Our trip started on a high note. The two projects that I mentioned in my previous post, replacing the HF radio tuner and installing the Garmin Gwind wired pack, both went well. I wasn't able to reach Chris Parker on the HF radio but I was able to call a friend at considerably closer distance, which narrows the potential culprits - and now our wind instrumentation works perfectly. Stringing its cable down the mast went surprisingly well, with Dawn's help.
So we got out of Deale on Wednesday, Aug 30th, and had a delightful motorsail in light winds to Annapolis, MD. We took a mooring in the inner harbor, and it was so good to be off the dock and cruising again. The next day involved a long motor in completely calm winds to Chesapeake City MD, and then early the next morning we transited the C&D Canal on a favorable current. A cold front had passed during the night, and as soon as we got out into Delaware Bay on Friday Sept 1st we were able to unfurl the sails and turn off the engine for a fantastic beam-to-broad reach to the S/SE, the delight of sailors everywhere. A squally warm front was pressing in from the south, but the forecast was just right for us to run up to New York Harbor before things got too crappy.
And then, just as we were exiting Delaware Bay, the wind died, we started up our engine, and then our transmission started acting up in rather dramatic fashion - refusing to stay in gear, particularly above 60% power. I had to laugh despite myself - this was exactly where Judy & Mark Handley experienced transmission trouble with Windbird in 2005, just as they set off to sail around the world. Then, they ducked into Delaware Bay and met a boat-mechanic genius that convinced them to repower their boat with a new Yanmar and the ZF transmission that was now, after 8400 hours of faithful service, giving up the ghost. Unfortunately I hadn't read that portion of Judy's blog in about a year and, failing to recall that the genius lived in Lewes, DE, took a left turn into Cape May, NJ.
Yeah, no, I'm not that sorry. Cape May has turned out to be a really cool place to be stranded for over a week. It's a funky old resort town turned artist commune, with a bunch of really great restaurants, art galleries, breweries, wineries, distilleries, and a cool naval air museum. We spent the first two days in a rather snooty high-end marina crowded with expensive sport-fishing boats and nearly no humans, then decamped to the much more sociable Two Mile Marina just past the Two-Mile Drawbridge. We've met some great people here who've provided great moral support as I've torn out the transmission and assorted hardware - a considerable task.
Judy Handley, bless her heart, emailed her Delawarian engine guru the moment she heard we were having trouble, and he called early the next morning. David Laux has been an absolute godsend. He gave me valuable guidance throughout the tear-out process. He called his old friends at Mack Boring for us, and hearing they no longer did transmission overhauls, called several other shops. They said ZF transmissions with this many hours on them generally aren't very economical to overhaul, so Dave found a new one in Florida for considerably cheaper than retail. They sent it our way before the Hurricane Irma evacuations got started in earnest. Dave came across to Cape May on the ferry today to make sure everything was ready for the install. He expects to receive the transmission on Monday, and he'll come back across on Tuesday to help me put it in the boat.
We drove up to New York City early Tuesday morning, checked into a hotel in Chelsea, and showed Dawn's mom all around town on a whirlwind, all-day tour ending with a broadway show. It was her first time in NYC and seemed to really enjoy herself, considering that it was a pretty exhausting day. On Wednesday we got her to Kennedy Airport for her rescheduled flight home (she was originally planning to fly out of Boston on Friday) and headed back to South Jersey.
We've been keeping a very close eye on Hurricane Irma as she's worked her way across the Atlantic (she was the Invest 93L I mentioned in my last post). For a while we were worried that she might make her way up here, where we're powerless to relocate to a less exposed spot. Instead she made an absolutely direct bullseye hit on Barbuda, St. Maarten, the British Virgin Islands, and the USVI. The devastation in the BVI is particularly painful, as we've spent so much time there on charters over the last five years. All of our favorite spots are gone, the charter boat fleet is mostly wrecked, and the people we got to know there are largely homeless. We still plan to go to that part of the Caribbean this coming season, but our focus will be drastically changed. Now we'll be loading Windbird up with supplies and volunteering to do relief work.
Tomorrow Irma will be making landfall in Florida; we're keeping our fingers crossed that she weakens and drifts further west, as she had done during much of the last 36 hours. And then we'll be keeping an eye on Jose, which the most recent models suggest may not be headed out to sea quite as soon as we thought. Ugh, this hurricane season is kinda stressful. I just want to get our transmission back in and operational, just in case we need to move our boat somewhere better. Should be there in another couple of days.
So we got out of Deale on Wednesday, Aug 30th, and had a delightful motorsail in light winds to Annapolis, MD. We took a mooring in the inner harbor, and it was so good to be off the dock and cruising again. The next day involved a long motor in completely calm winds to Chesapeake City MD, and then early the next morning we transited the C&D Canal on a favorable current. A cold front had passed during the night, and as soon as we got out into Delaware Bay on Friday Sept 1st we were able to unfurl the sails and turn off the engine for a fantastic beam-to-broad reach to the S/SE, the delight of sailors everywhere. A squally warm front was pressing in from the south, but the forecast was just right for us to run up to New York Harbor before things got too crappy.
And then, just as we were exiting Delaware Bay, the wind died, we started up our engine, and then our transmission started acting up in rather dramatic fashion - refusing to stay in gear, particularly above 60% power. I had to laugh despite myself - this was exactly where Judy & Mark Handley experienced transmission trouble with Windbird in 2005, just as they set off to sail around the world. Then, they ducked into Delaware Bay and met a boat-mechanic genius that convinced them to repower their boat with a new Yanmar and the ZF transmission that was now, after 8400 hours of faithful service, giving up the ghost. Unfortunately I hadn't read that portion of Judy's blog in about a year and, failing to recall that the genius lived in Lewes, DE, took a left turn into Cape May, NJ.
Yeah, no, I'm not that sorry. Cape May has turned out to be a really cool place to be stranded for over a week. It's a funky old resort town turned artist commune, with a bunch of really great restaurants, art galleries, breweries, wineries, distilleries, and a cool naval air museum. We spent the first two days in a rather snooty high-end marina crowded with expensive sport-fishing boats and nearly no humans, then decamped to the much more sociable Two Mile Marina just past the Two-Mile Drawbridge. We've met some great people here who've provided great moral support as I've torn out the transmission and assorted hardware - a considerable task.
Judy Handley, bless her heart, emailed her Delawarian engine guru the moment she heard we were having trouble, and he called early the next morning. David Laux has been an absolute godsend. He gave me valuable guidance throughout the tear-out process. He called his old friends at Mack Boring for us, and hearing they no longer did transmission overhauls, called several other shops. They said ZF transmissions with this many hours on them generally aren't very economical to overhaul, so Dave found a new one in Florida for considerably cheaper than retail. They sent it our way before the Hurricane Irma evacuations got started in earnest. Dave came across to Cape May on the ferry today to make sure everything was ready for the install. He expects to receive the transmission on Monday, and he'll come back across on Tuesday to help me put it in the boat.
We drove up to New York City early Tuesday morning, checked into a hotel in Chelsea, and showed Dawn's mom all around town on a whirlwind, all-day tour ending with a broadway show. It was her first time in NYC and seemed to really enjoy herself, considering that it was a pretty exhausting day. On Wednesday we got her to Kennedy Airport for her rescheduled flight home (she was originally planning to fly out of Boston on Friday) and headed back to South Jersey.
We've been keeping a very close eye on Hurricane Irma as she's worked her way across the Atlantic (she was the Invest 93L I mentioned in my last post). For a while we were worried that she might make her way up here, where we're powerless to relocate to a less exposed spot. Instead she made an absolutely direct bullseye hit on Barbuda, St. Maarten, the British Virgin Islands, and the USVI. The devastation in the BVI is particularly painful, as we've spent so much time there on charters over the last five years. All of our favorite spots are gone, the charter boat fleet is mostly wrecked, and the people we got to know there are largely homeless. We still plan to go to that part of the Caribbean this coming season, but our focus will be drastically changed. Now we'll be loading Windbird up with supplies and volunteering to do relief work.
Tomorrow Irma will be making landfall in Florida; we're keeping our fingers crossed that she weakens and drifts further west, as she had done during much of the last 36 hours. And then we'll be keeping an eye on Jose, which the most recent models suggest may not be headed out to sea quite as soon as we thought. Ugh, this hurricane season is kinda stressful. I just want to get our transmission back in and operational, just in case we need to move our boat somewhere better. Should be there in another couple of days.
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