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What a difference two weeks makes! It hasn’t been our choice to linger in northern latitudes this long, but rather the choice of our insurance underwriter.

Our old insurance carrier wanted us north of Florida until November 1st, our new carrier says November 15th. The timing here is focused on avoiding the worst of the tropical storms. This time of year two weeks really changes things. Cold fronts roar across the continent more frequently, following each other closer, and reaching further south. Our weather window for a comfortable ocean passage south gets tighter.

Toward the end of this week (or next at the latest!) we will be heading south. First making the 150 mile run south down the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, Virginia. Once we get there we will wait while we seriously watch the weather for an opening to run south.

The exact date of our departure is right now being driven by the delivery of two international packages that are delayed in customs clearance. New dodger canvas is on its way from Amel in France, and a new sail is coming from Siri Lanka. Bet you didn’t know that Siri Lanka is a center of sail manufacture these days.

The delay does have a bright side, we get to enjoy the glory of colors that the deciduous forests of northeastern America show every fall. If you are from some other part of the world, and have never experienced it, all I can say is: You have no idea! Hillsides lit up with yellow and red as far as you can see. All the more precious because it is so fleeting. A complex mix of rainfall, temperature, wind, and other stuff combine to make the peak of color quite unpredictable by calendar. You just have to be there.

This year had regular steady rain all summer, making a great growing season, which leads to a better than average color show.

Every serious sailboat racing team competes on two levels. One, of course, is who’s boat is faster. The other is who can look best out on the race course. This usually consists of color coordinated foul weather gear, and such.

A local all female racing team on the boat named More Cowbell has taken this to a new level:

And for those of you who might not get the reference for the name:

The colors of autumn are beginning to tinge the trees here in eastern Maryland. For us, this can only mean one thing: Time to head south! That will happen in a few weeks, but in the meantime we are once again putting the final tie downs on our fall maintenance and upgrade projects.

We have been working hard on one major, and several minor, projects that are finally coming to completion. Our major project is the installation of a new generator into Harmonie‘s engine room. This major change to our boat’s electrical system has resulted in a long cascade of changes, modifications, and upgrades. From the outside, little has changed, but on the inside Harmonie has undergone a major refit and changed from a boat with a 1990 energy system, to one with a system as modern as any 2020 model year vessel.

Bill has spent 8 hours a day for weeks buried in the engine room (his version of a “man cave”) rerouting wires and plumbing, and making the structural changes needed to accommodate our new generating system. 25 years of modifications and repairs were all brought up to standard, routed in a logical fashion, labeled, and made neat and clean. A master breaker box was installed to collect all the main circuit breakers that had been scattered in various places around the boat.

We have had a number of discussions with boat owners recently about out maintenance practices, especially around our generator, and I have been surprised by what I heard.

The Issue

What we were discussing was one of the scheduled maintenance items for our Onan generator. Onan’s recommendation is to replace the shaft bearing every 5 years. Onan’s reasoning is while this is a sealed bearing that is “lubricated for life” the grease used gradually dries out and loses effectiveness. Catastrophic failure of this bearing would likely cause a lot of collateral damage and could destroy the generator. Because of this, the maintenance schedule for this task is based strictly on calendar time, and not operating hours.

There is no question that this is a major job. The entire guts of the electrical side of the generator need to be removed to access the bearing. An intimidating job for the mechanically naive, and a major one even for an experienced mechanic. Because of this, many, maybe most, people have chosen to just ignore this item on the maintenance list.

Our Approach

In our thinking, if we take care of our boat, she will take care of us. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know we are constantly working one or another major, or minor, project on our boat. The thing that is important to note, is that VERY few of our projects are in response to an item that failed unexpectedly. All (well, almost all!) of our big projects are either preventive, or in response to an incipient failure we are heading off at the pass.

The idea of ignoring a recommended maintenance item and hoping that it will not matter is anathema to us. We routinely take our boat to remote and isolated places. We need to have confidence that all of our critical systems will support our plans.

Take it Apart!

One of the really important parts of the care for our boat is the philosophy: Just take it apart. If you roam around the boat, and on a regular basis you just disassemble and reassemble something it has a number of useful results. Maybe most important, is you learn how to do it, and gain a better understanding of the key parts and how they work and wear. You will find problems before they stop you in your tracks. You can be sure that you have all the tools you need to repair critical systems. You can compare your spare parts inventory to what you see needs work.

Different Strokes

Now, to be sure, different boats have different needs. A boat that spends almost all its time in close reach of supplies and professional mechanics can have a less stringent maintenance program than one that spends time crossing oceans or in remote places. For us, and for the way we use our boat, the “plan” of “run it until it breaks” is just not an option.

At the time of our last post we were still in Lewes, Delaware. We have moved, and are now in Annapolis, Maryland back at our favorite boatyard in the Chesapeake: Bert Jabin’s Yacht Yard.

Getting here started out with a real adventure, and NOT one of the good kinds. Lewes has been a harbor since the late 1600’s. For part of that time is was a fairly important port. There are 400 years of debris on the bottom. On our third visit, we found some of it.

As we pulled up our chain, it seemed the windlass was working a bit harder than usual, but not anything exceptional, until we got to this:

That steel cable is about an inch and a half across, and is as stiff as a steel bar. We can’t bend it, or move it much at all. It took us about an hour and a half to figure out how it was wrapped around our chain, and maneuver the two so we could drop the cable off.

But we were not done yet! As the anchor came up…

…our “friend” shows up again. We never saw the whole thing, or what, if anything, it was attached to. Careful study of the photo would show that what we have is really just a loop of cable over the anchor, but try as we might, we can’t get it off. We eventually tied a line to the anchor, and disconnected the chain. We lifted, we bounced, we dragged, we puzzled.

After another 2 hours, we FINALLY managed to pry the loop of cable off the anchor and send it back to the bottom. All through this time we are very slowly drifting along with the tide out to sea. Lucky for us there are no shallows or other obstructions in our way.

Clearing this mess was hard, physical labor that lasted nearly 4 hours. We were both exhausted and sore for days…

Also, in the spirit of “Catch and Release”, we didn’t catch any fish offshore, but while making our way up the Chesapeake we pulled some trolling lines and ended up landing a big redfish.

Not just big, but TOO big! the local regulations require you return to the water any fish over 26 inches, so back he went!

And More Boat Work…

Always more boat projects… we have just started on a bunch and will be working hord for the next couple of weeks to get them all done before it’s time to head south for the winter. More details on those will be following!

If you are in the area, feel free to stop by, we would welcome an excuse to take a break!