That moment when you find out that the water is as bad as you were afraid it would be.
Here we are, still in Berkeley.
Once again stuck fixing the boat,
having lunch at local taco stands,
taking regular time off to hang with old friends,
constantly meeting people in the marina “neighborhood”,
relaxing with DVDs at night,
checking out the yacht club’s open mic night (it’s pretty much what you expect, but also not),
getting reacquainted with my power tools and Our Friend Fiberglass,
tending a much smaller eternal flame of spending,
and occasionally treading numbing cold water and cursing this life we live on Earth.
It’s a little different experience than the last time around.
Yes, we have yet another repair to perform before we can continue. Yes, it’s something that’s probably going to happen with some regularity. This is the consequence of trying to go on an adventure like this without being or having recently been fairly wealthy. We will probably bleed time and money in a thousand tiny cuts until we peter out, say “Well, we’ve had our fun,” and have to head home. This is the life, but damned if we aren’t going to fight tooth and nail to prolong it.
There’s a boat yard right on the other side of the marina, and it’s a do it yourself-er. Really it could not be a more perfect place to have a breakdown. However, the yard wanted to charge us $500 to let the boat hang in the crane slings overnight, allowing us to work until morning under bright (but in our case let’s face it, dim) lights to remove our tiller. We then would be able to claim a small corner of the yard (fee unspecified) until the rudder was ready to be reinserted, at which point the overnight scramble in the slings would repeat itself. This did not sound ideal.
The extra burn is that this was the yard “working with us”. It’s not that we thought they were gouging us (though our whole boatyard fee from our month in Ilwaco didn’t even cost this much). This is the Bay Area afterall, and everything here is priced like it’s made out of gold. No, it was the fact that we knew this was the yard giving us a deal, but it was too high a cost for us to accept if we were going to succeed in making this not another sure step towards the end. We would have to do this repair by ourselves, while the boat was still floating in the water.
Harmony and I have different approaches to cold water. I’m more . . temperature conscientious.
So how does a pair go about this? A rudder is a pretty complicated thing, seeing as it has a pretty important job and takes a lot of crap from the ocean. Normally you can at least look on a forum dedicated to your brand of boat, but like every other thing we’ve had to work on, the rudder on our boat is custom. What a luxury. What a joy.
From what we could see without swimming under in the 60 degree water, we could tell that the rudder was held in place by a metal collar of some sort up high in the cockpit rear seat locker (lazarette) and down low by a U-shaped band of steel with two large bolts in it. Over the past four days we have toiled – when not visiting friends – to free this monster. I sat on my knees in the cockpit for two whole days using every tool I could think of (including two separate hardware store trips of inspiration), as well as magic solvent to first try to remove two screws from the collar, then later after that didn’t work to cut through the heavy steel collar and extremely hard bolts that ran through it.
My body is bruised to the bone and exhausted, and my ears would still be hurting if I hadn’t used plugs. After much pain and frustration, I stood up slowly, turned to face inside the cabin, and dropped the parted collar to the deck with a heavy thud. Victory.
Now to get it out in the water, repair it, and slide it back in. We can do this. We cannot get stuck, not even here. The weather is relatively nice and the opportunities are plentiful, but we’re meant to be close to entering Mexico by now. That was the plan anyway, but out here we’re learning how much those are worth.
PS – There’s this whole separate blog that we don’t write, which is all about the fun we have while traveling. Pity, maybe we’ll get to it when things slow down. Har har.
