Sometime in January, 2004, a new sewing machine arrived. Not the most precision instrument in the world, but a semi-industrial workhorse suitable for canvas work. Lynde and I immediately put it to use repairing Malakii's sailbag, and making a spinnaker sock so we could fly the big light-air sail. I didn't save any money on the sock, but I think I got a better sock in the long run.
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| Sailrite LSZ Sewing Machine | Lynde and the Spinnaker Sock |
In mid February I left the frigid north by fast bus (is that an oxy-moron, or what?), heading for Denver, Dallas, and then Belize. I was tired of getting jerked around by the airlines and their idiotic pricing schemes. I could fly to Dallas round trip for about $300, changing planes in Denver. But if I actually wanted to get off the plane in Denver for a few days so I could visit mom and dad, it was going to cost $750 or more. I bought a $129 bus ticket instead. I buttoned up the house, got a neighbor to drop me off at Trixi's, and flagged down the bus on its way to Great Falls. Somewhere outside of Billings, the bus was overheating. The big cooling fans weren't running. The driver called ahead to have another bus come out to rescue us, and I overheard him tell the mechanic to bring "the little idler pulley" . When he hung up, I asked him how big the pulley was, as I had some spare boat blocks in my backpack. He invited me to come look at it, so I went to the back of the bus and stared at an 8" pulley, way bigger than anything I had. But the only thing wrong with it was that one flange was completely gone. Another fellow on the bus was a truck driver and had some tools, so I borrowed his hammer and some tiedown straps and jury-rigged the idler to keep the belt on it. In short order we were happily back on the road. We made it to Billings only half an hour late, and everybody made their connections.
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| Bus Pulley Jury-Rig |
After a few days in Denver helping mom and dad, I continued on to Dallas, where Christi met me. I got to meet her beau Bob Staib and some of his family, and learn a little about the jet rental business. Not that I'm going to need one any time soon, but it would make getting to the boat a bit easier...
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| Christi and Bob |
Then it was off to Belize. When I arrived, a caught a taxi to the marina where I had left Malakii in December after rebuilding her engine. The batteries were dead, but recovered a little with charging. I was anticipating having to do a little work on the engine still, but it started right up and seemed to run better than when I had left it. I rebuilt the hand pumps in the galley and head, repaired the flush valve on the head, and installed a thermostat and a new temperature gauge on the engine. Then I replaced the engine ignition switch and the glow plug and starter buttons.
I was feeling pretty happy until I looked under the port settee and discovered one of the cans of bottom paint that I acquired when I purchased the boat had rusted through. Fortunately, it was a tiny hole, and the paint was sitting in a plastic bucket, but the bucket had a crack and let some out. It's expensive paint, about $200/gal, and I didn't want to waste it, so I cleaned up the mess and tried to seal up the leak.
Then I installed the solar panel charge controller I brought with me, so I can leave the batteries charging to keep them up and not ruin them.
I replaced the broken sheaves on some of the blocks with new ones I had made, and epoxied new oarlock bushings on the dinghy oars.
One morning I "fixed" the SSB radio for some friends on a neighboring boat by figuring out how to change the transmitter frequency. The instructions weren't correct, and it definitely wasn't intuitive.
There is a boat on the side of the road on the way into town from the marina. It has a huge hole in the bottom -- the keel is gone, as is just about everything else. You could drive a full-sized pickup in through the hole and park it. Apparently the boat went up on the reef at San Pedro and there was a bit of a fiasco trying to get it off. When it finally happened, under orders from the Belize authorities, the boat was pretty well totalled.
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| Holed Boat on the Way into Town from Cucumber Beach Marina |
The dinghy floorboards were pretty worn, so I put a fresh coat of epoxy on them. Not sure how long it will last but hopefully more than a year.
Then I went up the mast and installed a block on one of the cranes and lead a new halyard through it for the spinnaker. Because the spinnaker is a free flying sail, the block for the halyard used to hoist it should be free to rotate, since the direction of pull will not always be dead ahead. All of my existing halyards went through fixed blocks in the mast, which can't rotate to face the sail when it is off to the side.
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| Masthead with New Spinnaker Halyard | View from the Masthead |
After all that I was ready to shake things out, so I headed for the Drowned Cays. I only had a few days before I had to be back to pick up Lynde. I motored part way, as it was going to be close getting there before dark. The engine died after about an hour of running, so I just sailed on. Half way across I went up to the foredeck to mess with something and scared up a lizard. It ran back to the edge of the cabin and I'm not sure where from there. I never saw it again... maybe it's still hiding somewhere, eating crumbs. I got to my favorite anchorage just at dark. Fortunately, I was familiar with the bouge and slipped in around the shallow bars without problems.
On the way over, the head sink drain thru-hull was shut off. But when I arrived, there was water in the sink. How did it get there? The only thing different is that the hand pump is now hooked up. Is a ghost operating it while I'm under way?
It started raining hard right after I dropped the hook, so I was happy to be warm and dry down below. Unfortunately, I left my binoculars hanging in the cockpit, and in the morning I discovered one lens all fogged up. I set them out in the sun to try to dry them out. Eventually, they did (took a few weeks).
I spent the next two days on R&R (rest and repair...), getting back on island time. I rearranged the cabin to make more space, and designed some better storage bins in the pilot berths. I fixed the vee berth light and switch, and figured out a way to "mount" the propane camp stove in the galley solidly enough to use it.
One day I made a shelf for the space under the stove, which helps a lot with storage. Then I scraped the hull, made a toothbrush holder, and did laundry. It's sure nice to have clean tee shirts...
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| R & R in the Drowned Cays |
On Friday, 20-Feb I sailed back to Cucumber Beach Marina in Belize City, then spent a few days getting a new battery and rewiring the battery compartment and its switches, repairing battery cables, and generally improving things.
This page last updated on 2004-05-10.
