thought I should make some modifications to the skiff after our experiences in some squalls a couple of weeks ago. As captain of our own little boat it behooves me to make sure we don't get caught offshore in those conditions again without a radio, a compass, and something to hang on to. I know, I know, it would also work if we just stayed close to land. We'll take that under consideration, but in the meantime, I have made some modifications to the boat.

This is what the little console looked like before I started. I have already installed three grab rails so that people have something to hang onto, and I have ideas for a much more substantial frame and seat. I want to have one fabricated that incorporates a seat and windshield frame in front of the console. That project is still in the design phase. I also needed a compass and radio. The compass is easy, and I bought one of those on a trip last month to Pittsburgh when I stopped by a West Marine store. Mounting the radio was a bit of a challenge. I just could not find a good place to mount one on this little boat.



I wanted the radio protected and out of the way. We only need it when we need it. I decided I had to make some kind of a mounting bracket. I used a scrap piece of marine plywood for the prototype. Easy enough to screw the radio bracket to a strip of plywood:



All those shiny shavings and dust are zinc particles left over from me sawing up Captain Bob's anodes, in case you were wondering. I should have taken some photos of that. I had zinc shavings in places that should only see zinc oxide. I cleaned all this up after this project, but at the time I knew I was going to be sawing some more metal to mount the radio. Sure enough, I added aluminum and 316 stainless shavings to the pile before it was all over.

I had some aluminium angle left over from the modifications I did to the Hobie Tandem Island trailer (photos in that same Southside Marina post) and I just used two pieces of that for angle brackets on each end of the plywood. I drilled two holes in each side of the skiff console that match up with the two holes in the brackets. This way, the only mods to the console are four little holes that are nicely covered by stainless screws. I might even be able to engineer up some drink holders that use the same screws.



I did run into a problem in mounting the radio antenna. I didn't have any stainless quarter-twenty bolts that were threaded all the way to the head. I needed four bolts that would hold the antenna bracket to the fiberglass console. It was a Sunday when I was doing this, so I couldn't just make the always exciting trip to the hardware store for the correct bolts. And not being a disciple of delayed gratification, I couldn't wait until Monday. So I just continued cutting the existing threads with a ¼-20 die. Which added to my pile of metal shavings. I did vacuum it all up once I put the hacksaws and drills away.



Here's a before and after photo. You can see that the top bolt would not let me tighten up a nut enough to hold this antenna mount (the thing in the top of the photo) to the thin fiberglass. The bottom bolt is the 'after' version. A tap and die set is one of those tools a DIY guy will find very very useful in a place like this. It sits unused for long periods of time, true, but when you need to cut new threads or clean up old corroded threads (which is called 'chasing' threads, by the way).... there's nothing better than having the correct tools. And for me, nothing rarer.



So anyhow, here is the 'after' photo of the skiff console with a compass, grab handle, VHF radio, and a short 4' antenna installed. A four foot antenna won't give us the range of an 8 ft. antenna, but it should cover us for most of the places we'll be taking this little boat. I had to cut out two places on the plywood strip so that it cleared the hydraulic steering and the bottom of the shifter/throttle assembly. If it works out okay, I plan to replace the wood with Starboard or some kind of plastic, using the prototype plywood mount as a template for the finished bracket. What I'll end up using for that will depend upon what I can find locally. An added benefit of having the VHF is that now we can register the boat and fish legally.

How would you like to have to haul your boat up that driveway? And the driveway is MUCH better than the road to the nearest pavement, four miles away. We do a shake, rattle and impact test on the boat and trailer every time we leave the house.



Another aspect of living here is what I've learned about fuel and outboard injectors. Using unfiltered fuel from the local marinas has caused me a fair bit of grief over the years. These days I tend to buy gasoline from the automobile stations and top up the skiff's 25 gallon tank before leaving the house. I think the automobile fuel stations have cleaner fuel, because it's fresher. They have a higher turnover than the marinas, and they tend to use more modern pumps with better sediment filters. The fuel at the local gas stations also is less expensive than the marina fuel. We just filled up the Land Rover last week, and diesel is presently running $ 6.30 a gallon here, to give you an idea.

I now use a little Racor fuel filter when I fill the skiff's tank. I use this even with fresh fuel straight from the gas pump. And I'll show you why.



I wanted to top up the tank for a recent trip up to Water Cay (more on that in the next post). This is the fuel filter when I started. No water, no dirt.



I drove the Land Rover to the nearest Texaco station and filled up two clean six gallon containers with gasoline. I just siphon the fuel from the container to the tank. This is easier than pouring it, and doesn't splash all over the place. Also, the filter is limited as to how fast it can pass fuel through the filtering screen (2.7 gallons per minute max) and using a small hose works just fine. It also lets me carry on with other stuff while the siphon is going on.



After siphoning six gallons of fresh, new gasoline, this is what was left in the little Racor. This was filtered out of the fresh gasoline:



About two tablespoons of water in six gallons of new gas:



There were also particles of sand and what appeared to be rust in the fuel. And this is the clean stuff fresh from the pump. Of course we also have an even better filter between the tank and the Suzuki, and I have started trying to keep the tank in the skiff topped up to minimize the condensation inside the tank. It's also a handy place to store gasoline for the generator, but that's a whole 'nuther story for another day. Our generator gets used a lot.

Well, despite my initial description of this as a short post, I see my long windedness has stretched it out about as far as I feel I can get away with. We have another post with some nice photos and videos coming up. All these mods to the skiff and filling it with gasoline were, of course, preparations for a trip to another island. I managed to cobble up a way to mount the new GoPro camera to Dooley the enDuring... and here's an advance photo of him after swimming ashore with the camera attached:



Just editing a few minutes of video from Dooley's view makes me feel like taking a nap, but we'll get it done. Actually, La Gringa takes over from this point on the videos, and we recently generated a lot of footage to go through and edit. We have also just returned from a 4th of July trip to Austin to visit family last weekend, and on the way back to the airport we stopped by an electronics store and bought two sets of anti-fog inserts for the GoPro camera. So we should be able to improve upon the quality of our videos using that underwater housing by preventing the lens from fogging up. Hopefully. We'll soon know about that, as I have several ideas for some different videos and more of the still photo montages and time lapse stuff we've been doing. For example, I am thinking of attaching the GoPro to a rock or anchor and lowering it down to deeper water outside the reef. That outta be fun. And of course we have scads of ideas using the Dooley DogCam approach. He doesn't seem to mind being a camera platform. I am drawing the line at buying him his own director's chair and a beret, though. Hmm.... Dooley the Director...?

I'll close this one with a short time-lapse from the GoPro camera. We were hoping for one of those nice, dramatic, tropical sunset scenes. We didn't get one of those because we were in a typical summer hazy day situation here. But I am hoping we can compensate for that with the neat effects of the clouds reflecting on the salina as they head for the sunset and the horizon.





Cool, eh?

Underwhelming Post

I'll warn you up front that this is not a real blog post. It's a temporary post to fill in this increasing blank spot until I can put together a real one. You know how life sometimes sneaks up behind you and gooses you when you least expect it? We've been feeling like we were just a half step ahead of the gaggle for weeks now. But enough of my whining and excuses. I'll give you a brief rundown of what we've been up to. But first here's one of my favorite 'La Gringa sunrise' photos in a long time. This was yesterday morning:



Looks almost biblical or something, doesn't it? I was standing there in nervous awe waiting for some kind of cosmic announcement. You just never know.

And let's face it, we're long overdue.

Looking at that photo reminds me of how much a part of our lives this stretch of ocean has become. It's our local stretch of ocean, for a while anyhow. Just a few hundred feet away. It's constantly changing. We see it every day but I know sometimes I don't even glance at it unless something is moving out there that catches my eye. And stuff does move across it almost all day long. We get to see a lot of boats. Power and sail. Big and little. Local and foreign. This is the only boatyard with a travel lift that I know of between Florida and Puerto Rico. Maybe there's some in the DR. Probably. Oh, and we see lots of aircraft here. And birds. We have raptors here. Osprey and the zippy little American Kestrels. Those are like a cross between a seagull and a fighter plane. And we also get to see a whole lot of weather. There has never been snow or ice here in the history of geology,  of course, but we get  sun and wind. And those two elements alone make for some massive effects on the sea.   Frozen water is a lot more stable.

The next photo is pretty much the same view on one of our few cloudy days. The sea goes from crystal clear blues and turquoise to slate gray. In this photo, a squall is coming right at us. It's about six miles away and will be here in about half an hour. We have gotten pretty good at estimating which ones will hit us. Of course it helps when you can see them coming from fifty miles away.



This is the same general view at another time. The sky is clear, as it usually is, but the light source is the full moon. This photo was taken at night, with almost no wind.



I know we've posted photos of that ocean when the waves were crashing way up onto the rocks, and the spray was blowing hundreds of yards inland, too. It's always changing. Every dawn is different in some way. This is a real good spot for people who like the ocean. And don't get too nervous about water spouts. Or hurricanes.

Now, back to some of the mundane stuff that's been occupying our time recently. If you read the previous couple of posts you know we just imported another boat. This one is a small, easily trailerable skiff. Anyone who has been following our story knows some of the hassles we have had to deal with in hauling our other power boat, the Contender, up and down this hill and on these dirt roads. We like the ability to trailer the boat to the ramp nearest where we want to go. We also like keeping the boat out of the water. It's incredibly convenient to keep a boat in the water, but it adds a lot of complications when you can't keep it close enough to get to in a hurry. Ask us how we know about that.

Anyway, a lot of people have written to ask about this one and since I need some 'content' for this post anyhow, here it is:



This is just about a 'bare-bones' skiff, although not completely. A truly basic skiff would have a tiller outboard and just a gas tank and hose in it. A place to sit would be an option. This boat has a little more than that of course, but compared to the Contender and the Andros, this one is simplicity itself. All the options are in that one photo. We have a console, hydraulic steering, a jackplate, and trim tabs. That's it. Oh, and the bimini. I forgot we added that for some shade. The motor is a four stroke, which is a new experience for us. Just when I was learning all I could about two stroke HPDIs. Oh well. I have already bought the manual for this one, and four strokes are very familiar to me already.

You probably can't really see it clearly in that image, but the trailer hubs are the new oil bath type instead of the old grease glob approach. I like them so far. Trailer hubs have been a big impact on my life lately. (I had to replace all six of them to get the Contender to the water) I can lift the tongue of this little XO rig and walk it around a little. This is very useful when hooking up to the truck. And no, not just for the exercise.

We've had the new boat out twice so far. We did the quick shakedown cruise out to look at the Lionfish. I wrote about that in the last post we did before this one. Since then I have made two hand spears for the Lionfish, but we haven't had the chance to test them yet.

After the first shakedown we made another longer trip up along the reef, through Pine Cay channel and back around to the Dellis Cut. We needed to put a few hours on the motor to complete the break-in period. Like we needed an excuse to go boating. One thing I have noticed is that the gas mileage for this outboard is so good I am suspicious and want to check it again, more carefully. It couldn't have come at a better time. Fuel just hit $ 5.70 per US Gallon here.

Dooley the Drowsy was trying out various snoozing-in-the-sun spots. He likes this boat. He can see over the gunnels from anywhere on it. He's wearing his life jacket because there's nothing to keep him from going right off the back of the boat when I hit the throttle and he's up strolling around. He doesn't mind the jacket, and it has a great handle for snagging the little booger when he falls overboard.



My little camera was not at its best on this day. There was moisture inside the lens, which makes the photos blurry and uncrisp. I picked out a few of the clearer ones to show you and I apologize in advance that they are not up to our usual efforts. We normally take two cameras.

This is where the half billion dollar Dellis Cay five star resort seems to have coasted to a halt. We don't know the details, other than what's been published. The charges filed are that the developers spent several million putting up these concrete shells, while taking deposits and payments for these and future condos. Lots of money is involved. Meanwhile what was once a hive of construction and fast talking activity is now largely silent. We did see some workers there in one small boat and what appeared to be a couple of security guards.



I wonder how these open shells will fare should they still be incomplete when the eventual hurricane comes through here. The concrete is good, the roofs look solid and well designed, but I doubt that it was intended that the wind could ever get under them. Those roofs sure do look a lot like potential wings to me.

The government here would dearly love for someone to take over this massive project and complete it. I'm sure they would be very easy to work with on permits and taxes. Anything to get this project completed so it can start generating income. So if you have any friends with deep pockets who always wanted to own an exclusive resort on a privately owned island an hour south of Miami, here's a chance. Building permits all approved by a former Minister. With the blessing of a previous Governor.

This is where the previous developers had their real estate office. As I recall, there were some floating docks here, and that framework was covered with some pretty fancy canvas. Well, hopefully, someday it will again be moving forward. Great location. We would like to see it either finished, or returned to its former, natural state. Since that's going to take more than one hurricane, it would be better to just finish it so that people can enjoy this water.



After anchoring off Dellis Cay for lunch, we boogied on back to Leeward over the Caicos Bank. We wanted to establish a good route for the new boat. This is pretty easy navigation on a clear calm day. The area is riddled with sand bars, coral heads, submerged rocks. And some of the rocks are not so submerged. At least this one has a pole and light to mark the edge of one of several shallow channels.



There are far more unmarked rocks than there are rocks with lights here. I'm not sure at what point a rock gets promoted to island. Or in this case, a cay. What I do know is that it could be downright unpleasant to run into one of these unmarked ones at night.



It would be almost as unpleasant to run into one in broad daylight, too. Now that I think about it. I guess it would be a lot more colorful in the daylight...

Since this is a 'hit-and-run" kind of post I am going to just briefly touch on some of the other stuff we have been getting involved in over the past month. We still drop by the Southside Marina from time to time for happy hour. Usually when there are a lot of sailing cruisers in town. A couple weeks ago we got to meet Debbie and Ed from Ontario. They had read about the place in this blog and emailed us when they were in town. They decided to change their normal routine of taking their boat, Ariel, back up to a shipyard in Georgia for the summer. This year they are going to leave it stored here in Provo. This should give them a real jump start on heading further south into the Caribbean when they come back in November.

We got to wish them farewell as we were exploring the canals in our Hobie and saw them at the Caicos Marina and Boatyard. We can see Ariel from our patio, as I type.



We've managed to fit in probably another half a dozen sails in the Hobie since our last post. Of course we've taken photos of Dooley the Deranged nervously trying to stay on the trampolines, and movies. But until we make some changes in the way we take photos from the Hobie, they all start looking the same, don't they? I figured you guys had seen enough of the standard Hobie sailing kayak images from us by now. So I am not going to post up another dozen of them here.

I did want to show you this one, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that this photo of my GPS is showing that we have been sailing for 2.20 nautical miles since I turned it on. The top number is showing that when I took the photo, we were sailing along at a brisk but comfy 4.6 knots (5.3 mph). And that other number says that at one point since I turned the GPS on during this trip we hit 10 knots. That's a lot more 'brisk' and 'comfy' and then becomes a topic for discussion. There are different types of 'comfy'. Ten knots is about 11.5 mph. Most typical sailboats sail in the 7-8 knot range on their best day. To do 11.5 mph with your rear pockets at sea level is quite exhilarating. And wet.

Oh, the second reason I wanted to show you that photo is that it's the last known image of my beloved Garmin GPS 60CSx. I don't know where I lost it, but it was at the end of this sail. I think at the ramp. Hopefully, someone somewhere is benefitting from it.



Now, I am almost out of nice colorful tropical scenes for this post. And we think you can hopefully look forward to some new video capabilities from us. We recently picked up one of these little Hero HD video cameras. You know the ones, look like a little camera in a clear plastic cube that people stick onto their helmets and jump out of airplanes and off mountains with? (Was that a run on sentence? Ending in a preposition? Forgive me Mrs. Rizzo and LiteracyLady. I'm trying to illustrate by example. Yeah, they may be bad examples.) But this camera shoots good video and reasonable stills and can be stuck onto boats, Land Rovers, foreheads, and maybe even small dogs if they can be coerced into cooperating. We'll see.

In addition to those boat trips, in the past month we have had a lot of other things going on. I somehow crashed my computer big time. La Gringa got online with Dell Customer support, and they sent a new CD with drivers to a US address, who sent it to us. She got it running again, but I lost a lot of information. My last backup was in July. Ouch. I also have found that I have to learn new versions of software for programs I had stubbornly refused to update over the years. Oh, and I lost a lot of my photos.

We also decided that it made sense for us to move the Contender from our driveway to someplace next to a boat ramp. The obvious choice was the marina where we can see it from our house. You would probably not believe the string of DIY projects I went through to get this rig from this driveway to the boatyard 900 yards away. That's over ten miles by road, by the way.

I've just decided that I am not going to bore you with all the DIY stuff that it took to get this boat running and in the water again. We went through an incredibly stressful day-before-April-Fool's-Day. That was the day I discovered I lost my GPS. And we got the Contender to the water, but three wheels came off the trailer while doing it. And with water in the fuel it took me a long time to get to the boatyard with the engine dying every few feet. And I had to jump in the water and swim to the back of the Contender to climb aboard the ladder, forgetting that I had my cell phone in my pocket. Does your cell phone battery make crackling noises when you dunk it in the ocean? And the oil filter on one of the Land Rovers rusted through where a stone had dented it, and it sprayed all the oil out. That was March 31.

In the last month we also had a house guest. And we spent last week in Texas visiting family. And I'm leaving out some parts, no doubt. But you get the idea.

But we DID manage to move this rig from this driveway.....



...down to a ramp, and over to the marina, and back on the trailer 900 yards away. Looks pretty out-of-proportion to the little Defender 90, doesn't it? Well, we didn't tow the boat over on the trailer. Our limited tow vehicles are another reason we wanted to move the boat over to the yard.



Did I mention that moving that boat from the trailer in the driveway to the same trailer less than 2 km away took us four days? I won't go into the details of replacing six sets of bearings on tapered spindles. It wasn't much fun.

I know I keep saying I am going to spare you all the trials and tribulations of the ongoing Contender and Yamaha HPDI saga, and I will. If I let it get out of hand, I could find myself posting very long DIY blogs every three or four days. I know that not everybody reads the DIY stuff. It's boring to those who are not into it.

Heck, I would avoid it too, if I could. But I can't. It calls to me every morning. Like some sadistic rooster screaming 'Fix ME! Fix ME! It's a crock of doodle, toooooo!'

Well, for y'all who avoid DIY stuff, this is a warning. The next few photos are involved in just ONE of the little projects it took to get this boat floating again.

The motor wouldn't crank. That's the sole symptom I had of something being wrong. Everything else on the electrical circuit worked. I spent months puttering around with various ideas, concentrating on something within the Yamaha, or the ignition switch. Of course I kept taking things apart, a few things here. A couple circuits there. Removed two of the four pumps and fixed them. I ended up fixing everything on the boat.

I also found the starting problem. The direct lead from the battery to the starter had a splice in it. Still does, come to think of it. Battery cables are as thick as one of your fingers (no, I don't know which one of your fingers. Heck, it's probably two of your fingers now that I think about it. Or a toe. 2 toes.)

The cables are too thick for me to solder with what I have here. I'm actually not sure what it would take to solder these cables. I think mechanical connections seem to be the norm when it comes to heavy wire.

So, I determined that this break was indeed the demon that had haunted my Contender DIY nightmares for the past few months. A few notes here. This was NOT a Yamaha HPDI problem. It was a five year old crimp lug that had completely corroded. And rumors that chasing this down made me want to turn in my McGyver card are not true. Well, not entirely.

But back to defending the HPDI, I jumpered the battery directly around the break and turned the key and the HPDI fired up within seconds. After sitting outside unstarted for almost a year. On old, but by-golly some finely filtered gasoline.

Okay, now just the one DIY project for this post... I could NOT find a crimp lug big enough for this cable on this island. And I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried.....

Nope. Although everyone I spoke with agreed that it would be a great idea to have them in stock on an island where electricity returns to the earth via many paths. Maybe some day someone will stock them. But for now, nada.

So I bought about a three inch section of copper plumbing pipe and made a crimp lug. First, I just hacksawed out the piece that looked the most like a crimp lug.



After I cut out that little section, I turned it and sliced it lengthwise, so that I could spread it slightly and get the cable ends into it. I have a hand swage tool from another project that worked great to crimp it once I got the cables in.

Speaking of the cables, I learned something in this DIY that might be useful to someone, someday. You other boaters out there will likely know what the wiring in your bilge looks like after it's been exposed to salt water. All the wire surfaces develop an oxidation. I'm not exactly sure what it is, probably cupric oxide. I read that cuprous oxide is red, while cupric oxide and this corrosion are both black. Anyhow, normally one would replace all the wiring in a boat once you discovered that the wires inside are covered with this black coating. And if you are a realist, you will also recognize that the temptation is there to make do with the wiring on hand.

I couldn't replace the wiring in this boat with what is available on this island even if I felt like dedicating the next six months of my life to it. I decided that in this case, an easily identifiable (yeah, NOW it's 'easily identifiable') mechanical splice would be acceptable with clean wires to make the contact. I thought of using my Dremel tool and a little wire brush to clean it, but then I decided to take the lazy approach and try to dredge up some memories of chemistry classes of days gone by.

I figured with something this simple, copper and oxygen, I could find something in the house with something in it that would eat cupric oxide. First I tried the green stuff in the bottle in the photo. The teeth in that one are phosphoric acid. It didn't do diddly. Except to make a spot on my arm turn bright red. And the top of my feet.



Now, here's the part you can use. I found out that toilet bowl cleaner works great to remove the corrosion from the copper wire. The one I used has hydrochloric acid in it, but I suspect that any brand would probably work. The blue stuff in the bowl in the photo above is "Sno Bol" cleaner.

This is what a formerly blackened cable end and a former piece of copper plumbing pipe can look like with some tender loving care. If the definition of TLC includes acids and hacksaws, that is.



Anyhow, I put it all back together, turned the key and fired that puppy up.
There's a lot more to the Contender story, but since it's now running great and located just a few feet away from a paved ramp at the boatyard, I am not going to dwell on it all again. That's old history now.

Did I tell you I hacksawed the entire tongue off our new trailer to fit it into the garage? Well, I will save that one for the next post, too. I gotta stop this one somewhere so that I can get it posted. Or to be more precise, so that La Gringa can get it posted. She will have already taken all my major screw ups out by the time you read this!! (thanks, honey)

Speaking of La Gringa Suprema.....what do you think of this sunset photo she took?



Not too shabby, for a girl.