Day 158, Year 4 Doing Everything Twice
Date: Sunday, March 29, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny; Threatening Rain All Day
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

It was Sunday here and no one works but us yachties. We were working on our own today and things just didn’t go as planned. It seemed like everything we did had to be undone and done again. Mark thought the binnacle in the cockpit would be done first thing in the morning, but it was not even totally done at the end of the day. The binnacle is the column through which the wiring for the GPS, the cables for shifting gears, and the controls for the fuel throttle come from the engine room to the cockpit. The steering wheel and compass are also attached to the binnacle. So it is a very important piece and the installation is tricky. Mark has installed this more than once, but today we just had one problem after another that caused him to put the thing together and then have to take it apart and try again. The biggest problem was an accidental short in the wiring that caused overheating and actually melted the insulation cover of the wiring that we caught just in time to prevent a fire. Mark had sent me below to pull another wire from the cockpit to the engine room, and when I got there I could see smoke and then red hot wires. Thank goodness we caught that problem before it did more damage.

While all of this was happening, I was taping off and applying plastic to the walls and ceiling in the aft cabin and aft head to that I could spray the inside of our bronze ports with lacquer. After this was completed, I installed the port windows. But again, this job had to be done twice. My old directionality issue arose and had me installing port lights on the starboard side. Once I realized they really just didn’t fit, I had Mark come examine the situation. At first he was stumped but then he realized what I had done.

The end result is that we are not nearly as far along as we thought we would be by the end of today. So we will see how tomorrow goes and then re-assess our ambitious launch date.

On a totally different note, we talked to our grandson Sam on Skype this evening. After an hour’s video conversation, he finally said “whoosh, whoosh.” This is his sound for the movement of Windbird through the water, so I think he does actually make a connection between our video images and the grandparents who live on a sailboat. He is loving the coming of spring to Cape Cod and insists on his mom and dad stopping to smell the crocus blooms outside the front door. Even a two year-old knows that we need to take time to smell the roses.

090329 Day 158 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Putting Windbird Back Together