Well, here is a new one. Today you get a post from the captain. The admiral is sleeping as we are off on another over-nighter.
It is now just after 7pm and we are sailing our way north across Saginaw bay. The wind has finally picked up and we are happy to be sailing. We left this morning with plans to sail about 50 miles and were greeted by a beautiful beam reach which had us ghosting over a nearly flat lake at 6 knots. This was one of the best sails of the trip. It was at this point that we decided to just carry on and do an over-nighter. That decision was followed by a period of light winds that slowed us to 4 knots and progressed to a dead calm. We motored for a while then tried sailing again as we saw increasing winds. Then the wind died and we motored some more. Finally the expected winds came and we are now sailing well.
We are limping home with a bad propellor coupling, the fitting that joins the propellor shaft to the transmission. The shaft is held by three set screws and a key that aligns the shaft with the coupling. Unfortunately the previous owner had replaced the grub screws with three regular bolts. These do not hold properly and worse, when things slip and the key falls out it scores the shaft and wears the key. I had to purchase new key stock as the key was almost totally worn away. I have also purchased new bolts as the end of the bolts have worn away. Long and short, the shaft is now worn away, the key way is widened and rounded, and the bolts are being worn away.
When the shaft pulls out, we have been grateful that we have a zinc anode collar around the shaft which keeps the shaft from being pulled out of the boat totally. Zincs are supposed to corrode and wear away, like the anode in your water heater. Well that zinc has been there for a while and yesterday it gave way. The propellor shaft slipped out, far enough that I couldn’t pull it back into the boat. I had to have Erik jump in and push the shaft back. This was not good.
Last night I purchased a new zinc and installed it inside the boat as a safety collar. it will hit the stuffing box nut and prevent the ejection of the shaft. This morning I had a better idea and moved the collar close enough to the nut that the shaft can’t move back more then a few millimetres. I noticed that when motoring forward, the distance between zinc and stuffing box nut was about 10mm and when we stopped or sailed, the distance is more like 0 millimetres. Then motoring again the shaft moves back in to the 10mm point. That looked hopeful, if we can keep the key from falling out, we are much better off.
Or at least that was the plan. Somehow even with the collar holding things together, the key had still popped out. When we shut down the engine to start sailing, I guess the key slipped out. The problem now is that I couldn’t pull the shaft out to get the key in. Now I had to remove the zinc in order to pull things apart to put the key back. I put the zinc back on with much more clearance as I realized that if things pulled apart while sailing that we would have some trouble. Now I just need to slow the boat so that I can put the coupling together again. That will have to wait until tomorrow. I just hope the winds keep up over night.
We are making good progress on getting home and should have some time to slow down, relax, maybe swim, and just enjoy a few anchorages along the way. We have been pushing for a while now and we need to take some time to smell the roses.
I have enjoyed my admirals posts and her sense of humour. I thought I should give you an idea of what things would be like if the captain was blogging. Alas, I rarely have time to sit down and write. Tonight as I do my shift, as we begin our over night journey, I found the time.
We have taken an alternate route through the Great Lakes while the other loopers are doing the Trent-severan waterway. It has been a lonely time as we are no longer travelling with our looper friends and are instead on our own. Not that we need our buddy boats, but we miss having someone to share the journey with and to have cocktails with. Travelling the Great Lakes has been nice as we are feeling now like we are heading back to our home stomping grounds. The Michigan marinas are reminiscent of the ones back home in Green Bay.
We are just a short distance from home and are looking forward to crossing our wake in a few weeks, where we will haul out and begin fixing our coupling for good. I am hoping to get time to stop in Mackinac Island for a day or two. Mackinac Island is a place I have wanted to go to, for years. It is a small island where they have not allowed cars and so it has developed differently from the rest of America. They use bikes and horses instead. It interested my car-free city self.
After that a quick stop in some of our favourite places back in Wisconsin and then it is time to pack up the boat until we can return to it again. It likely won’t be for a while. I will miss her, but I won’t miss the problems, and I won’t miss trying to live without a car. It was hard provisioning without one, and harder still, trying to find stuff for the boat. Odd that most west marine stores are miles from the water.
We look forward to returning to our lives, our friends and our jobs. We are not the same people who left; This trip has changed us. We are still struggling with describing the changes. We have all become more social. Striking up a conversation with a stranger is now something we do regularly. strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet. I hope that we carry that on when we are back in our land-life. We have learned to be more spontaneous, allowing things to unfold rather then always being in control. We have learned perspective and the difference between a life threatening event and an event which is just stressful or important. We know that we can face adversity and endure discomfort to bring us safely to our next port. We know that setting off each day into the unknown is not only a bit scary, but how you get to experience adventures. We have learned to rely on our friends and family for advise, help and support. We have made so many friends from all over, and we hope to visit with them at some point in the future.
Finally, a motivational speech: Whatever you decide to do, you have already done the hard work, you have decided. The rest is just following through.
Henning
This morning we are at south presque island and I have just plotted the last 210 miles of our trip back to Marinette. Yippee
Mortensens Flying Free 