fetchinketch

In the space of two weeks, the weather here has gone from, “Doesn’t that breeze feel good and cool?” to, “Doesn’t that sunshine feel nice and warm?”  That can only mean one thing, it is getting to be time to migrate!  The Chesapeake Bay is of course a major stop on the bird migrations of the east coast.  The sounds of large flocks of geese honking their way south is an evocative sound of the changing seasons. We’ll soon be joining them.

We have been working hard every day to get more of our projects complete.  There is one more part with a delivery expected by the end of this week to get our wind instruments back up and talking to the other devices on the boat.  We have had successful major overhauls of a number of systems, and some repairs. We have lights up the mast to fix, and then we’ll be ready to sail again.

Our plans from here are still developing.  In the short term, we will be headed to Fort Lauderdale to paint Harmonie’s bottom.  After that, things get murky!  There might be a business opportunity helping a new Amel owner with a major refit.  If so that might keep us parked in the Sunshine State for a bit.  We are seriously exploring the idea of heading to Panama, south of the hurricane zone, for the summer season next year.  For now, we are going with the flow.

We have updated our tacking website with our voyage tracking, so if you are interested, have a look https://fetchinketch.net/where-are-we-now/

As we were getting Harmonie ready to leave the dock for the weekend, Karen was up on deck and I was down below.  I didn’t hear it, but Karen called me on deck, and said, “Only one thing makes that noise!”

We walked over to the other side of the boat yard where…

Oops!!!!

You can see the racks of boats that are stored “dry.”  If one of those is your boat, you call the yard, and tell them you want to go sailing, and they pick your boat up with a special forklift and put it in the water for you.  Sometimes, very rarely, something goes wrong.

We are guessing the boatyard just bought themselves a J-24.  The crew rushed the crane over to pick up the debris before too many people saw the body on the pavement.

The only question I have is: How did Karen know what a J-24 sailboat sounds like hitting concrete after falling 10 feet???? (It was the echo of the crunching fiberglass, she says.)

Right now we are anchored off downtown Annapolis, and we will be making our way over toward St Michaels tomorrow for the Amel meet-up. We are looking forward to meeting a lot of people whom we know only from online postings.

Autumn is here, at least by the calendar.  The hottest days are past, and we are wrapping up a long and complex list of projects. We have finished getting Harmonie‘s electrical system upgraded to exactly what we what, we fixed a leaking hatch, did many minor repairs to generator, and rigging.  Replaced an old and corroded anchor windlass, cleaned, polished, sealed, waterproofed, and organized.  The boat is looking, and working, great.

This coming week we will be visiting with over a dozen other Amel yachts that will be gathering in St. Michaels, Maryland.  At the end of the week is the big sailboat show here in Annapolis.  For us, this year will likely to be more a social outing than a shopping expedition. The last of the shiny new boats are getting rigged here at the boat yard for display.  Overheard on the docks: “It’s for the boat show.  It doesn’t have to work, just look good!”

Once the boat show is over, we begin final preparations to migrate south.  We are still working on our plans for where to go, and when to get there.  We have one or two things to do in Florida, but this year it will be a short visit to the Sunshine State before we head further south and east.

Karen got down and dirty with her weapon of choice (the boatyard classic 9-in-1 scraper) to do battle with the scourge of zebra mussels.  Most of the boat was actually very clean, except for the very bottom of the keel. We might, just maybe, possibly, perhaps, could have scraped some paint off on a sand bar or two…

Karen described the task as more fun and satisfying than “pouring boiling water down an ant hill.” I hear her application for membership in PETA was turned down.

If anybody is wondering, we use SeaHawk BioCop paint on the bottom of the boat to keep the nasty critters from attaching, and have been very pleased with it.

There is Harmonie safely tucked in tightly amongst the other boats.  It’s looking like the storm will be very much a non-event here, but all is safe, and that’s what matters.  At this point we expect to be floating again on Monday.

A calm, gray, foggy morning and Harmonie was lifted first thing. No surprises. Everything in good shape. The bottom was actually very clean, with almost not attached growth.

We have a couple minor routine things to do, and then she’s on her own for a few days.

It’s interesting watching different boats come in to be hauled. Some (like Harmonie, of course) arrive ready to go and are up out of the water within a few minutes. Others, well, are not ready. I’m watching six men from the yard crew stand around doing nothing while a boat sits in the travel-lift while one guy makes final prep to lift it. All things that could-a/should-a been done by the owners days ago. I hope they get charged extra!

This is the first time we have spent any time on a body of water where the infamous Zebra mussels have successfully invaded.  And there is no other word for it than “invasion”.

Zebra mussels are a tiny, fast growing, fresh water shellfish. Originally native to the large fresh water lakes of southeastern Russian and Ukraine they have hitchhiked around the world in the ballast water of commercial ships. They grow so fast, and in such large numbers they have actually dragged navigation buoys to the bottom with the weight of their tiny, evil, fast-growing, shells.

Full grown–and they grow fast–they are about the size of a fingernail.  They grow fast, and they are amazingly prolific.  Did I mention they grow fast???  I suspect that the unusually rainy months here have diluted the normal salt concentration of the bay to the point where they are growing in parts of the bay that are normally too salty for them.

Harmonie‘s air conditioners are cooled by seawater that is pumped through the boat.  That water comes in through a large strainer in the engine room. Checking and cleaning that strainer is a routine task. We occasionally find chunks of seaweed, maybe some miscellaneous debris.  It has never really been much of an issue.

Since arriving in Annapolis, and staying in a marina, we have been running the air conditioners more than at any time we have owned the boat.  It has been hot and humid almost every day.  It has been about three weeks since we cleaned the strainer basket last. The water here is a bit murky, but there is not a lot of floating trash, or seaweed, or jellyfish.  Things that normally clog the strainer. So we were rather horrified to see…

Words fail me…

21 days ago this was a shiny clean plastic basket.  I did happen to mention how fast these miserable little buggers grow?  The inside of our cooling system is the perfect environment for them.  Rapidly flowing water bringing food and oxygen they need to grow–really fast.  Yes, they do grow fast!

The strainer itself was an ugly mess, but it is easy to remove and scrub clean. Unfortunately, these nasty little slavic buggers had infested the entire air conditioning cooling circuit, clogging everything. Basically, all our pipes and tubes looked like that strainer basket!

It wasn’t going to be long before the water flow dropped below the minimum the air conditioners needed to run.  No air conditioning means Karen melts in the heat and humidity.  A melting Karen is an unhappy Karen.  An unhappy Karen, means an unhappy Bill. Something needed to be done–and fast!

A little creative temporary plumbing, and I routed the overboard exit of the air conditioner cooling circuit back to the strainer.  Now, when I run the cooling pump, it just moves water around in a circle.

Barnacle Buster to the rescue!

Trac Ecological’s Barnacle Buster

Barnacle Buster is a phosphoric acid based cleaner designed exactly for this kind of cleaning. It actually dissolves the shells and flushes all the gunk away. If you have occasion to use this, be aware it comes both in a concentrate (4:1) and pre-diluted form. Since one gallon of the concentrate makes five gallons of cleaning solution, it is a lot cheaper to use, and takes less space to store.

After an hour circulating this around the circuit, all the evil invaders have been vanquished. Unfortunately, I am sure there are fast growing reinforcements waiting in the wings. A few weeks, and we’ll have to be back at it again.  We just replenished our supply of Barnacle Buster in anticipation…