More New

After Ryuho Yamada Sensei , Zen shiatsu teacher and healer, died in 2003, Hollis DeLancy bought his 1986 Toyota Corolla All-Trak, from Ryuho's wife, Mayumi (so she could return to Japan). Since she did not really need another car, she gave it to me. It was a bit of a problem from the beginning because it often failed to start (the car came with a small battery charger), and I went through a series of repairs, replacing the alternator and starter, until one smart mechanic replaced the ignition switch and it worked perfectly. The car served me well, especially during torrential winter rains when I could flip it into four-wheel drive and safely negotiate water and mud.

Moving to Florida, I had to pay more than five hundred dollars to register it! I should have sent it to Pull-A-Part right then, but I had the money and lacked the sense. I used it well for several years until it was stolen and ended up in Kingman, Arizona. Sara Smith rescued it and her Santa Cruz mechanic, Pedro, put it back into shape. Curiously, though, somewhere in its journey, its nice, new, 100 amp-hour battery, got switched to an older, 60 amp-hour model.
Last year, before I sailed off to Fort Meyers, the car failed to start reliably. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't, not a desirable behavior in a car. I found that if I could get the battery voltage up to about 12.8 volts (higher than a resting, fully charged battery), it always started, indicating a big resistance in the starting circuit. I attempted to check the cable connection, but there is so much metal back where the starter lives, I could not even see the starter motor. I abandoned the car and sailed away!
Well, now daughter, Lisa, and son-in-law, Andrew, are moving back to Tallahassee, I need a car again as there is no public transportation to the Forgotten Coast. I also had to miss a meeting of the Franklin County Democratic Party Committee because I could not get to Carabelle--I thought about taking the boat, but that would mean six hours on the engine because there is seldom any fair wind in the Waterway, or ride my bike, but that would probably be beyond my ability. And, Tallahassee is just out of reach entirely!

1986 Toyota Corolla Ignition Switch

So, I guessed that the starting problem was once again due to a faulty switch and dove in. It took me hours to remove all the old, junky plastic to get the switch and diagnose it was indeed the problem--I jumped the connection between the hot plug and the starter plug and the engine turned right over, then I had to crawl under the steering column to unscrew it. I took it apart and attempted to clean the connections, but when I put it back together, it would not work at all. So much for repair! An eBay seller had a new switch for $35 and it is on its way.

I finished painting the quarterberth and other places while I was at it. Hopefully, the little flecks of white paint are banished from my cabin. It looks good, too, all clean.


I also decided to add a shelf for my computer, printer, etc, and provide a secure place to store charts. So, I taped off a section (blue in the photo) to provide a foundation for fiberglass. After the new paint dried, I ground off all the old gel-coat and paint right down to the fiberglass of the hull. Then, I fashioned a 1"x3" board to glass in to the hull and provide a ledger to support the shelf. In order to make it conform to the hull shape, I sawed about fifty kerfs across the width of the board, down to about 3/8". I prepared means to hold the board in place and glassed it in.

My shelf job is not perfect, completely due to my inexperience as a "glass-man". Neighbor Mike Young, a real glass-man, advised me, but the technique is tricky. It is necessary to add just the right amount of hardener to the resin--too little will cause the resin to set up slowly, too much will cause the resin to set up too quickly and be brittle, to boot. I did both. The first batch fastened the board to the hull and it set up too quick. The second batch wrapped the wood and fastened to the hull below the board and after two days, it is still tacky. Nevertheless, the shelf looks good.

When the resin finally cures, I can use the last of my cabin paint to touch up, then I get my cabin back! I am so tired of typing on my dining table. But, I believe the result will have been worth the travail: a bright, clean quarterberth, a bright, clean cabin, and a sturdy shelf to keep my laptop secure at sea.

New Tiller

On the voyage to Fort Myers, we got stuck in the mud heading into a little marina on the side of the Inter-coastal Waterway (ICW) and got the tiller broke off at the rudder post due to a misplaced tow rope and a too small tow boat. I fixed the tiller by sawing off the broken end and drilling a new hole, but the resulting tiller was too short--not enough leverage and poor steering position--and irremediably broken-- delaminated core. So, back in Apalachicola, I searched the net and found Tillercraft, which seems to be the only custom tiller house left in the US.
Richard, there, after a bit of negotiating the correct shape and size, fixed me up with a beauty. Because of the shape, tillers are hard to photograph, but here are a couple of shots:

So, now the tiller is prettier than the boat! I look forward to my next sail. BTW, I am keeping the old one. I can double as a spare tiller and a spare cudgel, should I need either.

Too pay for the tiller, I had to sell my marine SSB radio. The truth is that I never liked that radio. It was based on channels, i.e. pushing a button got a specific frequency and mode. The trouble was that there were only two channels out of sixty million that I ever used and could remember. To surf the ham spectrum was possible, but required pushing about sixty buttons. I like dials! So, it was more radio than I ever needed. It had one advantage which was its Digital Service feature--a red button that when pushed sent a distress signal all over the world. However, I already have a similar device that works with satellites, much more of a sure thing. So, it was not too hard to see it go to Louisiana.

The radio had a special antenna tuner that I included because it only worked with the ICOM M802 and my next radio will surely be an old Yaesu or Kenwood--solid Japanese ham radios--and their corresponding antenna tuners. [Boat antennas need tuners because they are essentially long wires, not cut to a specific frequency's length]. At any rate, in order to retrieve the tuner, I had almost insurmountable problems. The guy who installed was very small and he drank a lot. So, when he read the instructions to install the tuner as close to the antenna as possible, he did not discriminate between electrical length--the length of the coaxial cable connecting antenna and tuner-- and physical length. So, he mounted it as far back in the stern as he could get, leaving about six feet of extra coax neatly coiled.
I barely even reach the tuner, let alone unscrew it. I managed to unscrew one screw of three, and my friend Marsha, a small person, crawled back in there and unscrewed another. The final screw was stripped, so I tried to lever it out and could not budge. Marsha's husband, Mike, a very, very strong guy, got his crow bar literally ripped it out of the hull (I epoxied all the holes).

The point of the antenna tuner story is that whenever I crawled back there on the quarter berth, I always came out covered with white flecks, paint or gelcoat coming loose. Plus, the new tiller inspires me to get this old boat spiffed up. Here is the quarterberth now:

 The purpose of the quarterberth is to allow an additional sleeping space underneath the starboard lazarette, but it was probably never used thusly. In fact, it is mostly a handy place to stow life jackets, fishing equipment, and other gear. But it is also useful for me to crawl aft and check the transmission oil, tighten the stuffing box, etc.

It should be very clear that my next job to spiff up the boat will be to do a little painting! I am experienced now that over a week I helped my daughter Lisa and son-in-law Andrew repaint their Tallahassee house, so I purchased a quart of very expensive boat cabin paint and UPS delivered it today.