Well, it was a whirlwind after St. Georges, mostly involving
the work of decommissioning the boat and putting it away.
We managed a few meals with friends, a second HASH
(walk/run), and a cooking demonstration, though. Interestingly, the cooking demonstration at
True Blue resort turned out to be about cooking conch, so we have finely tuned
our cooking conch protocol, and are ready for next year. We'll save you from the rest, however.
Haulout on May 4th went well at Spice Island Marine in
Grenada. The work on the water and in the boatyard was difficult for us; and we
put in very long days. It was not too
bad with evenings in air conditioned comfort at our little room at Cool Running
Apts.
Laurie's birthday was celebrated at Timbers with friends for
a lovely meal out after a hot and sweaty workday on the boat! Timbers is the restaurant in the boatyard,
only a 5 minute walk from our rented apartment.
The flight home on May 9th was also comfortable and without
significant event, although customs and security lineups in Toronto were
outrageous, and we had to stay over one night in Toronto unexpectedly due to a flight change.
All was found to be well at the cottage, with no failures or
problems with any systems or the structure.
As well, as a result of a rather mild winter, we found all our friends
to be in good spirits. A special thanks
to Hugh and Liz who checked on our place and picked up our mail for 6
months! Laurie has been thrown into the
chores at the cottage and within the neighbourhood, and Dawn is setting up to
assist Jean, her mother, in a major move from condo to retirement home.
TECHNICAL
 |
| Poor Laurie in over 40 degree temperatures on his birthday! |
The big story with the boat was the changing out of the old
diaphragms in the saildrives. The
diaphragms keep the sea out of the boat while allowing the engine and drive leg
to vibrate and move. The primary one is
a very heavy piece of reinforced rubber in a disc with a hole for the leg, held
in place against the hull by the bolts of a retaining ring, and against the
saildrive by being sandwiched between the upper and lower assembly of the leg
and related transmission. The secondary
one is a thinner rubber membrane held onto the upper portion of the retaining
ring and the upper portion of the transmission by special steel rings not
unlike giant hose clamps. Between these
is a screwed in sensor that tells if one or the other has allowed water into
the interstitial space.
Removing these suckers was hard work, involving the
unbolting of the engine from the saildrive and moving it forward (onto bits of
lumber scrounged in the boatyard), the complete removal of the saildrive, and
the dismantling of the saildrive on a scrounged table under the boat. It was heavy, hot, dirty, hard work; and I am
proud that we were able to do it.
Now here is the bad part.
There is no difference in the new and old diaphragms. I could wipe off the old ones and sell them
as new, even though they are 20 years old.
The manufacturer said they should have been replaced 15 years ago, but
in fact there seems to be little known history of failure from fatigue. So there we are, a job done well that maybe
shouldn't have been done at all.
