Repairs underway

It is May 22 and the glass work is finally getting done. Our hopes of being in the water for Memorial Day Weekend are not realistic. Hopefully we can get the parts from Caliber and get everything done within a month - Just in time for hurricane season. Sometime life throws you a monkey wrench!

ECSA Boy Scout Island Cruise/Jones BBQ

Still doing time on the hard

The picture above is of Chris hack-sawing through our 1.5" solid stainless steel drive shaft. Unfortunately, we were unable to pull the shaft from the coupling, so ching, ching (that's a cash register), we get to add that our parts purchase list. Once we had the shaft, strut and other various/asunder parts of the drive train out, we loaded up for a trip to Clearwater, Florida. Caliber Yachts, the builder of LaLeLu, still builds our same boat in their factory in Clearwater. In fact, the very mold our hull was laid up in is still in use!! It was like getting to see our boat's womb - very cool. We met with George McCreary, the head honcho of Caliber, and had him look at our parts. He came up with the official theory #3 as to why our boat failed: He believes that the prop was too heavy for the strut/shaft length, which caused it to stress fracture and break. So now we have three theories: 1. Prop blade broke and then caused strut to fail; 2) electrolysis caused strut to fail and 3) weight of prop caused strut to fail. Sooooo, we may never know what really happened - I suppose it could even have been a combo of things. We decided the best thing to do was to go back to square one - return the drive train to its original design. We are going to go back to the original fixed blade prop. George said that the prop/shaft were tested and designed for the type and weight of the original prop. Changing the prop and or shortening the shaft is tampering with the unknown. We are now 3 weeks post breakdown and probably at least another month from being back in the water - maybe more. Arrggggg!

Strut/Prop Failure

******************************
4-27-06 Update: We still don't know the exact cause of our failure. It is Marine Pro's opinion that the strut broke first, due to electrolysis. We are taking all our parts, pieces and photos to the manufacturer of our boat, who still makes the same boat, to see if they can determine what happened.
******************************

Today we were motoring down the ICW on the Indian River - no wind, but a beautiful sunny day just the same. We were in between two other boats from our sailing club, middle of the channel, headed to an island to anchor for an overnight. I was at the helm, thinking more about hanging the hammock upon arrival than anything going on in the cockpit at the time. I was jolted back to reality by the sound of metal on metal. We coasted off the channel and dropped anchor. With the engine still running in idle, following his inspection of the engine, Chris shouts "shut `er down, there's black oil all over down here." He then dove the bottom and saw that the strut was broken in half.

Fortunately, we were able to get towed and hauled - which was no easy thing on an Easter weekend. There was no impact involved in this failure. The rudder, keel and bottom are very, very clean. We were in the middle of the ICW with 12' water. Also, there doesn't appear to have been anything fouling the prop. We were motoring down at about 2200 rpm - 6.7 knots.

From our preliminary inspection, it appears that the prop blade failed first, and the lopsided, unbalanced, remaining two blades under load caused the strut to break. From the last photo you can see that the prop has two inches clearance between the top of the blade and bottom of the boat. We think that the gash in the boat must have occurred when the prop blade was lifting (as it was failing) and thus elongated enough to reach the underside of the boat. We have folks coming to inspect on Friday, so should know more after that.

Inside photos of LaLeLu

1. Salon looking aft to Galley, Nav Station and companion way steps:




2. Park's cabin looking forward into "day" head:



3. Park's Cabin:




4. Main Cabin with dressing table/stool:



5. Taken from Galley looking into Salon with Main Cabin beyond:

Conrads in Ft. Lauderdale

Taken during a trip to visit the Wolfes on Lucky Peek.

Stupid Pet Tricks

Yeah, I know, they look cute and innocent in the photo, but looks can be deceiving. We have been taking Roxie and Neko with us on the weekends to the boat. They seem to enjoy going, but sometimes they do really wierd things. Neko is the worst offender. On our trip up the Indian River from Cocoa a few weeks back, Neko tried to escape. Or at least that's what we think he was trying to do. We were putting up our mainsail, and thus, pre-occupied at the front of the cockpit. The dogs had been lounging about on the cockpit seats as they usual do when we are underway. When we got the sail up, I heard a strange clicking noise behind me. Turning around I saw Neko standing in the dingy, which was hanging from our davits off the back of the boat. Ok, I will admit, this was kind of cute and silly, but what if he had fallen off the boat! He would have been fish food. Then, this past weekend, he tried a new trick: Jumping off the boat while it is at the dock. Somehow, he was able to make it onto the dock - but again - what if? Another wierd thing he has been doing is trying to roam in the middle of the night. We have been putting the pin boards in to stop him from getting out of the boat at night. This doesn't desuade him. He will climb up the companionway and sit up at the top step. Sometimes he falls down and we awaken to the sound of furry paws desparately trying to grab onto something. Sometimes he justs sits at the top step and makes a moaning sound. He is so strange.

Roxie does not try any death defying acts, as she is not quite as brave (ie, stupid). She is pretty content to just lounge around and does not have the overwhelming need to roam like her buddy does. Her worst habbit is running to the bow of the boat and barking at everyone that goes by.

Oh well, it's a good thing they are so cute.

"Quick" Trip down the ICW

We finally had a chance to actually sail our new boat over the weekend. This is the first time we have raised the sails since we purchased her over a month ago. (On the trip from Halifax we had Gale-force winds, so it was too windy to raise sail.) We were prepared to crawl along under sail - after all, the boat is a 22k pound, sloop rig. When we first raised sail we had 10 knots dead astern coming from the North. We sailed wing-on-wing at a respectable 6 knots. She was surprisingly balanced going wing-on-wing, but we rigged a preventer just in case. (Nothing worse than getting a full sail slammed over the cabin top - or worse, into your head). After an hour or so the wind direction changed to give us a little bit of an East mixed in with the North wind. It was enough of a shift to allow us to move the sails to the same side. The wind speed climbed to a steady 14 with gusts to almost 20. Our speed jumped to over 7 knots, sometimes almost hitting 8. We flew down the river at the fastest speed we've ever sailed, all the while reminding each other - this is really cool! It was one of those days that will go down in permanent ink into the memory bank.

Miami Boat Show

Chris, Park and I enjoyed a quick trip down to Miami to attend the Miami Boat show. ECSA folks were there courtesy of the fun bus. We didn't get tickets in time, so we had to drive down ourselves. We went in search of a new dingy, but had no luck in that regard. We did, however, get to tour a brand new version of our boat, a 2006 Caliber LRC 40 named Transylvania. On our way to look at it, we overheard a gentleman excitingly exclaim to his wife, "Now we are going to get to see the Hummer of boats" as he sprinted towards the Caliber. Chris and I looked at one another and giggled. Now of course ours is a 1990 - not a 2006, but as someone once told me, it is better to own a used rolex than a brand new timex.

Delivery - part 2: Titusville to Merritt Island

We lounged around a bit in the marina in the morning, sipped our coffee and watched the morning weather forecasts. It was hard to bring ourselves to unplug the boat from its heat source. Outside it was windy (20 - 25k NW) and cold (40 degrees). Inside it was quite cozy with our hatchboards in and central heat cranking at 76 degrees. We leisurely prepared for a 9:30 cast off. We left the slip without incident and headed south down the river. We had 3 draw bridges to hail and the first two were on call, so there was no waiting for them. This is familiar water for us, so except for the bitter cold, it was smooth sailing (ummm, make that smooth motoring.) Even though the winds were no longer on the nose and we could have sailed - we didn't because it was so dang cold. I told Chris I was afraid my fingers would snap off if I had to handle sail lines. We cuddled together on the long captains seat (that we refer to as the love seat), dressed in 4 layers of clothes, and shivered. I made a hot water bag that I put in my pocket for extra warmth. When we arrived at the barge canal entrance to our marina, we were too late for the opening (it only opens on the 1/2 hour) and had to wait for the next opening. We tried to keep the boat in idle to wait out the 30 minutes, but the NW wind pushed us down the barge canal at 4.5 knots. By keeping the motor in reverse we were able to keep the boat at only 1-2 knots forward speed! It was a long 30 minutes, but finally we were through the State Road 3 bridge and on the home stretch to our marina. By the time we entered the marina, we had a 25 knot cross wind. Our attempt to back in the slip despite the significant cross wind was less than pretty. Fortunately, several of our dock neighbors were out and came over to lend a hand. The water in the marina was down about 1 foot due to the NW winds and we had to drag LaLeLu in across the silty bottom. Not the entrance we had envisioned - but none the less, we were very relieved and happy to have her in her new home.

Bringing LaLeLu Home to Merritt Island - Day 1

Let me start by saying, this trip made me realize that I do not have a career as a delivery skipper in my future. I have never been so cold and miserable in my life. It all started very well. We got to Halifax Marina early Friday afternoon. It was a nice, calm sunny day. We uneventfully unloaded 10+ totes full of boat stuff onto LaLeLu, and she swallowed it up and had room to spare. The prior owner, Les, came over and showed us how to work various things, and gave us some extra canvas, sails, etc. that went with the boat. He and his wife were staying over on their new boat in another slip in the marina and he planned to come over and help untie us at our scheduled 8a departure. We were up at 6:00 am Saturday and after listening to dire NOAA weather predictions, decided to leave a little earlier in an attempt to make the 50 kmile journey to Titusville Municipal Marina before the squalls hit. We headed out of Halifax at about 7:30 am and Les was on his dock waiving good bye to us. (Later that evening he told Chris it was very hard for him to watch his boat sail away). The first half of the day we had mild weather with winds dead on the nose about 15-20 knots. We motored all the way. We had one soft grounding (ok, it was really two groundings, but since it was in the same spot we only think of it as one) inside the main channel of the ICW @ red mm 34 just past the Coronado Beach draw bridge. We were on a falling tide and concerned about being stuck there for several hours while the tide came back in. In a bit of a panic, we hailed SeaTow, who quoted us $680 to pull us loose. That quote gave us the incentive we needed to wiggle her off. From there on out the water was very skinny. We hand steered almost all the way to masquito lagoon with depths hovering around 7' (we draw 5'). It was such a relief to get to the lagoon where the depth averaged about 9'. We got to Haulover canal at about 3:00 pm. As we went through the canal, we saw a wall of squalls coming at us. The wind had steadily increased throughout the day and by this time we had 25 knots steady. When the squall line hit us we got gusts up to 38 knots and blinding rain. LaLeLu took it in stride and brought us safely to the marina by about 5:00 pm. We plugged into the power and enjoyed a nice, toasty evening aboard playing Yatzee and watching TV.

What's in a name?

2/9/06: This has been a long and stressful week - tomorrow we close on the purchase of our beautiful new boat. She is a 1990 Caliber 38. I never thought that we would own such a magnificent vessel. Her name presently is Semper Fi. Her current owner, Les, is a marine (you probably guessed that) and was visibly relieved to hear that we were not keeping her current name since he already was using it for the new boat. In the past, we have always named our boats after songs: Jolly Mon, Cool Change. But this boat is different and we knew we had to come up with something very befitting of her. Her lines are refined and she is quite unassuming. A masculine name definitely would not do. Chris and I both really liked the name Lullaby, but after learning of the unfortunate sinking of a similarly named Gozzard, we decided to pass on that name. Too many other omens to worry about out there - didn't need to add another to the list. In keeping with the Lullaby theme, I Googled for "German Lullaby" seeing as how our German heritage runs strong in both of our lines. The Google search led me to "La Le Lu" - the title of a German lullaby about the man on the moon watching over baby. Seemed appropriate enough. We gave it the VHF hail test (ie "This is sailing vessel LaLeLu, sailing vessel LaLeLu, over"), to confirm that it would be acceptable in practical application, and agreed it would do just fine. Below are the lyrics to our boat's name sake:

La Le Lu
Only the man in the moon is looking
When the little babies sleep
So go to sleep, too.
La Le Lu
Two shoes are in front of the bed
And they are exactly as tired
Baby, as you.
Then comes the Sandman
He walks quietly in the house
Giving out his dreams
The most beautiful to you.
La Le Lu
Only the man in the moon is looking
When the little babies sleep
So go to sleep, too.