Day 24, Year 1: The Engine is Coming
Date: Thursday, November 24, 2005
Weather: Continued Warm Fall Weather
Location: Oxford, Maryland, Tred-on-Avon, SailAway Marina
The new Yanmar 4JH4E/ZF15MIV (the part after the slash refers to the transmission) will arrive tomorrow and we will spend the weekend getting its new home ready. Mark and I worked with David Laux all day today taking various accessories out of the engine room and basically turning the boat inside out. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but for those of you who don’t live on a boat, I’ll try to paint a picture here of what I mean. I’ll start with removing the exhaust hose which runs under the battery compartment which is under the aft cabin bed. So to get to the exhaust hose, you have to take all of the bedding and put it in the v-berth and take the mattress off and put it in the aft head to get it out of the way. You then have to remove the boards under the mattress and remove the six batteries that run everything on this boat. And then you have to remove the plywood floor the batteries sit on to get to the exhaust hose. And since the new exhaust hose is twice the size of the old hose, you have to cut a bigger hole to get the hose from the engine room to back of the boat. And then you have to get out the vacuum and clean up the mess you made cutting the whole. And then . . . You get the picture. Inside-out might not be an exaggeration.
It is now 5:00 and the sun is going down. We just got the batteries back in place, but before putting the area temporarily back together so we can sleep tonight (on a slant), there is more work to be done. Dave is out in the dinghy and Mark is in the battery compartment trying to pull the stainless exhaust fitting off the back of the boat. This weekend, once the new exhaust hose arrives, that hole in the boat will have to be enlarged to accommodate the larger exhaust system. And then we will have to remove everything again so the hose can be installed. Sounds like fun to me. And that reminds me of a sailing story. Friends of ours from Concord, Jim and Teresa Speigel, once sailed with us for a weekend from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Rockport, Massachusetts, and back to Portsmouth. We had a great evening at the Isles of Shoals, but the next night we rocked and rolled terribly in the Rockport anchorage. It was so rough that we had to leave before dawn. We flew back to Portsmouth in very windy conditions. After that weekend, all Jim had to say was, “And this is what you do for fun?” I thought of those words today, but the answer is still, “Yes, this is what we do for fun.” Things have not been going as we had hoped, but we are meeting fantastic new friends and seeing the US of A at its best. There are wonderful people out here ready to help at every turn and it is unfortunate that we had to have a turn of bad luck to experience this. But it is truly wonderful to live each day, learn new things, and meet incredible people. Today a guy named Frank Lawlor came by the boat. David Laux has built a couple of different boats for Frank, and his wife, Liz, who live close by in Royal Oaks. He came by to meet us and offer a car or a place to sleep that wouldn’t be “on a slant.” For now we are doing fine, but we did get Frank’s phone number just in case.
In 1971, when I was teaching high school in Cleveland, Ohio, I went to see Donny Hathaway and Aretha Franklin in concert at Cleveland State University. They sang a song that has been spinning through my head all day. I think it is called, “You’ve Got a Friend.” Linda Stuart, a very close and wonderful friend of mine from the Concord School District, gave me a “friends” CD mix as a going away gift and that song is on the CD. I’m playing it right now and thinking of you Linda. “If you’re down and troubled and you need some loving care, and nothing, nothing is going right, close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there to brighten up even your darkest night . . . If the sky above you grows dark and full of clouds and that old north wind begins to blow, keep your head together and call my name out loud and soon you’ll hear me knocking at your door . . . You just call out my name and you know that wherever I am I’ll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there, you’ve got a friend.” When I feel like things just aren’t going as expected, I think of friends and family like Linda and know that everything will really be alright. I just have to have patience.
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| 051110 Day 24 Boston to Norfolk, USA–Making Changes |
