Captain's Log

Skinwalker Log, March 6, 2008, 0620 hrs

Caloosahatchie River, Turkey Creek, Ortona, Florida

Our bodies are sorely hurt. Trashed. Even my hair hurts. Our fingers, nicked & bleeding, grime stains our hands and splotches our faces like a Virginia coal miner. Most muscles feel like twisted dock line under strain from a heavy wind. At times this ten days we have been too tired to eat, much less cook. My knees are swollen from the incessant up and down so many times a day—today I am crippled. Lynn’s hair has turned blue from bottom paint. As Rodger Wrona, the Trawler Doc explains it. “We got the boatyard blues”.

We took the short cruise from Turkey Creek to Glades Boatyard to do annual maintenance. We knew cutless bearings, (bronze and hard rubber tubes that fit in a strut through which a driveshaft is held straight and is allowed to rotate) were in need of replacement. What we didn’t know is that the stainless shafts, also needed replacing along with the couplings to the transmission. They call them stainless steel shafts, but I know from the price of replacement that they are a more exotic metal, like gold, titanium or maybe milled out of diamonds. I didn’t even know my boat was worth that much. Hell, I’m not even worth that much. Do you know what a 10.5’ 2” shaft weights? I do. It is more than Capt’n Lynnie can install without help from others.

(Dear heirs to the estate: If we die and the boat sinks—salvage the new shafts and re-conditioned props.)

Now I have to tell you I knew all the words that describe how this work was to be performed, but I didn’t believe what they told me. If it had not been for Trawler Doc giving me morning lectures via email and Mark Richter of Winnie the Pooh fame stopping by frequently advising us on what to do next and what to expect this work would never have gotten done. It all is a matter of knowing leverage tricks and reducing friction. Yeah. Un-huh, sure.

Let’s edge this toward the slightest of perspective. It took two 24” pipe wrenches, a large socket, eight hours, a can of penetrating oil, a couple of hundred exertion grunts, dozens of groans, multiple curses, cramps, pain and serious panting to move two 5” couplings four inches each off a two inch shaft. That was just the coupling holding the shaft to the transmissions. Now remove four cutless bearings, two shafts, two props and five days of intense gut wrenching labor and we are ready to drop a few boat bucks and have the pleasure of reversing the process for installation. The bad news is we had to do it. The good news is, if we have to do it again it will take so much less time and effort, now that we know the leverage and lubricant tricks—I think.

Damn I love boating. I just hate boats.

So we aligned the newly milled shafts with the holes in the struts and the hole in the boat and the shaft couplings, milled to specifically fit each shaft perfectly down to 3 thousandth of an inch, and finally the coupling to the transmission face plate. We adjusted the ½ ton engines and transmission as a unit so they would line up flush with the shaft coupling with the same 3 thousands of an inch tolerance. While I labored with the engine room Lynn fought valiantly the job of painting the bottom with three coats of anti-fouling protective paint, rebuilt the swim platform, did a hundred other out of the water jobs and together we watched with satisfaction as Skinwalker was splashed back in the river yesterday.

I have to admit the boat drive train now has no vibration above idle speed and leaves me with the sensation of smooth cream while underway. There is something magical about having finished arduous efforts and reaping the comfort of proper tuning of those efforts. The grossness of using pipe wrenches and 10 lb sledge hammers to establish a 3 thousandth clearance or less is rather fascinating to me.

I give props to Mark Richter and Roger Wrona. Lynn & I can do anything. Unfortunately I seldom know how. They were both there for us. We are proud to have them as friends and mentors. Roger. Mark. Thank you for your benevolent service to mankind. I have this uncanny ability to make the human race look really stupid with my ignorance. The two of you may have saved the world by showing all watching that the human race is not what I make it appear.

Thank you, guys.

Skinwalker is now down to tweaking in preparation for our next adventure set. The boat is mostly ready but we are not. We must finish our land based activities, provision, fine tune our systems and depart. We will be underweigh by March 15th while our eldest son the JAG for Carrier Group Nine working off the Abraham Lincoln is off to save the world.

The heck with saving the world, we need to bunker cheaper fuel oil.

Skinwalker & Capt’n Lynnie